Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry 0520968425, 9780520968424

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Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry

sather classical lectures Volume seventy-Four

classicism and christianity in late antique latin Poetry

Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry

Philip Hardie

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2019 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hardie, Philip R., author. Title: Classicism and Christianity in late antique Latin poetry / Philip Hardie. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: lccn 2018060158 (print) | lccn 2019003058 (ebook) | isbn 9780520968424 (ebook) | isbn 9780520295773 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: Christian poetry, Latin—History and criticism. | Political poetry, Latin—History and criticism. | Rome—In literature. Classification: lcc pa6053 (ebook) | lcc pa6053 .h37 2019 (print) | ddc 871/.0109—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018060158 Manufactured in the United States of America 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

c ontents

Preface Introduction

vii 1

1. Farewells and Returns: Ausonius and Paulinus of Nola

6

2. Virgilian Plots: Public Ideologies and Private Journeys

44

3. Cosmos: Classical and Christian Universes

75

4. Concord and Discord: Concordia Discors

103

5. Innovations of Late Antiquity: Novelty and Renouatio

135

6. Paradox, Mirabilia, Miracles

163

7. Allegory

188

8. Mosaics and Intertextuality

223

References General Index Index Locorum

251 273

281

preface

This book is based on five of the six Sather lectures that I delivered in spring of 2016, with the addition of three further chapters (4, 5, and 7). Materials from the fourth lecture, “Cowherds and Saints: Realism and Humour in Paulinus of Nola,” have been published elsewhere. My experience on first receiving the invitation in February 2012 to give the lectures as the 102nd Sather Professor—an experience perhaps shared by others— was one of a warm glow at the great honor of being invited to join the roll call of previous Sather Professors, quickly followed by trepidation at the thought of the distinction of my predecessors, and anxiety over the choice of a topic for my own series of lectures. At that time a couple of other projects were in their final stages, and I decided to venture into the, for me, relatively untried field of late antiquity. What emerged is in substantial part a study of reception, the reception in late antiquity of the poetic “classics” of the late Roman Republic and early empire. Within my own academic trajectory, this can be seen as a stepping back in time from my work in recent years on the reception of ancient Latin poetry in the early modern period. During my semester in Berkeley I enjoyed the legendary hospitality and friendship of the Classics Department. I owe particular debts of gratitude to Susanna Elm, John Ferrari, Mark Griffith, Kathy McCarthy (who initiated us into the mysteries of newt spotting in the Berkeley Hills), Dylan Sailor, and, above all, Nelly Oliensis, chair of the department during my stay. Nancy Lichtenstein gave invaluable advice both on negotiating the complexities of the University of California

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bureaucracy and on swimming pools. I enjoyed the stimulation of the participants in my graduate seminar. At the Press I thank my editor Eric Schmidt for his encouragement. I am also grateful to my copy editor, Marian Rogers, for her meticulous and sharp-eyed work on the volume.

Introduction

Looking back over the last fifty years or so of criticism and scholarship in the field of Latin poetry, one sees a progressive extension of interest forward in time from the canonical authors of the late Republic and earlier years of the reign of Augustus. First, Ovid was rescued from his modern demotion to the status of a latecoming and not very serious, albeit highly proficient, poet. The new aetas Ovidiana shows no sign of running out of steam. The same is true of the slightly more recent rediscovery of the claim to sustained critical attention on the part of poets of the Neronian and Flavian periods. And now no Latinist can fail to be aware of an upsurge of interest in the Latin poets of late antiquity, in particular of what is sometimes called the “Theodosian renaissance” of the late fourth and early fifth centuries a.d., matched by a corresponding investment of energies in Greek poetry of the later empire. Yet literary scholars have been rather slow, compared to our colleagues in ancient history and art history, in coming to view late antiquity as equally deserving of attention as the earlier periods. When it comes to undergraduate and graduate syllabuses, late antique poetry is still for the most part invisible. I would like to hope that the present contribution might help to further the cause of late antique Latin poetry among a wider audience. This book is primarily a literary study, with a recurrent focus on the reception in late antique Latin poetry of poetry of the late Republic and early empire, chiefly from Lucretius and Catullus through to the Flavian epic poets. I make no attempt to be comprehensive in charting this very important episode in the history of the reception of earlier Latin poetry: thus Roman comedy is mentioned only very occasionally, and Juvenal, whose satire enjoyed a revival in readership in the fourth 1

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Introduction

century, is notable mostly by his absence.1 Virgil has a privileged place, partly a reflection of my own long-term interests, but also an index of the quasi-divine status accorded to Virgil in late antiquity (as in later centuries). Ovid also looms large.2 What further unites the several chapters is an attention to two large questions. Firstly, how differently do texts on Christian subjects and texts on non-Christian subjects respond to the earlier tradition? And secondly, do late antique poets rework the tradition through what is an identifiably “late antique” poetics and aesthetic? In both inquiries I have ended up stressing continuities rather than discontinuities, a revisionist position that I was not aware of having consciously formulated when I first decided a few years ago to undertake a major project on late antique Latin poetry. The relationship of Christian poetry to the omnipresent pagan models has naturally been much discussed, along a spectrum from accommodation and assimilation, through transformation, to contrast-imitation and finally to polemical supersession.3 Models of a radical disjunction between the purposes and practices of Christian poets, on the one hand, and, on the other, of poets writing within the pre-Christian tradition (many of whom were themselves Christian) have been developed in particular by German scholars: Reinhart Herzog, arguing for the “heteronomy” of biblical poetry,4 and Christian Gnilka, and his students, applying a model of chrēsis, the “proper use” of non-Christian texts and traditions by Christian writers and readers.5 While the radical difference in ideology between preChristian and Christian culture is something new in antiquity, and leads at an extreme to professions of the need for Christianity totally to reject the existing literary institutions, in practice Christian beliefs and pagan literary traditions coexist with various degrees of ease or unease. The resulting continuities and discontinuities between Christian and earlier non-Christian texts can in fact largely be considered using the terms that structure discussions of imitatio and aemulatio within the pre-Christian Greco-Roman literary tradition. The issue of how Christian doctrinal sincerity sits with the use of the resources of traditional poetry is perhaps not all that different from the long-standing debate over the relationship of poetry and philosophy in the De rerum natura of Lucretius, who proposes something like a model of the “proper use” of the charms of traditional poetry in order to inculcate his countercultural philosophical truths. On the second large question, concerning periodization,6 there is a now wellestablished genre of books and essays that set out to define a late antique aesthetic 1. On Persius and Juvenal in late antiquity, see Sogno 2012. 2. For a recent study of the reception of Ovid in late antiquity, see Fielding 2017. 3. Good overviews of the issues and the various positions can be found in Lühken 2002, 20–23, 269–84. 4. Herzog 1975. 5. Gnilka 1984, 2012; Kirstein 2000, 14–19 (a succinct exposition of Gnilka’s chrēsis). 6. In general on the possibility and legitimacy of periodization in literary history, see Perkins 1992.

Introduction

3

or a late antique poetics. Michael Roberts’s 1989 The Jeweled Style remains the most influential single intervention. Its propositions of an attention to glittering detail, of a privileging of the part over the whole, of a rhetorical focus on ekphrastic vividness rather than larger structures, have not so much been superseded over the last thirty years as given new spins, reinvigorated by a postmodern privileging of the fragmentary.7 My own reading of these texts operates within a horizon of expectations that is for the most part not very different from that within which I read early imperial Latin poetry; I find that these texts respond adequately and interestingly when thus approached. There are certainly differences, not least of which is the introduction of Christian subject matter into the inherited forms. There are also new, or newly popular, forms: the cento, Optatian’s figured poems, Ausonius’s technopaegnia, but these do not form the bulk of the poetic output of late antiquity. The “Theodosian renaissance” is a modern label, but it serves usefully to point to the resumption, if that is historically correct, or continuity, if it is not, of the modes and practices of earlier Latin literature. Blanket definitions of a late antique aesthetic or poetics seem to me to be more of a hindrance than a help. Change there certainly is, transformation even, but not sufficient, in my view, to arrive at something qualitatively quite other. This is particularly the case with allusion and intertextuality, where I am not persuaded by various attempts to diagnose a quantum shift in writers’ and readers’ responses to earlier texts.8 Some useful perspective may be lent by reflection on the history of criticism of what was once called “Silver Latin,” but is now more often referred to, more neutrally, as “post-Augustan” or “early imperial” Latin poetry. Blanket labels such as “mannerist,” “rhetorical,” and “episodic,” which were applied to the productions of a period as a whole, are now for the most part a thing of the past. I venture to suggest that the persistence of attempts to define an overarching “late antique poetics” is a sign of the relative youth of studies of late antique Latin poetry. Chapter 1, “Farewells and Returns: Ausonius and Paulinus of Nola,” is a detailed reading of a famous correspondence between Ausonius and his erstwhile pupil Paulinus of Nola, which I use to introduce major themes and questions that will occupy me in the rest of the book: the Christian appropriation and transformation of non-Christian values; the prominence of paradox in late antique discourse; an 7. Roberts 1989. For recent updates and modification of Roberts, see Formisano 2007; Hernández Lobato 2012; Pelttari 2014; J. Elsner and J. Hernández Lobato, “Notes towards a Poetics of Late Antique Literature,” in Elsner and Hernández Lobato 2017, 1–22. Earlier essays in defining the essence of late antique poetry include Charlet (1988), who discerns the “combination of neo-classicism and neoalexandrianism in the triumphalist expression of Constantino-Theodosian ideology” (74); and Fontaine (1977), who sees the hybridism of a mingling of genres as typically late antique. 8. E.g., Pelttari 2014; Kaufmann 2017.

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Introduction

interest in figures of reflection and echo; the ideology and theology of novelty, renovation, and transformation; the question of what is (or is not) typically late antique, and typically Christian, in practices of allusion and intertextuality; late antique Virgilianism and Ovidianism. Chapter 1 serves as the longer introduction from which I refrain in these briefer opening remarks. In this exchange of letters Paulinus announces that he is renouncing the pagan Muses to devote himself to a more committed form of Christianity than he had hitherto pursued. Ausonius complains that his student and friend is turning his back on his duties to his “father” and attempts to recall him to their shared homeland of Gaul and to their shared pursuit of the life of cultivated men of letters. The correspondence is often taken as a charged moment in the conflict between Christianity and the lifestyle of an elite trained in a pre-Christian culture. It is not an episode in any standoff between Christianity and paganism: Ausonius was a Christian, and it is not of Paulinus’s religious beliefs per se that he complains, but rather of his desertion from a shared culture. However, Paulinus exploits that same literary culture in his poetic epistolary responses to Ausonius. A brief glance forward in time reveals that in his newly committed life as a Christian Paulinus continues to work within the framework of this allusive poetics; discussion of other poems by Paulinus in later chapters reinforces the point. Chapter 2, “Virgilian Plots: Public Ideologies and Private Journeys,” examines the uses to which large-scale Virgilian narrative structures, primarily those of the Aeneid and the fourth Eclogue, are put in late antique poetry of empire and salvation. Virgil is also an important point of departure for the themes of the following three chapters. In chapter 3, “Cosmos: Classical and Christian Universes,” I return to matters that interested me in my first book, Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium, and focus on the projection of cosmic struggles between order and disorder onto history both secular and sacred. Here the important models are above all Virgil and the Virgilian tradition. Political and theological factors conspire to heighten what might be called the “cosmic sense” of late antiquity. That sense is acutely aware of the threat posed to harmony and concord on the political and spiritual levels by forces of disharmony and discord, an opposition that reflects cosmic concordia and discordia. Virgil and other Augustan poets, writing after the resolution of long years of civil war through the establishment of the principate, situate the eruptions of discord in Roman history within philosophical constructions of a dynamic of order and disorder, in particular the pre-Socratic Empedocles’s identification of Strife and Love as the principles that regulate the cosmic cycle. Late antiquity displays something of an obsession with concordia and discordia, fueled by both historical and, now, theological rather than philosophical considerations. This is the subject of chapter 4, “Concord and Discord: Concordia Discors,” where I also develop Michael Roberts’s insightful identification of the variety-in-tension of concordia discors as a distinguishing feature of late antique poetics.

Introduction

5

Virgil’s literary-historical position as a leading member of the second generation of the “new poets” of the first century b.c., and his contributions to the Augustan ideology of restoration and renewal, make of him an important representative of a poetry and poetics of the new. In the past, late antiquity has sometimes been viewed as the old age of classical antiquity, a period of decline and decadence. Chapter 5, “Innovations of Late Antiquity: Novelty and Renouatio,” examines the period’s own investment in ideas of renewal and novelty, both in the ideology of empire and in the Christian theology of making new. One of the most potent symbols of renovation and rebirth is the phoenix, an old exhibit in the history of paradoxography that is burnished up for new purposes in late antiquity. A heightened interest in paradox has been identified as typical of many late antique writers. In chapter 6, “Paradox, Mirabilia, Miracles,” I ask the question of how justified is the enduring judgment that in non-Christian texts paradox is the mark of a frivolous playfulness, in contrast to Christian uses of paradox to express the deepest mysteries of the faith. Chapter 7, “Allegory,” explores selected aspects of the vast topic of allegory in late antiquity. A key text in the history of personification allegory is Prudentius’s Psychomachia, a fervently Christian poem that is also one of the most Virgilian productions of the period. Christian allegory articulates specifically Christian constructions of history and meaning, but at the same time employs linguistic and figurative procedures that converge with, and, in some cases, derive from, allegorical practices in earlier and contemporary texts on non-Christian subjects. Finally, in chapter 8, “Mosaics and Intertextuality,” I scrutinize and critique the frequent use of the metaphor and image of the mosaic in discussions of late antique poetry (and art), with reference both to an aesthetic and to a model of intertextuality. My conclusion is that the image obscures more than it clarifies.

1

Farewells and Returns Ausonius and Paulinus of Nola

In a.d. 389 the wealthy senatorial Gallo-Roman landowner, and former consul, Meropius Pontius Paulinus left Gaul to live on his wife Therasia’s estates in Spain. On Christmas Day 394 Paulinus was ordained a priest in Barcelona and sold off his and his wife’s properties. In the following year he and Therasia moved from Spain to Campania, to the shrine of St. Felix in Cimitile, the necropolis of Nola. Here Paulinus (the future Saint Paulinus of Nola) spent the rest of his life, embellishing the shrine, developing the pilgrimage cult of the saint, and engaging in correspondence with leading figures in the late fourth- and early fifth-century church. Between Paulinus’s departure to Spain and his ordination as a priest he continued a correspondence with his friend and former teacher Decimus Magnus Ausonius, forty years his senior. Ausonius was another leading Gallo-Roman grandee, a one-time consul, and a professor of grammar and rhetoric in Bordeaux who had been tutor to the future emperor Gratian. Ausonius is the author of a substantial surviving corpus of poetry, on a range of subjects, in which he self-consciously displays his learning and draws on the wealth of the classical tradition of Latin and Greek poetry. There survive four earlier letters to Paulinus, in a mixture of prose and verse, fragments of what will have been a more extensive series of exchanges between the two men, friendly but competitive performances of an elite late antique literary culture.1 In one letter (Ep. 17 Green), for example, Ausonius registers his reactions to Paulinus’s versification of Suetonius’s lost work On Kings, and in another (Ep. 19) he thanks Paulinus for the gift of some gourmet fish sauce, 1. Auson. Ep. 17–20 Green; see Witke 1971, 7–17 on these earlier letters, tokens of “jolly participation in the literary game.” See also Ebbeler 2007; Knight 2005.

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7

acknowledges a poem sent for comment, and reciprocates with some playful iambics, dispatched as an earnest of some weightier heroic hexameters to follow.2 The attention to form is typical of Ausonius’s poetic production as a whole, symptomatic of what is often seen as a late antique playfulness or worse—what Antonio La Penna, in a particularly jaundiced view, once labeled the “reign of futility” of post-Antonine Latin poetry.3 Very different, or so it would seem, are the verse letters exchanged between the two men in the early 390s a.d.4 Ausonius, in his three surviving letters (in hexameters), accuses Paulinus of neglecting the duties (officia) of friendship, of being forgetful, of lacking pietas, and of casting off the yoke (iugum) that had previously joined the figurative “father” and “son” in their shared life of a literary and cultural amicitia (friendship). Ausonius calls on Paulinus to return, return to the Muses and return to be with Ausonius in Aquitaine. Paulinus, in his two letters in response (in a variety of meters—elegiac, iambic, hexameter), rebuts the charges of forgetfulness and impietas, but is unbending in his dedication to his new life in Christ, in a more dedicated and austere practice of his Christianity. He rejects the Muses and Apollo, inspired as he now is by a greater god. He now has his heart set on a new, celestial, fatherland, and is absorbed with thoughts not of a journey to his native Bordeaux, but of the posthumous journey of his soul to the Christian heaven. Paulinus’s renunciation of his wealthy lifestyle and his self-devotion to the service of Saint Felix represent a famous episode in what could be seen as a clash of cultures in late antiquity.5 Paulinus’s postconversion poetic correspondence with Ausonius has enjoyed a privileged status in scholarship on both Ausonius and 2. On the culture of amicitia and literary exchange in Ausonius’s reading community, see Sowers 2016. 3. La Penna 1993, 731: “regno di futilità.” 4. The texts are Ausonius, Epistulae 21–24 in Green’s edition (1991) and Paulinus, Carmina 10–11 in Hartel’s edition (1999). Translations of Paulinus’s Poems are those of P. G. Walsh, in places adapted. For ease of reference I retain Hartel’s numbering of the Poems but for the most part follow the text of Dolveck (2015b). The numeration of Green and Hartel is followed by Amherdt (2004). The order of Auson. Ep. 21 and 22 is disputed, and Green prints two letters, 23 and 24, as shorter and longer responses to Paulin. Poem 10, in an attempt to make sense of the variants in the manuscript tradition. In what follows I assume, with Amherdt (see pp. 19–23), but without total confidence, (1) that Auson. Ep. 22 precedes 21, and that 21.1 (Quarta tibi haec notos detexit epistula questus) refers to two lost letters of Ausonius, and (2) that Ausonius wrote only one letter, 24, in response to Paulin. Poem 10. This latter is a response to Auson. Ep. 22 and 21, and to a third, lost, letter of Ausonius (cf. Paulin. Poem 10.7–8 trina etenim uario florebat epistola textu, | sed numerosa triplex pagina carmen erat), and Paulin. Poem 11 is a response to Auson. Ep. 24. Dolveck (2015a) is undecided as to the order of Auson. Ep. 21 and 22. For bibliography on the Ausonius-Paulinus correspondence, see Green 1991, 648–49; for a sustained reading of the correspondence, see Witke 1971, 3–74. Chin (2008, 148–55) reads the correspondence for “Paulinus’ and Ausonius’ articulations of classical and Christian space . . . within the ‘commonplaces’ of Latin literature.” Fielding (2017, ch. 1) reads the correspondence from the perspective of its reception of Ovid. 5. See recently Brown 2012, ch. 13.

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Paulinus. It has every appearance of being an iconic moment in the history of the encounter of an uncompromising Christianity with the culture and values of classical antiquity. Furthermore, the two letters of Paulinus are, in the words of Catherine Conybeare, “one of the first extant literary accounts of personal conversion.”6 The correspondence is not, however, a record of a late antique clash between paganism and Christianity.7 There is no doubt that Ausonius was a Christian. If he was not, he would hardly have fooled Paulinus with an opportunistic prayer to God the Father and God the Son for his friend’s return in the last of his surviving letters to Paulinus (Ep. 24.104–6 Green). Paulinus would also have seen through Ausonius’s insertion of a crowded village church into his painting of an Aquitanian locus amoenus to which he hoped to lure back Paulinus (Ep. 24.86 Green). Admittedly that is the only instance of the word ecclesia in Ausonius’s oeuvre. But what we are dealing with is a matter of cultural rather than ideological or theological choice, a self-conscious practice of literature within a classical tradition. This may also be true of other poets of the late fourth and early fifth centuries: the jury is still out in the case of Claudian, who, as successful panegyrist of Christian emperors, it is hard to believe was a committed anti-Christian; and the discovery of a new fragment of Rutilius Namatianus’s On His Return (a eulogy of the patrician Constantius, a devout Christian) has shaken the widely held view that he at least was unambiguously a pagan.8 The distinction in this respect between the poetry of Ausonius and of (postconversion) Paulinus is that between works written entirely, or almost entirely, within a pre-Christian classical tradition, works that are often self-consciously classicizing, in short what may be labeled “classical”—or “traditional”—poetry,9 and works on explicitly Christian themes, or, in short, “Christian poetry.” This is a distinction that may be generalized to much of the poetry that will concern me in this book. Many of the texts in the category of “Christian poetry” are explicit in their attacks on, or criticism of, pagan religion and pagan culture and literature. At the same time almost all of this body of poetry is deeply embedded within the nonChristian traditions of ancient literature; criticism of pagan culture is often constructed as imitation through opposition, or Kontrastimitation, of a kind that may be difficult to distinguish from the emulative and agonistic practices of pre-Christian 6. Conybeare 2000, 147. Amherdt (2004, 23) speaks of “le choc de deux mondes.” On the lexicon of conversion in Paulinus, see Nicastri 1999, 901. 7. Alan Cameron’s systematic construction of a case against the idea of a substantial late antique pagan revival receives its monumental statement in Cameron 2011; see pp. 34–35, 404–5 on the religion of Ausonius; Cameron pours cold water on the idea that Ausonius was ever in the “circle” of Symmachus. 8. For Alan Cameron’s latest thoughts on the religious beliefs of these writers, see Cameron 2011, 207–8 (on Claudian), 207–18 (on Rutilius). 9. I avoid the term “pagan poetry,” since this would tend to imply that the authors necessarily held pagan beliefs.

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poetry.10 Conversely, the question may be raised as to whether “traditional poetry” is open to the occasional inclusion of Christian subject-matter, or, more generally, shows the imprint of Christian patterns of thought or imagery. The exchange of letters between Ausonius and Paulinus performs the selfpositionings of their authors as they seek respectively to reinforce an identity as a cultivated man of letters, in the case of Ausonius, and, in the case of Paulinus, to set a distance between that identity, as previously performed in correspondence in prose and verse with Ausonius on literary and worldly matters, and a new self-definition.11 In this chapter I will deploy a selective close reading of these letters with the aim of bringing out some of the larger issues and questions that will occupy me in this book. I will be attentive to both continuity and contrast. This is a dichotomy that is strategically built into Paulinus’s replies to Ausonius’s letters, as he attempts to give reassurances that the two men are as close friends as ever they were, at the same time as he reinforces his decision to draw a clear line between his former way of life and his new life in Christ. In the wider perspective, how different and how similar are the traditional poetry and the Christian poetry of late antiquity? At the beginning of Epistle 21 Ausonius appeals to the notions of officium, “duty,” and pietas, untranslatable but meaning something like “dutiful respect,” in order to prompt Paulinus into a reply: “But no page repays my pious dutifulness” (21.3 officium sed nulla pium mihi pagina reddit). Ausonius returns to the charge of impietas at the end of the letter: “Who then has persuaded you to keep silent so long? May that impious person not be able to make any use of their voice” (62–63 quis tamen iste tibi tam longa silentia suasit? | impius ut nullos hic uocem uertat in usus).12 These are traditional values of amicitia, “friendship,” in the Roman world; Ausonius has particularly in mind Ovid’s appeals to them in the complaints of his exilic poetry.13 They are terms that undergo a transvaluation in Paulinus’s new 10. See Brooke 1987, 286 on “the intimacy of the relation between imitation and polemic in Christian reminiscence of pagan writing.” 11. I am assuming that one of the aspects of continuity between this exchange of artfully crafted letters and the practice of earlier antiquity (including the “preconversion correspondence” of Ausonius and Paulinus) is that what is presented as an earnest personal exchange is written with a wider readership in mind, as, for example, Horace’s Epistles, which are indeed one of the intertexts for this final correspondence between the two. 12. Cf. also Ep. 24.11–12 impositumque piis heredibus usque manere | optarunt dum longa dies dissolueret aeuum. See Rücker 2009, 90 n. 19 for parallels for officium, reddere, charta, and epistula at the beginning of letters; e.g., Symmachus, Ep. 1.34.1 ff. Unless otherwise indicated, translated passages throughout have been adapted from the Loeb Classical Library editions of the various authors. 13. E.g., Tr. 4.7.3–6 tempore tam longo cur non tua dextera uersus | quamlibet in paucos officiosa fuit? | cur tua cessauit pietas scribentibus illis, | exiguus nobis cum quibus usus erat? 9–10 di faciant ut saepe tua sit epistula dextra | scripta, sed e multis reddita nulla mihi; 19–20 haec ego cuncta [existence of mythological monsters] prius, quam te, carissime, credam | mutatum curam deposuisse mei (the possibility of the friend’s “metamorphosis” is even more incredible than mythical monsters).

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world, where secular friendship is replaced by a spiritalis amicitia, a spiritual friendship between humans that is based on a transcendent love of Christ, caritas Christi.14 This final, transcendental, transformation of the ideal of amicitia awaits the conclusion of Paulinus’s second letter (Poem 11). In the meantime, he will answer the charge of impietas by appealing to a different set of values. By definition, he says, to be a Christian is to be pious, and therefore Ausonius’s charge must drop away: “How can piety be lacking in a Christian? Being a Christian is the reciprocal guarantee of piety, and the mark of an impious man is to be not subject to Christ” (Poem 10.85–88 pietas abesse christiano qui potest? | namque argumentum mutuum est | pietatis esse christianum, et impii | non esse Christo subditum).15 Therefore it is God’s will that Paulinus should show pietas toward his figurative “father” (90) Ausonius. A few lines later Paulinus gently implies a forgiving criticism of a traditional model of a pietas that can coexist with, indeed be the source of, anger: “But why do I absent myself from you for so long? This is your reproachful question, your angry reaction prompted by piety” (Poem 10.97–98 sed cur remotus tamdiu degam arguis | pioque motu irasceris). The most famous example of pietas-fueled anger is the ending of Virgil’s Aeneid, where Aeneas’s sense of pietas toward the dead Pallas and Pallas’s father, Evander, moves him to kill Turnus in an uncontrollable fit of anger. For another “epic” ending, but one in which, through a Christian transvaluation of pagan models, pietas overcomes ira, take the account of the Crucifixion in Sedulius’s Carmen paschale (5.182–86), a biblical epic of the second quarter of the fifth century, on the miracles and passions of Christ: protinus in patuli suspensus culmine ligni, religione pia mutans discriminis iram, pax crucis ipse fuit, uiolentaque robora membris illustrans propriis poenam uestiuit honore16 suppliciumque dedit signum magis esse salutis. Suspended forthwith from the top of the spreading wood, transforming with the piety of religion the anger that led to the moment of crisis, He himself was the peace of the cross, and adorning the violent timber with His own limbs He clothed his penalty with glory and turned His punishment rather into a sign of salvation.

Through the paradoxes of the cross, by the agency of religio pia anger is metamorphosed (mutans) into peace, humiliating poena is dressed up as glory, and the 14. Conybeare 2000, ch. 3. 15. Cf. also Poem 10.197–99 studia ipsa piorum | testantur mores hominum—nec enim impia summum | gens poterit nouisse Deum. 16. Cf. Ov. Met. 2.98–99 deprecor hoc unum, quod uero nomine poena, | non honor est: poenam, Phaethon, pro munere poscis; here too Sedulius inverts a pagan epic plot: in Ovid a father tries to prevent a son’s self-destruction; in the Bible the Father willingly accepts the Son’s self-sacrifice.

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death penalty, supplicium, becomes the sign of salvation, salus. Christ on the cross asks the Father to forgive those who crucify him (“for they know not what they do,” Luke 23:34). Sedulius’s biblical epic stands near the beginning of a long tradition of correcting pagan epic values that will be summed up by Milton in the prologue to book 9 of Paradise Lost. Milton rejects the traditional “arguments” of “the wrath | Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued | Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage | Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused” (14–17), and prefers as “subject for heroic song” (25) “the better fortitude | Of patience and heroic martyrdom” (31–32). Paulinus, for his part, turns away Ausonius’s “pious anger” with a request for forgiveness for himself, whose love for Ausonius is constant (101 ignosce amanti).17 In the matter of officium and pietas, Paulinus’s strategy is to reconcile traditional with Christian values, and at the same time to transform them.18 He is more radical in the matter of salus, as he responds to Ausonius’s manipulation of the epistolary convention of conveying greetings, salus, “salutation.” Ausonius complains that he has received no letter (Ep. 21.4 Green) “writing propitious words at the head of sheets that bring greeting” (fausta salutigeris ascribens orsa libellis). Even enemies exchange greetings, he says: “But foe from foe receives greeting in barbarous language, and ‘hail’ is heard in the midst of war” (7–8 hostis ab hoste tamen per barbara uerba salutem | accipit et “salue” mediis interuenit armis).19 Ausonius alludes to Ovid, Heroides 4, where Phaedra complains to Hippolytus that even enemies receive and look at missives from enemies (6 inspicit acceptas hostis ab hoste notas). This is one of a number of allusions by both Ausonius and Paulinus to Ovid’s epistolary works, both the letters from exile and, as here, the Heroides, letters of mythological heroines.20 Ausonius’s complaints (Ep. 21.1, questus; 22.1, querimonia) are tinged with the elegiac and the erotic.

17. He further seeks to defuse Ausonius’s pious anger at the beginning of the hexameters; 106–8 increpitas, sanctis mota pietate querellis; | amplector patrio uenerandos pectore motus | et mihi gratandas saluis affectibus iras. Cf. also the clementia asked of Felix by the rusticus in Poem 18 (see Hardie 2019, 257). For an example of a pious anger that is paradoxically accompanied by calmness of spirit, and is positively directed, see Paulin. Poem 21 (Natal. 13).754–56 hinc ego te modo iure ream, mea Nola, patrono | communi statuam, et blandae pietatis ab ira | mente manens placida motum simulabo paternum (in the matter of the water supply at Cimitile). Ira and pietas are combined with regard to different targets in the closing hymn celebrating the crossing of the Red Sea at Dracontius, De laudibus Dei 2.809–10 una eademque die populis datur ecce duobus | ira furens pietasque simul (righteous anger against the Egyptians, mercy for the Israelites). 18. Cf. the project of Ambrose’s De officiiis; Brown 2012, 126–34; 127: “In it, Ambrose set himself up to rival and to replace the De officiis of the great Cicero. It amounted to a statement of the role of the Christian bishop in Roman society.” 19. Cf. also 32–33 quis prohibet “salue” atque “uale” breuitate parata | scribere felicesque notas mandare libellis? 20. On the Ovidian allusions, see Fielding 2017, ch. 1.

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Paulinus’s response to the complaint of the lack of a greeting is twofold. Firstly, in the elegiac preface to Poem 10 he fulfils his duty to offer greeting, but only after playing Ausonius’s own game of using the plaintive language of Ovidian epistolography: it has been four years since he received a letter from Ausonius, “[four years] during which not a letter has reached me from your mouth, not a line have I seen written by your hand” (3–4 ex quo nulla tuo mihi littera uenit ab ore, | nulla tua uidi scripta notata manu), echoing the language of the opening of Heroides 3 (1–2 quam legis, a rapta Briseide littera uenit | uix bene barbarica Graeca notata manu).21 The choice of elegiac couplets for the first part of this threefold letter may indeed be determined in part by a wish to write a specifically Ovidian kind of letter, acknowledging Ausonius’s own allusion to the Heroides. Here, at least, is a kind of responsion, or echoing, to answer Ausonius’s complaint (Ep. 21.9–25 Green) that the natural world and the world of pagan religious ritual are full of an echoing responsiveness, in which Paulinus alone refuses to participate: “Even rocks respond to a man, and words return when they are struck back from caves, and the image of a voice returns from the woods” (9–10 respondent et saxa homini, et percussus ab antris | sermo redit, redit et nemorum uocalis imago).22 Echo, and Narcissus, figure in epigrams in Ausonius and the Anthologia Latina, obvious subjects for what is often seen as a late antique predilection for the paradoxical (see chapter 6), for which the revived genre of epigram provides a convenient vehicle. But figures of reflection and echo, of desiring reflection and desiring echo, may have a particular appeal for late antique poets as they contemplate the relations between their own productions and those of a classical past.23 In Poem 10 Paulinus echoes Ausonius closely at line 5, salutifero . . . libello, “letter bearing greetings,” lightly varying Ausonius’s salutigeris . . . libellis (Ep. 21.4). Having done their duty, the elegiacs withdraw: “The elegies now give their greeting, and having greeted you, now that they have made a beginning, a first step, for the others, they fall silent” (17–18 nunc elegi saluere iubent, dictaque salute, | ut fecere aliis orsa gradumque, silent). This is a pregnant silence: what is left unspoken is that this is an end to this kind of poetic responsion, communication of the 21. Amherdt (2004) cites Ov. Am. 1.11.14 (a letter sent to Corinna) and Ars 2.596 (secret messages between lovers) for the line-ending notata manu. 22. There are echoes of classical sources: Green (1991) compares Cic. Arch. 19 saxa et solitudines uoci respondent; Virg. Geo. 4.49–50 concaua pulsu | saxa sonant. Cf. also Auson. Ep. 21.67–68 non quae pastorum nemoralibus abdita lucis | solatur nostras echo resecuta loquellas. See Rücker 2012, 283–89 on the echo in Auson. Ep. 21. 23. See Auson. Epigrams 11, 110 Green (Echo), 108 (Narcissus); Rücker 2012, 302–5 on Narcissus and Echo; Anth. Lat. 145–47 Riese (134–36 Shackleton-Bailey) (Narcissus); see also Symphosius, Aenigmata 69 speculum, 97 umbra, 98 Echo. Elsner (2017), on a cento on Narcissus in the Codex Salmasianus, probably fifth or sixth century, and probably from Vandal North Africa, offers far-reaching thoughts on the “narcissism” of late antique poetics.

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traditional kind, as shared by the two men in the past. The dialogue will continue, but it will not be business as usual—on that silence will fall. One of the differences relates specifically to the word salus. Here we might suspect that Ausonius’s use of Ovidian allusion offers Paulinus an avenue that the former had not intended. Heroides 4, the letter of Phaedra to Hippolytus to which Ausonius had alluded, begins with a typically Ovidian play on words: “With wishes for the welfare which she herself, unless you give it to her, will ever lack, the Cretan maid greets the hero whose mother was an Amazon” (1–2 Quam nisi tu dederis, caritura est ipsa, salutem | mittit Amazonio Cressa puella uiro). Here salus is both “greeting” and literally, “welfare, health.” Paulinus takes the Ovidian licence of revalorizing the epistolary cliché, but the kind of salus he is interested in is that of the soul, not of the body—“salvation.” In the iambics Paulinus attacks the sophists, rhetors, and poets, who fill men’s hearts with false vanities and “bring nothing that might bestow salvation” (41 nihil ferentes, ut salutem conferant): only God is truly salutifer. Other ideas and words that are given new Christian meanings or new applications by Paulinus include pater, patronus, patria, caelum (“climate” of a particular locality/“heaven”). This is echo in the mode of Ovid’s nymph Echo, repetition of the linguistic substance with difference of meaning. Ausonius claims to be Paulinus’s “father,” in the sense of an older man to whom respect is due: “Are you ashamed if you have a friend still alive who claims a father’s rights?”; “Do not disdain to address your father. I am your nourisher, the man who was your first teacher” (Ep. 22.6–7 Green, anne pudet, si quis tibi iure paterno | uiuat amicus adhuc; 32–35, nec dedignare parentem . . . ego sum tuus altor et ille | praeceptor primus). Paulinus acknowledges his “filial” relationship to the older man (Poem 10.96, patrone, praeceptor, pater; 189, uenerande parens), but rejects the accusation of being forgetful of their shared geographical home made by Ausonius at Ep. 21.52 Green (nostri . . . obliuio caeli). Paulinus looks up to a greater father, our Father in heaven, which is the true fatherland, the caelum patrium, of a Christian: “I am not forgetful of my native skies, as you would have it, when I am looking up at the highest Father, for he who worships the one Father is truly mindful of heaven. So reassure yourself, father, that I am not forgetful of the sky, I am not out of my mind” (193–96 nec mihi nunc patrii est, ut uis, obliuio caeli, | qui summum suspecto Patrem, quem qui colit unum | hic uere memor est caeli. crede ergo, pater, nos | nec caeli immemores nec uiuere mentis egentes). Memory itself is subjected to a transvaluation (uere memor). The last word of the poetic correspondence, at the end of Paulinus’s second reply to Ausonius, is memor, referring to a memory that is validated by a Christian eschatology—I will return to this. For Ausonius the patria is Aquitaine, but also Rome (or the traditions of Rome): he rebukes Paulinus for taking himself off to wild Spain, on which he calls down renewed devastation by Rome’s enemies, Hannibal and Sertorius: “Is it here, Paulinus, that you establish your consular robe and Roman curule chair, and is it here

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that you will bury your ancestral honours?” (Ep. 21.60–1 Green hic trabeam, Pauline, tuam Latiamque curulem | constituis, patriosque istic sepelibis honores?). A few lines earlier Ausonius addresses Paulinus as “my pride and that of my country, and mainstay of the Senate” (Ep. 21.56 Green meum patriaeque decus columenque senati). Ausonius uses the language of an address by Horace to his patron Maecenas, and invests it with a patriotic appeal to senate and country (Odes 2.17.3–4 mearum | grande decus columenque rerum).24 It is, however, Ausonius who sees himself in Maecenas’s role of patronus to Paulinus, rather than the other way round. But Paulinus is moving away from the earthly patronus toward the heavenly patronus to whose service he will dedicate himself for the rest of his life, his patron Saint Felix.25 Paulinus, however, protests against Ausonius’s tendentious picture of Spain as a barbarous and uncivilized land, thereby occluding the great Roman cities of Tarraconensis. By the same token the rhetoric of patria could be used to criticize Ausonius’s choice of residence in Gaul, were one to focus on the rough huts of the native peoples rather than on the sophisticated city of Bordeaux or on Ausonius’s own lofty villa, rivaling the palaces of Rome (Poem 10.239–59). It might with equal justice be said that “you, the influential consul, spurn the proud walls of Rome, but do not scorn the sand-dwelling Vasatae [a Celtic tribe in Aquitania]” (247–48). Paulinus goes on to raise the possibility of complaining that Ausonius allows his own consular trabea (251–55) “to moulder in an ancient temple [in a small settlement in Gaul], when in fact it gleams in the august city of Roman Quirinus amidst the imperial triumphal tunics, sharing their fame, long venerated with its pristine gold, and preserving the flourishing glory of your undying services” (ueteri sordescere fano, | quae tamen augusta Latiaris in urbe Quirini | caesareas inter parili titulo palmatas | fulget inattrito longum uenerabilis auro, | florentem retinens meriti uiuacis honorem). The contrast between a grimy and decaying old age and a bright eternal youth, or a youth restored, here distinguishes a provincial torpor from the undiminished splendor of Rome. It is a contrast that more often characterizes late antique reflections on the city of Rome itself. The city of Rome is a recurrent theme of late antique poetry, a place of fantasy, memory, and nostalgia as much as a real place. 24. Amherdt (2004) notes that columen senati (archaic gen.) is Plautine, citing Cas. 536; Epid. 189. 25. Patronus is often used of Felix in the Nolan poems (e.g., Poem 13.27). Horace uses the word patronus only in Ep. 1.7, at lines 54 and 92, in the story of Philippus and Mena, a lesson to Maecenas on how not to act as a patronus, and at the end of which Mena withdraws himself from the service of Philippus, as Paulinus is withdrawing himself from Ausonius as patronus. Odes 2.17 has a further applicability to Ausonius’s letters to Paulinus, presented as letters of complaint from a patronus (Ep. 21.1 questus, 22.1 querimonia): Horace begins his poem to Maecenas Cur me querelis exanimas tuis? On the further presence of Horace in the Ausonius-Paulinus exchange, see below. For the replacement of an earthly Maecenas with Felix the true patronus, cf. Poem 15 (Natal.).2–3 natalis tuus, o clarissime Christo | Felix, natali proprio mihi carior, alluding to Horace’s celebration of Maecenas’s birthday at Odes 4.11.17–18 iure sollemnis mihi sanctiorque | paene natali proprio.

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The city’s symbolic value was only heightened by the fact that the real center of power in the West, the imperial court, was usually based elsewhere, at Trier, Milan, or Ravenna. Rome was precious as the location and embodiment of Roman foundation and Roman identity, and precious because threatened by decay and invasion. More than ever, Rome becomes the written city, transmuted into a marvelous work of art, in a series of glittering ekphrases, or into the verbal figure of personification.26 Visions of Rome in Claudian, Rutilius Namatianus, and Prudentius dwell on the preternatural or supernatural brightness of the ancient and venerable city, sometimes as the result of renewal, through the topos of a miraculous rejuvenation of a personified Roma fallen into senility. That renewal may subscribe either to the pagan ideology of imperial renouatio or to a Christian making new, as in Prudentius’s vision of Theodosius’s Christian Rome in his poem Against Symmachus. I will return to visions of Rome, and to the theme of novelty, renouatio, and rejuvenation in chapter 5.27 A key moment in Ausonius’s grilling of Paulinus comes at Epistle 21.50 Green: “Dearest Paulinus, have you changed your character?” (uertisti, Pauline, tuos, dulcissime, mores?).28 This is another place where Ausonius seems to blunder in without realizing what he is doing. Here the answer is clear. For all that Paulinus asserts that his friendship with Ausonius is undying—if in a way that will turn out to exceed Ausonius’s traditional frame of reference—Paulinus has undergone a radical change, nothing less than a con-version, which Ausonius will be unable to reverse (despite Ep. 22.2 Green, “I had thought that [my letter of complaint] could change your mind” [credideram quod te, Pauline, inflectere posset]).29 One may ask whether Ausonius is aware of the irony of using the vocabulary of metamorphosis to a newly committed Christian, as one wonders whether in his use in Epistle 24 of the image of the yoke (iugum) of a this-worldly friendship he is aware of the yoke

26. On Rome as a written city, see Edwards 1996. 27. Eventually Paulinus’s own resolution of the question of “where and what is Rome” will be to identify Nola as a second Rome, an “imperial” center where the power of the Christian God is channeled through the tomb of the saint. 28. Rücker (2012) compares Ov. Tr. 4.7.19–20 (cited above); Pont. 4.3.21 aut age, dic aliquam quae te mutauerit iram. 29. Conversion may be thought of either as a turning to God or as a metamorphosis of the self. Madec (1994, 1286) notes that in Augustine conuersio can mean both ἐπιστροφή “return to” and μετάνοια “spiritual change”: both are in play at Aug. En. Ps. 6.5 dum autem nos conuertimus, id est, mutatione ueteris uitae resculpimus spiritum nostrum, durum et laboriosum ad serenitatem et tranquillitatem diuinae lucis a terrenarum cupiditatum caligine retorqueri. For conuerti ad, cf., e.g., Aug. CD 7.33 ad uerum Deum conuersionem; Paulin. Ep. 25.5 ad haec tibi respondet non ego sed dominus, qui loquitur in prophetis et apostolis suis, et propheta dicit: ne tardaueris conuerti ad dominum nec differas de die in diem, ne subito ueniat ira illius (Eccles. 5:8–9). See Nicastri 1999, 897 n. 23 on μεταμέλεια, μετάνοια, and paenitentia. See Hardie, forthcoming b.

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of Christ (Matt. 11:30 “for my yoke is sweet and my burden light” [iugum enim meum suaue est et onus meum leue est]), or whether this is just an own goal. Paulinus’s answer, justifying and defending his conversion, is delivered in a key section of his letter in reply, at the point where the elegiac couplets fall silent and the meter changes to alternating iambic trimeters and dimeters. This metrical variation may in itself be seen as homage to Ausonius’s own practice of using a variety of meters,30 just as the threefold division of Paulinus’s letter into sections in three, no more and no less, meters appears to respond, or correspond, playfully to the three letters that he says he had received in one go from Ausonius: “The varied texture of three letters blossomed there, but rhythmically; the sheets of verses formed a triple poem” (Poem 10.7–8 trina etenim uario florebat epistola textu, | sed numerosa: triplex pagina carmen erat).31 Paulinus may also remember one of Ausonius’s more playful poems, the Griphus ternarii numeri, “Riddle of the Number Three” (dedicated to Symmachus). Surprisingly, perhaps, in that poem Ausonius’s last example of the threefold, before concluding with the form of the poem itself that we have been reading, is the Christian Trinity: “Drink thrice. The number three is above all, three persons and one God. And that this game should not run its course in an insignificant number, let it have verses thrice ten times three, or nine times ten” (88–90 ter bibe. tris numerus super omnia, tris deus unus. | hic quoque ne ludus numero transcurrat inerti, | ter decies ternos habeat deciesque nouenos). Paulinus may hint at a riddle of his own: what might appear to be a ludic numerological exchange with his fellow poet is also a reflection of the Christian threefold God to whom he has now dedicated himself.32 Furthermore while Ausonius’s shifts in meter typically do not correspond to any more momentous kind of change, the change from elegiacs to iambics is precisely the point at which Paulinus starts to sing from a very different hymn sheet.33 The change of meter becomes 30. On polymetry within single late Latin poems, see Consolino 2017: 103–7 (Ausonius), 108–12 (Paulinus). 31. For Paulinus’s later use of metrical variety in a single poem, cf. Poem 21 (Natal. 13).56–61 et contra solitum uario modulamine morem, | sicut et ipse mihi uarias parit omnibus annis | materias, mutabo modos serieque sub una, | non una sub lege dati pede carminis ibo; | nam quasi fecundo sancti Felicis in agro | emersere noui flores; 84–89 haec igitur mihimet meditanti congrua suasit | gratia multimodis illuso carmine metris | distinctum uariis imitari floribus hortum, | sicut Felicis gremium florere repletum | lumine diuerso quasi rus admiror opimum | hospitibus multis. For play on three and one, cf. Poem 21.272 ff. 32. See also Rücker 2012, 222–34 for discussion. See also ch. 6. 33. The iambics also serve the purpose of a preface (after the opening “greetings” of the elegiacs) to the much longer hexameter section; cf. 15 interea leuior paucis praecurret iambus. On iambic prefaces, see Cameron 1970b. On Poem 10.29–42, see Nicastri 1999, 868–71—a new poetics for a new life. One of the anonymous readers suggests that the model of Horace’s Epodes may be one of the factors in the choice of epodic couplets, and points to the striking echo in lines 23–24 fuit ista quondam . . . tecum mihi concordia of Hor. Epod. 4.1–2 Lupis et agnis quanta sortito obtigit, | tecum mihi discordia est. Unlike the Archilochean Horace, however, Paulinus strives to reestablish concord with his friend, beyond the parting of the ways.

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something more than formal variation, and is now the marker of a change of heart, a conversion. The first fourteen lines of the iambics call for close attention (19–32):34 Quid abdicatas in meam curam, pater, redire Musas praecipis? negant Camenis nec patent Apollini dicata Christo pectora. fuit ista quondam, non ope sed studio pari tecum mihi concordia, ciere surdum Delphica Phoebum specu, uocare Musas numina fandique munus munere indultum dei petere e nemoribus aut iugis; nunc alia mentem uis agit, maior Deus, aliosque mores postulat sibi reposcens ab homine munus suum, uiuamus ut uitae Patri.

20

25

30

Why, father, do you bid the deposed Muses return to my charge? Hearts dedicated to Christ reject the Latin Muses and exclude Apollo. Of old you and I shared common cause (our zeal was equal if our poetic resources were not) in summoning deaf Apollo from his cave at Delphi, invoking the Muses as deities, seeking from the groves or mountain ridges that gift of utterance bestowed by divine gift. But now another power, a greater God, inspires my mind and demands another way of life. He asks back from man His own gift, so that we may live for the Father of life.

Paulinus starts by replying to Ausonius’s closing prayer to the Muses to recall his friend from the exilic wilderness to which he has condemned himself: “This is my prayer, receive this cry, Muses divinities of Boeotia, and through the Latin Camenae call back your bard” (Ep. 21.73–74 Green haec precor, hanc uocem, Boeotia numina Musae, | accipite et Latiis uatem reuocate Camenis). But there can be no return; there is a sharp and unbridgeable divide between past and present; “that erstwhile community of purpose is a thing of the past” (fuit ista quondam . . . concordia).35 The cancellation of concordia is particularly charged given the prominence of the theme of concordia and its opposite discordia in late antique Latin poetry on both Christian and non-Christian themes (see chapter 4). The breaking by Paulinus of the long-standing concordia of the yoke of friendship that once bound together the older and the younger man is the burden of Ausonius’s last letter to Paulinus, Epistle 24. 34. For commentary on 19–46, see Salvatore 1968. 35. Cf. perhaps Aen. 2.324–26 uenit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus | Dardaniae. fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens | gloria Teucrorum. There can be no return to the sacked Troy.

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Paulinus will expatiate on the impossibility of return at the beginning of the hexameter section of the poem (10.109–28: 109 reditum, 110 reuocandum, 113 tibi me patriaeque reducis, 119 reditus). “Return” is another highly charged term in late antique poetry, on political, theological, and literary-cultural levels, and is linked to the ideas of both exile and renewal. For an imperial panegyrist like Claudian renewal consists in a return, a return to the forms of traditional poetry, and a return of the Roman emperor and consul to the glories of the past. Regeneration and renovation of different kinds are central to Saint Paul’s theology of reform and rebirth (see chapter 5). Return as renewal means reinvigoration of self through reanimation of the past. But the powers on which Ausonius calls to bring back Paulinus are spent forces, his prayers are sterile (111 cum steriles fundas non ad diuina precatus). The failure to respond, silence, is a charge to bring not against Paulinus, but against the poetic gods to whom Ausonius addresses his prayers. Apollo is deaf and dumb (surdus can mean both), and nothing but silence will come from the Delphic cave.36 The Muses, too, are dumb and substanceless: “You invoke things that are deaf and call on what is nothing . . . the Muses, names without the power of divinity” (surda uocas et nulla rogas . . . | . . . sine numine nomina Musas). Gone are the days when an Ovid could invoke “Muses, the present powers of bards” (Met. 15.622 Musae, praesentia numina uatum). Yet at the same time there is continuity, as well as contrast. These lines of Paulinus do return to the ancient Muses, in the sense that they are dense with allusion to traditional poetry. Groves and mountains are traditional places to seek the inspiration of the Muses, and the following lines are a tissue of poetic allusion from the old sources.37 The renunciation of the Muses, renuntiatio Musarum, itself can be viewed as a traditional form, a version of the recusatio, the “refusal” to sing or write on a particular subject or in a particular genre,38 or as an example of how 36. Cf. Poem 15.30–36 non ego Castalidas, uatum phantasmata, Musas | nec surdum Aonia Phoebum de rupe ciebo; | carminis incentor Christus mihi, munere Christi | audeo peccator sanctum et caelestia fari. | nec tibi difficile, omnipotens, mea soluere doctis | ora modis, qui muta loqui, fluere arida, solui | dura iubes. tu namque asinam reboare loquendo. For the silent Delphic oracle, cf. Luc. 5.111–23 Delphica sedes | quod siluit, postquam reges timuere futura | et superos uetuere loqui . . . tempore longo | immotos tripodas uastaeque silentia rupis; Milton, On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity 173–80 “The oracles are dumb, | No voice or hideous hum | Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. | Apollo from his shrine | Can no more divine.” Cf. Prud. Apoth. 438–43: oracles fall silent at Incarnation, Delphica damnatis tacuerunt sortibus antra. 37. As Witke (1971, 60) says, “Paulinus rejects the nemora only in one sense; he still rifles them for their useful timber.” Filosini (2008) draws on earlier analyses of the dense intertextuality in this passage, and reaches for the mosaic image. See also the other commentaries and Nazzaro 1995; Nicastri 1999. 38. See Gärtner 2004. For other examples of the renunciation of a non-Christian path, cf. Proba’s turn from an epic on civil war to sing of the Bible, Cento 1–28; Prudentius’s autobiographical Praefatio, detailing the stages of his public career, followed by his turn to Christian poetry (cf. the priamel of Hor.

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to succeed where a Horace or an Ovid had failed in their attempt to resist a return to their previous poetic practice. “Desist, I beg you, from tearing your friend to pieces” (parce, precor, lacerare tuum), Paulinus beseeches Ausonius at Poem 11.6, in response to Ausonius’s renewed appeals and rebukes, but Paulinus is in fact immune to the lacerations of the liuor of which he accuses his friend (20 quis tua, quaeso, tuis obduxit pectora liuor? “What is the rancour that has clouded your heart against your friends?”).39 Parce, precor, is the prayer with which Horace fails to avert Venus’s renewed lyric-erotic onslaught at the beginning of Odes 4.1.2–3: “Desist, I beg you: I am not the man I was” (parce precor, precor. | non sum qualis eram).40 At Tristia 2.3 Ovid asks himself, too late, “Why do I return to the Muses I have just denounced, the causes of my guilt?” (cur modo damnatas repeto, mea crimina, Musas?). Paulinus echoes the Ovidian line-ending crimina Musas, but in a phrase that makes it brutally clear that the Muses are now empty ciphers: sine numine nomina Musas (115). Paulinus cloaks the programmatic statement about his new source of inspiration and his new life, his vita nuova, in a patchwork of old intertexts. The key lines are 29–30, nunc alia mentem uis agit, maior Deus, | aliosque mores postulat, ten words in which the commentaries detect allusions to intertexts in Horace, Terence, Virgil, and Ovid, which I gather together here:41 Horace, Odes 3.25.2–3 quae nemora aut quos agor in specus | uelox mente noua? (“Into what woods or caverns do you [Bacchus] drive me so swiftly with a mind not my own?”)42 Terence, Andria 189–90 (Simo talking about the need for his son to change his ways) nunc hic dies aliam uitam defert, alios mores postulat. | dehinc postulo siue aequomst te oro, Daue, ut redeat iam in uiam. (“But today brings another life, demands another way of behaving. From now on I expect you or, if I may properly do so, I implore you, Davus, to bring him back to the right path.”) Odes 1.1, with the difference that Prudentius has had an alternative career). Paulin. Poem 22.20–28 (to Jovius), urging Jovius to turn from his previous poetic production of ficta and terrena to the greater gloria of Christian poetry, 27–28 in quibus et linguam exercens mentem quoque sanctam | erudies laudemque simul uitamque capesses, thus winning both the fame of the pagan poet and the eternal life of the Christian; on Poem 22, see below. 39. Lacero of envy and calumny: TLL 7.2, 827.52 ff. uituperando, detrectando. Cf. the lacerations inflicted by Liuor on a resourceless Ovid in Pont. 4.16. For parce . . . lacerare, cf. Ov. Tr. 3.3.51 parce tamen lacerare genas. 40. Parce precor is also a common Ovidian phrase (× 12: see Fielding 2017, 49 with n. 94); before Hor. Odes 4.1.2 it is found only at Tib. 1.8.51. 41. On the intertexts in Aen. 12 and Ter. Andria, see Rücker 2012, 250–55, at length. On the Horatian allusions in these lines, see Nazzaro 1995, 133–36. 42. See Nazzaro 1995, 134–38. With iugis in the previous line, Paulin. Poem 10.28 e nemoribus aut iugis, cf. the continuation of Hor. Odes 3.25, 7–8 dicam insigne, recens, adhuc | indictum ore alio. non secus in iugis.

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These sources and parallels raise more general issues relating to allusion and intertextuality in late antique poetry.43 The intertexts here seem to give a fairly clear answer—interesting results follow if readers allow themselves to pull at the visible part of an allusive thread in the weave of the text.44 One might be tempted to use the term “allegory,” the revelation of Christian meanings in pagan texts. Thus Charles Witke notes with regard to the allusion to Horace’s ode of Bacchic rapture, 3.25, that Paulinus “plays upon the reader’s recollection of the circumstances of Horace’s gaining the nemora in order to intensify his own religious seizure’s description.” “Horace’s rapture by Bacchus recalls Paulinus’s by Christ.”45 On the allusion to Terence’s Andria Witke comments: “The context in Terence comes over into Paulinus’ letter: a father speaks of a new life, a new way of living.” In the line from Aeneid 12 the doctor Iapyx recognizes the agency of a greater god, maior deus, in healing Aeneas’s wound, which he, the human doctor, is powerless to heal. The context is one of renewal and reform: “New strength returned, as it was before” (Aen. 12.424 nouae rediere in pristina uires). Paulinus may also think of the irresistible force of another “great god” at Aeneid 6.77–79, as Apollo induces a Bacchic frenzy in the Sibyl: “But the prophetess, not yet subservient to Apollo, raves wildly in the cave, if so she may shake the mighty god from her breast” (at Phoebi nondum patiens immanis in antro | bacchatur uates, magnum si pectore possit | excussisse deum).46 Virgilian and Horatian descriptions of Bacchic ecstasy are hooked together. At the same time Paulinus’s allusive practice is responsive to that of his teacher and “father” Ausonius.47 Take, for example, the phrase with which Ausonius contrasts Paulinus’s taciturnity with his own inability to keep silent at Epistle 21.48–49 Green: “I cannot keep silent, since free affection never endures the yoke, and takes no pleasure in putting the truth second to flattery” (nec possum reticere, iugum quod libera numquam | fert pietas nec amat blandis postponere uerum). The only other place in Latin literature, down to and including the time of the church fathers, where the sequence 43. For the question about the “limits of allusive analogy,” see Hinds 1998, 100. Kaufmann (2017, 163) sees the allusions in Paulin. Poem 10 as merely “formal features”; I disagree. 44. But for some salutary comment on the possibility that a reader of intertextuality will see what they expect or want to see, see Kaufmann 2017, 175. 45. Witke 1971, 59. 46. Cf. Poem 27 (Natal. 9).313–14 unde mihi hos animos? quae me leuat aura superbum? | non agnosco tumens mea pectora, maior agit mens. 47. Good analyses of this in Rücker 2012, 77 ff.

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nec (or non) possum reticere occurs is in Catullus 68.41–44, where Catullus expresses his debt to his friend Allius: “I cannot, goddesses, keep silent on the matter in which Allius helped me, and how greatly he helped me by his services, lest time flying with forgetful ages hide in blind night this kindly zeal of his” (non possum reticere, deae, qua me Allius in re | iuuerit aut quantis iuuerit officiis, | ne fugiens saeclis obliuiscentibus aetas | illius hoc caeca nocte tegat studium).48 Recollection of the Catullan situation will rebuke Paulinus for his silence, his neglect of officia, and his forgetfulness.49 The compressed density of allusion in this couple of lines can also be matched in Ausonius.50 Ausonius’s examples from the natural and human worlds of echoing responsiveness (Ep. 21.9–25 Green) are themselves an echo chamber of allusivity, as a perusal of the commentaries reveals. So, a line (21) on the cymbals and drums of the Magna Mater is pieced together, in Roger Green’s words, from “a typical conglomeration of phrases from earlier poets.” Green cites passages from Catullus, Lucretius, and Statius. This is the noise and clatter of classical poets, revealing Ausonius’s immersion in the “classics” of Latin poetry, in a procedure that approaches the manner of the cento. “Cento” is the name for a poetic text that is pieced together entirely of half lines and lines of an earlier author, usually Virgil in Latin or Homer in Greek (cento, Greek kentron, literally means a “patchwork garment”).51 Line 12 in Ausonius’s poem, the example of a hedge humming with Hyblaean (Sicilian) bees, is indeed patched together in the manner of a cento; the line Hyblaeis apibus saepes depasta susurrat is made up entirely of four separate fragments from three lines of Eclogue 1, 53–55: uicino ab limite saepes | Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti | saepe leui somnum suadebit inire susurro.52 The cento is a favored late antique form, Ausonius being the author of the best-known, the at times scabrous “Wedding Cento” (Cento nuptialis) (for more on the poetics of the cento, see chapter 8). Going back to Paulinus, another commentator, Stefania Filosini, with reference to the dense intertextuality of lines 23–32 of Poem 10, describes the passage as “a little mosaic, whose principal tesserae, apart from the Aeneid, come from Terence and Horace.”53 48. At Ep. 21.48–49 Ausonius combines allusion to Catullus with allusion to Cic. Amic. 91–92 (on the need to avoid adulatio and simulatio); see Rücker 2012, 108. 49. Amherdt (2004) and Mondin (1995) also compare Met. 11.183–85 qui cum nec prodere uisum | dedecus auderet cupiens efferre sub auras | nec posset reticere tamen. 50. See Rücker 2012, ch. 8. 51. So Rücker 2012, 259–60. 52. But note the variant, somniferumque canit saepes depasta susurrum NSA, accepted by Mondin (1995, ad loc. and “In margine” p. 168) and Amherdt (2004). The variant would be a looser redeployment of material from Ecl. 1; canit would come from the following line, 56 hinc alta sub rupe canet frondator ad auras. Green (1991, ad loc.) argues against the variant: “The point is the existence of the sound, not its nature, and depasta would be brusque.” Dolveck (2015a, 30–32) disagrees with Green, and, if these are not author variants, prefers the somniferumque . . . line. 53. Filosini 2008, 48: “un piccolo mosaico le cui tessere principali, oltre che dall’Eneide, provengono da . . . Terenzio . . . e . . . Orazio.”

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The mosaic has been a favorite image in discussions of both late antique intertextuality and late antique art, in which of course actual mosaics feature prominently. It is not an innocent image (but then no image comes without its baggage), suggesting, for example, the fragmentation and recombination of preexisting materials, or an aesthetics that privileges brightness and color. In chapter 8 I will draw out the implications, and test the usefulness, of the mosaic image. What can be said at this stage of Paulinus is that if this Prospero has renounced his former arts, he still knows how to use the magic of intertextuality. Where he does differ from Ausonius is in his citation and recombination of a completely different set of texts, the Bible. Lines 43–52 are a “mosaic,” or perhaps a “web,” of biblical echoes, to set beside the “mosaic” of classical texts.54 A general question is whether there is an absolute divide between allusion to, or citation of, biblical texts, and intertextuality as practiced on nonbiblical texts. An easy answer might be that there is, and that, for a Christian writer or reader, the meaning and truth-value of the word of God are fixed in a way that lies beyond the deformations, truncations, and transformations to which the source texts of traditional intertextuality are typically subjected. On the other hand, in the exegetical practice of late antiquity (and beyond) all kinds of meanings are read into biblical texts, in a manner that might strike the impartial observer as playful and allusive. Intertexuality often makes a non-Christian text signify in new and different ways; allegory is an integral part of biblical exegesis. Line 51 of Paulinus’s Poem 10 also contains a paradox of a kind thoroughly at home in Christian texts, playing on life and death: “life of our mortality and death to our death” (mortalitatis uita nostrae et mors necis).55 This is followed by paradoxes of the Incarnation at 53–54: “He is God to us and became man for us by putting on our nature, we who are to put on [the new man], joining eternal relations between man and God, while He Himself is both” (Deusque nobis atque pro nobis homo | nos induendos induit, | aeterna iungens homines inter et Deum | in utroque se commercia). This is a forcing together of contraries that joins man and god.56 This eternal and divine iugum is a very different kind of yoke from that of whose dis-joining Ausonius will complain in Epistle 24.1 (Discutimus, Pauline, iugum . . . ).57

54. On intertextuality with biblical and classical texts, see Nazzaro 1993. An extreme example of biblical allusivity is Augustine, Confessions, with dense allusion to the Psalms in particular. See Knauer 1955 (note that this important study in biblical allusivity, Knauer’s Hamburg 1952 thesis, was followed by his massive study of Virgil’s allusions to Homer in his 1961 Berlin (Freie Universität) Habilitationsschrift, published as Knauer 1964); Clark 1995, 10–12. 55. Cf. John 11:25 qui credit in me et si mortuus fuerit uiuet. 56. See Conybeare 2000, 153–54. 57. For a further paradox, cf. Paulin. Poem 10.135 stulta deo sapiens et mortis pabula uiuens.

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It is a commonplace to note the frequency of paradox, antithesis, and oxymoron in late antique poetry, and Ausonius shares in the taste (although the letters to Paulinus themselves are not striking in this respect—maybe because Ausonius is being serious in these poems in a way that he is not always in the rest of his output?).58 Here in the iambic section of Poem 10 Paulinus pointedly gives samples of a new, Christian poetics of paradox. In chapter 6 I will explore traditional and Christian varieties of paradox in late antique Latin poetry, and ask whether it is helpful to draw a simple contrast between literary playfulness and doctrinal profundity.59 An allusive poetics of transformation, of the making new of traditional models, corresponds to the substantive message of personal renewal and transformation.60 To Ausonius’s question “Have you changed your way of life?” Paulinus replies that “a different, other power, a greater god, drives my mind, and demands a new way of life (mores).” The two instances of alius in lines 29–30 retrospectively lend a new charge to the aliis in the last line of the introductory elegiacs (18): “Now that they have made a beginning, a first step, for the others, they fall silent” (ut fecere aliis orsa gradumque, silent). There aliis refers immediately to the “other meters” that follow, but in the light of what follows we may read back into this innocuous word another kind of otherness, an “other” lifestyle, an “other” ideology.61 The themes of novelty and transformation, implicit in the iambics of Paulinus’s Poem 10, are brought fully into the open in the third and last of the metrical sections, the hexameters. Paulinus did not change his own behavior, as Ausonius had stated, he is not a per-uersus (83, 275), a word frequent in the Latin Bible and in the fathers in the sense “wicked, perverse.” Rather, God is the agent of this metamorphosis and innovation: “[God] who wills to fashion or change my thinking” (130 cui placet aut formare meos aut uertere sensus); “the uncharacteristic nature of my action lends you greater awareness that the highest Father works this innovation in me” (136–38 promptius ex hoc | agnosci datur a summo Genitore nouari | quod non more meo geritur). Paulinus is not the man he was: “I shall freely admit that I am no longer the man I was at that time” (132–33 sponte fatebor eum modo me non esse sub illo | tempore qui fuerim). This kind of statement has a long history, beginning with a poem in which an elegiac love poet answers a charge of inactivity, Propertius 58. Ausonius’s liking for antithesis and oxymoron (e.g., in discussing the cento): Pelttari 2014, 106–7. 59. See Conybeare 2000, 106 on “the delight in paradox that is so characteristic of Christian writings of this period, and not least of the letters of Paulinus” (and the Carmina). 60. On the centrality of metamorphosis and novelty in Paulinus’s poetry of conversion, see above all the important article by Nicastri (1999, 893–96) on the lexicon of change in Paulinus; 895 on nouus and related terms; 907: “Paolino poeta della metamorphosis.” Cf. the language of metamorphosis in Paulinus’s autobiography at Poem 21.365 ff. (see Nicastri 1999, 881, 885 ff.). See Hardie, forthcoming b. 61. Might gradum mean “step” toward something higher, as well as first step on a path? Poem 10.18 also picks up on Auson. Ep. 21.4 fausta salutigeris ascribens orsa libellis.

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1.12.1–2: “Why don’t you stop inventing a charge of sloth against me, on the ground that Cynthia is causing our procrastination, Rome?” (Quid mihi desidiae non cessas fingere crimen | quod faciat nobis Cynthia, Roma, moram?62 cf. Paulinus, Poem 11.2– 3: placitamque latebris | desidiam exprobras). Propertius explains: “I am not what I was: a distant journey changes a woman’s heart” (11 non sum ego qui fueram: mutat uia longa puellas).63 The exiled Ovid repeatedly complains non sum ego qui fueram (and related phrases).64 What in pagan authors is a predominantly negative form of expression becomes a positive statement in a narrative of conversion: if conversion may be seen as a kind of exile from a previous state, and, in Paulinus’s case, from his native country, it is more importantly a homecoming to God. The themes of change and novelty reach a climax at 138–43: non, arbitror, istic confessus dicar mutatae in praua notandum errorem mentis, quoniam sim sponte professus me non mente mea uitam mutasse priorem: mens noua mi, fateor, mens non mea, non mea quondam, sed mea nunc auctore Deo.65 I do not think that by saying this I shall be considered to have admitted the reprehensible sin of a mind changed for the worse, though willingly proclaiming that I have amended my former life through a purpose not my own. I admit that I have a new mind. My mind is not my own—or rather, it was not mine before, but now it is mine through God’s agency.

Mens noua (142) alludes once more to Horace’s Dionysiac Odes 3.25.2–3 (“Into what caves am I being driven at such speed, in a new state of mind?” [quos agor in specus | uelox mente noua?]). The repetitions of the personal adjective (non) mea, non mea, sed mea, point rather to Ovidian formulations. In Metamorphoses 10 Myrrha, in love with her own father, says: “Now, because he is already mine, he is not mine” (339 nunc, quia iam meus est, non est meus).66 This is a different kind of divided identity: Myrrha complains that because Cinyras is “my” father, he cannot be “my” sexual partner. Split identity is a recurrent phenomenon in the world of Ovidian metamorphoses, here transferred by Paulinus to a spiritual metamorphosis. The 62. For this text of line 2, see Heyworth 2007, 57–59. 63. See Nicastri 1999, 887–88, referring for the history of non sum qui fui to Nicastri 1992 (from Propertius to Foscolo). 64. Tr. 3.11.25; 3.8.38; 4.1.99. Cf. also Maximian, Eleg. 1.5 non sum qui fueram: perit pars maxima nostri. 65. Cf. also Poem 27 (Natal. 9).314 non agnosco tumens mea pectora, maior agit mens. 66. See Reed 2013, ad loc. for related examples. Given the importance of Horace, Epistles 1 for Paulinus’s self-positioning, he may also have in mind Hor. Epist. 1.1.4 (answering Maecenas’s request to return to the antiquus ludus) non eadem est aetas, non mens.

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experience recorded by Paulinus in this poem is of a transition between two worlds. Even if we reject Hermann Fränkel’s account of Ovid himself as a poet between the two worlds of paganism and Christianity,67 the kinds of in-betweenness repeatedly explored in the Metamorphoses lend themselves readily to the kind of spiritual autobiography of which we have here an example. Christian—as well as traditional— Latin poetry of late antiquity makes good use of Ovidian metamorphosis. Paulinus does use the notion of “another world,” when he sums up Ausonius’s charge of having abandoned civilization for a wilderness (Ep. 21.69–72 Green) at Poem 10.104: “to have chosen another world for my vagrant wanderings” (atque alium legisse uagis erroribus orbem). Here there is perhaps an allusion to a fragment of the Augustan poet Albinovanus Pedo, on the expedition of Germanicus in the northern ocean, 228.18–19 Hollis (quoted in the Elder Seneca’s First Suasoria, on the topic “Alexander deliberates whether to set sail on the Ocean,” and itself drawing on Alexander topics): “Are we in search of peoples who lie under another sky beyond, in search of another world untouched by wars?” (anne alio positas ultra sub cardine gentes | atque alium bellis intactum quaerimus orbem).68 Unspoken, perhaps, is the hint that Paulinus really is in search of a new world; Ausonius may be aware of this too, if it is the case that his allusion to the solitary wandering of the Homeric Bellerophon (Ep. 21.72 Green) is to be taken as antimonastic polemic (Rutilius Namatianus explicitly compares the antisocial monks on the island of Capraria to the melancholic Bellerophon; On His Return 1.439–52). In Epistle 24 Ausonius will protest in vain that his respect for the old Paulinus is unchangeable: “for my trust is assured, and my reverence for that Paulinus of old is always unchangeable” (96–97 nam mihi certa fides nec commutabilis umquam | Paulini illius ueteris reuerentia durat). But the old Paulinus has been metamorphosed into the new.69 Some of the sharpest contrasts between Ausonius’s “traditional” poetry and Paulinus’s new poetry of conversion emerge through a comparison of the final sections of the last three poems in the exchange: Paulinus, Poem 10; Ausonius, Epistle 24; and Paulinus, Poem 11. As Paulinus starts to pen Poem 10 he remains within the poetic conventions inhabited by Ausonius, with a poetic periphrasis for the 67. See Fränkel 1945, 163 for a summative statement of the thesis. 68. Hollis (2007 ad loc.) compares Sen. Suas. 1.1 aiunt fertiles in Oceano iacere terras ultraque Oceanum rursus alia litora, alium nasci orbem, nec usquam rerum naturam desinere sed semper inde, ubi desisse uideatur, nouam exsurgere; Vell. Pat. 2.46.1 alterum paene . . . orbem (Britain), on which Woodman (1983 ad loc.) comments: “It was conventional to describe Alexander as having sought (an)other world(s) to conquer.” 69. I incline, with Green, to take the “old Paulinus” to refer to Ausonius’s addressee, rather than his father or grandfather.

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passage of the four summers and four winters since he has received a letter from Ausonius:70 Quarta redit duris haec iam messoribus aestas et totiens cano bruma gelu riguit. This is the fourth summer which has now come round for hardy reapers, and as many winters have manifested their rigours with hoary frost.

Time has passed on its accustomed cyclical course, recorded in the usual poetic clichés. By the end of the poem, time will have been recast as Christian eschatology, and the time for planning possible journeys between Spain and Gaul will have been overtaken by a different kind of arrival and a different kind of setting out, the advent of Christ at the Last Judgment and the soul’s hoped-for journey to heaven on that final day (316 dies . . . ultimus). Horatian carpe diem merges with biblical thoughts on the brevity of human life (289 temporis occidui) and the need to use the time that remains (293 dum tempus praesens datur) to live in accordance with the precepts of Christ, who sits at the right hand of the eternal Father (298 Patris aeterni).71 Fearful lest the last trump should catch him unprepared, and anxious not to lead a life of temps perdu (318 tempora sub uacuis ducentem perdita curis), Paulinus puts his trust in God for the ages to come (328 uentura in saecula). I have had occasion repeatedly to note Virgilian allusion; here we come across an example of a more sustained exploitation of Virgilian patterns, an example of the “Virgilian plots” of which I will give a more extensive sampling in chapter 2. Paulinus revalorizes the language of Virgilian prophecy in a Christian context: “My believing heart with inner apprehension tremblingly await His coming” (304–5 huius in aduentum72 trepidis mihi credula fibris | corda tremunt). In this anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ there is pronounced, heavy-handed even, allusion to the climactic annunciation of the future coming of Augustus by Anchises in the Parade of Heroes in Aeneid 6.798–800: “Against his coming both Caspian realms and the Maeotic land even now shudder at the oracles of their gods, and the mouths of sevenfold Nile quiver in alarm” (huius in aduentum iam 70. With 2 et totiens cano bruma gelu riguit, cf. Geo. 3.442–43 et horrida cano | bruma gelu. Cf. Auson. Ep. 17 to Paulinus, with an opening flourish of poetic periphrasis for passage of time, on which Ausonius then comments in prose, alluding to the joke at Sen. Apocol. 2: puto magis intellegi, si dixero. For another elaborate contrast of annually returning cyclical time and eternity, cf. Poem 16 (Natal. 5).1–16 in the context of happy returns of Felix’s birthday, on the day marking his “birth” into aeternosque dies (16), beginning: Tempora temporibus subeunt, abit et uenit aetas; | cuncta dies trudendo diem fugit et rotat orbem (cf. Hor. Odes 2.18.15–16 truditur dies die | nouaeque pergunt interire lunae); see Nazzaro 1995, 142–43. 71. Cf. also 281–82 aeterna parari | praemia mortali damnis praesentibus empta. On the Horatian allusion, see further below. 72. Cf. also Poem 31.401 huius in aduentum modo pendent omnia rerum (Christ).

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nunc et Caspia regna | responsis horrent diuum et Maeotia tellus | et septemgemini turbant trepida ostia Nili).73 Paulinus, however, lives in fearful anticipation not of the earthly but of the heavenly emperor. The anticipated flight of his soul to the stars, a correction of Anchises’s teaching on the postmortem purification and metempsychosis of the soul (more cyclical time), is the realization of the promises of the New Testament, but it is also an epic flight: with “to the lofty stars” (312 ardua in astra) compare the words with which Aeneas taunts Turnus shortly before the violent ending of the Aeneid: “Wish for wings to fly up to the stars on high” (12.892–93 opta ardua pennis | astra sequi). Paulinus’s is a more confident wish than any that might be entertained by Turnus, whose soul ends by fleeing only “down to the shadows” (sub umbras).74 Line 316, “This is my fear, this is my toil” (hic metus est, labor iste), rewrites Aeneid 6.129, “This is the task, this is the toil” (hoc opus, hic labor est):75 there the Sibyl speaks of the difficulty of superas euadere ad auras, escaping from the underworld to the breezes of the upper world under the heavens, but Paulinus’s anxiety is about the further vertical ascent to the presence of Christ, fearful lest his soul “may not be able to rise on light wings into the breezes to meet the King” (308–9 non possit in auras | Regis ad occursum leuibus se tollere pennis). One might see the posthumous flight of the soul to heaven as a metapoetic figure for the new, and sublime, poetic flight of Paulinus’s Christian poetry—an alternative to the implicit Virgilian, and Ennian, poetics of metempsychosis. In his response to Paulinus’s Poem 10, Epistle 24, Ausonius also invokes Virgil, but to a different end. He pens further complaints at Paulinus’s absence and his breaking of their “yoke” of friendship, only to end on a more positive note, with a confident assertion that his prayers will result in Paulinus’s return (106 nostro reddi te posse precatu). His prayer is now to the Christian God, but the language in which he expresses his hope that Paulinus’s estate will not be torn to pieces—a reference to the sale of Paulinus’s and Therasia’s property—draws on themes of exile76 and loss in Virgil’s Eclogues. Lines 107–8, “so that we should not have to weep for a house scattered and pillaged, for the kingdom of the old Paulinus torn to pieces between a hundred masters” (ne sparsam raptamque domum lacerataque centum | per dominos ueteris Paulini regna fleamus), combine elements of Eclogue 9, where Moeris complains that he has had to listen to the new owner of his confiscated 73. See Nicastri 1999, 874–75. 74. See the commentaries for other echoes of classical poetry; for the New Testament texts, see Filosini 2008 on 307–15 (Matt. 24:31, 1 Cor. 15:51–52, 1 Thess. 4:15–17, Apoc. 10:7). Filosini (2008) notes that Paulin. Poem 24.903–18 (to Cytherius) is close to this passage. 75. For another echo of the Virgilian line, cf. Paulin. Ep. 24.9 (to Sulpicius) quare totus labor et plenum opus nobis in obseruantia et expoliatione cordis nostris est, cuius tenebras uel abstrusas in eo inimici latebras uidere non possumus, nisi defaecato ab externarum rerum curis animo et intus ad semet ipsum conuerso. 76. See Fielding 2017, 43–48 on Ovidian exilic topics in Auson. Ep. 24.

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farm saying, “This is mine: begone, old tenants” (9.4 haec mea sunt; ueteres migrate coloni) and Eclogue 1, where Meliboeus, going into exile, wonders, “Shall I in aftertime look amazed on a few ears of corn, once my kingdom?” (1.69 post aliquot, mea regna, uidens mirabor aristas). In context ueteris refers both to Paulinus as the “old” owner, as in Eclogue 9, and to the “old,” preconversion, Paulinus.77 Appealing again to the memory of what once was, Ausonius hopes that Paulinus will not, “unmindful of your old friends, put your trust in foreign friends” (109–10 te . . . | immemorem ueterum peregrinis78 fidere amicis). In the following lines, 111–13, Ausonius proceeds to pile memories of ancient texts on Paulinus as he addresses him with imperatives asking him to make haste to return.79 Address of the absent correspondent now turns into the vivid enargeia of the imagined announcement of Paulinus’s imminent arrival at Ausonius’s front door, drawing on topics of the lover’s return80 and of the speech of welcome (prosphonētikon).81 The passage begins: “See, your Paulinus is here” (116 ecce tuus Paulinus adest). Sevenfold anaphora of iam details the precise stages of his journey from the snowy Pyrenees to Bordeaux, reaching a climax with double iam: “and even now he goes past his own front door to knock at yours” (123 et sua praeteriens iam iam tua limina pulsat).82 Shadows of Virgilian journeys and arrivals, on the Trojans’ path to Italy and Rome, accompany the journey that will never take place.83 This is an aduentus very different from that anticipated by Paulinus at the end of Poem 10. Ausonius ends his poem with a whole line lifted from Virgil: “Can I believe it? Or do lovers fashion their own dreams?” (credimus? an, qui amant, ipsi sibi somnia fingunt? = Ecl. 8.108). This is the penultimate 77. Picking up Ep. 24.96–98 nam mihi certa fides nec commutabilis umquam | Paulini illius ueteris reuerentia durat | quaeque meoque tuoque fuit concordia patri, where I take Paulini to refer to the addressee of the letter, not his father or grandfather. 78. Another word (whence English “pilgrim”) that takes on a different meaning in a Christian context; cf. Paulin. Ep. 24.3 domus tuae hospes es, ut sis hospitium domus; patriae tuae peregrinus es et exul istius mundi, ut sis incola paradisi et patriae ciuis antiquae; TLL 10.1, 1312.65 ff. respicitur vita in hoc mundo procul a deo caelestive patria degenda (usu christiano); Tertullian, Cyprian, Prudentius, Augustine, etc. 79. With 111 accurre, o nostrum decus, o mea maxima cura, cf. Geo. 2.39–41 inceptumque una decurre laborem, | o decus, o famae merito pars maxima nostrae, | Maecenas (an appeal to enter on a figurative journey). Mea maxima cura = Aen. 1.678. With 112 uotis ominibusque bonis precibusque uocatus, cf. Hor. Odes 4.5.9–13 (pro reditu Caesaris) ut mater iuuenem . . . uotis ominibusque et precibus uocat. Line 113 dum tu iuuenis, dum nostra senectus taps the Horatian carpe diem: the commentaries compare Odes 2.3.15–16 dum res et aetas et sororum | fila trium patiuntur atra. 80. See Alfonsi 1963. 81. See Green 1991, Amherdt 2004, and Mondin 1995 for the parallels; but this is more vivid than any of those, I think. 82. Cf. Ov. Am. 2.19.39–40 incipe, quis totiens furtim tua limina pulset, | quaerere; see Fielding 2017, 47–48. 83. With 119 labitur amne secundo, cf. Aen. 8.549 secundo defluit amne (cf. also Auson. Mos. 39–40 cum amne secundo | defluis). With 120 iamque in conspectu est; iam prora obuertitur amni, cf. Aen. 10.260 iamque in conspectu Teucros habet (Aeneas’s return) and 6.3 obuertunt pelago proras.

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line of the song of a woman who uses magic to secure her lover’s return from the city.84 At this point Ausonius allows a suspicion that his fides and credulitas (in the sense of “faith,” a meaning credulitas often has in Christian writers, as opposed to “credulity,” its classical meaning) are less certain than those of Paulinus, undermining his assertion at line 104 of his confident certainty that his prayers can bring about Paulinus’s return.85 Ausonius will have had no doubt of the answer to the question credimus? an, qui amant, ipsi sibi somnia fingunt? once he had received Paulinus’s Poem 11, showing once and for all the nullity of a credulitas that tricks itself out in the imaginings of poetic fictions, as opposed to the credulitas of a Christian credo. Where Ausonius plays with the absent presences of “traditional” poetry, Paulinus asserts the continuing presence in absence of Christian belief. He does this by taking a leaf from Ausonius’s habit of alluding to the Eclogues—another example of what might be regarded as pastoral responsion—and by giving a Christian gloss to the topics of absent presence familiar in the ancient discourses of amicitia and epistolary communication.86 Paulinus ends the hexameter section of his poem (as Ausonius had ended his hexameter poem) with allusion to the Eclogues: “Though I be separated from you by a whole world or a whole lifetime, I shall never be divorced from you in mind. Life itself will quit my body before your features vanish from my heart” (11.46–48 toto licet abstrahar orbe uel aeuo, | numquam animo diuisus agam: prius ipsa recedet | corpore uita meo quam uester pectore uultus).87 This alludes to Virgil’s first Eclogue, and Tityrus’s extravagant use of an adynaton in his praise of the young man and “god” who is his benefactor: nature will go topsy-turvy “before his face will fade from my heart” (59–63 ante . . . quam nostro illius labatur pectore 84. Ecl. 8.109 parcite, ab urbe uenit, iam parcite carmina, Daphnis; Witke (1971, 35–36) sees the omission of this last line as leaving things “open to Paulinus’ acceptance or rejection”; Mondin (1995) sees rather “un silenzio di disillusione”; “alla fine . . . le illusioni revelano tutta la sua vacuità, perché in realtà Paolino non torna. Con la scelta del silenzio Ausonio, maestro della reminiscenza, tocca forse qui l’apice della sua arte allusiva.” Virgil in turn alludes to Lucr. 1.104–5 quippe etenim quam multa tibi iam fingere possunt | somnia quae uitae rationes uertere possint; see Hardie 2002b, 21. If there is extended Lucretian allusion in Poem 11, this is perhaps in part a response to the cue in Ausonius’s last line. This whole nexus is echoed at Poem 27 (Natal. 9).179 ff., the real presence of Nicetas at Nola, uideo praesenti lumine coram | Niceten; 184 hunc ego conspiciens longo post tempore [Ecl. 1.67] ; 187–91 nam quis tam claro poterit non cernere signo | hoc prece mi uenisse tua, ut, quod sumere uotis | uix poteram aut ipso saltem mihi fingere somno, | Nicetam rursus coram Felicis in ipso | natali uisu simul amplexuque tenerem. Rutilius Namatianus also makes pointed use of Ecl. 8.108 at Red. 1.204; see ch. 2. 85. With Auson. Ep. 24.104 Green “I am certain in my confidence” (certa est fiducia nobis), cf. Paulinus’s assertions of the power of his belief in God in the last part of Poem 10: 280 credulitate, 304 credula, 324 diffidentia ueri (rejected). 86. See Roberts 1985b; on amicitia, Roberts (1985b, 276 n. 25) cites Cic. Amic. 23 (uerum enim amicum qui intuetur, tamquam exemplar aliquod intuetur sui. quocirca et absentes adsunt) and refers to Fabre 1949, 139 n. 5. 87. Fielding (2017, 50) cites the close parallel of Ov. Pont. 2.11.3–4 ut, quamquam longe toto sumus orbe remoti, | scire tamen possis nos meminisse tui.

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uultus). The power of Paulinus’s amor and amicitia for Ausonius is sufficient to overcome the spatial separation of the remotest of the exilic destinations envisaged by Meliboeus at the end of the first Eclogue: “the Britons, wholly sundered from all the world” (66 et penitus toto diuisos orbe Britannos).88 In the concluding twenty lines of iambics Paulinus once again changes gear. There are fewer allusions to classical texts, and the absent presence89 of memory in this life is overgone by the claim of the continuing presence of his friend in Paulinus’s mind, even after life has left his body, when his soul will have been released from the prison of the body. Such intertexts as there are for absent presences are now Ovidian and exilic.90 However, the assertion of undying friendship and undying memory is not an attempt to compensate for the absence of exile, but rather the promise of an affective bond that will be strengthened even by a journey that is an exile from a previous life, but a homecoming to the true father and the true fatherland. The poem closes with two lines (67–68) in which eternal memory of a friend provides the final answer to Ausonius’s repeated charges of forgetfulness;91 the subject is the disembodied mens: et ut mori sic obliuisci non capit, perenne uiuax et memor.92 [The mind] admits forgetfulness no more than death. It lives and it remembers forever.

Here, at the end, the language of Christian friendship coincides with the traditional topics of poetic memory. Perenne uiuax, “eternally alive,” echoes the language both 88. The situation is further complicated by the presence of allusion to Dido’s experience, Aen. 4.4 haerent infixi pectore uultus; Paulinus may remember Ausonius’s closing allusion to elements of Dido’s curse at Ep. 21.73–74 (see above). Paulin. Poem 11.47–48 also echoes Ov. Tr. 1.5.11–13 spiritus in uacuas prius hic tenuandus in auras | ibit et in tepido deseret ossa rogo, | quam subeant animo meritorum obliuia nostro. This emphatic closural allusion to Eclogue 1 has been preceded by allusion to Ecl. 1.24–25 uerum haec tantum alias inter caput extulit urbes | quantum lenta solent inter uiburna cupressi at Paulin. Poem 11.36–38 si . . . aequas uiburna cupressis, | me compone tibi. 89. See Chiappiniello 2010, 618 on Paulinus’s reversal of the presence/absence polarity: “By alluding to Ovid’s Tristia, Paulinus seems to be operating a reversal of the traditional presence/absence polarity and, therefore, privileging absence over presence, the spiritual over the corporeal.” 90. Tr. 3.4b.73–74 scite tamen, quamuis longe regione remotus | absim, uos animo semper adesse meo. Cf. Poem 11.53 nec ab aure longe nec remotum lumine; 59–60 quo me locarit axe communis pater, | illic quoque animo te geram. Cf. also Met. 15.62–63 licet caeli regione remotos, | mente deos adiit; does Paulinus think of an alternative to Pythagorean metempsychosis? Cf. the allusion to the Met. epilogue at the very end of the poem. 91. Auson. Ep. 21.50–52 nostri facit hoc obliuio caeli; 24.110 immemorem ueterum peregrinis fidere amicis. Cf. also Ep. 23.16–18 obruar usque tamen, ueteris ne desit amici | me durante fides memorique ut fixa sub aeuo | restituant profugum, solacia cassa, sodalem (if these words are Ausonius’s). 92. Cf. Sulp. Sev. Vit. s. Mart. 1.4 (in the context of contrast with pagan biographies) cum hominis officium sit perennem potius uitam quam perennem memoriam quaerere, non scribendo aut pugnando uel philosophando, sed pie sancte religioseque uiuendo.

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of Horace’s Odes 3.30.1 (“I have completed a monument that will last longer than bronze” [exegi monumentum aere perennius]) and 6 (“I shall not all of me die” [non omnis moriar]), and of Ovid’s reworking of the Horatian ode in the epilogue to the Metamorphoses, Met. 15.875–76 (“With the better part of myself I shall be carried everlasting above the lofty stars” [parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis | astra ferar]) and 879 (“If there is any truth in what the bards foretell, I shall live” [si quid habent ueri uatum praesagia, uiuam]). Ovid’s last word is uiuam; Paulinus’s last word is memor. Viuax, “long-lived,” cancels mori, “die,” as memor, “remembering,” cancels obliuisci, “forget,” at the same time as obliuisci echoes in uiuax, and mori in memor. The poetic memory in these last four words is transformed into the perpetual presence of the memory of a disembodied Christian soul.93 But the memories of traditional poetry are not thereby erased—they are “inerasable,” indelebile, to use another word that Ovid uses of the enduring memory of his own name and poetry at the end of the Metamorphoses. To sum up my readings hitherto, the exchange between Ausonius and Paulinus is articulated through recurrent allusion to a number of classical authors, chief among whom are Virgil and Ovid. Virgil’s Eclogues supply intertexts for a sustained dialogue on topics of fatherland and exile, topics that develop new charges in late antiquity with regard to both the earthly city of Rome and the new heavenly city.94 Rutilius Namatianus, for example, elaborates a complex plot of exile and homecoming, of exile as homecoming, in On His Return (see chapter 2). Rutilius, like Paulinus in Poems 10 and 11, combines the polarities of the Eclogues with elements of the Aeneid’s plot of a journey into exile that is at the same time a homecoming. Ovid provides further intertexts for an exploration of the theme of exile, as well as for a poetry of Christian metamorphosis and novelty. I have also touched on allusions to other classical authors. I will end this chapter with a more detailed look at the presence of Lucretius and Horace in the epistolary dialogue between Ausonius and Paulinus. LU C R ET I U S

Lucretius is enlisted by both Ausonius and Paulinus.95 In reproaching Paulinus for his silence, Ausonius asserts: “Nature made nothing dumb” (Ep. 21.17 Green nil mutum natura dedit), and then gives a list of the different sounds made by 93. Cf. Ep. 20.1 (to Delphinus) itaque hac eadem lege, qua uerior circumcisio in corde quam quae in carne concisio et praesentia firmior quae spiritu quam quae corpore iungitur et cohaeret sibi, semper tecum sumus tuque nobiscum (see Conybeare 2000, ch. 6). 94. On Paulinus and Virgil, see Bitter 1948 (not seen). 95. On Lucretius in late antiquity, see Rücker 2013, 18 n. 24; Hardie, forthcoming a. Rücker (2013) discusses esp. Auson. Ep. 21.7–28.

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the beasts of air, land, and sea, alluding to a long list of the sounds made by different animals at De rerum natura 5.1056–90. That passage ends: “Therefore if different sensations compel creatures, dumb (muta) thought they be to utter different sounds, how much more natural it is that mortal men should at that time have been able to denote dissimilar things by different words!” (1087–90). If Paulinus recognizes the allusion, he will feel the force of Lucretius’s a fortiori argument. Lucretius’s vivid and noisy depiction of the procession of the Magna Mater (Lucr. 2.618–20) is one of the sources for Ausonius’s own alliterative evocation of the noise of cymbals and drums (20–21). Against an Epicurean natura Paulinus, for his part, asserts the presence and power of the Christian God, but in language that echoes the beginning of Lucretius’s materialist explanation of the thunderbolt in De rerum natura 6. With Paulinus, Poem 10.120, “he who shakes the fiery summit of high heaven with thunder” (qui tonitru summi quatit ignea culmina caeli), compare Lucretius 6.96, “In the first place the blue of heaven is shaken with thunder” (principio tonitru quatiuntur caerula caeli). Paulinus continues a tradition of using Lucretian language in the service of a non-Lucretian message that goes back to the first part of the speech of Anchises in Aeneid 6, where Virgil diverts the vocabulary of Epicurean materialism to the service of a Platonic-Stoic theology.96 In the next line, “who flashes forth His three-forked flame, stirring up no empty rumblings” (10.121 qui trifido igne micat nec inania murmura miscet), Paulinus alludes to another passage in the Aeneid that itself alludes to Lucretius, but in which the Epicurean doctrine of a noninterventionist divinity is disproved. Nec inania murmura miscet negates the terms of the complaint by Dido’s jealous African suitor Iarbas that his father, Jupiter, is paying no attention to what is going on on earth (the liaison of Dido and Aeneas), and that his thunderbolts are not directed at wrongdoers: “The flames in the clouds that terrify men’s minds have no aim and stir up empty rumblings” (Aen. 4.209–10 caecique in nubibus ignes | terrificant animos et inania murmura miscent).97 But the Virgilian Jupiter is listening, and he does intervene—at least in the epic fiction that is the world of the Aeneid. In Paulinus’s world the Christian God is no fiction, and he is universally present and engaged.98 At Poem 11.30–48 Paulinus answers Ausonius’s charge that he has thrown off the yoke under which the two men have for a long time traveled harmoniously. To formulate both the disparity in talents that, so Paulinus asserts, divides the two men and the mutuality of affection that unites them, Paulinus weaves a dense 96. See Austin 1977 on Aen. 6.724 ff. 97. On the Lucretian allusion in these lines, and more widely in Aeneid 4, see Hardie 2009a, 72–73. 98. Poem 10.123–24 (Deus) in omni totus ubique, | omnibus infuso rebus regit omnia Christo is one of the many Christian adaptations of Anchises’s account of the cosmic spirit at Aen. 6.726–27 spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus | mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.

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Virgilian and Ciceronian web of allusion.99 But a closer parallel for the underlying situation is Lucretius’s confession at the beginning of De rerum natura 3 that he is a mere follower of Epicurus, quite unable to compete on equal terms with his teacher and “father,” from whom he is yet inseparable “because of his love” (3.5 propter amorem). Just so, in the matter of “learned pursuits” (11.30–31 doctis . . . studiis) Paulinus is unequal to his elder and better, but inseparable from him in a yoke of love (39 iungar amore), an eternal bond of sweet friendship, that will last for a true eternity, unlike the Catullan “eternal bond of friendship” (Cat. 109.6 aeternum . . . foedus amicitiae) to which Paulinus alludes in line 42, dulcis amicitia aeterno mihi foedere tecum.100 Like Lucretius, Paulinus uses examples from the world of animals and birds to illustrate the claimed unequalness of the two men. H OR AC E

There is a yet more extensive engagement with Horace, who has particular uses for Paulinus’s negotiation of his side of the correspondence. For both men Horace is a model of friendship, expressed and conducted through poetry.101 For Ausonius, Horace is second only to Virgil in importance, a model both as a poet and as an advocate for a life lived according to the values of calmness of mind (aequanimitas) and the golden mean (aurea mediocritas), and as an advocate for an ideal of a retirement, otium, in the countryside that is very different from the religious otium on which Paulinus is now set. For Paulinus it is above all the Horace of book 1 of the Epistles who sets a precedent for turning away from one kind of life to another, and from one kind of poetry to another, just as Horace attempts to reform his own moral self, in part through a critique of conventional values that translates into Paulinus’s more radical ethical revolution. Horace’s epistolary manner also offers a model for the tactful and civilized delivery of a firm and unyielding message. This appears most overtly in the last two lines of Poem 10, after Paulinus has at length stated his overriding concern to prepare his soul for death and the next life. Lest he might seem to be browbeating Ausonius, he concludes: “If you approve this, take pleasure in the rich hopes of your friend; if you disapprove, leave me to win approval from Christ alone” (330–31 si placet hoc, gratare tui spe diuite amici; | si 99. Notably 37 aequas uiburna cupressis ~ Virg. Ecl. 1.24–25 uerum haec tantum alias inter caput extulit urbes | quantum lenta solent inter uiburna cupressi; 43 paribus . . . redamandi legibus uses the word redamare coined by Cic. Amic. 49 to translate ἀντιφιλεῖν. At 38–39 Paulinus flatters Ausonius, uix Tullius et Maro tecum | sustineant aequale iugum, doubtless aware that his friend will recognize his own intertextual rivalry with those greats of Latin literature. 100. I follow Keul-Deutscher 1998, 353–56. 101. Filosini (2008) stresses the importance of Horace in Paulin. Poem 10; see also Nazzaro 1995, 133–41 on Horatian allusions in Poem 10; Paulinus also practices an epistolary accommodatio to the central importance for Ausonius of Horace as master in life and art, on which see Nardo 1990.

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contra est, Christo tantum me linque probari). The two conditional clauses look to the closing two lines of one of Horace’s more austere Epistles, 1.6 (Nil admirari): “Farewell and goodbye. If you know anything better than these things, kindly share them with me; if not, join me in following these” (67–68 uiue, uale. si quid nouisti rectius, istis | candidus imperti; si nil, his utere mecum).102 Central to Paulinus’s strategy is the attempt to readjust his relationship with his pater and patronus Ausonius, as Horace tries to redefine his relationship with Maecenas in Epistles 1.103 It is Ausonius who allusively introduces Maecenas into the conversation, as we have seen above, at Ep. 21.56 Green (“my pride and that of my country, and mainstay of the Senate” [ergo meum patriaeque decus columenque senati]), reworking Horace’s address to Maecenas at Odes 2.17.3–4. Ausonius may expect that Paulinus will remember Horace’s more intimate designation of Maecenas in the following line as “part of my soul” (5 meae . . . partem animae). If he does, Paulinus will present an even more passionate statement of his inseparability from his friend in the closing iambic section of Poem 11, lending new meaning to the Horatian formulation at Odes 2.17.11–12 “comrades ready to take the last road together” (supremum | carpere iter comites parati).104 But Paulinus’s more pressing concern is to detach himself from a world bounded by earthly friendships and by cultured literary play, the world that he had previously occupied with his patron and “father” Ausonius. He is in the position of Horace in Epistles 1.1, resistant to Maecenas’s attempt to recall him to the world of the lyric poetry of Odes books 1–3, “to shut me up once more in the school of old” (3 iterum antiquo me includere ludo), unwilling to return (6 rediens) to the arena. Paulinus’s “old school” (as the pupil of Ausonius) and “old literary games” (ludus has both senses) have been superseded by something totally new (see above). There is little or no verbal parallelism, but given the density of Horatian allusion in the epistolary exchange as a whole, and given the importance to Ausonius of Horace as model, the tensions of Epistles 1 are strongly felt. In Epistles 1.7 Horace tactfully resists pressure from his patron to return from the country to the city, using the fable of Philippus and Mena as an example of how not to conduct a patron-client relationship. Horace begins with specification of the period of absence: “Having promised you that I would be in the country for five days, I lied and have been absent for the whole of August” (1–2 Quinque dies tibi pollicitus me rure futurum | Sextilem totum mendax desideror). Paulinus opens the third and longest section, in hexameters, of Poem 10 with reference to the length of his absence from Gaul: “You rebuke me for being away from my native land for a 102. The ending of Poem 10 also echoes the closing two lines of the section in iambics, 102–3 ignosce amanti mi si geram quod expedit; | gratare, si uiuam ut libet. 103. Nazzaro 1995, 141–42 on Poem 15.1–3. 104. For other Horatian allusions in these closing iambics, see above.

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full three years” (103–6 defore me patriis tota trieteride terris . . . increpitas). If Maecenas wishes Horace to return and never leave again, he must grant him the return of his youth and of his old lyric self: “But if you never want me to leave, you will give me back my strong lungs” (Ep. 1.7.25–28 quod si me noles usquam discedere, reddes | forte latus). That is an impossibility. If Ausonius wishes for Paulinus’s return (Poem 10.119 si tibi cura mei reditus), he should look to a real divinity capable of granting his return: “but I would rather, my father, that you request my return from one who can grant it” (109–10 sed reditum inde meum, genitor, te poscere mallem | unde dari possit). This is the Christian God, who alone can grant the one return that matters, the return of the soul to God after the death of the body. The gods to whom Ausonius prays, the Muses, are no gods, and return on Ausonius’s terms an impossibility. In the rest of Epistles 1.7 Horace makes a more serious point about a freedom that is threatened by too close a dependence on Maecenas and his gifts (were Maecenas the kind of patron sufficiently obtuse not to take the point). This is the point of the Philippus and Mena fable, which ends with the once carefree auctioneer Mena’s prayer to his well-meaning but insensitive new patron to be allowed to return to his former life (95 uitae me redde priori). The moral drawn by Horace is this: “Let him who has once seen how much better what he has given up is than what he sought out, make haste to return and seek again the things he abandoned” (96–97 qui semel aspexit quantum dimissa petitis | praestent, mature redeat repetatque relicta). To stretch the point, perhaps, this might be allegorized in a Christian sense as a recognition of the superiority of man’s origin in God to the ultimately unsatisfying and enslaving distractions of this world. From the start, Horace’s project of self-transformation in Epistles 1 is shaky, and his opening wish to escape from the limelight is gainsaid by the personified Epistles book’s desire in the envoi (Ep. 1.20) to prostitute itself to a wide public. The recusatio of Epistles 1.1 is repeated in the first poem of Odes 4, where the ageing poet resists Venus’s attempt to start up the old battles of love/erotic lyric poetry, and protests, again, that he is not the man he was (3 non sum qualis eram), as he had at Epistles 1.1.4: non eadem est aetas, non mens (“I am not of the same age as I was, not of the same mind”). This time his resistance lasts no longer than the length of the poem, by the end of which Horace is in hopeless pursuit of the boy Ligurinus. His opening plea to Venus (2; parce precor, precor) is, as we have seen above, perhaps echoed in Paulinus’s plea to Ausonius at Poem 11.6 (parce, precor, lacerare tuum). If so, Paulinus demonstrates a non-Horatian inflexibility105 of purpose. For him there will not be the backsliding that is a recurrent feature of the Horatian persona.106 105. Cf. Hor. Odes 4.1.6–7 circa lustra decem flectere mollibus | iam durum imperiis. 106. See Nicastri 1999, 873–74 on allusions to Horace in Paulin. Poem 22.64 ff., and on Paulinus’s transcendence of Horatian “dissidio” and backsliding.

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Instead Paulinus steers Ausonius toward the impersonation of Maecenas as he was when Horace first encountered him in Satires 1.6. Before complaining that Paulinus has changed from what he was, Ausonius should ask what he has changed into: “If I have changed from uprightness to crookedness, from god-fearing to ungodliness, from thrift to excess, from the honourable to the shameful, if I live a life of laziness, idleness and obscurity, take pity on your friend who has been corrupted” (10.272–75 si prauo rectum, si religiosa profanis, | luxurie parcum, turpi mutatus honestum, | segnis, iners, obscurus ago, miserere sodalis | in mala peruersi). Turpi mutatus honestum alludes to the unerring ethical judgement of Maecenas at Satires 1.6.62–63: “I consider it a great thing that I have found favour with you, who distinguishes between the shameful and the honourable” (magnum hoc ego duco | quod placui tibi, qui turpi secernis honestum). It would indeed be shameful were Ausonius not to judge by such standards, since even the malevolent mob with their foolish gossip (268 uulgus scaeuo rumore malignum) does not always criticize those who change their way of life. This is the malignum uulgus despised by Horace at Odes 2.16.39–40; and in Satires 1.6, before recounting his first meeting with Maecenas, Horace goes to great lengths to stress that he is not a man swayed by popular notions of glory, or by the “envy,” inuidia, that all feel toward Horace the son of a freedman.107 Paulinus firmly renounces the antiquus ludus, at least in the way that he used to play it with Ausonius. This is not, however, a renunciation of the game of al-lusion to the old poets, but it is a game played now on Paulinus’s own terms. One example comes a few lines later, when he urges the brevity and transience of human life as a reason to live in Christ, uiuere Christo: “Whatever short-lived thing man is, man has a sickly body, his days are fleeting, and, without Christ, he is dust and shadow” (288–89 breue, quicquid homo est, homo corporis aegri, | temporis occidui, et sine Christo puluis et umbra).108 Puluis et umbra is a Horatian phrase: “When we have gone down to where pious Aeneas, rich Tullus, and Ancus are, we are dust and shadow” (Odes 4.7.14–16 nos ubi decidimus | quo pius Aeneas, quo diues Tullus et Ancus, | puluis et umbra sumus). The juxtaposition of the phrase to the name Christo makes the point that Christ alone can cancel man’s caducity, to which the ringing names of Trojan and Roman kings are prey (Paulinus will doubtless have appreciated Horace’s questioning of the tradition that Aeneas was in fact elevated to the skies as a god). There is also a strong contrast with Ausonius’s incorporation of the phrase in a formal exercise in constructing an epitaph of traditional stamp “Nastes and Amphimachus and the famous son of Nomion, once we were leaders of men, now we are dust and shadow” (Epitaph 17 Nastes Amphimachusque, 107. On the Horatian critique of fame, see Hardie 2012, 29–31. Paulinus engages with fame and envy within a Christian perspective at Poem 10.181–88, 265–70, 295–97; Poem 11.20–29. 108. On the Horatian and biblical intertexts in 288–89, see Filosini 2008, 61. See also Nazzaro 1995, 140 with n. 32.

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Nomionis inclita proles, | ductores quondam, puluis et umbra sumus).109 In a Christian context the Horatian phrase neatly brings together two central and related biblical images that are found only in isolation in the Old Testament: God’s sentence on Adam after the Fall that “dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return” (Gen. 3:19 puluis es et in puluerem reuerteris), and the recurrent comparison of the time of man’s life to a passing shadow.110 That umbra here is to be taken in this sense is guaranteed by temporis occidui at the beginning of line 289, rather than in the Horatian sense of “shade” of the dead, which would in any case make no sense in a Christian eschatology.111 If Paulinus gives Ausonius a lesson in how to incorporate the classics in a Christian poetry, the previous line, 288 (breue quicquid homo est, homo corporis aegri), reminds Ausonius that he too is a Christian poet. Ausonius had used the phrase corporis aegri in his own prayer to the Omnipotent Christian Father, in a passage that looks to the posthumous flight of the Christian soul to heaven that is the subject of the sublime flight of the last section of Paulinus, Poem 10: Ausonius, Ephemeris 3.37–38: “Open the way, which will bear me on high after the chains of my sickly body” (pande uiam, quae me post uincula corporis aegri | in sublime ferat). Ausonius’s verse prayer, the first known nonliturgical Christian prayer, is an impressive piece that was imitated by subsequent Christian poets, Prudentius, Marius Victorius, Sedulius, Dracontius, and Paulinus of Perigueux, as well as Paulinus.112 A continuing responsiveness to Ausonius’s own poetic utterances in this case overcomes the alterity that is both the condition for communication and the source of alienation for Ovid’s Echo. Echo had her revenge through the offices of Nemesis (Ov. Met. 3.406 109. Combining a line from the Catalogue of Ships (Il. 2.871) with Hor. Odes 4.7.16: Horace’s three names, one Iliadic and two Roman, are replaced with three Iliadic names of very minor warriors. These are the only three examples of puluis et umbra in Library of Latin Texts A (Antiquitas + Aetas patrum). 110. 1 Chron. 29:15 dies nostri quasi umbra super terram; Job 8:9 sicut umbra dies nostri sunt super terram; Ps. 101:12–13 dies mei quasi umbra inclinati sunt et ego quasi faenum arui. tu autem Domine in aeternum permanes; Ps. 143:4 homo uanitati adsimilatus est. dies eius quasi umbra pertransiens; Sap. 2:5 umbrae enim transitus est tempus nostrum, 5:9 transierunt omnia illa tamquam umbra et tamquam nuntius percurrens. 111. Thomas (2011) on Hor. Odes 4.7.16 compares Soph. El. 1158–59 ἀντὶ φιλτάτης | μορφῆς σποδόν τε καὶ σκιὰν ἀνωφελῆ, and comments: “These seem to be the only two instances of the expression in Greek and Latin literature”—a narrow view of what constitutes “Latin literature.” 112. Green 1991, 250. Ausonius perhaps took the phrase from Juvencus, Evang. 1.192–93 (Simeon) quod carcere corporis aegri | deposito mortem liber requiemque uideret; Paulinus uses it again at Poem 17.93–95 (of the flight of the mind) sed licet pigro teneamur aegri | corporis nexu, tamen euolamus | mentibus post te. Quicquid homo est is also a phrase with a history, found first in Luc. 9.779 (of the effects of a snake bite, a peculiarly gruesome illustration of the frailty of human flesh) quicquid homo est, aperit pestis natura profana; it is also used by Prudentius in the context of Christ’s assumption of humanity, Apoth. 779–81 totum hominem Deus adsumit, quia totus ab ipso est, | et totum redimit quem sumpserat, omne reducens, | quicquid homo est, istud tumulis, ast illud abysso (respectively body and soul). These are the only three occurrences of the phrase in the Library of Latin Texts A (Antiquitas + Aetas patrum).

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Ramnusia). Ausonius had wondered whether Nemesis was punishing the formerly inseparable pair of friends for “some presumptuous words” (Ep. 24.43 Green grande aliquod uerbum); Paulinus shows that they may still travel together on the same track, sharing the same truly grandia uerba, practicing the same genus grande. AFTER THE BREAK

After these letters there is silence, at least in what has been transmitted, between Paulinus and Ausonius. Shortly after this last exchange, in a.d. 394, Paulinus and his wife, Therasia, moved to Nola in Campania, where Paulinus dedicated himself for the rest of his life to the shrine of St. Felix as guardian, and later bishop. From the year after Poem 11 comes the first of Paulinus’s Natalicia, “birthday poems,” for Felix, that is to say, poems written for the anniversary of Felix’s death on 14 January 395, the date of his “birth” into life with Christ in heaven.113 Poem 12 takes the form of a propempticon (send-off poem) for himself, as Paulinus prays to the saint for an easy and prosperous journey to Nola, presumably shortly before his departure for Italy (on this poem, see further in chapter 2). There is a strong—and pointed?— contrast between the pained and tortured protestations of undying friendship and loyalty (fides) to “father” Ausonius, despite their geographical separation, and the uninhibited expression of joy in the future proximity to “father and lord” Felix (12 [Natal. 1].10 o pater, o domine). Paulinus makes amends for the years of living apart from the presence of Felix: “I pray that I have now sufficiently paid the penalty deserved by my lack of piety, because I have lived without you for so many years, alas! far from your abode, although not absent in mind” (15–17 sit iam, quaeso, satis meritam impietate tulisse | hanc poenam, tot iam quod te sine uiximus annis, | sede tua procul heu! quamuis non mente remoti).114 The absent presence of the dead saint is paradoxically a more intense communion than the friendship with the living Ausonius could ever be. Paulinus’s eager anticipation of his arrival at Nola will be matched by the reality, unlike Ausonius’s dream of the return of the absent lover at the end of Epistle 24. Ausonius had complained that he and Paulinus were shaking off a yoke of long-standing concord that they had inherited from their fathers. Paulinus had denied that this was a shared yoke in the way that Ausonius would have it. By contrast Paulinus willingly embraces the yoke of his “slavery” (seruitium) to Felix: “There, under you as master, I will bear the sweet yoke, the light burden, and a pleasing slavery” (12.32–33 illic dulce iugum, leue onus blandumque feremus | seruitium sub te domino): the yoke of Christ (Matt. 11.30 “For my yoke is 113. Cf., e.g., Poem 14 (Natal. 3).1–3 Venit festa dies caelo, celeberrima terris, | natalem Felicis agens, qua corpore terris | occidit et Christo superis est natus in astris. 114. For the formulation of this absent presence, cf. Ov. Met. 15.62–63 (Pythagoras’s flight of the mind) isque licet caeli regione remotos | mente deos adiit.

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easy and my burden is light”), to which Ausonius had perhaps himself, tactlessly, alluded at Epistle 24.8 Green: “so tranquil and so gentle a yoke” (tam placidum tam mite iugum; see above). The poetry that Paulinus wrote after his installment as guardian of the shrine of St. Felix at Nola, where he was to spend the rest of his life, is certainly very different in feel from the bulk of the Ausonian corpus—the contrast is easily presented as one between the frivolous and futile, and the serious and committed.115 For one thing, Paulinus’s Nolan poetry is full of biblical citation. Yet he does not abandon classical allusion, in an intermittent rewriting of pagan intertexts often to polemical ends. As is often the case with the recusatio of the classical poets, renunciation is incomplete. This is observable in the major component of his poetic output, the annual Natalicia for Saint Felix, and more pronounced still in the three one-off occasional poems,116 the propempticon for Bishop Nicetas (Poem 17), the epithalamium for Julian and Titia (Poem 25), and the epicedion or consolatio for Celsus (Poem 31). These are poems in which “Paulinus is attempting to build a Christian superstructure on the classical foundations, with the implicit purpose of contrasting the differing ethos of the two cultures in their attitudes towards significant occasions in the course of human life.”117 These three poems are addressed to individuals who presumably have a level of education and classical culture comparable to that of Paulinus himself. A Kontrastimitation (contrast-imitation) that operates at the level of generic expectation results in paradoxical examples of their respective genres, since each poem contradicts a basic presupposition of its genre: that a journey leads to the absence of a friend, that a wedding is for the procreation of children, that a death is the occasion for grief.118 The Natalicia themselves are paradoxical birthday poems, celebrating a biological death, not a birth. I conclude this chapter by posing the same question, of whether goodbye really means goodbye, of another “farewell to classical culture” poem written by Paulinus some years after the exchange with Ausonius, Poem 22.119 The farewell in this case 115. As it is by La Penna (1993, 747) in his very negative assessment of the value of Ausonius’s poetry: “Andremmo oltre i limiti del lusus poetico se ci soffermassimo su questo epistolario famoso; noterò solo che anche Paolino, per esprimere la sua nuova fede, ricorre a forme letterarie della poesia nugatoria e che, d’altra parte, Ausonio nel rapporto col discepolo e amico arriva ai momenti di maggiore intensità umana.” 116. What Walsh 1975, 13–16 calls “the genre poems.” 117. Walsh 1975, 13. 118. Well put by Walsh 1975, 16: “The marriage song has become an exhortation to continence, the consolation has become the expression of Christian hope, and the valedictory has become the medium for the pivotal notion in Paulinus of the caritas Christiana—that no distance, no time can truly separate those who are joined together as limbs of the body of which Christ is the Head.” 119. For the formal marker of a past now superseded shared by Poems 10 and 22, cf. 10.23–5 fuit ista quondam, non ope sed studio pari | tecum mihi concordia | ciere surdum Delphica Phoebum specu; 22.13–14 fuerit puerili ludus in aeuo | iste tuus quondam.

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is one enjoined by Paulinus on his friend Jovius, a cultured littérateur in Gaul. Together with Poems 10 and 11, Poem 22 has been labeled “un vero trattato di arte poetica Cristiana.”120 It is a protrepticon to Jovius, to whom is also addressed the prose Letter 16 of which Poem 22 is a verse retractatio, and can probably be dated about a.d. 400.121 Paulinus calls Jovius away from pagan philosophy and poetry to a dedicated study of the Scriptures as the foundation for his own future poetic production, a program announced in the opening words: “I promise myself that you are now basing your poems on the sacred books [or, composing your poems from the sacred books]” (1–2 Iam mihi polliceor sacris tua carmina libris | condere).122 Paulinus presents a syllabus of biblical subjects from Old and New Testaments, and gives a specimen of biblical paraphrase in an elaborated versification of the first three chapters of John (Poem 22.54–59). At the same time Paulinus alludes extensively to classical texts, with particular clusters at the beginning and end of his advice to Jovius. A patchwork of Virgilian and Statian phrasing cloaks the opening call to Jovius to look to a Christian inspiration (6–11):123 mox oculis caelo noua lux124 orietur aperto, intrabitque Sacer tacito per operta meatu Spiritus et laeto quatiet tua uiscera flatu. heia age125 tende chelyn,126 fecundum concute pectus,127 magna mouens; abeat solitis impensa facultas carminibus:128 maior rerum tibi nascitur ordo.129 Soon the heavens will open and a new light will rise before your eyes, and the Holy Spirit will enter your hidden parts on silent foot and shake them with joyful breath. Come, tune your lyre, shake out your fertile breast, as you set out on a great subject. Farewell to the fluency you expend on your usual songs; this is the birth of a greater order of things for you. 120. Ruggiero 1996, 2: 75. 121. Fabre, 1948, 116–17. On Letter 16, see Erdt 1976. 122. Reading and writing go together as two sides of the same activity at 29–30 dumque leges catus et scribes miracula summi | uera dei; 148–49 his potius studiumque operamque legendis | scribendisque uoue. 123. On the Virgilian allusions, see Bitter 1948, 16–17. 124. Aen. 9.110–11 hic primum noua lux oculis offulsit et ingens | uisus ab Aurora caelum transcurrere nimbus. 125. Aen. 4.569 (Mercury rousing Aeneas to leave Carthage). 126. Stat. Theb. 1.33–34 nunc tendo chelyn satis arma referre | Aonia; 8.374. 127. Aen. 7.338 (Juno to Allecto) fecundum concute pectus. Some MSS of Paulinus read facundum concute pectus: if that is what he wrote, it would be a witty “correction” of the Virgilian phrase. 128. See Stat. Theb. 10.829 non mihi iam solito uatum de more canendum, in a passage to which further allusion is made in lines 33–34 (see below). 129. Aen. 7.44–45 maior rerum mihi nascitur ordo, | maius opus moueo.

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These intertextual moments of new beginnings and new impulses are balanced at the end by allusion to a poetic excellence achieved, once Jovius has fulfilled a program of poetry based on Old and New Testaments (157–60): tunc te diuinum uere memorabo poetam et quasi dulcis aquae potum tua carmina ducam, cum mihi nectareos summis a fontibus haustus praebebunt Dominum rerum recinentia Christum. Then I will say that you are a truly divine poet, and I shall drain your songs like a drink of sweet water, when they offer me draughts of nectar from the fountains on high, as they echo forth Christ the lord of the world.

Paulinus will see in Jovius a truly divine, that is, Christian, poet, as opposed to the compliment with which Menalcas receives Mopsus’s song of the death and memorialization of Daphnis in Virgil’s Eclogue 5.45–47: “Your song, divine poet, is to me like sleep on the grass for the exhausted, like quenching thirst in the summer’s heat with a leaping stream of sweet water” (Tale tuum carmen nobis, diuine poeta, | quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per aestum | dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere riuo).130 The adverb uere, “truly,” signals Paulinus’s Christian correction of Virgil’s idea of what it is to be a “divine poet.” The refreshing sweet waters of the Virgilian simile turn into the heavenly nectar drawn from biblical sources. Unspoken, but felt, is the contrast between the fantasy of the ascent to heaven and deification of the dead Daphnis in the following song of Menalcas, and the true divinity of the resurrected Christ. Are these allusions to classical poetry just there to sweeten the protreptic for Jovius, a ladder to be kicked away once Jovius has ascended to the heights of biblical poetry, or is this a specimen of a doctrinally Christian poetry that revalues and reuses pagan texts to its own ends? The allusive rhetoric points to the former: Paulinus calls Jovius from the playthings of children (pagan mythological subjects) to the occupations of grown-ups (biblical poetry) (13–16): fuerit puerili ludus in aeuo iste tuus quondam, decuerunt ludicra paruum ; nunc, animis grauior quantum prouectior annis, aspernare leues maturo corde Camenas. Let that sport of yours in your boyhood be a thing of the past; toys suited you when you were small. Now with a weightier spirit in keeping with your more advanced years, let your mature heart reject the trifling Muses.

130. Cf. also Ecl. 10.17 diuine poeta; summis a fontibus haustus perhaps alludes to a Horatian passage on inspiration, Epist. 1.3.10 Pindarici fontis qui non expalluit haustus.

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The terms are once more those of Horace, Epistles 1.1.2–3 (“Are you looking to shut me up again in the old school/sport?” [quaeris . . . iterum antiquo me includere ludo?]) and 10 (“So now I put aside verses and other toys” [nunc itaque et uersus et cetera ludicra pono]); line 15 repeats the distinction between mind and age at Horace, Epistles 1.1.4 (“My age is not the same, my mind is not the same” [non eadem est aetas, non mens]), but in language closer to Aen. 9.246 (“Aletes heavy with years and mature of mind” [hic annis grauis atque animi maturus Aletes]). The call to set aside the past is repeated at 33–34 (“Enough of using your voice as a trumpet for idle ends; from now on let it thunder out the loftier works of God” [hactenus illa tuae uanos tuba uocis in usus | persona, diuinos modo celsius intonet actus]), lines that allude to Statius’s elevation of his epic voice to a higher theme at Thebaid 10.827–30 (“Enough of arms, trumpets, weapons and wounds; but now I must raise up Capaneus to fight the starry heavens at close quarters. My song must not now be after the usual fashion of the bards; I must seek a greater frenzy from the grove of the Muses” [hactenus arma, tubae, ferrumque et uulnera: sed nunc | comminus astrigeros Capaneus tollendus in axes. | non mihi iam solito uatum de more canendum; | maior ab Aoniis poscenda amentia lucis]). Paulinus calls on Jovius to ascend to a new, Christian sublime. As he launches on the main body of Poem 22, the syllabus and exemplification of biblical poetry (35 ff.), Paulinus polemicizes against the Epicurean account of the universe, with its plural worlds formed from atoms in the void, and against Ovid’s mythological accounts of the creation of mankind from Prometheus’s clay or Deucalion and Pyrrha’s stones. Instead he uses Ovidian language to outline a hexaemeron (narrative of the six days of creation): “You set about discovering the causes of things and the first-beginnings of the world (35 nosse moues causas rerum et primordia mundi);131 “Do not despise yourself as if you came from the stones of Pyrrha or the clay of Prometheus, when the hand of the Highest shaped you, elevated in face and mind, honouring you with the image of Himself ” (45–47 nec te ceu lapides Pyrrhae argillamue Promethei | contemnas, quem summa manus uultuque animoque | sublimem et propria dignatus imagine finxit).132 The section reaches a climax with a description of the universal power of Christ, “who alone governs all nature and all life” (147 qui solus naturam omnem uitamque gubernat), which adapts Lucretius’s description of the power of Venus (1.21 quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas). 131. Ov. Met. 15.67–68 magni primordia mundi | et rerum causas et quid natura docebat; cf. also Virg. Geo. 2.490 rerum cognoscere causas; 132. Met. 1.82–86 quam satus Iapeto, mixtam pluuialibus undis, | finxit in effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum, | pronaque cum spectent animalia cetera terram, | os homini sublime dedit caelumque uidere | iussit et erectos ad sidera tollere uultus. There seems to be no precedent in pagan texts for Ovid’s statement that man was created in the image of the gods, and influence from Hebraic texts has been suspected; Lieberg 1999.

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Paulinus continues pointedly to direct Jovius from his once beloved classical poets in the direction of a poetry founded on the Bible, but in shaping this poetry through allusion to the classical poets Paulinus follows the practice of most late antique biblical poetry. Awareness of the difference between pagan and biblical stories is continuously present for writers and readers of poetry founded on the Bible, and indeed an important part of what it is to use the poetic forms and traditions learned in school for a Christian subject-matter. Paulinus’s use of Ovidian and Lucretian language is typical of late antique versifications of the Genesis account of the six days of Creation (see chapter 3),133 which also have repeated recourse to natural-philosophical passages in Virgil, above all the first part of the speech of Anchises in Aeneid 6. Paulinus alludes to this in his account of the Christian God’s control over the universe, after refuting Epicurean and Stoic doctrines in the sister text to Poem 22, Letter 16.2: “For who does not see that this corporeal world is governed by an incorporeal power, and that the mind of a divine spirit infuses and is mingled with the great body of the universe, a mind that sets in motion the great bulk that it created, orders it for employment, holds it in place, and organizes it for long life?” (quis enim non uidet mundum istum corporeum ui incorporea gubernari totamque molem infusa atque permixta magno uniuersitatis corpori diuini spiritus mente, qua facta est, agitari ad uitam, temperari ad usum, contineri ad statum, ordinari ad diuturnitatem?). This is a detailed adaptation of the opening of Anchises’s description of the divisions of the universe, which “a spirit within nourishes, and a mind infused through its members sets in motion its whole bulk and is mixed with its great body” (Aen. 6.725–26 spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus | mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet). Letter 16 ends with one of the standard Christian images for justifying the use of pagan culture in the service of the true God, the spoils of Egypt taken by the Israelites (Exod. 3:22).134 Jovius is to use the verbal resources and stylistic ornament (linguae copiam et oris ornatum) of the pagan authors, but merely as the external clothing for Christian truths, verbal cosmetic (fucum facundiae) for the fullness of truth (plenis rebus). The final contrast is between things that please the ears and things that benefit the mind (non solis placitura auribus sed et mentibus hominum profutura mediteris). Yet these polarities between outside and inside, empty and full, pleasure and profit, are inadequate for the work that intertextuality of the kind practiced by Paulinus calls on from the reader, just as, in an earlier period, the honeyed-cup model that Lucretius offers for the relationship between his philosophy and his poetry fails to do justice to the actual complexities of Lucretius’s engagement with the poetic traditions of Greece and Rome.

133. On the use of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, see Roberts 2002; Lucretius: Hardie 2016b. 134. See Gnilka 2012, 132–40.

2

Virgilian Plots Public Ideologies and Private Journeys

In the previous chapter we saw allusion to the works of Virgil, predominantly the Eclogues and Aeneid, repeatedly put to work to articulate the conflicting desires and goals of Ausonius and Paulinus of Nola. It comes as no surprise to find that allusion to Virgil is everywhere in poetic texts produced by highly educated members of the Roman elite. Virgil’s works had been central to Roman education and literary culture from the poet’s own lifetime onward. But there is a newly energized engagement with Virgil in the poets of late antiquity. This is the period that saw the production of the surviving large-scale commentaries on Virgil by Servius and Tiberius Claudius Donatus; the near canonization of Virgil in Macrobius’s academic symposium, the Saturnalia; and, for Christian readerships, the widespread belief that Virgil’s fourth Eclogue, the so-called Messianic eclogue, which tells of the descent from heaven of a mysterious child and the restoration on earth of the Golden Age, was a prophecy of the birth of Christ.1 In late antiquity, as in other periods, Virgil’s poems could be read in many ways and put to various uses. This chapter, which focuses primarily on the Aeneid, with intermittent reference to the Eclogues, is structured around a dichotomy, public versus private, familiar from much twentieth-century Virgilian criticism, and which is also exemplified in one of late antiquity’s most intelligent readers of Virgil, Saint Augustine, who responds to a poet drummed into him at school, but a

1. The literature on the reception of Virgil in late antiquity is large: major items include Rees 2004 and various works by Courcelle (e.g., 1995a, 1995b). On Eclogue 4 as a prophecy of Christ, see Courcelle 1957; Ziolkowski and Putnam 2008, 487–503.

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poet whom he went on reading with close attention well into his adult life.2 In the Confessions Augustine charts his own personal journey to God with intermittent reference to the experiences of Aeneas and Dido. The City of God builds a city and an empire set consciously in opposition to the city and empire constructed in Virgil’s Aeneid; already in the preface to the City of God Augustine provides a critique of the famous line in which the shade of Anchises defines central values of the Roman mission (Aen. 6.853): “Spare the defeated and crush the proud,” parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. I DE OLO G I E S I M PE R IA L A N D C H R I ST IA N

I start with public ideologies. Late antiquity responds strongly to central aspects of the Aeneid, both as an epic of foundation and as an epic of transition and renewal. Poets who write in the non-Christian Virgilian tradition deploy the story lines of the Aeneid either to affirm the revival—and continuity—of the imperial ideology constructed by Virgil, or to present the Roman teleology of the Aeneid in the mode of exilic longing. Christian writers, those poets who proclaim the doctrines and successes of the post-Constantinian state religion, transmute the pagan imperialism of the Aeneid into the universalism of the Christian faith. There are two competing myths: the pagan imperial myth of an urbs aeterna whose historical success is the mark of the continuing support of the Olympian gods; and the Christian myth of God’s providential fostering of Rome’s expansion to a peaceful world-rule as a vehicle for the universal mission of the Christian church.3 The pagan imperial myth is open to falsification by the destruction or decline of the earthly city, while the Christian myth can be salvaged from the wreckage of Roman power by the assertion that God’s kingdom—his empire—is really not of this world. An ideology, or theology, of renewal, renouatio, exploits Virgilian plots of return, repetition, and restoration—the rebirth of a new and greater Troy in the shape of Rome, the return of the Golden Age. The theme of return and renewal is processed through a renewal and repetition of the Virgilian poetic project itself. What is sometimes referred to as the late fourth-century literary and artistic renaissance, or the Theodosian renaissance,4 is the vehicle for ideological renewal.

2. Augustine and Virgil: O’Meara 1963; Hagendahl, 1967, 2: 444–59 (on Virgil in the City of God); O’Donnell 1980; Bennett 1988; MacCormack 1998; Clark 2004. 3. See Bolwin 1932. 4. “Theodosian renaissance”: Garger 1934; Ladner 1959, 18–19; Cameron 1984; Doblhofer 1977 on Rutil. Namat. Red. 1.140 (with bibliography). On the history of the term as applied to the visual arts, see Kiilerich 1993, 12–18; Elsner 1998, 186–97. For further discussion of themes of renewal, see ch. 5.

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(For more extensive discussion of novelty and the Theodosian renaissance, see chapter 5.) What is often renewed and polished up in late antique poetry is the vision in Virgil’s fourth Eclogue of a Golden Age restored, Virgil’s enduring myth of historical return (“Now the Virgin too returns, the reign of Saturn returns” [Ecl. 4.6 iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna]), often in combination with allusion to the references to the return of the Golden Age in central books of the Aeneid, books 6 and 8. There are many happy returns of the Golden Age in Claudian’s panegyrical epics, images of the prosperity and happiness enjoyed by all citizens of Rome,5 and in Christian visions of the garden of Eden and paradise, at the beginning and end of human history. These are places of bliss for, respectively, the first two created human beings and the elect. The damned will go to hell, not heaven: poetic visions of this sharp and uncrossable division between perdition and salvation, between darkness and light, are accompanied by the heightening of a moral and theological dualism already present in Virgil, above all in the Aeneid, whose plot is structured around contrasts between the bright Olympian gods and dark spirits of hell, between reason and fury.6 The dualism of the Aeneid is always subject to qualification: after all, Jupiter, ruler of the bright aether and guarantor of Fate, is brother and husband of Juno, the turbulent female who calls up first the Gigantomachic winds to unleash the chaos of the storm against Aeneas’s Trojans; and second the most disruptive of the Furies of the underworld, Allecto, to provoke war in Italy. At the end of the Aeneid we find a Dira, a “Fury,” now employed not by Juno, but by Jupiter, to ensure Turnus’s defeat at the hands of Aeneas. In the Virgilianizing poetry of late antiquity the dualisms are more absolute. This is true of Claudian’s political poems above all, which are obedient to the imperative in panegyric and its inverse, invective, to operate with a black-and-white contrast between objects of praise and objects of blame. The most elaborate example of an infernal machinery used to cast an enemy of Claudian’s masters as an agent of a hellish evil is the Council of Furies at the beginning of Against Rufinus, a narrative invective in two books attacking Rufinus, the prefect of the eastern empire and guardian of the eastern Augustus, Arcadius. The Council of Furies launches Rufinus, against Stilicho, ruler of the western empire as regent for the eastern Augustus, Honorius, the brother of Arcadius. Rufinus himself is almost a personification of furor.7 The channel from the deliberations of the evil underworld council to the 5. Ware 2012, chs. 6 and 7 on the Golden Age. 6. See Hardie 1993, ch. 3 for both the dualism of the Aeneid and the absence of an impermeable boundary between the forces of darkness and light. On late antique, and especially Claudian’s, dualism, see Cumont 1929, 141–42, 184; Kroll 1932, 520; Romano Martín 2010; Gualandri 1999, 2008. 7. Ware 2012, 127: “The furor which possessed Rufinus appears as a general emanation of evil in all its manifestations, in the body of one man.”

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world above is the journey of the Fury Megaera from Hell to inspire her nursling Rufinus, in a repetition of the Fury Allecto’s infuriation of her human victims at the beginning of the second half of the Aeneid. In Virgil it is Juno who summons up the Fury. Claudian’s replacement of Juno as instigator of hellish disruption with an infernal council for the plotting of evil had a long afterlife: Christian epic narratives frequently open with councils of devils, in which Satan and his agents attempt to extend their empire to earth.8 Satan’s consultation of the devils in book 2 of Paradise Lost is but one of the latest, and grandest, exercises in this tradition. The first book of Against Rufinus ends with a first point of closure and a strongly dualistic contrast:9 the personification of Justice tells Megaera, exultant in the chaos that she has brought about in the world through Rufinus, that her rampage on earth will not last long. Recombining elements from two of the major passages of Augustan prophecy in the Aeneid, which lay out the whole sweep of Roman history—the speech of Jupiter in book 1 and the scenes on the Shield of Aeneas in book 8—Claudian’s Justice foresees the worldwide conquests of the western emperor Honorius, and the imprisonment in the nethermost pit of Megaera, shorn of her snaky locks. Once the world has been relieved of the monster, dispatched to a hell below, the world above will enjoy a new Golden Age, a kind of heaven on earth. Repetition and renewal already inform the structure of the Aeneid itself. The first half opens with Juno rousing the storm against Aeneas, when she persuades Aeolus to release the hellish winds. The apparent resolution of disorder at the end of the first half of the epic, through the eschatological separation of sinners and saints in Tartarus and the Elysian Fields in Aeneid 6, and the seeming end to toil and struggle that is reached with the Trojans’ arrival in Latium, is then thrown back into chaos by the intervention of the hellish Fury Allecto in order to unleash the storm of war in Latium. The second half of Claudian’s two-book Against Rufinus also stages an eruption of disorder to match that at the start of book 1. Book 2 begins with a brief narrative of what seem to be closural events, the ascent to the skies of the dead Theodosius after he has subdued the Alps and successfully defended Italy, followed by the entrusting of his sons, the two imperial brothers Honorius and Arcadius, to the care of the regent Stilicho. Rufinus then “began once more to inflame the world with wicked wars and to disturb peace with accustomed sedition” (9–10 infandis iterum terras accendere bellis | incohat et solito pacem uexare tumultu). Iterum both refers to the resurgence of disorder within Claudian’s plot and functions as a marker of allusion, an Alexandrian footnote, signaling that this is an iteration of a Virgilian iteration. Rufinus unleashes the barbarian hordes, an action compared in a simile to the unleashing of the winds by 8. On the history of the infernal council, see Moore 1918. 9. Iustitia begins, non ulterius bacchabere demens (1.368)—a formal closural allusion; cf. Aen. 12.806 ulterius temptare ueto; 938 ulterius ne tende odiis.

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Aeolus, the Virgilian king of the winds (22–23 uentis ueluti si frena resoluat | Aeolus). This reverses the direction of the imagery at the beginning of Aeneid 1, where a literal event in the natural world, the storm, is compared to an event in the world of human history, in the famous first simile of the epic, which compares Neptune calming the storm to a Roman statesman. Claudian’s Aeolus simile also engineers another reversal, aligning the outburst of barbarians at the beginning of the second book of Against Rufinus with the eruption of disorder at the beginning of the first half of the Aeneid, while the first book of Against Rufinus had reworked the intervention of a Fury at the beginning of the second half of the Aeneid.10 The two books of Against Rufinus taken as a whole are framed by pictures of the underworld: the Council of Furies at the beginning of book 1 is balanced by the appearance at the end of book 2 of Rufinus before Minos, the judge of the underworld, who condemns him to be thrust deeper even than Tartarus, there to suffer for eternity. One cue for this underworld ending is the last line of the Aeneid, in which Turnus’s soul flees indignantly sub umbras, “down to the shades”; but Claudian turns this closing touch into a comprehensive separation of the wicked Rufinus from the world of light. All the elements of Claudian’s visions of heaven and hell can be traced to sources in the non-Christian tradition of Latin poetry, chief among which are the works of Virgil, but one can sense how attractive—and assimilable to a Christian worldview— this dualistic plot would have been to Christian readers at the court of Honorius.11 Virgil’s Allecto is a close relative of Ennius’s Discordia, the demon of war who burst open the Gates of Janus in the Annals. Against Rufinus tells of discord between the western and eastern Roman empires, ruled over by two brothers, Honorius and Arcadius, potentially at odds with each other. The opposition of discordia and concordia is another Virgilian dichotomy: the Aeneid strives to write an ending to the discord of civil war that had torn apart the late Republic, as Virgil proclaims the concord of the pax Augusta.12 But the contrast of discord and concord receives heightened emphasis in late antique poetry, where it is often colored by allusion to Lucan’s civil-war epic, and to the reception of Lucan’s poetry of civil war by the Flavian epic poets, above all Statius. Stephen Hinds has traced the connections in 10. For the structural parallelism, see Ware 2012, 41–42. The structural analysis will hold even if Ruf. 2 was composed only subsequently to Ruf. 1 (for the arguments, see Nesselrath 1991, with a survey of previous arguments for the unity or lack of it of the two books). 11. The dualism of In Rufinum is more absolute than the dualism in De raptu (on which, see Wheeler 1995b; Hinds 2013a, 174–79). In De raptu the roles of upper- and lower-world characters are not clearly separated: the Olympian Ceres turns into an infernal Fury and uses Etnean energy for the illumination of her torches. At 2.277–306 Pluto presents an alternative view of the underworld as a Golden Age locus and the site of cosmic power. There is a difference then between the black-and-white distinctions of the panegyrical and invective epics and the mythological epic. 12. On concordia and discordia in the Aeneid, see Cairns 1989, ch. 4.

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Claudian between a cosmic dualism and the divided western and eastern empires.13 An emphasis on concordia is found at the beginning of the fourth century in the speeches on the Tetrarchs in the Panegyrici Latini.14 (For fuller discussion of concordia and discordia in late antique Latin poetry, see chapter 4.) Concord and discord are also obsessions of the Christian poet Prudentius, with reference not to the secular state but to divisions within the church, and the threat of heresy. Among other things heresy poses a threat to the doctrine of the unity of the Trinity.15 The Psychomachia, “Battle of the Soul,” is Prudentius’s major exercise in epic narrative. In Virgilian terms it can be thought of as a little Iliad: the narrative of the battle in the soul between the personified Virtues and Vices corresponds to the war in Italy in the second, Iliadic, half of the Aeneid. This is followed by another Virgilian theme, that of foundation, the building of the Temple of Wisdom, a temple in the human soul, which is also the building of the church, and of the New Jerusalem, the city of God, rather than the Virgilian city of man, Rome. But like the Aeneid, and like Claudian’s Against Rufinus, the Psychomachia also falls into two parts, with a second beginning after what appears to be closure. The battle of the soul in the first, and longer, part begins without elaborate motivation—no Juno and Aeolus, no Council of Furies. Without further ado we read that Fides is the first to take the field. The proem, however, describes the recurrent struggle in the soul between virtue and vice in terms that remind the reader of Virgilian beginnings: “Whenever our senses are disordered and rebellion arises within us and strife of diseased passions distresses the soul, what help is there then to guard her liberty, what army with superior force is there to oppose the Furies invading our heart?” (7–11 exoritur quotiens turbatis sensibus intus | seditio atque animam morborum rixa fatigat, | quod tunc praesidium pro libertate tuenda | quaeue acies Furiis inter praecordia mixtis | obsistat meliore manu?). Seditio, referring to the civil war in the soul, is the word used for the civil unrest calmed by the statesman in the first simile in the Aeneid “Just as when disorder often arises in a great people, and the common mob’s spirits rage” (1.148–49 ac ueluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta est | seditio saeuitque animis ignobile uulgus).16 The personified Furiis, however, points to the appearance of the Fury Allecto to motivate the second half of the Aeneid.17 Prudentius draws on the action of the Virgilian Allecto to motivate the resurgence of violence after the seemingly decisive defeat of the Vices. At 631 “kindly Peace,” alma Pax, banishes war, fair weather returns (as at the coming of alma 13. Hinds 2013a, 174–79; see also Ware 2012, 69–76, 117–24, 128–34. 14. Rees 2002, 60–66 on Tetrarchic concordia. 15. See Malamud 1989, 93–101 on Concordia/Discordia in Perist. 11; Roberts 1993, 167–81 on Perist. 12 as a “model of concordia.” 16. With coorta, cf. Psychom. 7 exoritur; with animis, Psychom. 8 animam; with praecordia, cf. Aen. 7.347 inque sinum praecordia ad intima subdit. 17. Note also Aen. 1.51 furentibus Austris, 150 furor arma ministrat.

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Venus at the beginning of Lucretius’s De rerum natura),18 and Concordia gives the signal to return to camp in triumph. In the only formal extended epic simile in the poem, the return of the Virtues is compared to the successful crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites in their exit from Egypt, leaving behind them the Egyptians, destroyed by the waters, which come together again after the Israelites’ safe passage. The language alludes to the storm that launches the Virgilian epic narrative in medias res in Aeneid 1.19 But on the threshold of the Virtues’ camp there is a sudden turn of events: “Here arises a storm (tempestas) unlooked for, through the cunning of a woeful Evil” (667–68 ). Concordia is treacherously wounded by Discordia, who has joined the ranks of the Virtues in disguise, wearing the attributes both of Allecto disguised as an aged priestess (Calybe) as she makes her approach to the sleeping Turnus in Aeneid 7 (415–19) and of the Statian ghost of Laius appearing to Eteocles disguised as Tiresias in Thebaid 2 (94–101).20 But Prudentius’s Discordia is quickly unmasked, and the verbal Babel of her self-revelation as “Heresy” is silenced by the spear that Fides drives through her tongue. Then, in a punishment that fits her crime of dividing the church through heresy, she herself is torn to pieces. Con-cordia con-sors, Concord in partnership with Faith, can now set about laying the foundations for the new temple (824–25). R OM A N V I S I ON S : C L AU DIA N A N D PRU DE N T I U S

I now turn to focus more closely on the Virgilian representation of Rome, Roman history, and Roman tradition, and its reception in late antique poetry on both non-Christian and Christian themes.21 Claudian’s first panegyric celebrates the consulship of the brothers Probinus and Olybrius in a.d. 395, a few months after Theodosius’s defeat of the usurper Eugenius at the battle of Frigidus in September 394. With this performance Claudian, a native of Greek-speaking Egypt, emerges as if from the head of Zeus, fully formed as the poet who, in the words of Edward 18. On Prudentius and Lucretius, see Rapisarda 1950; Hardie, forthcoming a. On Lucretius in Prud. Symm., see Klingner 1930, 49, 51. 19. With 654 mons rueret pendentis aquae, cf. Aen. 1.105 praeruptus aquae mons; with 655 fundo deprenderet imo, Aen. 1.84 totumque a sedibus imis. Cf. also the hyperbolical opening of the sea bottom at Aen. 1.106–7 his unda dehiscens | terram inter fluctus aperit. The Israelites, unlike the Egyptians, are saved from the storm (661 subsistente procella), protected by a god more powerful than the Virgilian Neptune. For an epicizing narrative of the crossing of the Red Sea, including some allusion to the storm in Aen. 1, see Prud. Cathem. 5.45–80. 20. Prudentius’s Discordia is also in the likeness of the Discordia (and her companion Bellona) at the battle of Actium on the Shield of Aeneas: with 685 scissa procul palla structum et serpente flagellum, cf. Aen. 8.702–3 et scissa gaudens uadit Discordia palla, | quam cum sanguineo sequitur Bellona flagello. Aeneid 7 and 8 are thus framed by Allecto and her Ennian ancestor Discordia. 21. Personifications of Rome in late antiquity: Dewar 1996, 264–67; Roberts 2001. On the late antique idea of Rome, see, e.g., Paschoud 1967; Fuhrmann 1968; Inglebert 1996; Brodka 1998; Grig and Kelly 2012. In general on Roma as goddess and as personification, see Vermeule 1960; Mellor 1991.

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Gibbon, “in the decline of arts and Empire . . . soared above the heads of his feeble contemporaries, and placed himself, after an interval of three hundred years, among the poets of ancient Rome.”22 The language of decline is largely out of fashion these days, but we may agree with Gibbon on Claudian’s poetic virtuosity. Stephen Wheeler has persuasively read the panegyric on Probinus and Olybrius as Claudian’s programmatic introduction of himself as a “new Virgil,” “inaugurating a return of the Golden Age with a new kind of panegyric that synthesizes different parts of the Virgilian corpus.”23 This consular panegyric combines allusion to the Aeneid with allusion to Eclogue 4, a poem which itself may be classified as a consular panegyric, celebrating the consulship of Pollio in 40 b.c. Claudian opens with an address to the Sun, who brings in the new year. Allusion to Eclogue 4 is dense in lines 6–7: “Now let the year bend its new steps for the consul brothers, and the glad months take their beginning” (iam noua germanis uestigia torqueat annus | consulibus, laetique petant exordia menses). This is a new beginning for Claudian as well, but a beginning that is a return of the old, going back over the “returning ages” redeuntia saecula (2). At Eclogues 4.7 iam noua qualifies progenies, the new child; at Claudian, Panegyric for Probinus and Olybrius 6, the phrase qualifies uestigia, the footsteps of the new year, which are also planted in the footsteps of previous years. The line also alludes to a formulation in the Georgics of the eternally returning annual round of the farmer: “the farmers’ past labours return in a circle, and the year revolves on itself through its own footsteps” (2.401–2 redit agricolis labor actus in orbem, | atque in se sua per uestigia uoluitur annus) (cf. Prob. Ol. 2 uoluis, redeuntia). Claudian follows (closely) in the footsteps24 of the Latin hexameter, and more particularly Virgilian, tradition to produce something that is new. At line 8 Claudian, still addressing the Sun, turns to an intertext from the Aeneid, rather than the Eclogues: “You know about the Auchenian race, and the powerful Amniadae are not unknown to you” (scis genus Auchenium, nec te latuere potentes | Amniadae). Compare Dido’s words to the Trojan Ilioneus, newly arrived at the Carthaginian court, at Aeneid 1.565: “Who would not know of the race of the Aeneadae, who would not know of the city of Troy?’ (quis genus Aeneadum, quis Troiae nesciat urbem?). Dido’s knowledge of Aeneas and Troy is in part an intertextual knowledge, as we know from the scenes of the Trojan War in the Temple of Juno based on the Iliad and the Epic Cycle (Aen. 1.453–93). The knowledge of Claudian’s Sun is similarly intertextual. For those with ears to hear, the echo of 22. Gibbon 1994, 2:163–64. 23. Wheeler 2007, 120. For Prob. Ol. as programmatic for the Virgilianism of Claudian’s panegyric oeuvre, see also Ware 2012, 4. 24. On uestigia as a marker of allusion, see Burrow 2019, index s.vv. “imitatio, path/footsteps as metaphor for.”

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Aeneadum that lurks in the names Auchenium (in the same sedes) and Amniadae will not go unnoticed.25 New beginnings and families eminent over many generations: this is a combination of Eclogue 4’s myth of a new age ushered in in the lifetime of a single exceptional individual and the multigenerational plot of the Aeneid. Claudian’s poem foregrounds beginnings and endings, placing the rule of Theodosius in the full sweep of Roman history, beginning with Romulus and Remus and ending with a Virgilian vision of a world empire that will endure indefinitely into the future. This framing of a limited segment of historical time within an overarching sketch of a much larger history is the master strategy of the Aeneid itself, which anchors the primary plot of Aeneas’s flight from Troy and successful prosecution of a war in Latium within a larger narrative that reaches from figurative allusion to cosmic beginnings, in the “Chaos” of the storm in Aeneid 1, down to the “end of history” that is the pax Augusta. The focal points of the Virgilian corpus in Claudian’s Panegyric for Probinus and Olybrius are Eclogue 4 and Aeneid 8, the most Roman book in the epic, and one that incorporates its own version of a total history, from a time before the city of Rome was founded to the final triumph of Augustus. The Panegyric for Probinus and Olybrius introduces for the first time in Claudian’s poetry the personification Roma, herself almost an embodiment of the Virgilian plot of Roman history. The lengthy description of her person and accoutrements at 75–99 is capped with an ekphrasis of her shield, a resumption and variation of the Shield of Aeneas at the end of Aeneid 8, with its scenes of Roman history from Romulus and Remus to Augustus. Claudian gives us only the first of the sequence of scenes of Roman history depicted on the Virgilian shield (94–99): et formidato clipeus Titana lacessit lumine, quem tota uariarat Mulciber arte. hic patrius Mauortis amor fetusque notantur Romulei; pius amnis inest et belua nutrix; electro Tiberis, pueri formantur in auro; fingunt aera lupam; Mauors adamante coruscat. Her shield challenges the sun in its fearful brilliance, that shield which Vulcan forged with all the subtlety of his skill. In it are depicted Mars’s paternal love and his children Romulus and Remus, Tiber’s pious stream and the wolf that was their nurse. Tiber is embossed in electrum, the children in gold, the wolf is molded in bronze, and Mars flashes in steel.

In what follows Claudian fills in the Virgilian dots, so to speak, to span the arc of time between first beginnings and latest victory. Roma’s flying chariot conveys her 25. Taegert (1988) reads Amniadae, on the basis of inscriptional evidence, rejecting the reading Anniadae of Birt (1892, vii, xl n. 1), who suggests a pun on consular anni.

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in an instant to the Alps to find Theodosius resting after his victory at the battle of Frigidus. In the emperor, Roma discovers another likeness of Mars, to whom Theodosius is compared in a simile, a verbal image (119–23). The father of the race is re-embodied in its current ruler, one might say an impersonation, or even personification, of Mars addressed by the personification Roma. Her last words to Theodosius provide the reader with a version of the final scene on the Shield of Aeneas, showing peoples and rivers at the ends of the earth now obedient to Augustus. Roma seals her request that the young sons of Probus should be appointed to the consulship with the wish for the world-rule of the city that she embodies, a world-rule whose geographical coordinates are signaled with distant foreign rivers to balance the Tiber on her shield (160–63): adnue: sic nobis Scythicus famuletur Araxes, sic Rhenus per utrumque latus, Medisque subactis nostra Semiramiae timeant insignia turres; sic fluat attonitus Romana per oppida Ganges.26 Give your consent: so may Scythian Araxes be our vassal and both of Rhine’s banks; so may the Medes be conquered, and the towers built by Semiramis go in fear of our standards; so may the Ganges flow amazed between Roman cities.

This is a promise of empire won through foreign wars, after the civil wars in which Theodosius had defeated the usurpers Maximus (387) and Eugenius (394). That too is a Virgilian sequence, the celebration of victory over the internal enemy (Antony) with a triumphalism directed at the foreigner. The last personification to give voice in the poem is the Tiber, who, like Mars, steps out of the ekphrastic images on the shield of Roma when he hears the thunderbolt with which Jupiter confirms the inauguration of Probinus and Olybrius as consuls. They are described as unanimos fratres (231), proof against the divisive force of the Virgilian Fury Allecto, who sows civil war (Juno speaks at Aen. 7.335: “You have the power to arm brothers of one mind to fight each other” [tu potes unanimos armare in proelia fratres]).27 The Tiber praises the two brothers by 26. The Araxes and the Rhine flow from Aen. 8.727–28; for the Medes and the Ganges, cf. Geo. 2.136–37 (and 3.27 Gangaridum), the opening lines of the laudes Italiae, the last line of which, also echoed in Prob. Ol. 163, is Ascraeumque cano Romana per oppida carmen (176). The Ganges figuratively flows through Italian fields at Aen. 9.30–32 (simile of the Italian army). 27. Rufinus is also Allecto’s—or rather her sister Megaera’s—pupil at Ruf. 1.104–5 fallere mentes | doctus et unanimos odiis turbare sodales. Unity in duality is also expressed at Prob. Ol. 233 atque uno biiuges tolli de limine fasces; play on unity and duality begins with the topothesia at 226–29 est in Romuleo procumbens insula Thybri | qua medius geminas interfluit alueus urbes | discretas subeunte freto, pariterque minantes | ardua turrigerae surgunt in culmina ripae. For the Insula dividing the Tiber, cf. Met. 15.739–41; for other bipartite landscapes, cf. Stat. Silu. 1.3 (2 inserto geminos Aniene penates) and the description of the harbor at Aen. 1.159–63 (with some close parallels in Prob. Ol. 226–29).

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comparing them to the Spartan Dioscuri; unspoken, but unmistakable, is the contrast between the harmonious brothers Probinus and Olybrius and the discordant brothers Romulus and Remus.28 The consular duo are the final typological completion of the figures on the shield of Roma, 96–97 fetus . . . Romulei (Romuleus occurs for the second time in the poem at 226, applied to the Tiber flowing between the “twinned” cities on either side, 227 medius geminas interfluit . . . urbes). Here, in his first exercise in Roman panegyric, and his first exercise in a Virgilian plot, Claudian already sounds the keynotes of concord and unity. Claudian perhaps signals awareness of the precocity of his own achievement in this poem in words addressed to the two young consuls: “You have started at what should be the end, and but a few seniors have achieved your beginnings” (67–68 coepistis quo finis erat. primordia uestra | uix pauci meruere sense). The speed with which he has achieved his poetic goals matches the speed of the horses that draw Roma’s flying chariot: “They did not delay, but straightway, in a single motion, they reached their desired goal” (103–4 nec traxere moras, sed lapsu protinus uno, | quem poscunt, tetigere locum). PRU DE N T I U S , AG A I N ST SYM M AC H U S

Prudentius delivers his major statement on Rome and Roman history from the perspective of a Christian view of universal time in the two books of Against Symmachus, which dates to perhaps a.d. 404.29 The poem is a belated reply to Symmachus’s third Relatio of a.d. 384, in which Symmachus, the prefect of Rome, appealed to the emperor Valentinian II for the restoration of the Altar of Victory in the Roman Senate House, which had been removed by Gratian in a.d. 382. In this famous episode in the confrontation of Christianity and paganism, Valentinian was swayed by Ambrose of Milan against the arguments of Symmachus. Prudentius’s Psychomachia ends with the building of the Temple of Wisdom,30 which is also the Church Triumphant and New Jerusalem, the heavenly city that is the final goal of the believer. In Against Symmachus Prudentius turns to the earthly city of Rome and to an explication of the correct understanding of the history of 28. Wheeler (2007, 127 n. 98) compares Mamertinus, Pan. Lat. 10[2].13.1–2, contrasting the harmonious rule of Diocletian and Maximian on Rome’s foundation day, 21 April 289, with the destructive competition of Romulus and Remus: Felix . . . Roma . . . et multo nunc felicior quam sub Remo et Romulo tuis. illi enim, quamuis fratres geminique essent, certauerunt tamen uter suum tibi nomen imponeret, diuersosque montes et auspicia ceperunt. hi uero conseruatores tui . . . nullo circa te liuore contendunt. hi, cum primum ad te redeant triumphantes, uno cupiunt inuehi curru, simul adire Capitolium, simul habitare Palatium. 29. Commentaries and translations of Against Symmachus: Tränkle 2008; Garuti 1996. On the poem’s structure, see Döpp 1980, 1986. On the representation of Rome in Against Symmachus, see Krollpfeifer 2017. 30. Cf. Symm. 2.249 templum mentis amo, non marmoris.

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Rome within a Christian providential history. As in the case of Claudian’s Panegyric for Probinus and Olybrius, Aeneid 8 is a central and recurrent model for Prudentius’s remodeling of Roman imperial ideology in Against Symmachus. The attack on paganism in book 1 of Against Symmachus begins with the statement that the “ancient disease,” antiquus morbus, of paganism has not been entirely eradicated by Theodosius. Prudentius introduces a vocabulary of renovation and of return to the past that is programmatic for much of what is to follow, and which may already hint at a polemical engagement with Claudian’s Virgilianizing ideology of return and renewal: “But since the plague has broken out anew and seeks to trouble the well-being of the race of Romulus, we must beg a remedy of our father, that he not let Rome sink again into her old filthy torpor” (Symm. 1.5–7 sed quoniam renouata lues turbare salutem | temptat Romulidum, patris imploranda medella est, | ne sinat antiquo Romam squalere ueterno).31 What is renewed is not ancient Roman virtue and greatness, but a lethal sickness. The word ueterno alludes to Jupiter’s negative view of the Golden Age in Georgics 1, when he decides to introduce the hardship and labor of the Iron Age: “He did not allow his kingdom to stagnate weighed down by sloth” (124 nec torpere graui passus sua regna ueterno). This is, perhaps, Prudentius’s comment on the facile use of Virgilian Golden Age imagery by panegyrists such as Claudian. In context the literal meaning of ueternus, “old age,” is emphasized by the adjective antiquo, this last in juxtaposition to, if not agreeing with, Romam. Prudentius’s Christian ideology of novelty will sweep away the tired and outmoded image of Rome as handed down in the pagan Virgilian tradition.32 In the first part of his attack on “the superstition of our ancient ancestors” (39 superstitio ueterum . . . auorum), Prudentius turns to another of Virgil’s culture histories, Evander’s history of Latium in Aeneid 8.314–36. Prudentius begins a satirical euhemerist history of the gods with a succession of disreputable deified men who ruled in Italy, starting with Saturn cast down from his throne by his cruel and tyrannical son. This tracks Evander’s account of the arrival in Italy of Saturn, 31. Temptare of plague and disease: Geo. 3.441. 32. Veternus elsewhere in Prudentius: Cathem. 9.68 lingua fatur quam ueterna uinxerant silentia; 11.63–64 nam tunc renatus sordidum | mundus ueternum depulit; Apoth. 921–23 quae quamuis infusa nouum penetret noua semper | figmentum, uetus illa tamen de crimine auorum | dicitur, inloto quoniam concreta ueterno est; 1072–73 quod truncauit edax senium populante ueterno, | omne reuertenti reparata in membra redibit. Cf. the use of ueternus by Paulinus of Nola at Poem 20.43–53, in a context of Christian making new: ille igitur uere nobis est musicus auctor, | ille Dauid uerus, citharam qui corporis huius | restituit putri dudum compage iacentem, | et tacitam ruptis antiquo crimine chordis | adsumendo suum dominus reparauit in usum, | consertisque deo mortalibus omnia rerum | in speciem primae fecit reuirescere formae, | ut noua cuncta forent, cunctis abeunte ueterno. | hanc renouaturus citharam deus ipse magister | ipse sui positam suspendit in arbore ligni | et cruce peccatum carnis perimente nouauit. Paulinus also uses ueternus in contexts of renewal at Poem 21.745 (new aqueduct) and 24.861 (eagle rejuvenated); see ch. 5.

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fleeing from Jupiter, in Aeneid 8 (319–23). Symmachus’s Saturn appeals to the Italians: “I am a god. I come to you an outcast; give me a hiding-place. Conceal an old god driven from his throne by a savage, usurping son. It is my pleasure to hide me here, a fugitive and exile, and to race and country I shall give the name of ‘Latin’ ” (45–48 sum deus. aduenio fugiens. praebete latebras, | occultate senem nati feritate tyranni | deiectum solio. placet hic fugitiuus et exul | ut lateam, genti atque loco Latium dabo nomen). Saturn is succeeded by his son Jupiter, who is succeeded by Mercury, each ruler worse than the last. The comparative deterior, “worse,” applied to Jupiter (59 mox patre deterior siluosi habitator Olympi) is taken from the Virgilian Evander’s description of the age that followed the Golden Age of Saturn in Latium (Aen. 8.326 deterior donec paulatim ac decolor aetas). There follow other euhemerist gods, Priapus, Hercules, Bacchus, a line that dupes the common people into believing that their emperors can make the transition to a divine kingship in the sky (Symm. 1.147–48), a comment on the thinly veiled allusion to apotheosis of the Roman ruler in Evander’s account of the worship of the man-god Hercules on the site of Rome. According to Prudentius it is this history of error that constitutes mos patrius, “ancestral custom,” and falsae pietatis imago, “an image of false piety” (154), alluding to, and overturning, central Virgilian values.33 Enter Theodosius (408 ff.), triumphant over the usurpers Maximus and Eugenius, to release Rome from the cloudy and smoky darkness of the pagan centuries and to sweep away the idols of perishable stone, plaster encased in gold leaf, and sagging and rusting bronze, the “old nonsense,” ueteres nugae (433) of an obsolete superstition, to be replaced by the incorruptible gems and solid gold of Constantine’s sign of the cross, the labarum (465–66, 484–88).34 A new age begins as Roma shuns her old errors and shakes off the clouds from her wrinkled face, to embrace justice and (true) pietas. A triumphant Theodosius rewrites the Virgilian script: his victory is over Catilines of the soul, demons who operate with the weapons of Allecto: “Foes were roving everywhere through temples and courts, holding possession of the Roman Forum and the lofty Capitol; they had conspired to contrive a treacherous attack on the very vitals of your people, into whose marrow they were accustomed secretly to mix disease, so that the poison crept inside them” (533–37 errabant hostes per templa, per atria passim, | Romanumque forum et Capitolia celsa tenebant, | qui coniuratas ipsa ad uitalia plebis | moliti insidias intus serpente ueneno | consuerant tacitis pestem miscere medullis).35 The passage concludes: “No bounds indeed did he set, no limits of 33. Cf. Aen. 12.834 sermonem Ausonium patrium moresque tenebunt; (tantae/patriae) pietatis imago: Aen. 6.405, 9.294, 10.824. 34. On the theme of rejuvenation, see ch. 5. 35. Cf. Aen. 7.347 praecordia ad intima, 353 membris lubricus errat, 505 pestis enim tacitis latet aspera siluis.

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time did he lay down. Empire without end he taught, so that Roman virtue should never grow old, nor the glory she had won know old age” (541–43 denique nec metas statuit nec tempora ponit: | imperium sine fine docet, ne Romula uirtus | iam sit anus, norit ne gloria parta senectam). This is one of the many reworkings of the famous words with which the Virgilian Jupiter promises boundless and everlasting empire to the Romans (Aen. 1.278–79), and it presents a climactic image of old age (of the ueteres dei) overcome: the “renovation,” now within a Christian Rome, of traditional values of uirtus and gloria.36 Book 2 of Against Symmachus contains Prudentius’s detailed answers to Symmachus’s arguments for the restoration of the Altar of Victory in his third Relatio of 384. In this book the climactic speech is given to a prosopopoeia of Roma herself (2.655–768), which begins with reference to her rejuvenation through the good services of Theodosius: “under whom born again I put off old age entirely and saw my gray hair turn to gold again; for although time destroys all mortal things, length of days brings forth for me a new life, and I have learned by living long to despise finality” (656–60 sub quo senium omne renascens | deposui uidique meam flauescere rursus | canitiem:37 nam cum mortalia cuncta uetustas | imminuat, mihi longa dies aliud parit aeuum, | quae uiuendo diu didici contemnere finem). This is an alternative process of “rebirth” to that at Claudian, Panegyric for Probinus and Olybrius 15–17: “Their ancestors are counted by the fasces, and they are evergreen through a nobility reborn, and a like destiny awaits their children in unbroken succession” (per fasces numerantur aui semperque renata | nobilitate uirent, et prolem fata sequuntur | continuum simili seruantia lege tenorem). The new age of Prudentius’s Roma is something different, not the return of the same, but an aliud aeuum.38 This is the transition from “traditional” time to Christian time, the replacement of a pagan concept of aion with the eternity of Christian eschatology. Now at last Roma can truly contemnere finem, since Christian closure is the only kind that will eventually stick. The point is also made through the reference in line 659, longa dies, to Anchises’s account of the cycle of purification of souls at Aeneid 6.745–46: “until length of days, when time’s cycle is complete, has removed the inbred taint” (donec longa dies perfecto temporis orbe | concretam exemit labem); but in Virgil’s Pythagorean-Platonic-Stoic scheme of things time’s cycle will never be brought to an end.

36. See Döpp 1988, 341. This description of Rome’s rejuvenation may be specifically a Christian transformation of Claudian’s account of the appearance of Roma enfeebled and aged by hunger in The War against Gildo (see ch. 5). Prudentius’s rebuttal of Symmachus’s argument that neglect of the old gods is to blame for famine at Rome at Symm. 2.910 ff. may allude to the story of famine overcome in Claud. Gild. 37. Garuti (1996 on 656–57) compares Claud. Cons. Stil. 1.316 senioque . . . uernante. 38. Cf. discussion of alius in Paulin. Poem 10 in ch. 1.

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A new and different age dawns with Theodosius and his son and successor Honorius, hailed by Roma as triumphant after the defeat of Alaric at the battle of Pollentia on Good Friday (6 April) 402: “Mount the triumphal chariot, take your spoils and come hither accompanied by Christ” (2.731–32). This is the preordained result of a historical process that reaches far back in the annals of Rome. Seen as a whole, the history of Rome sketched in the two books of Against Symmachus may be understood as a rewriting of the history of Latium and Rome contained in Aeneid 8, geared to the end of eradicating the disease of superstitio ueterum auorum (Symm. 1.39). The Prudentian history reaches from the arrival of Saturnus in Latium, the first properly historical moment in Evander’s narrative (before that we hear only that the land was inhabited by Fauns and Nymphs and by a race of men born from trees), down to the triumph of the western Augustus after the battle of Pollentia, a Roman triumph that is also the triumph of Christ. Virgil’s Evander denies that uana superstitio, “empty superstition,” was operative on the site of future Rome (Aen. 8.185–88) when Hercules, the human son of the supreme god Jupiter, was accorded divine cult as the savior of Evander’s people from the monster Cacus. In flat contradiction Prudentius asserts that the history of the Roman gods, of which Evander provides the first chapter in Aeneid 8, has always been a history of uana superstitio (Symm. 1.198). Nevertheless, the Christian God has long been at work, unseen by the pagans, directing the might of Roman arms to His own end. Christianity has its own, true, narrative of the coming in human form of the son of God. This “Reichstheologie,”39 promulgated notably by Eusebius, is laid out at length at Against Symmachus 2.578–633, in an aetiology that replaces the divine causality of the Aeneid. At 583–84 the poet asks: “Shall I tell you, Roman, what cause it was that so exalted your labours?” (uis dicam quae causa tuos, Romane, labores | in tantum extulerit?). The causes and labors that are the subject of the Aeneid are laid by Virgil at the door of a malevolent and disruptive goddess: “Muse, tell me the causes, what offended the will of the queen of the gods, so that she forced a man outstanding in piety to undergo so many labours” (Aen. 1.8–11 Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso . . . regina deum . . . insignem pietate uirum, tot adire labores | impulerit). In Prudentius a beneficent and peaceful God determines the causality of Roman history and rewards its people’s labors. The answer to the Christian poet’s question is that God wished to unite the peoples of the world, formerly disunited in speech and culture, under a single empire, thus releasing them from a discordia characterized as seditio and civil war,40 and joining them in 39. See Döpp 1988, 340; Cacitti 1972. Another major statement of this view of Roman history is placed in the mouth of Saint Lawrence at Perist. 2.413–84; see Buchheit 1966. 40. Civil war: 600–601 Bellona . . . armabatque feras in uulnera mutua dextras; concord is restored by the Christian God: 609 [Deus] domitos fraterna in uincla redegit.

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a concordia worthy of Christ, an empire now subject to a Christian emperor.41 “Already then was the way prepared for the coming of Christ, believe me” (620–21 Christo iam tunc uenienti, | crede, parata uia est): Roman, which is to say world, history is witness to the advent of Christ, in contrast to the Virgilian version, whereby already in the remote past the furthest parts of the earth were trembling in awareness of the advent of Augustus (Aen. 6.798 huius in aduentum ). The prophetic speech of Virgil’s Anchises is corrected with reference to the voice of another prophet, John the Baptist: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord” (Mark 1:3 Vox clamantis in deserto, parate uiam Domini). Pax Christiana replaces pax Augusta. PE R S ONA L PLOT S : S A I N T S’ L I V E S A N D J OU R N EYS I N T O E X I L E

Claudian and Prudentius both write of a Roma who renews herself, as she looks back over a long history and a long tradition, which will, it is asserted, continue into the future. Neither lived to see the sack of Rome by Alaric and his Visigoths in 410. I turn now to two poets who do not share that confidence in the continuity of the urbs aeterna, and who as a consequence handle Virgilian plots in very different ways from Claudian and Prudentius. The one is a Christian poet, Paulinus of Nola. None of his extant poems was written after 409; it may be that it was the disaster of 410 that interrupted his poetic production and the channels by which he communicated his poetry to his audience. But 410 might not have made very much difference to Paulinus’s attitude to Rome and the values for which Rome stood. The center of his world was not Rome, but the shrine of St. Felix at Nola, in Campania, and the “Reichstheologie” plays little part in his vision of universal biblical history.42 The second is a probably pagan writer, Rutilius Namatianus, who must come to terms with the aftereffects of the sack of Rome in his De reditu suo, the narrative of a journey from Rome to Gaul in a.d. 417. In both cases we are dealing with a turn from grand public ideologies to more private appropriations of Virgilian plots. The Aeneid is an epic of nation building and imperialism narrated largely through the experiences of an individual, the hero Aeneas. The travels and battles through which Aeneas makes possible future foundations are also a personal 41. This is an answer to Symmachus’s claim that the Altar of Victory was a focus for senatorial concordia: Relat. 3.5 illa ara concordiam tenet omnium, illa ara fidem conuenit singulorum neque aliud magis auctoritatem facit sententiis nostris quam quod omnis quasi iuratus ordo decernit. 42. Paulinus transfers some of the Virgilian imperial imagery to Nola, imagined as a center second only to Rome, and as a center of its own with worldwide reach; cf. Poem 13.24–30 postque ipsam titulos Romam sortita secundos, | quae prius imperio tantum et uictricibus armis, | nunc et apostolicis terrarum est prima sepulchris!

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voyage and a personal struggle. Alongside the external plot of the succession of cities and migration, there is the hero’s internal journey, offering the possibility of a reading in terms of a moral and spiritual odyssey and of an interior, psychological struggle. Virgil had access to earlier moralizing allegories of the Odyssey43 as well as to philosophical allegorization of the hero Hercules.44 The Aeneid was itself the subject of a series of moralizing and allegorizing readings, of which Fulgentius’s sixth-century Expositio Vergilianae continentiae is the most striking and one of the strangest examples. Prudentius’s Psychomachia translates Virgilian battle narrative and Virgilian stories of city foundation from the real geography of the Mediterranean to the battlefield of the soul and the construction site of a Temple of Wisdom. The move from national and imperial history to the history of the individual is also made at the end of Prudentius’s rewriting of the Virgilian providential history of Rome at Against Symmachus 2.623–33, when the need to overcome disunity and discord is located in the human soul, as well as in the state. One of the foundational texts in the history of Western autobiography, Augustine’s Confessions, contains a number of references and allusions to the Aeneid that, intermittently, construct a life as a version of the story of Aeneas.45 One of Augustine’s correspondents was Paulinus of Nola. We have seen how, in the epistolary exchange with Ausonius that marks Paulinus’s conversion to a newly energized and ascetic form of Christian life, the two men exploit Virgilian themes and images to put their contrasting points of view, drawing from both Virgil’s Eclogues and Aeneid. The first two of the Natalicia (Poems 12, Jan. 395, and 13, Jan. 396), birthday poems addressed to Saint Felix on the day of his entry into eternal life, January 14, date from the two years following the last two letters of the exchange with Ausonius in 394. In these poems Paulinus talks about his own journey from Spain to Nola, a journey that is both a physical translocation and a spiritual journey to a desired haven, expressed in Virgilian language: 12.12 sedibus optatis (“the place longed for” = Aen. 6.203); with 31 “May I find a haven of peace at your door” (inque tuo placidus nobis sit limine portus) compare Aen. 7.598–99, “For I have found peace, and all of the harbor is before me” (nam mihi parta quies, omnisque in limine portus | funere felici spolior), where Latinus uses the image of the harbor of death.46 There Paulinus will submit himself to the sweet and light yoke of Christ, superior to, if yet compatible with, the yoke of friendship that Ausonius had petulantly accused him of casting off (“There under your dominion 43. See Buffière 1956. 44. See Galinsky 1972. 45. For bibliography on Augustine and Virgil, see n. 2 above. The Eucharistikos of Paulinus of Pella, grandson of Ausonius, is another example of an interiorized autobiographical reception of the plot of the Aeneid; see Fo 1989b, 369–71, 372–80. 46. Punctuation and construction of omnisque in limine portus are disputed. On the spiritual “desired haven,” see Bonner 1941; Powell 1988 on Cic. Cato maior 71 in portum.

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we shall bear the sweet yoke, the burden that is light, the slavery so mild” [12.32–33 illic dulce iugum, leue onus blandumque feremus | seruitium sub te domino]; see above). Natalicium 1 looks forward to the journey; Natalicium 2 looks back to a journey that alludes to Aeneas’s voyaging. Paulinus begins and ends his survey of the fifteen years between his self-consecration to Felix and his final arrival and installation at Nola with Virgilian allusion, Poem 13.10–14: ex illo, qui me terraque marique labores distulerint a sede tua procul orbe remoto, nouisti; nam te mihi semper ubique propinquum inter dura uiae uitaeque incerta uocaui. et maria intraui duce te. You know what toils on land and sea have since then kept me far from your abode in a distant world, because I have always and everywhere had you near me, and have called on you in the grim moments of travel, and in the uncertainties of life. You were also my leader when I embarked on the sea.

Like Aeneas, Paulinus has endured labors on land and sea before reaching his promised land.47 The Christian saint Felix replaces the pagan god Apollo as guide and guardian: compare Aeneid 6.59 (Aeneas prays to Apollo): “You were my leader in all the seas on which I embarked” (tot maria intraui duce te).48 The poem ends with more Virgilian language of seafaring and of coming to shore (32–36): liceat placati munere Christi post pelagi fluctus mundi quoque fluctibus actis, in statione tua placido consistere portu. hoc bene subductam religaui litore classem: in te compositae mihi fixa sit anchora uitae.49 May Christ be appeased, and by his gift may we come to rest at your anchorage in the harbor of peace, after enduring the waves of the sea and having been buffeted also by the waves of the world. I have carefully hauled up and tied my ship upon this shore, so let the anchor of my ordered life grip fast on you.

The parallelism between storms at sea and figurative storms of life is pointed up through the juxtaposition of the nearly identical uiae and uitae in line 13, and through the repetition of fluctus in a figurative sense in line 33. The parallelism

47. On “earth and sea” expressions in the Aeneid, see Hardie 1986, 302–10. 48. Three lines after the line that Prudentius pointedly appropriated as the first line of the Psychomachia: Aen. 6.56 Phoebe, grauis Troiae semper miserate labores; ~ Psychom. 1 Christe, graues hominum semper miserate labores; see ch. 7. 49. Cf. Aen. 1.333 uento huc uastis et fluctibus acti; 7.106 religauit ab aggere classem (the Trojans on arriving in Latium).

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becomes concentrated metaphor in the last two words of the poem, anchora uitae.50 This personal journey also takes Paulinus “home” to a second Rome, thus providing another answer to Ausonius’s complaint that he had betrayed Rome by abandoning his life as an aristocrat (13.24–30): ecce uias uario plebs discolor agmine pingit, urbes innumeras una miramur in urbe. o felix Felice tuo tibi praesule Nola,51 inclita ciue sacro, caelesti firma patrono postque ipsam titulos Romam sortita secundos, quae prius imperio tantum et uictricibus armis,52 nunc et apostolicis terrarum est prima sepulcris. See, the crowds of many hues bring colour to the roads in their mottled throng, and we eye with astonishment countless cities in a single city. Nola, happy in having your Felix as your protector, you win fame from your saintly citizen, and strength from your heavenly patron. You have won the title of city second to Rome herself, once first only in dominion and conquering arms, but now first in the world through the apostles’ tombs.

Vrbes innumeras una . . . in urbe varies the Roman imperialist topos of orbis in urbe (“the world in the city”), and the crowds of many hues are yet another variation on the description on the Virgilian shield of the peoples of the world processing at the triumph of Augustus, varied in tongue, dress, and armor (Aen. 8.723 quam uariae linguis, habitu tam uestis et armis; see further chapter 4). The crowds at Nola are not forced participants in a ceremony, but willing worshippers drawn by the tomb of a confessor saint second in sanctity only to the tombs of Peter and Paul at Rome. The proverbial concordia apostolorum is, by implication, mirrored in the harmonious concord of the pilgrims at Nola. Paulinus’s devotion to Saint Felix amounts at times to identification. Commenting on the convergence of Paulinus’s ascetic virtues with those that he ascribes to Felix, Dennis Trout notes that “biography slides almost imperceptibly into autobiography.”53 In the fourth and fifth Natalicia (Poems 15, Jan. 398 and 16, Jan. 50. For the figurative journey of life in a philosophical context, with another Virgilian allusion, cf. Sen. De beata uita 19.1 (on the Epicurean Diodorus, who took his own life) ille interim beatus ac plenus bona conscientia reddidit sibi testimonium uita excedens laudauitque aetatis in portu et ad ancoram actae quietem et dixit, quod uos inuiti audistis, quasi vobis quoque faciendum sit: “uixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi” (Aen. 4.653). 51. Kamptner in Hartel (1999) sees an allusion to another Roman hero: o fortunatam natam me consule Romam (Cic. Poetry fr. 8 Courtney). 52. Cf. Aen. 3.54 uictriciaque arma secutus. 53. Trout 1999, 168.

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399) Paulinus narrates the life of the saint, perhaps inspired by the publication in 397 (or earlier) of the foundational text in the Western tradition of saints’ lives, the Life of St. Martin by Sulpicius Severus, another of Paulinus’s friends and correspondents.54 Like Paulinus, Felix has also lived his version of the Aeneid. In the case of the saint we have no narrative of a Petrarchan dissidio resolved finally through the total embrace of a life in Christ, as in the case of Paulinus himself, but an individual who early in life devotes himself to Christ, while his brother is swept up by the things of this world, an example of fraternal discordia (“A disagreement of opinion divided the two brothers” [15.78–79 geminos sententia discors | diuisit fratres]). Felix’s struggles are with enemies outside, replaying the Virgilian conflict between furor and pietas. This first erupts in what may have been the persecution of Decius or of Valerian, when Maximus, the bishop of Nola, flees from the sudden storm (15.124 subita . . . tempestate) into the wilds, and Maximus’s priest, Felix, draws the crowd’s violence on himself. There are echoes of the narrative of the sack of Troy in Aeneid 2.55 Felix is both the sole defender of his religion, an Aeneas fighting for his city single-handed against many, but at the same time not an epic unus homo on whom alone depends the fate of all,56 and whose destruction would involve the destruction of the city of God, as in Aeneid 2 the death of Priam is coterminous with the destruction of Troy (134–42): hunc omnes uincere certant, et quasi praecelsam obsessis in moenibus arcem57 facta mole petunt, cuius munimine uicto cetera iam facili cadat urbs prostrata ruina. o digna infidis dementia! creditur uno extinguenda fides totus quam credidit orbis. heu, misera impietas, infernis caeca tenebris, quo ruis? in quem tela moues? an credis in uno mortali constare Deum? All vied to bring him down. They attacked as if they were besieging with a massive engine a lofty citadel in a beleaguered town, so that when the mainstay was overcome the rest of the city might tumble and easily collapse. Such lunacy was worthy of infidels, believing that the faith which the whole world embraced could be blotted out with an individual. Wretched impiety, blinded by hell’s darkness, where do you rush to, and who is the target for your weapons? Do you believe that God depends on one man? 54. On Sulpicius Severus’s Life of St. Martin, see the commentary by Burton (2017). 55. With 126–27 (after Bishop Maximus flees into the wilds) tunc magis atque magis, quaesito antistite, Felix | claruit oppositus gladiis, cf. Aen. 2.299–301 et magis atque magis . . . clarescunt sonitus. 56. On the unus homo, see Hardie 1993, ch. 2. In the Christian “epic” there is only one true unus homo, and that man is also a god: in uno mortali constare deum could be applied to Christ, taking constare in the sense “consist in.” 57. Cf. Aen. 5.439 ille, uelut celsam oppugnat qui molibus urbem.

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Felix is captured, imprisoned, and, in a repetition of the miraculous liberation of Peter from prison, he is led out of his cell by an angel. Felix goes into the wilderness and restores Maximus, now at death’s door, to life, and, in an act of pietas, carries him on his back to his house, as Aeneas carried his father from the burning Troy: “Tireless Felix took pleasure in the task he had prayed for. He lifted his cherished burden like the light weight prescribed by Christ” (329–30 impiger optato gauisus munere Felix | carum onus ut Christi pondus leue sumit), a typical combination of allusion to Virgil (Aen. 2.707 [Aeneas to Anchises] ergo age, care pater, ceruici imponere nostra” [“Come now, my dear father, place yourself on my neck”]; 723 succedoque oneri [“I take up the burden”]) and to the Bible (Matt. 11:30 onus meum leue est [“My burden is light”]) allusion. This is the first half of the diptych. The second poem tells of the renewed assault of furor and impietas, yet another example of an imitation of the structural division of the Aeneid into two, mirroring, halves, as we have seen it in Claudian’s Against Rufinus and Prudentius’s Psychomachia (see above). After Felix’s rescue of Maximus peace seemed to return (16.38 pax uisa reuerti), and, the storm past, Felix resumed his ministry: “At length, trusting in the calm skies, he had begun joyfully to return to his joyful brothers and to entrust himself to the peaceful city” (39–41 tandemque sereno | confisus caelo laetis se reddere laetum | fratribus et placidae committere coeperat urbi). That this is a false optimism is suggested by the echo of Aeneas’s words to Palinurus at Aeneid 5.870: “You who put too much trust in a calm sky and sea” (o nimium caelo et pelago confise sereno). At the beginning of the second half of the Aeneid Juno flies into a rage when she sees Aeneas happily (7.288 laetum Aenean, as blissfully unaware of the impending storm as the laeti Trojans had been at Aen. 1.35) at work on the construction of his new camp, the model for future city-foundations in Italy, and she summons the Fury Allecto from the underworld to introduce a hell on earth. Peaceful life in Nola is also short-lived, and the Evil One combines the actions of Juno and Allecto in unleashing a new storm of furor and impietas (16.52–59): non tulit haec Malus ille diu, sed inhorruit atris crinibus et rabidis inflauit colla uenenis, immisitque suum scelerata in pectora uirus ureret ut nigras Felicis gratia mentes. inseruit stimulos, et mentibus arsit iniquis uipereae furor inuidiae; petit improba primum ira domum; cunctis amor impius in scelus ardet. Felicem sitit impietas. The Evil One did not bear with this for long. His black locks stood on end, and his neck was infused with the poison of madness. He directed his venom into wicked hearts so that Felix’s kindness stung their black minds. He pierced them with the goad and the frenzy of the viper’s hatred blazed in their wicked minds. Impious anger first sought a home; an unholy love for sin burned in all. Wickedness thirsted for Felix.

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This is not the prelude to epic warfare against the forces of darkness, but to a series of miracles by which Felix’s presence is concealed from his persecutors: in a sequence of disguises and transformations, whose affinities are Ovidian rather than Virgilian, Felix becomes unrecognizable in plain daylight: “When suddenly either the hearts of the foe or the features of Felix were transformed” (16.64–65 cum subito aut illis corda hostibus aut huic ora | uertuntur). Taking refuge in a ruined building he is shielded from his pursuers by a wall that suddenly takes shape from the rubble and is then camouflaged by a cobweb spun to order by a spider (“A spider obeyed the command to spin a trembling web” [16.100 iussaque nutantes intendit aranea telas]; cf. Met. 6.145: “As a spider she [Arachne] works at her webs as of old” [antiquas exercet aranea telas]).58 An old woman, divinely inspired, brings him food without remembering that she does so. These miracles illustrate the Pauline teaching that God has chosen the weak things of the world, that they may confound the strong, “O wisdom of God, rich in many ways, always confounding the strong things of the world through the agency of the weak” (16.129–30 o multis diuina modis sapientia diues, | semper ab infirmis confundens fortia mundi), paraphrasing 1 Corinthians 1:27, “The weak things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the strong” (infirma mundi elegit Deus ut confundat fortia). The pharaohs of Egypt, Jericho, and Goliath are all illustrations of this lesson, and of the irrelevance of heroae uirtutes (141). Pharaoh lies dead on the shore like Priam in Aeneid 2, a rich king of the East whose city will not be reborn in more splendid form: “That proud king lay dead on the sand of the shore, paying out the wealth of his kingdom as a naked corpse” (16.145–46 litorea iacuit rex ille superbus harena, | diuitias regni pendens in funere nudo). Paulinus combines allusion to Virgil’s description of the headless Pompey at Aeneid 2.556–57, “Once the proud ruler of so many peoples and lands of Asia, he lies on the shore a huge headless trunk” (tot quondam populis terrisque superbum | regnatorem Asiae. iacet ingens litore truncus), with allusion to Lucan’s account of the death of Pompey (whose death is alluded to in the fate of Priam’s body in Aeneid 2), at Bellum ciuile 8.761–62 (Cordus addresses Pompey’s headless corpse), “if this pyre causes you more sorrow than the fate of being a naked corpse” (si funere nudo | tristior ille rogus ).59 Felix by contrast does have an “afterlife.” He reemerges after the persecution has passed, as if from the dead, “when he emerged fresh to the light of day, amid his now despairing flock, appearing in his native city as though from the dead” (219– 20 ut nouus in lucem iam desperantibus exit | et patria tamquam rediuiuus in urbe uidetur), like the rejuvenated snake to which Neoptolemus is compared in Aeneid 2 when he appears in his gleeful savagery as if he were his father, Achilles, come 58. Only these two instances of aranea telas are found in LLT. 59. Funere nudo is a variant for funere nullo; for arguments in its support, see Mayer 1981, 177–78.

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back to life, “like a snake that emerges into the light . . . renewed after sloughing its skin” (2.471–73 qualis ubi in lucem coluber . . . positis nouus exuuiis). Felix is once more the object of a failure to recognize, but this time not because of a supernatural disguise, but because his fellow citizens think that he must have died. They interrogate him, as doubting Thomases, in language that comes from Virgilian meetings with the dead, or those thought to be dead (221–25): et multi dubitant agnoscere, et ante rogantes, “uerane, te, facies?” aiunt, “tune ille beatus redderis huc tanto nobis post tempore, Felix? qua regione uenis? caelo datus an paradiso redditus in terras habitacula nostra reuisis?” Many hesitated to acknowledge him and first enquired: “Can it really be you? Are you the great and blessed Felix returned to us after all this time? Where have you come from? Are you a gift of heaven? Have you returned to earth from Paradise to revisit our homes?”

Andromache cannot believe her eyes when Aeneas suddenly appears before her at Buthrotum: “Is this a true vision? Is it a true messenger that comes to me, son of the goddess? Are you alive? If the light of life has left you, why are you here?” (Aen. 3.310–12 uerane te facies, uerus mihi nuntius adfers, | nate dea? uiuisne? aut, si lux alma recessit, | Hector ubi est?). Her delusion is the opposite of that of Aeneas, who sees the ghost of the dead Hector and imagines him still to be alive: “From what shores have you come, Hector, for whom we have long waited?” (Aen. 2.282–83 quibus Hector ab oris | exspectate uenis?).60 Felix’s adventures in the first half of the biographical diptych had begun with allusions to the sack of Troy; they now end with Felix allusively in the role of a Hector who does not die but comes back from the dead, and who does not hand over a city-founding mission to an Aeneas. Felix is able to give bodily proof that he has, so to speak, returned from the dead: “He confirms that he is present in the body” (226 ille fidem firmat coram se corpore adesse). This is also, of course, in the image of the resurrection of Christ and the doubting apostles.61 Christ ushers in a new dispensation with its own narratives of rebirth and renewal to replace those of the pagan Aeneid. Felix is no warrior-hero, no imperialist city founder. In the last section of the biography Paulinus tells how, after trampling on death and ambition, he also wins a victory over greed. He lives out his life as a tenant-farmer, content with his three 60. With tune ille, cf. Aen. 1.617 tune ille Aeneas . . . ? and 9.481–82 tune ille senectae | sera meae requies . . .? 61. Cf. esp. the narrative in Luke 24:16 (the disciples at Emmaus) oculi autem illorum tenebantur ne eum agnoscerent; 24:18 Cleophas misrecognizes Jesus as a stranger (peregrinus); cf. Paulin. Poem 16.65–66 notum non agnouere furentes | Felicemque rogant; also Luke 24:39–40 (Christ demonstrates his bodily presence); John 20:24–29 (doubting Thomas).

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acres, and rich in his poor table supplied with humble vegetables. The Virgilian model for this closing picture is not an epic hero, but the Corycian old man who tends his garden in a digression in Georgics 4.116–48.62 I conclude my readings of Paulinus of Nola’s Virgilian plots with his exercise in epithalamium, a genre that combines celebration of the wedding day with the hope for generational continuity through the future offspring of the happy couple. In his version of the genre Paulinus effects a Christianizing transvaluation of one of the Aeneid’s central visions of nation and empire, the pageant of the successive generations of Roman families in the Parade of Heroes in book 6, balancing the panoramic vision of the continuity of Roman history on the Shield of Aeneas in book 8. I begin by going back to Claudian for an example of how the Parade of Heroes is used by a poet who subscribes to the ideology of earthly empire elaborated by the first Roman princeps, Augustus, and his poets and artists. The Shield of Aeneas in Aeneid 8 is one Virgil’s major panoramic visions of the continuity of Roman history, balancing the pageant of the successive generations of Roman families in the Parade of Heroes in book 6. Claudian, in his Panegyric on Probinus and Olybrius, heavily dependent as we have seen on the Virgilian shield, also makes passing allusions to the Parade of Heroes, in order to anchor this new beginning in the continuity of past tradition. In a conventional synkrisis the personified Roma elevates the new consuls over the greatest families of Roman history: “To these I would not prefer the noble Decii nor the brave Metelli, nor the Scipios who overcame the warlike Carthaginians nor the Camilli, that family fatal for the Gauls” (147–49 his ego nec63 Decios pulchros fortesue Metellos | praetulerim, non, qui Poenum domuere ferocem, | Scipiadas Gallisque genus fatale Camillos). The plural to refer to more than one member of a great family is in the manner of the Virgilian parade; compare Aeneid 6.824–25: “Look too at the Decii and the Drusi over there and cruel Torquatus with his axe and Camillus carrying back the standards” (quin Decios Drusosque procul saeuumque securi | aspice Torquatum et referentem signa Camillum); 842–43: “Who would be without the Gracchi or the two Scipios, the two thunderbolts of war?” (quis Gracchi genus aut geminos, duo fulmina belli, | Scipiadas [relinquat]?).64 62. With 16.284 modici tria iugera ruris, cf. Geo. 4.127–28 Corycium . . . senem, cui pauca relicti | iugera ruris erant; with 16.289 holus, Geo. 4.130; with 16.287–88 has de caespite diues egeno | in Dominum confudit opes, Geo. 4.132 regum aequabat opes animis. Cf. Fo 1989a, 374 on Paulinus of Pella, Eucharistikos 516 ff., the smallholding at Marseille, another version of the Corycian old man’s garden. 63. Cf. Aen. 1.278 his ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono (the only example of his ego nec in Virgil, and the only example apart from quotations of the Virgilian line in LLT for “Antiq.,” “Aetas patrum”). 64. Cf. also Geo. 2.167–70 haec genus . . . extulit, haec Decios Marios magnosque Camillos, | Scipiadas duros bello et te, maxime Caesar.

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Retrospectively the family of Probinus and Olybrius are added to the catalogue in the Virgilian parade.65 Paulinus of Nola’s epithalamium for Julian of Eclanum (later well known as a Pelagian opponent of Augustine) and Titia (Poem 25) is a radical Christianization of the pagan genre. It ends not with a prayer for fertility and offspring, but with the wish that theirs should be a marriage without sex. If that is too much to ask, then “may the chaste offspring to come be a priestly race” (237 casta sacerdotale genus uentura propago).66 The language suggests a very particular version of the Virgilian line of descendants stretching into the future, a race of Christian priests rather than a race of Romans and Caesars; compare Aeneid 6.789–90: “Here is Caesar, and all the race of Iulus about to come under the great vault of the sky” (hic Caesar et omnis Iuli | progenies, magnum caeli uentura sub axem); 6.870 Romana propago. The poem opens with an emphatic Virgilian quotation, “Souls harmonious are being joined in chaste love” (Concordes animae casto sociantur amore). The concordia of the wedded couple is a standard theme of the epithalamium,67 but this particular formulation alludes to Anchises’s introduction of Caesar and Pompey as concordes animae nunc (Aen. 6.827), before their entrance on the stage of history as the protagonists in Roman civil war.68 A section on the paradoxes of the Virgin, the mother who gives birth without sexual intercourse, both spouse and sister of the husband her master, leads into the Pauline lesson (Gal. 3:28) that in Christ there is no female or male: “For all of us who acknowledge Christ as Head of our body are one body, and are all Christ’s limbs” (181–82 namque omnes unum corpus sumus, omnia Christo | membra quibus Christus corporis in caput est). The love that joins the happy pair is to be the love that joins Christ and the church, superseding the sexual love that is the 65. Cf. perhaps the Virgilian aggiornamento of Ennian annals. 66. Walsh (1975) compares 1 Peter 2:9 uos autem genus electum regale sacerdotium, gens sancta, populus adquisitionis, ut uirtutes adnuntietis eius qui de tenebris uos uocauit in admirabile lumen suum. 67. Concordia-homonoia as topos of the epithalamium: Wheeler 1930, 214–15; Sbrancia 1978, 92. Cairns (1989, 98–100) notes that references to concord in the first half of Aeneid mainly involve the original familial and marital context of ὁμοφρονέω—ὁμόνοια. In transferring the phrase from the political sphere to the harmonious relationship of marriage, Paulinus perhaps shows himself aware of the importance in the Aeneid of the theme of marriage and concord: Aeneas’s “wedding” to Dido that will result in strife between Romans and Carthaginians, and the wedding with Lavinia, a political marriage that will seal peace between Trojans and Italians; see Cairns 1989, 106–7. On the interaction of marital and political concord and discord in Aeneid 4, see Panoussi 2009, 92–100. Caesar and Pompey unleash politico-military discordia, but this too is familial discord between a father-in-law and son-in-law who should be united by a marriage in the family. 68. These are the only two instances of the combination concordes animae in the Brepols LLT database, apart from a third instance in a Virgilian cento.

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precondition for a parade of the generations of Romans. The relationships that unite the Pauline community of the “body of Christ” (“Now you are the body of Christ and members of member” [1 Cor. 12:27 uos autem estis corpus Christi et membra de membro]) are very different from the relationships that unite (or, in some cases, divide) the race of Aeneas. At this point a new arrival makes himself known through supernatural signs: “But what fragrance is this seeping down from the sky and gliding down to my nostrils? From where comes this unexpected light which grips my eyes? Who is this approaching with serene steps . . . ? I recognise the man attended by God’s fragrance” (203–10 quis procul ille hominum placidis se passibus adfert . . . ? nosco uirum, quem diuini comitantur odores). This is the language with which Anchises identifies the soul of Numa, the second, priestly, king of Rome, at Aeneid 6.808–10: “Who is this at a distance resplendent in his crown of olive and carrying holy emblems? I recognise the white hair and beard of the king of Rome” (quis procul ille autem ramis insignis oliuae | sacra ferens? nosco crinis incanaque menta | regis Romani). In the next line Paulinus introduces the newcomer with the words that announce the climactic appearance in the Virgilian Parade of Heroes of Augustus himself: “This is the man, this is he, who is so rich in the countless gifts of Christ the Lord, Aemilius, a man endowed with the light of heavenly life” (211–12 hic uir, hic est, Domini numeroso munere Christi | diues, uir superi luminis, Aemilius) (the bishop of Beneventum, who blessed the wedding); compare Aeneid 6.791–92: “This is the man, this is he, whom you have often heard promised to you, Caesar Augustus” (hic uir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis, | Augustus Caesar). The great “hero” who appears in this poem is not an ancestor, but a priest officiating at what, ideally, will be a sexless marriage. The epithalamium returns to the opening theme of concordia, with the hope “that you should both agree on a compact of virginity” (233 ut sit in ambobus concordia uirginitatis), the first and preferable of the two options for the marriage bed (the second being“that you should both be the seeds of consecrated virgins” [234]). This is a kind of concordia that is at odds with the whole project of a Parade of Heroes. This allusive correction of a central classical text on the importance of generational continuity may be set beside the more obvious ways in which this poem inverts and critiques the imagery and themes of the non-Christian epithalamium, taking as particular targets Statius, Siluae 1.2, the epithalamium for Stella and Violentilla, and Claudian’s epithalamia.69

69. On this, Gelsomino 1982 is very good. For another example of a Christian subversion of classical generational continuity, cf. Avitus SHG 1.172–79, God’s epithalamium to Adam and Eve, beginning uiuite concordi studio; 175 progeniem sine fine dedi; discussed in ch. 3.

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My last text in this chapter is an autobiographical account of a journey, in which private concerns are interwoven with Virgilian narrative and ideological structures. This is also another example of the combination of elements of the Aeneid with allusion to Virgil’s Eclogues, but here not Eclogue 4 and its prophecy of the return of the plenitude of the Golden Age under the protection of the divine child, but Eclogue 1 and its tale of exile from the pastoral world.70 Rutilius Namatianus’s On His Return (De reditu suo) is a travel diary of a journey undertaken probably in a.d. 417 by a former magister officiorum and praefectus urbis, from Rome to his native Gaul, which he describes as “summoning” him (1.20) home. We know neither the reason for his journey nor what Rutilius found or what he did when he reached home; the poem as we have it breaks off sixtyeight lines into the second book as the travelers approach the town of Luna in northern Etruria (apart from a recently discovered fragment of book 2).71 All ancient literary journeys are versions of an Odyssey, none more so than the Aeneid, and Aeneas’s journey is in turn an irresistible template for Latin authors after the publication of the Aeneid. Rutilius was very likely a pagan living at a time when the Christianization of Rome was unstoppable.72 He set out on his journey seven years after the sack of Rome, traveling north by sea because the inland route on the Via Aurelia and through Tuscany was still disrupted by the devastation inflicted by the Gothic invasion. As he takes his leave of Rome Rutilius delivers one of the grandest of all surviving panegyrics of the city of Rome (1.47–164), the urbs (city) that rules the orbis (world), the city whose victorious clemency (1.69 uictrix clementia) imposes peace and justice on the conquered peoples of the world, the city of sky-reaching architectural marvels, with a climate of perpetual spring. Traces of the Virgilian eulogies of Rome in Aeneid 6 and 8 are combined with more pronounced echoes of Claudian’s praises of Rome, along with many other sources. Following precedents in Claudian and Prudentius, Rutilius calls on Rome to rejuvenate and renew herself. A history of victories built on defeats (in wars with the Gauls, Pyrrhus, Hannibal) dictates the law by which the latest Gothic threat will also lead to rebirth: “That which destroys other kingdoms restores you; the law of your rebirth is the power to grow through disaster” (1.139–40 illud te reparat quod cetera

70. On Virgilian allusions in De reditu suo, see Wolff 2007, xxxiii-xxxviii; 2005, 68; Soler 2005, 276–80; Schierl 2013a, 2013b. See also Li Causi 2007. 71. For the new fragment, thirty-nine fragmentary lines praising the patrician Constantius (a devout Christian), see Wolff 2007, xlvii-lv. 72. But for a reconsideration of the question in the light of the new fragment, in praise of a Christian, see Cameron 2011, 207–18.

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regna resoluit: | ordo renascendi est crescere posse malis). Horatian intertexts73 are combined with allusion to the Virgilian Jupiter’s promise of eternity at Aeneid 1.278 (“On them I impose no limits of time or place” [his ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono]) in De reditu 1.137 (“The time that remains is subject to no limits” [quae restant nullis obnoxia tempora metis]).74 The “law of rebirth” can be traced back to the Virgilian plot of Troia resurgens (“There [in Latium] it is the will of god that the kingdom of Troy should rise again” [Aen. 1.206 illic fas regna resurgere Troiae]). But the landscape through which Rutilius travels once he has left Rome is largely a landscape of ruins, with a recurrent opposition of past greatness and present decay. Rutilius knows that he is returning to ruins back home in Gaul. From the glorious buildings of the world-city Rome to the ruins of home—this is a reversal of the journey of Aeneas from the ruins of Troy toward the future glory of Rome. Rutilius is both going into exile from his beloved Rome (1.19 dilectis . . . oris) and returning to Gaul, his desired homeland (34 desideriis); this is a Virgilian paradox, repeating Aeneas’s journey of exile from Troy to a land that is the Trojans’ ancestral homeland (Italy was home to Dardanus). The conflicting pulls in Rutilius’s experience are heightened by the presence of layers of allusion to works that both anticipate the plot of the Aeneid and respond to it. The journey to Gaul repeats Tityrus’s return from the unimaginably great city of Rome to his humble pastoral home in Eclogue 1. But what Rutilius finds when he returns will perhaps be closer to Meliboeus’s imagined postexilic vision at Eclogue 1.67–69: “Shall I ever look upon my ancestral land after many years, and the roof of my poor hut heaped up with turf, shall I hereafter look upon, with amazement, a few ears of corn, my kingdom?” (en umquam patrios longo post tempore finis | pauperis et tuguri congestum caespite culmen, | post aliquot, mea regna, uidens mirabor aristas?). Eclogue 1 is the first occasion on which Virgil explores the theme of exile that will become the central plot of the Aeneid. From an epic Dea Roma to a postdevastation pastoral Gallic landscape—this is a cultural regression, reversing the Virgilian career and reversing the progression in Aeneid 8 from the pastoral huts of Evander’s settlement (and the ruined cities of Janus and Saturn that are already to be seen there) to the gilded temples of Augustan Rome. This is also the regression plotted in Lucan’s anti-Aeneid, where post–civil war Italy has reverted to the condition of Evander’s Pallanteum (Luc. 1.24–29): 73. Cf. Hor. Carm. 4.7.13 damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae; with Rutil. Red. 1.129 quae mergi nequeunt, nisu maiore resurgunt, cf. Hor. Carm. 4.4.65 merses profundo, pulchrior euenit. 74. With Aen. 1.279 imperium sine fine dedi, cf. perhaps Red. 1.3–4 quid longum toto Romam uenerantibus aeuo? | nil umquam longum est quod sine fine placet.

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Virgilian Plots at nunc semirutis pendent quod moenia tectis urbibus Italiae lapsisque ingentia muris saxa iacent nulloque domus custode tenentur rarus et antiquis habitator in urbibus errat, horrida quod dumis multosque inarata per annos Hesperia est desuntque manus poscentibus aruis . . . But, if now in Italian cities the houses are half-demolished and the walls tottering and the mighty stones of mouldering dwellings lie on the ground; if the houses are not protected by any guard, and few inhabitants wander over the site of ancient cities; if Italy bristles with thorn-bushes, unploughed for many years, if the fields call in vain for hands to till them . . .

Rutilius’s departure from Rome into a kind of “exile” also repeats the experience of Ovid on his last night in Rome, compared in Tristia 1.3 to the experience of Aeneas leaving the sacked city of Troy. In lines 43–46 Rutilius describes his leavetaking in terms that echo both Virgil’s description of the women in the palace of Priam on the night of the sack of Troy and Ovid’s re-creation of that night. One general point to bring out is that the complexity with which Rutilius processes his thoughts and feelings about Rome and Gaul, and about the journey from Rome to Gaul, is in part the result of allusion not just to the plot and imagery of the Aeneid, but to a sequence of texts to which the Aeneid refers, and which refer to the Aeneid: Virgil’s Eclogues, Ovid’s exile poetry, Lucan’s Bellum civile, Claudian, Prudentius.75 This is a heavy investment in the tradition of writing about Rome; Rutilius’s restoration of Rome is an emphatically literary revival. For Rutilius the longing for an absent homeland is transmuted into a longing for a past in danger of vanishing, and that can perhaps only be preserved through literary evocations. Once he has left Rome, Rutilius must wait at the port of Rome for good sailing weather. The formal panegyric of Rome had been as conventional—and unreal— as Rutilius’s audience would have expected, existing in a self-contained world of epideixis. But now Rutilius narrates his “real-life” experience as he repeatedly looks back in the direction of Rome: 189 respectare iuuat uicinam saepius urbem. “Looking back” on departure or on going into exile is a topos, but Rutilius is “looking back” in time as well. This is already an exilic vision of Rome, one seen through 75. In an attempt to define a typical kind of relationship between a late Latin text and classical models, Fo (1989a, 55–56) writes of “una sorte di processo di identificazione con situazioni reperite nelle opere (o anche nelle vite) degli scrittori passati, che divengono una specie di galleria di archetipi con cui misurare le proprie esperienze esistenziali. Qui il viaggio di Rutilio principia col riflettere l’esilio di Ovidio, e solo poi può prendere le strade sue proprie.” But, with regard to the question of whether there is a distinctly late antique brand of intertextuality, it might be asked whether this differs from Ovid’s own reliving of the sack of Troy archetype in Tr. 1.3. Tissol (2002, 439) is of the view that Rutilius’s allusive practice is not much different from that of Ovid. For more extensive discussion of late antique intertextuality, see ch. 8.

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the eyes of Ovid. From the harbor Rutilius hears sounds coming from the city: “Again and again our spell-bound ears ring with the noise of the Circus games; a blaze of cheers proclaims the crowded theatre” (201–2 saepius attonitae resonant Circensibus aures; | nuntiat accensus plena theatra fauor). These are the sounds that the exiled Ovid imagined in far-off Rome at Tristia 3.12.23–24: “The stage is thriving, rivalries are blazing; three theatres [of Pompey, Marcellus, Balbus] now, not three forums [Romanum, Iulium, Augustum], roar” (scaena uiget studiisque fauor distantibus ardet, | proque tribus resonant terna theatra foris). Rutilius hears what Ovid heard, in imagination, four hundred years in the past. In Rutilius’s next couplet, the last of the backward glance at Rome, he concedes that it may all be in his own imagination: “Familiar shouts are sent back by the echoing air, whether it is that they really reach us or that affection fancies so” (203–4 pulsato notae redduntur ab aethere uoces, | uel quia perueniunt uel quia fingit amor). Assuming that Rutilius is at the main imperial harbor at Portus, and so a good twenty miles from Rome, it can hardly be other than in his imagination. If that is so, Rutilius experiences the same kind of delusion as the exiled Ovid, speaking of the death in Rome of his friend, the poet Celsus, at Ex Ponto 1.9.7–8: “His image is fixed before my eyes as if he were present, and my love makes me fancy that the dead man is alive” (ante meos oculos tamquam praesentis imago | haeret, et extinctum uiuere fingit amor).76 For this kind of imagined presence of a loved one or a beloved place, Ovid and Rutilius have a Virgilian model in the Eclogues, at the end of Alphesiboeus’s song of the woman using love magic to bring back her lover: “Am I to believe? Or do lovers invent dreams for themselves?” (8.108 credimus? an, qui amant, ipsi sibi somnia fingunt?). This is the Virgilian line that Ausonius lifts wholesale in his last futile attempt to persuade himself that his friend Paulinus will return to Gaul, return to his old style of life and style of literature (see chapter 1). Possibly imagined things heard match possibly imagined things seen at the beginning of the section, as Rutilius looks back toward the city: “where the guiding eyes feast on that dear scene, fancying that they can see what they want to see” (191–92 quaque duces oculi grata regione fruuntur, | dum se, quod cupiunt, cernere posse putant). The sign in the sky by which he recognizes that this is where Rome is, is not, he says, the rising smoke by which Odysseus recognizes Ithaca (Od. 1.57– 59, 10.29–30), a realistic sign of habitation, but a quite unrealistic sign: “a fairer tract of sky . . . there it is unbroken sunshine; the very daylight which Rome makes for herself seems purer than all else” (197–200 caeli plaga candidior . . . illic perpetui soles atque ipse uidetur | quem sibi Roma facit purior esse dies). In some kind of heightened reality Rutilius experiences the city as it is presented in the hyperboles of panegyric: note in particular 113–14: “In the spring that is yours the year never 76. Cf. also Ov. Her. 2.21–22 denique fidus amor, quidquid properantibus obstat, | finxit; Tib. 2.6.51 mens mihi perdita fingit.

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fails in its mildness; defeated winter looks on your charms” (uere tuo numquam mulceri desinit annus; | deliciasque tuas uicta tuetur hiems).77 The allusion to the Odyssean rising smoke is mediated through Ovid’s own exilic allusion to Homer at Ex Ponto 1.3.33–34: “The Ithacan’s wisdom is not in doubt, but all the same he desires to be able to see the smoke from the fires of his fatherland” (non dubia est Ithaci prudentia, sed tamen optat | fumum de patriis posse uidere focis). Ulysses’s yearning for Ithaca excuses Ovid’s own inability to control his desire to see his country.78 I will end by suggesting that the unreality of what Rutilius sees and hears as he waits at Portus Augusti is in large part mediated through another literary allusion, this time to a text much closer in date. Rutilius reworks a scene of fantasy in Prudentius’s Against Symmachus, the meeting between Theodosius and personified Roma at 1.408 ff. (see above). Victorious over the usurpers, Theodosius (411) “looked towards the beautiful walls with triumphant face” (pulchra triumphali respexit moenia uultu); compare De reditu 1.189– 90: “I like to look back . . . and search out the hills of Rome with failing sight” (respectare iuuat . . . | et montes uisu deficiente sequi). The emperor bids Roma to put off her tristes habitus, the cloud and mist of paganism that shroud her, and through which “the leaden light and dense air dull your very jewels, and smoke pouring over your face deadens the gleam of the diadem on your brows” (420–22 ipsas quoque liuida gemmas | lux hebetat spissusque dies, et fumus ob ora | suffusus rutilum frontis diadema retundit). Rutilius says, “I do not recognize that place by the sign of smoke” (Red. 1.193 nec locus ille mihi cognoscitur indice fumo). He does not recognize Rome by a smoke signal, because he does not accept Prudentius’s premise that the smoke of pagan sacrifice impairs the brightness and glory of Rome. In keeping with his earlier comparison of the Roman Senate to the council of the supreme god, Jupiter,79 Rutilius puts in place of Prudentius’s sky-soaring Christian Rome his own vision of a pagan Rome favored by bright and serene heaven, a place of unbroken sunshine and pure daylight.80

77. Clarke 2014, 97: “There is an accompanying feeling that his glorious encomium of the previous lines will not endure close examination, for it is also shaped by imagination and desire.” 78. Tissol 2002, 441–42; Fo 1989a, 52. 79. Red. 1.17–18 quale per aetherios mundani uerticis axes | concilium summi creditur esse dei (“like the council of the highest god which we believe to hold sway through the heavenly poles of the summit of the world”). 80. If Rutilius responds to Prudentius here, this is of a piece with the likelihood that De reditu also responds to Augustine’s City of God; see Cameron 1967.

3

Cosmos Classical and Christian Universes

This chapter revisits some of the themes of my first book, Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium,1 from the perspective of late antiquity. In the brief epilogue to that book I had glanced forward to late antique Greek and Roman Gigantomachies, to Claudian and Rutilius Namatianus, and to the Panegyrici Latini. My book on the Aeneid implicitly foregrounded the function of epic as poetry of praise. Drawing on earlier Hellenistic and Roman ruler ideology, Virgil’s panegyrical magnification frequently works through an equation between the power of the hero (Aeneas, Augustus), or of the city of Rome and her empire, and control of nature and of the cosmos. The Aeneid sets Aeneas and his descendants on a course that will eventually see the expansion of the city, urbs, to fill the world, orbis.2 The panegyrical and cosmic aspect of the Aeneid has been downplayed in much modern Virgil criticism, but it is an aspect that was central to much late antique, medieval, and Renaissance epic,3 not least epic on Christian subjects, one of whose chief aims is to praise God the cosmocrator, or to praise the ability of the saints to transcend the narrow limitations of mortality. Within the non-Christian tradition, the chief late antique monuments of Latin praise poetry are the hexameter panegyrics of Claudian. In recent years there has been much discussion of the genre of these poems, a debate as to whether there is something generically distinctive about what are often labeled “panegyrical

1. Hardie 1986. 2. See Hardie 1986, index s.v. urbs-orbis. 3. See Hardie 2011.

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epics.”4 Certainly, it is true that these works of Claudian found many imitators in later late antiquity, and to that extent they stand at the beginning of a tradition, but it is equally true that these poems can be understood as a natural product of an association of narrative epic and praise that goes back to Homer. Furthermore, a view that Claudian forges something distinctively new out of a combination of epic poetry and epideictic rhetorical prose runs the risk of assuming a sharp divide between verse and prose that did not exist in antiquity. PA N E G Y R IC I L AT I N I

With this in mind, I will start with prose texts that are themselves not devoid of poetic allusion,5 and look at the cosmic imagery in the Panegyrici Latini, the imperial prose panegyrics of the late third and fourth centuries preserved in a collection put together probably in Gaul in the late fourth century, and covering a span of a hundred years from Maximian (289) to Theodosius (389). By an accident of survival, we have no surviving Roman prose imperial panegyrics between Cicero’s Pro Marcello, a speech that anticipates important elements of the later tradition in its praise of Julius Caesar, and these late third- and fourth-century panegyrics—with the single (and important) exception of Pliny’s Panegyricus, the speech in praise of Trajan, delivered by Pliny as thanksgiving for his election to the consulship in a.d. 100. Pliny is concerned to propagate an image of Trajan as a ciuilis princeps, an emperor who does not behave as if he inhabited a different world from that of his Roman citizens, in contrast to his overbearing and tyrannical predecessor Domitian, an emperor whose cosmic power is praised by the poets Statius and Martial. But Pliny allows hyperbole to mount in the direction of the cosmic when it comes to Trajan’s military achievements outside Rome: the Rhine and Euphrates, at the limits of the Roman Empire, marvel at his power; mountains subside and rivers dry up in obeisance to Trajan’s virtues.6 4. Müller 2011 is a Habilitationschrift on “Gattungsgeschichte,” with a thorough survey of previous literature. Müller concludes (455–57) that a suitable label for Claudian’s “politisch-zeitgeschichtlichen Dichtungen” would be “episch-panegyrische Dichtung.” 5. See Rees 2017. 6. Hutchinson (2011) analyzes a Plinian strategy of praise that consciously avoids the cosmic, a strategy based on a contrast between the false sublime of the monstrous and terrifying Domitian and the true sublime of Trajan, who in restoring liberty to the Roman people and in practicing moderation and humility in his dealings with his subjects attains a real greatness and elevation that Domitian failed to achieve. Cosmic touches in the Panegyricus: 14.1 non incunabula haec tibi, Caesar, et rudimenta, cum . . . Rhenumque et Euphraten admirationis tuae societate coniungeres? cum orbem terrarum non pedibus magis quam laudibus peragrares, apud eos semper maior et clarior quibus postea contigisses? 16.5 quodsi quis barbarus rex eo insolentiae furorisque processerit, ut iram tuam indignationemque mereatur, ne ille siue interfuso mari seu fluminibus immensis seu praecipiti monte defenditur, omnia haec tam prona tamque cedentia uirtutibus tuis sentiet, ut subsedisse montes, flumina exaruisse, interceptum mare

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But in the late antique imperial panegyrics there is little check on cosmic fantasy. The venerable comparison of Roman rulers to Jupiter and Hercules is taken a step closer to identity, in the fiction that the supreme god and his son are the “fathers” of the senior Augusti in the tetrarchic system.7 Mamertinus’s birthday speech (Pan. Lat. 11) for Maximian draws out the implications of the titles Diocletianus Iouius and Maximianus Herculius. Both emperors are unceasing in their activities on behalf of their subjects, just as Jupiter continues to govern and guide the universe after the wars against the Titans and Giants (3.4–5), and as the deified Hercules, after his victories over monsters of earth, sky, and the underworld during his life on earth, continues to assist the labors of brave and just men (3.6). The aduentus of Diocletian and Maximian when they met at Milan in the winter of 290/1 turns into epiphany: “They invoked not a god held as such in opinion but a visible and present Jupiter near at hand, they adored Hercules not as a stranger but as the Emperor” (10.5). Like the gods, the emperors have the power to fill the world with their presence, omni-praesentes dei— an extravagant fiction padded out with Virgilian references (14.2–4):8 itaque illud quod de uestro cecinit poeta Romanus Ioue, Iouis omnia esse plena,9 id scilicet animo contemplatus, quamquam ipse Iuppiter summum caeli uerticem teneat supra nubila supraque uentos sedens in luce perpetua, numen tamen eius ac mentem toto infusam esse mundo,10 id nunc ego de utroque uestrum audeo praedicare: ubicumque sitis, in unum licet palatium concesseritis, diuinitatem uestram ubique uersari, omnes terras omniaque maria plena esse uestri.11 quid enim mirum si, cum possit hic mundus Iouis esse plenus, possit et Herculis? And so that line which the Roman poet sang of your Jupiter, that everything is filled with Jove, probably having in mind that although Jupiter himself holds the highest point of heaven above the clouds and above the winds sitting in perpetual light, nevertheless his deity and mind spread throughout the entire world, I now make bold to proclaim about each of you: wherever you are, even if you retire to one palace, your divinity abides everywhere, all lands and all seas are filled with you. For what is there to wonder at if, since this world can be filled with Jove, it can be filled as well with Hercules?

inlatasque sibi non classes nostras sed terras ipsas arbitretur (cf. Claud. 3 Cons. Hon. 89 ff.); 25.5 magnificum, Caesar, et tuum disiunctissimas terras munificentiae ingenio uelut admouere, immensaque spatia liberalitate contrahere. 7. See Seston 1950; Nixon 1981. 8. On the use of Virgil by the prose panegyrists, see Ware 2017b. 9. Ecl. 3.60. 10. Cf. Aen. 6.726–27 totamque infusa per artus | mens agitat molem. Cf. also Pan. Lat. 12.26.1 (addressing the supreme god) summe rerum sator . . . siue tute quaedam uis mensque diuina es, quae toto infusa mundo omnibus miscearis elementis. 11. Cf. the Christian Sanctus, pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua, deriving from Isa. 6:3 sanctus sanctus sanctus Dominus exercituum, plena est omnis terra gloria eius.

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The emperors’ divine absent presence had already been posited: “For no part of the land is without the presence of Your Majesties even when you yourselves seem to be absent” (13.5 neque enim pars ulla terrarum maiestatis uestrae praesentia caret, etiam cum ipsi abesse uideamini). Absent presence, a theme that was central to my book Ovid’s Poetic Illusions,12 but that I did not pursue there into late antiquity, is one of those areas where there is a noticeable convergence between pagan and Christian texts: the Christian God is a universal presence, although he may seem to be absent,13 and one of the standard themes of Christian hagiography is the living presence in the bones in his shrine of the dead saint, present both in heaven and on earth. The emperor is endowed with a quasi-divine control of the weather and of the elements. The control of the forces of nature by the king or great statesman or general is a topic that goes back to the Hellenistic Greek world and Republican Rome.14 Cicero, for example, extols the good fortune, as general, of Pompey, to whose will are obedient not only his enemies but even the winds and storms (Leg. Man. 48). When Constantine builds a bridge across the Rhine, “Nature herself serves your divinity” (Pan. Lat. 6.13.3); Constantine outdoes the bridges thrown across large stretches of sea by Xerxes at the Hellespont and Caligula at Baiae. Constantius’s mole at Boulogne, which the tidal sea is unable to break down, is an engineering marvel (Pan. Lat. 8.6.2): “You overcame the very nature of the place with remarkable ingenuity” (ipsam loci naturam admirabili ratione superasti). In his speech of thanksgiving for his consulship of 362, Mamertinus equates Julian with the supreme god bringing fair weather to the world (Pan. Lat. 3.28.5): “Poets say that highest god who holds everything in his power, who in universal authority governs divine and human affairs, alters the changing weather by the expression on his face when he gazes down upon the earth (cum despiciat in terras); and at his nod, the world shakes, when he is merry windstorms are driven away, clouds are put to flight, shining calm is spread throughout the globe. A little while ago one may have experienced the truth of this with one’s own eyes. How much rejoicing did the people give vent to when you smiled upon your consuls!” Somewhat disconcertingly this hyperbolical conceit comes in the course of praising Julian as a ciuilis princeps for the manner of his greeting the new consuls (28.1 ciuilis animi satis clara documenta). Despiciat in terras—the sovereign gaze from on high is a powerful image of the all-seeing and omnipotent ruler, whether divine or human, and an example also of the larger importance of sight and the visual in panegyrics in both prose and verse. 12. Hardie 2002b. 13. This is one of the first lessons conveyed to Adam after the Fall by Michael at Paradise Lost 11.334–54. 14. As it were collapsing into one Neptune calming the storm (the tenor) and the simile of the statesman calming the mob (the vehicle) at Aen. 1.142–56; see the material collected at Hardie 1986, 203–7, in a section on control of the storm, drawing in particular on Weinstock 1971, 121–26.

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The vertex of empire merges with the vertex of the heavens from which Virgil’s Jupiter looks down on sea and earth (Aen. 1.224 despiciens mare ueliuolum terrasque iacentis), in two speeches in praise of Maximian, Pan. Lat. 7.14.1 (“It becomes you, father, to survey from your pinnacle of command the world you share, and with celestial nod decide the fate of human affairs” [te, pater, ex ipso imperii uertice decet orbem prospicere communem caelestique nutu rebus humanis fata decernere]) and 10.3.3 (“to stand on such a lofty summit of human affairs as to gaze down, as it were, on every land and sea” [in tam arduo humanarum rerum stare fastigio, ex quo ueluti terras omnes et maria despicias]).15 Maximian is also given the role of a cosmic charioteer at Pan. Lat. 7.12.3 (referring to Maximian’s return to the imperial throne from retirement): “As it is said, only the god by whose gift we live and see the light of day could have taken up again the reins disastrously entrusted to another, and again steer in a straight line the chariot which had been thrown off course by its wayward charioteer.” The allusion here is to the disastrous chariot-ride of Phaethon, implying that Maximian is as expert a charioteer as the sun-god/Apollo.16 The late antique panegyrists continue a long tradition of the political use of the image of the sun-god, the god Helios, who in Homer “sees everything and hears everything” from on high (Il. 3.277; Od. 11.109, 12.323). The sun-king is no invention of the panegyrists and artists of Louis XIV: the image is implicit, for example, in the final scene on the Virgilian Shield of Aeneas, showing Augustus seated before the gleaming Temple of Apollo, god of the sun, and surveying the peoples of the world processing before him.17 Nero identified himself with Apollo and the Sun. Lucan, in his possibly ironic panegyric of Nero at the beginning of the Civil War, entertains the possibility that when he is apotheosed after his life on earth Nero will mount the chariot of the sun-god Apollo. In unironic vein, the panegyrist of Maximian and Constantine ends with an apostrophe to the absent-present deified Constantius Chloreus, father of Constantine the Great who had a particular veneration for Sol Inuictus (Pan. Lat. 7.14.3): “To be sure, divine Constantius, you hear and see these events, you whom the Sun himself, as he was within reach of his point of rising as he returned from his setting in the west, when his chariot was almost visible, picked up as he set off on his journey through the sky” (audis enim profecto haec et uides, diue Constanti, quem curru paene conspicuo, dum uicinos ortus repetit occasu, Sol 15. For the topos of gazing from clouds, see Gutzwiller 1942 on Pan. Lat. 3.10.1 si quis mortalium in aliquam caelestem speculam nube sublatus; cf. Cic. Rep. 6.15 ff.; Sen. NQ 1 praef. 7 (drawing on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis); on Seneca’s “cosmic viewpoint,” see Williams 2012; Lucian Icaromenipp. 11; Marc. Aurel. Medit. 7.48, 9.30. 16. See Turcan 1964. 17. Hardie 1986, 355–58. For a later example, cf. Coripp. Laud. Iust. 2.148–51 adstitit in clipeo princeps fortissimus illo | Solis habens speciem. lux altera fulsit ab urbe. | mirata est pariter geminos consurgere soles | una fauens eademque dies.

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ipse inuecturus caelo excepit). The living emperor already enjoys the universal perspective shared by the Sun with the king of the gods: Mamertinus, as we saw, alludes to the Virgilian Jupiter in his description of Maximian’s cosmic view from above at Pan. Lat. 10.3.3. If irony is present in Lucan’s praise of Nero, the implication may be that Nero’s ride in the chariot of the Sun will be as disastrous as that of Phaethon, who nearly succeeded in burning up the world and returning it to the chaos from which it emerged.18 The political possibilities of the myth are already visible in Ovid’s narrative in Metamorphoses 2 of Phaethon’s chaotic ride in his father’s chariot, from which the world is eventually saved by Jupiter when he blasts Phaethon with the thunderbolts that he had used against the rebellious Giants.19 Claudian uses the Phaethon myth as a political allegory on two occasions:20 in On the Fourth Consulship of Honorius Theodosius’s checking of the invasion of the Goths after the battle of Adrianople is compared to Phoebus taking back control of the horses of the Sun after Phaethon’s disruption of cosmic order (62–69): “Under a better master the fabric and harmony of the heavens were restored” (67–68 rediit meliore magistro | machina concentusque poli). The words machina and concentus each sum up a tradition of representing cosmic cohesion: machina evokes the much-imitated Lucretian phrase machina mundi, referring to the ordered structure of the universe and its potential destruction,21 and concentus is the term used by Cicero in the Republic both for the harmony of the spheres and as a musical image for the concordia ordinum in the human state.22 In On the Sixth Consulship of Honorius 178–92 the rivergod Eridanus (Po) indignantly addresses Alaric, comparing him to the Giants in his assault on Rome, the city of the gods, and to Phaethon’s mad attempt to control the fiery reins of the sky with earthly limbs, thus making explicit the symbolism of the visual image of Phaethon’s ride that is woven on Eridanus’s cloak (165–77). Comparison has often been made between the literary representations of the cosmic gaze of the ruler and the panel on the Arch of Galerius in Thessalonica showing Diocletian and Maximian enthroned over earth and sky.23 Unsurprisingly, similar language is used of the universal gaze of the Christian God.24 Richard 18. See Roche 2009 on Luc. 1.74 antiquum repetens iterum chaos. 19. See Schiesaro 2014, 89–91 for the political undertones of Ovid’s Phaethon narrative, and allusions to Cicero’s first Catilinarian and Horace, Odes 2.10; on Phaethon in Augustan and Neronian imagery and ideology, see Barchiesi 2009; on Nero and Phaethon, see Duret 1988. 20. See Dewar 1996, 170; Ware 2012, 131–34. 21. Lucr. 5.96; TLL 8.13.73–14.11. 22. Cic. Rep. 2.69, 6.22; TLL 4.20.50–69. 23. See Seston 1946, 249–55; Rothman 1975. 24. Christian sublime views from above: e.g., Avitus, De spiritalis historiae gestis 1.44–50 ergo ubi completis fulserunt omnia rebus | ornatuque suo perfectus constetit orbis, | tum Pater Omnipotens aeterno lumine laetum | contulit ad terras sublimi ex aethere uultum, | inlustrans quodcumque uidet. placet

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Talbert has offered the enticing but unprovable speculation that the original of the Peutinger Table, often thought of as a practical road map of the Roman Empire, was a representation of the oikumene forming part of a larger map of the five zones of the whole world, displayed on the wall of an apse behind the throne in an imperial aula. There it would have functioned as a symbol of the ideals of Diocletian’s Tetrarchy, with the image of Roma, enthroned, crowned, and bearing an orb, at the center of the map, the whole emphasizing the harmonious unity of the empire under the Tetrarchs.25 C L AU DIA N

Much of the cosmic imagery of the Panegyrici Latini can also be found in Claudian. Claudian is at once traditional and inventive in his highly classicizing use of cosmic themes, both in his panegyrical epics and in his mythological poems, the fragmentary Gigantomachies in Greek and Latin, and the large-scale but incomplete three-book epic on the rape of Proserpina. Stephen Wheeler, Stephen Hinds, and Catherine Ware have recently produced powerful readings of Claudian’s allegories of a cosmological struggle between the forces of chaos and order, or, in Christian terms, between heaven and hell.26 Both Wheeler and Hinds understand Claudian’s cosmic poetry as a repetition and continuation—and one might add, a heightening—of Virgilian themes. Thus Wheeler notes that “Claudian selects and combines epic models to recast the rape of Proserpina as an allegory about the foundation and preservation of cosmic order.”27 I will take a few examples from Claudian’s panegyrical epics, on the emperor Theodosius, his son Honorius, the boy emperor of the western empire, and Stilicho, regent for Honorius, and then glance briefly at Claudian’s major mythological epic, before dwelling a little longer on his last known work, the panegyric for the sixth consulship of Honorius. Nature responds sympathetically to the presence and successes of the emperor or general. After Theodosius’s victory at the battle of the Frigidus (Prob. Ol. 115–16), “Triumphant earth crowned her lord and flowers sprung up from prouder banks” ipsa tuenti | Artifici factura suo, laudatque Creator | dispositum pulchro quem condidit ordine mundum; 5.33–34 uiderat interea Genitor de sede superna | adflictamque manum placido prospexerat ore (God’s view from above of suffering Israelites in Egypt). 25. Talbert 2010, 142–57, with reference to Pan. Lat. 9(4).20.2–21.3 (Eumenius), the map of the orbis terrarum in the rhetorical school Maeniana at Augustodunum, and to the map commissioned by Theodosius II in 435 at Constantinople, Geographi Latini Minores (ed. A. Riese) 19–20. 26. Wheeler 1995b; Ware 2012, ch. 5; Hinds 2013a, 174–79. 27. Wheeler 1995b, 117.

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(dominum gauisa coronat | terra suum, surguntque toris maioribus herbae). At the proclamation of Honorius as emperor, black shadows are suddenly replaced by fair weather, in an example of the topos of the ruler’s control over the weather and over the elements (4 Cons. Hon. 170–83): “Phoebus scattered the clouds; at the same time was given to you the sceptre, and to the world the light of day” (175–76 nubila dissoluit Phoebus pariterque dabantur | sceptra tibi mundoque dies); “That was the light of empire. A prophetic brightness came over all things, and Nature laughed at your brightness” (182–83 imperii lux illa fuit: praesagus obibat | cuncta nitor risitque tuo natura sereno). Imperial weddings prompt cosmic rejoicing: at the wedding of Stilicho and Serena, Theodosius’s niece, “then, they say, the horses of the Sun and the stars of heaven danced for joy, pools of honey and rivers of milk welled forth from the earth. Bosporus decked his banks with vernal flowers, and Europe, entwined with rosy garlands, lifted up the torches in rivalry with Asia” (Cons. Stil. 1.84–88 tunc et Solis equos, tunc exultasse choreis | astra ferunt mellisque lacus et flumina lactis | erupisse solo, cum floribus aequora uernis | Bosphorus indueret roseisque euincta coronis | certantes Asiae taedas Europa leuaret). Claudian’s Against Rufinus is a verse invective, rather than panegyric, in which Rufinus, the prefect of the eastern empire, is blown up into a monster of cosmic evil, virtually a personification of the infernal Furies. Stilicho is cast in the role of a dragon-slaying Apollo, safeguarding the stability of the world for the two young imperial brothers, Honorius and Arcadius, Augusti respectively of the western and eastern empires. Rufinus’s postmortem punishment by Minos, judge of the dead, thrust deeper into hell than Tartarus and the dark prison of the Titans, is proof of the providential divine government of the universe (see chapter 2). In On the Third Consulship of Honorius Theodosius, as he undergoes apotheosis (162–84), ascends through the planetary spheres and is greeted by the spontaneous opening of the gates of the sky, to become yet another new imperial star, in the line that goes back to the catasterism of Julius Caesar at the end of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.28 Theodosius’s new status is marked with a checklist of the three major divisions of the universe— sky, earth, and sea: “Ornament of the heavens, formerly glory of the earth, Ocean receives you, wearied in your nightly course, in the waters of your land of birth, Spain bathes you in the waves you know so well” (175–77 o decus aetherium, terrarum gloria quondam, | te tuus Oceanus natali gurgite lassum | excipit et notis Hispania proluit undis). Following in the course of the Sun, the divinized Theodosius looks down on both his sons, Honorius in the west and Arcadius in the east. 28. 3 Cons. Hon. 172 inuitantque nouum sidus; cf. Cat. 66.64 (coma Berenices) sidus in antiquis diua nouum posuit; Ptolemaic court panegyric is transferred to Julian apotheosis at Ov. Met. 15.749 (star of Julius Caesar) in sidus uertere nouum stellamque comantem; Augustine uses nouum sidus of the star at the birth of Christ at Contra Faustum 2.5; Serm. 199 (PL 38.1028).

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Claudian’s mythological epic On the Rape of Proserpina stages a cosmic drama; it also contains a cosmic ekphrasis, the tapestry that Proserpina leaves incomplete when she is persuaded by Venus and Diana to leave her house on the fatal excursion that will lead to her rape by Dis (1.248–70). This is literally a cosmic icon,29 displaying the four elements as separated out of chaos by Mother Nature, the orderly divisions of the world (including the underworld of her uncle Dis), and the five zones of the earth. Proserpina, we are told, has begun to weave the enclosing border of the whole tapestry, showing Ocean encircling the world, when she hears the door open, with the fateful consequences that will leave the work unfinished. Both Proserpina’s tapestry and other ekphrases of works of art that explicitly represent the cosmos trace a part of their ancestry back to the Homeric Shield of Achilles, with its overt images of earth, sky, and sea, and the further naturalphilosophical content read into the shield by later allegorical commentators. With that tradition in mind I turn now to Claudian’s last panegyrical epic, his poem on the occasion of the sixth consulship of the nineteen-year-old western emperor, Honorius. Through allusion to the Virgilian Shield of Aeneas the poem provides a climax to the ekphrastic tradition of praising the cosmic city of Rome. In the elegiac Praefatio to the panegyric proper Claudian recounts his dream of singing a Gigantomachy in the presence of Jupiter, which turns into waking truth as the poet finds himself in the presence of the emperor in the imperial palace: “Behold our prince, behold the world’s pinnacle made level with Olympus” (23 en princeps, en orbis apex aequatus Olympo). The Palatine Hill, the seat of imperial power in the city of Rome, is the pinnacle (apex) of the world; in addition to the familiar equation of urbs and orbis, there is the further equation of the dwelling place of the emperor with the dwelling place of Jupiter and his gods, a conceit that goes back to Ovid’s comparison at Metamorphoses 1.175–76 of the houses of Jupiter and the gods to the Palatine. On the Sixth Consulship of Honorius is a poem more concerned than most with issues of illusion and reality, and employs what might be called a “rhetoric of the real” to the panegyrical end of persuading its audience of a heightened reality on the occasion of Honorius’s first visit since he became Augustus to Rome, the old capital of the western empire. Claudian extends the conventional ekphrastic topics of illusion and reality— typically of the form “So skilful was the artist that you would think that what you look upon is the real thing”—by crafting an allusive equation between the Virgilian Shield of Aeneas and the city of Rome as it was in the year a.d. 404 (described in lines 39–52). Catherine Ware has drawn attention to the dense network of allusions to the Virgilian shield in these lines, and she notes, with reference to my own 29. Cf. Nonn. Dion. 41.294–306, the cosmic tapestry of Harmonia, whose weaving is interrupted by the arrival of Aphrodite. On the similarity of Claudian’s and Nonnus’s cosmic tapestries, see Ahlschweig 1998, 189–90; in general on Nonnus and Claudian, see Braune 1948.

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reading of the shield as a cosmic icon, “To draw on Aeneas’ shield for a model of Rome is to accept the shield as an image of the cosmos. . . . Claudian’s cosmic icon is the idealised city before him, which, to him, is the essence of the entire Roman world.”30 Rome is idealized through allusion to the divinely made Virgilian shield; conversely, the visionary work of art is real-ized in the physical fabric of the city, on which Claudian and his select audience look down from the Palatine Hill, as the poem is recited, possibly in the library of the Palatine Temple of Apollo.31 The last line and a half of the ekphrasis of the city activates the topic of the astounded gaze on the wonderful work of art: “The eye is stunned by the blaze of metal and left trembling and dimmed by the gold that is scattered around” (51–52 acies stupet igne metalli | et circumfuso trepidans obtunditur auro). The golden blaze of the cityscape reflects the visual impact of the Virgilian shield as Aeneas brings it back to the theater of war at the mouth of the Tiber in Aeneid 10.271: “The golden shield-boss spews forth huge billows of fire” (uastos umbo uomit aureus ignis). The viewpoint for the mirabilia urbis, the Palatine Hill, is also the location for the climactic scene on the Shield of Aeneas, in which Augustus seated at the threshold of the Palatine Temple of Apollo, and representative of the sun-god Apollo, looks down on the peoples of the world processing before him with a gaze that replicates the Sun’s universal vision of the lands of the world. In the immediately preceding lines Claudian compares the effects of Honorius’s return to Rome to the reanimation of Delphi (the center of the world, according to the Greeks)32 by Apollo’s return from the land of the Hyperboreans (25–34). The material marvels of the cosmic city of a.d. 404 are now animated by the presence of its “god” (36 habitante deo) Honorius. Through the allusion to the Virgilian shield the Augustus Honorius also reembodies the Apollonian Augustus of the triple triumph of 29 b.c., the living presence in the here and now who reanimates 30. Ware 2012, 138–39; see Hardie 1986, ch. 8. 31. The suggestion of Dewar (1996) on 6 Cons. Hon. Praef. 23. See also the echo of the Virgilian shield with reference to the celestial city of God at Prud. Perist. 2.553–56 (Laurence) illic inenarrabili | allectus urbi municeps | aeternae in arce curiae | gestas coronam ciuicam (cf. Aen. 8.625 clipei non enarrabile textum), in the context of the gaze on the absent-present saint in heaven, 548 caelum intuemur eminus, 557–60 uideor uidere inlustribus | gemmis coruscantem uirum, | quem Roma caelestis sibi | legit perennem consulem; on the allusion to the Virgilian shield, see Buchheit 1966, 143 n. 105. 32. Dewar (1996) notes an intricate piece of intratextuality and allusion at 40–41 nulloque magis se colle potestas | aestimat; aestimo appears elsewhere in Claudian only at Cons. Theod. Praef. 17–20 princeps non aquilis terras cognoscere curat; | certius in uobis aestimat imperium. | hoc ego concilio collectum metior orbem; | hoc uideo coetu quidquid ubique micat, referring to the assembly of senators present in Honorius’s court at Milan, at the inauguration of Manlius Theodorus’s consulship. The allusion is to the dispatch by Jupiter, naturae regni nescius ipse sui (12), of two eagles from east and west that met on Parnassus, showing Delphi to be the center of the earth. Dewar suggests that it is the association with Delphi that leads Claudian to echo his earlier panegyric; of equal significance is the shared notion of worldwide rule, of, respectively, Jupiter and his representative on earth, Honorius.

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the figure in the Virgilian ekphrasis. Rejoicing in the presence of its god, the Palatine “commands its own laurels to grow green again, for our standards” (38 suas ad signa iubet reuirescere laurus), a revival and restoration of the triumphal laurels of the first Augustus, and a pointed allusion to an Ovidian description of the renewal of the world by Jupiter, after the disastrous chariot-ride of Phaethon (with whom Alaric will explicitly be associated at 186–90): “[Jupiter] restores grass to the earth, leaves to the trees, and commands the damaged woods to grow green again” (Met. 2.407–8 dat terrae gramina, frondes | arboribus laesasque iubet reuirescere siluas). Unlike the exile Aeneas, who is unaware of the subject matter of his shield, Claudian is confident in Honorius’s ability to recognize the full import of what he sees in his home city of Rome: “Do you recognise your home, my venerable Prince? These are the sights at which in time gone by, in your earliest years, you gazed in wonder, as a boy when your loving father showed them to you” (53–55 agnoscisne tuos, princeps uenerande, penates? | haec sunt, quae primis olim miratus in annis | patre pio monstrante puer).33 This act of recognition also echoes Caesar Augustus’s full-knowing gaze from the Palatine Temple of Apollo, as he reviews the gifts of the peoples of the world, on the Shield of Aeneas (Aen. 8.721 dona recognoscit populorum). Honorius will also remember the similar scene that he witnessed as a child in the imperial palace on the Palatine when peoples from different parts of the world, speaking a variety of languages, saw him seated beside his father, in a repetition of the multilingual peoples in the triumph of Augustus on the Virgilian shield: “And peoples diverse in tongue, and the nobles of Persia sent to sue for peace, once saw you sitting with your father in this very house” (69–71 et linguis uariae gentes missique rogatum | foedera Persarum proceres cum patre sedentem | hac quondam uidere domo). Compare Aeneid 8.722–23: “The defeated nations walked in long procession as varied in their costumes and their armour as in their languages” (incedunt uictae longo ordine gentes, | quam uariae linguis, habitu tam uestis et armis; further on this passage, see chapter 4). This conversion of Virgilian ekphrasis into imperial presence within the cosmic city more than compensates for Roma’s complaint that Honorius had not come to the city to celebrate a triumph over Gildo. At that time Roma says that artistic images of the war were being made ready, for a triumphator who never came. One 33. Lines dense with poetic memory, to be recognized by the reader at home in the Latin poetic tradition (see Dewar 1996, ad loc.); cf. Sil. Pun. 6.406 agnoscisne diem? an teneris non haesit in annis (Serranus and his father Regulus’s embassy to Rome as a Carthaginian captive); Virg. Aen. 9.276 uenerande puer (also at Theb. 12.73–74, Creon to the dead Menoeceus); Ov. Ars 1.181 (Gaius Caesar) primis . . . ducem profitetur in annis. Line 55 combines two Virgilian passages under the banner of the Virgilian epithet pius: Aen. 1.382 matre dea monstrante uiam, 8.337 dehinc progressus monstrat et aram. Honorius’s visit to Rome repeats Aeneas’s visit to Pallanteum; Evander’s guided tour forms a diptych with the ekphrasis of the Shield of Aeneas; mirari is Aeneas’s reaction both to the site of Rome and to the divine set of armor (Aen. 8.310, 619).

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of the images is reminiscent of the central scene of warfare on the Shield of Aeneas, the naval battle of Actium; with On the Sixth Consulship of Honorius 374–76 (“Even then were being prepared for Jove to see from the Tarpeian rock models for the coming triumph: a fleet of ships was cast in metal, ships whose oar-blades smote the golden sea” [iamque parabantur pompae simulacra futurae | Tarpeio spectanda Ioui: caelata metallo | classis ut auratum sulcaret remige fluctum]) compare Aeneid 8.675–77 (“In the middle the bronze-armored fleets at the battle of Actium were there for you to look at, and you could see the whole of the headland of Leucas seething with war, and all the waves gleaming in gold” [in medio classis aeratas, Actia bella, | cernere erat, totumque instructo Marte uideres | feruere Leucaten auroque effulgere fluctus]). Michael Dewar comments: “The Gildonic war is thus majestically associated with the centrepiece of the Aeneid’s panegyric and with the defining battle of Roman history”34—and one might add the battle that, in the Virgilian fiction, ensures Roman world-rule and the enduring pax Augusta. Capitoline Jupiter did not get to see that imitation of the Virgilian shield, but another god, the Apollonian Honorius, does now look down from above on a cosmic icon that is a whole city, not a single work of art, however grand. Six years later the city of Rome was sacked by Alaric and his Visigoths. It has become something of a topos in recent studies of the late antique aesthetic of “cosmic hierarchy” to detect the fantasy or dream of an orderliness that was constantly threatened with a plunge into chaos by the realities of history. So Claire Gruzelier, commenting on Claudian’s description of Proserpina at work on her cosmic tapestry at On the Rape of Proserpina 1.246 ff., writes colorfully of Claudian’s worldview of a harmonious cosmos in “a small pool of light at centre stage that is the civilized, organized world, surrounded by the monstrous, threatening shadows of destruction, whether they be Pluto ready to burst out of his proper sphere beneath the earth, the giants trying to scale heaven, or the Goths massing to invade Rome.”35 Similarly, the late antique villa (and its representations in art) has been viewed as a microcosm of the orderly coexistence of man and nature, defying the threat of disruption and invasion from outside, “ein kleiner Kosmos” that is also “ein kleines Imperium,”36 asserting man’s conquest of nature, set against the background of the increasing political, social, and economic crises of the fourth and fifth centuries, a 34. Dewar 1996, on 375 f. 35. Gruzelier 1993, 143. See also Braden 1979, 219–28 on the description of the Garden of Venus in Claudian’s Epithalamium for Honorius as a small, ordered, bounded area with the hostile forces just outside; Newbold 1979, 105–8 on the theme of the violation of enclosed space in Claudian and Prudentius; Onorato 2008, 44–45 on boundaries and their transgression, and on “l’ansia squisitamente claudianea—e, più in generale, tardoantica—per il continuo incombere del caos e della disgregazione su un mondo prima armonioso.” Michael Roberts sees in the somewhat later panegyrical poetry of Venantius Fortunatus representations of order in a historical world of disorder (Roberts 2009, ch. 3). 36. Stutzinger 1987, 111.

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“Domäne als Weltbild”37 that pretends to be reality, but is in fact out of touch with reality. There may be a danger of succumbing to a romantic view of the end of Roman civilization, of the barbarians at the gates, and perhaps at most we have to do with the heightening of an imagery of cosmic order and cosmic hierarchy that long predated and long outlasted the crises of late antiquity. T H E C H R I ST IA N C O SMO S

When we turn from panegyric in a pagan-classical idiom to Christian poetry, the realm of the fantastic is replaced by the space of faith. The Christian world is one in which sacred history plays out in the firm belief that the ruler of the universe has supported, and will support, the pious and faithful, a belief that can survive the collapse of empires and cities. I take an example where one of Claudian’s panegyrical formulations of the ruler’s command of nature is echoed in a biblical narrative. Indeed, this borrowing is one of the few secure dating points for the probably early fifth-century “Heptateuch-poet,” author of a hexameter version of the first seven books of the Old Testament. This is one of a series of Latin biblical epics, beginning with Juvencus’s gospels paraphrase, Evangeliorum libri quattuor, of about a.d. 330; these epics use classical materials, in varying degrees and combinations, to narrate cosmic events in the Christian story, from the works of creation on the first six days, through the miracles of Old and New Testaments, to the Last Judgment.38 In On the Third Consulship of Honorius Claudian says that it was on behalf of Honorius (te propter) that the elements conspired for Theodosius against Eugenius and Arbogast at the battle of the Frigidus (Sept. 394), on behalf of Honorius that the Alps were easy to invade (89–90 Alpes | inuadi faciles), that the mountain barriers were laid open (92 scopulis patuerunt claustra reuulsis), and that a fierce north wind blew against the enemy and turned their spears back upon themselves. Claudian then exclaims in much quoted and imitated lines: “O greatly beloved of god, you for whom Aeolus pours out the armed tempests from their cave, for whom the air goes to war and the winds come at the sound of the trumpet as your allies” (96–98 o nimium dilecte deo, cui fundit ab antris | Aeolus armatas hiemes, cui militat aether | et coniurati ueniunt ad classica uenti). This draws on the Virgilian tradition of linking the natural and human worlds, with the king of the winds here helping rather than hindering the hero, and the winds personified as military allies. In an example of window reference, or double allusion, Claudian looks back 37. The title of Schneider 1983. Asche (1983) has a rather different take on the cosmic panegyric of the Panegyrici Latini, arguing that the topos of universal empire retreats behind that of the emperor as uictor toto orbe: “Je mehr die realen Möglichkeiten expansiver Außenpolitik schwinden, desto mehr konzentriert sich die Argumentation auf den Weltherrscher selbst” (148). 38. In general on biblical epic, see Roberts 1985a; Green 2006; McBrine 2017.

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to Aeolus and the storm winds in Aeneid 1 through an episode in Silius’s account of the battle of Cannae (Punica 9.491–520), where Juno persuades Aeolus to unleash the southerly wind Vulturnus against the Roman army, blowing back the spears of the Romans on themselves, and giving added impetus to the Carthaginian spears.39 On their own the words o nimium dilecte deo could be taken of the Christian God, although the idea that this was the last battle between an emperor with pagan sympathies and the staunchly Christian Theodosius seems to be unhistorical.40 Augustine quotes these lines in the City of God, in edited form, in his account of the successes that Theodosius owed to his Christianity.41 Augustine notes that Claudian was not a Christian (whether or not Augustine is correct in saying that is another matter), and edits out the two half lines of mythological allusion, cui fundit ab antris | Aeolus armatas hiemes, thus producing a couplet that could more easily be taken as extolling the reward enjoyed by a Christian emperor. A few lines later Claudian does indeed revert to a traditionally pagan way of talking about Theodosius’s apotheosis.42 The Heptateuch-poet adapts Claudian’s lines to the intervention of God at Exodus 14:19–20, when he places the pillar of cloud (dark and enlightening the night, nubes tenebrosa et inluminans noctem) between the Israelite and Egyptian camps so that the Egyptians could not attack: “O greatly blessed, for whom God sent defences from the stars, for whom the glowing aether goes to war and the nights come to battle as allies!” (Exod. 474–76 o nimium felix, celsis cui misit ab astris | 39. Ware (2004b) argues that Claudian’s heavy use of traditional mythology bolsters the Romanitas of Stilicho and Honorius for a resistant, pagan audience, drawing heavily on Virgilian templates, and tracing the father-son line from Anchises-Aeneas-Ascanius to Theodosius-Honorius. Cameron (2011, 116 n. 117) notes the imitation of Silius, but adds: “There is no sign that Claudian had Vergil in mind.” Quite apart from the implausibility that Claudian did not remember the obvious Virgilian model, coniurati uenti suggests the massed winds of the Virgilian storm (Aen. 1.82–86) rather than the single Silian wind; see Ware 2004b, 168 for other verbal echoes of Aen. 1. 40. Cameron 2011, ch. 3, 115–16 on 3 Cons. Hon. 41. Aug. CD 5.26 unde et poeta Claudianus, quamuis a Christi nomine alienus, in eius tamen laudibus dixit: “o nimium dilecte Deo, cui militat aether, | et coniurati ueniunt ad classica uenti!”; see also Orosius, Hist. 7.35.21 (working from Augustine); Paulus Diaconus, Hist. Misc. 13. For other imitations and citations of the lines, see Charlet 2000, 178; Avitus, SHG 5.311–13 Hebraeum populi, totiens cui uindice dextra | militat omne malum, totus cui denique mundus | pugnat et irato succedunt prospera caelo; Paul. Petric. Vita Sancti Martini (Martin calls up the forces of the storm to destroy the wondrous pagan conical tower at Ambatia [Amboise]) 5.556–58 auxilium caeleste uocat. spes omnis in illo est, | qui caelum terramque regit, cui militat aer | et permansurum seruant elementa pauorem; 5.576–78 o nimium dilecte deo, te supplice Christus | iam pronos celso siccauit in aere nimbos. | ad tua uota iterum celeres rediere procellae. Claudian’s lines were lightly adapted in an inscription on the Naval Arch erected for Charles II’s coronation procession in 1661 (Hardie 2014, 107–10). 42. 3 Cons. Hon. 106–9 quamuis emeritum peteret natura reuerti | numen et auratas astrorum panderet arces | nutaretque oneris uenturi conscius Atlas, | distulit Augustus cupido se credere caelo.

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munimenta deus, candens cui militat aether | et coniuratae ueniunt ad proelia noctes!). Claudian’s chthonic antris, “caves,” are replaced by the lofty stars (astris), and the winds of Aeolus are replaced by the night in which the shining cloud appeared. In Claudian’s narrative of a nature subservient to Theodosius the mountain barriers of the Alps are only figuratively laid open; in Exodus the watery masses of the Red Sea are literally parted to allow the passage of the Israelites. The Heptateuch-poet follows the biblical text closely, with the burning wind that dries up the waters of the sea: “The south wind comes, and with all its breath drinks up the boiling waters in the silence of the night and dries up the sea, so that a way opened in the middle should offer a safe passage in the water thrown open” (480– 83 auster uentus adest, totis qui flatibus usus | per tacitam noctem feruentes ebibit undas | siccauitque fretum, medius ut trames apertus | panderet inlaesum patefacto in aequore cursum; cf. Exod. 14:21 flante uento uehementi et urente tota nocte, et uertit in siccum diuisaque est aqua). The Heptateuch-poet presumably remembers the winds of Claudian, which he has omitted from his direct reworking of the relevant lines, and he may also remember the burning Vulturnus of Silius (superheated with the fires of Etna, Pun. 9.497–98). In the Bible the parted waters are compared to walls (“And the children of Israel went in through the midst of the sea dried up; for the water was as a wall on their right hand and on their left” [Exod. 14:22 et ingressi sunt filii Israhel per medium maris sicci; erat enim aqua quasi murus a dextra eorum et laeua]); the Heptateuch-poet may have in mind the figurative “opening” of the Alps in Claudian when he compares the masses of water to a mountain rather than to a wall; and the Heptateuch-poet adds a further Virgilian allusion, to Aristaeus’s descent into his mother’s underwater realm in the fourth Georgic:43 “So when the sea had hurriedly parted, the waves surrounded them curved into the shape of a mountain, and received them in its spreading gulf and led them through the deep” (Exod. 485–87 ergo ubi festinum pelagus discesserat, illos | curuata in montis faciem circumstetit unda | accepitque sinu patulo misitque per altum; cf. Geo. 4.360–62: “But the waves surrounded him, curved into the shape of a mountain, and received him in their vast gulf and led him down into the river” [at illum | curuata in montis faciem circumstetit unda | accepitque sinu uasto misitque sub amnem]). The Old and New Testaments contain a cosmology and a cosmic history alternative to, but at the same time comparable and assimilable to, those of pagan antiquity. To begin at the beginning, the story of the six days of creation in Genesis 43. Allusion to Georgics 4 is found already in Lactantius’s reference to the crossing of the Red Sea, Inst. 4.10.7 traiecit enim populum medio Mari Rubro praecedente angelo et scindente aquam, ut populus per siccum gradi posset quem, uerius ut ait poeta, “curuata in montis faciem circumstetit aqua”; cf. also Prud. Cathem. 5.65–68. Other poetic treatments of the crossing of the Red Sea: Prud. Psychom. 650 ff.; Paulin. Poem 22.90–93; Sedul. Carm. pasch. 1.136–47; see Mandile 2011, ch. 3.

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provided material for a Christian poetry of cosmogony to replace the pagan mythological and philosophical cosmogonies. Proba begins her retelling of Genesis (In principio creauit Deus caelum et terram) in Virgil’s words in her Cento where one might expect, with the beginning of the speech of Anchises in Aeneid 6 (Cento 56–59): Principio caelum ac terras camposque liquentes lucentemque globum lunae solisque labores ipse pater statuit, uos, o clarissima mundi lumina labentem caelo quae ducitis annum. In the beginning the father himself established the heavens and earth, and the level surfaces of the sea, and the shining sphere of the moon and the laboring sun, you, most radiant lights of the universe, who guide through heaven the gliding year. ( = Aen. 6.724–25 + Aen. 1.742 + Geo. 1.353 + Geo. 1.5–6).

The Christianization consists in the redirection of two Virgilian fragments: Anchises begins his speech with a Lucretian principio, marking the beginning of an exposition; in the Cento it becomes a temporal adverb, “In the beginning.” Ipse pater statuit paraphrases the biblical creauit Deus: the three words come from Georgics 1.353 where they refer to an act of cosmic organization, not creation, on the part of Father Jupiter, who “ordained” the meaning of celestial and natural weather signs. When Paulinus of Nola writes a verse protreptikon to his friend Jovius, urging him to turn to poetry on biblical themes, and away from mythological fictions or the praise of earthly deeds (Poem 22),44 the program of sacred poetry has a strong emphasis on a sublime cosmic poetry, beginning: “You set about discovering the causes of creation and the beginnings of the universe” (35 nosse moues causas rerum et primordia mundi). Paulinus diverts to Christian ends the naturalphilosophical subject matter of the Ovidian Pythagoras: “He taught the beginnings of the great universe, the causes of things, and what nature is” (Met. 15.67–68 magni primordia mundi | et rerum causas et quid natura docebat).45 Paulinus extols the power of the God who “governs sky and sea, stars and winds, with the same power with which He made them” (89–90 caelum, mare, sidera, uentos, | qua fecit uirtute regens). This is followed by proofs (documenta) of his cosmic power, beginning with the crossing of the Red Sea, followed by Jonah in the storm, and biblical examples of heavenly bodies stopped in their course. Summing up, Paulinus tells Jovius: “Sing of the mighty projects of the Thunderer, write of the 44. On Poem 22, see also ch. 1. 45. For another appropriation of Ovid’s cosmic history, cf. 22.40 (Moses) compositum prima referens ab origine mundum; cf. Met. 1.3 primaque ab origine mundi. On the use by late antique poets of Ovid’s account of cosmogony, see Roberts 2002.

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beginnings of the universe created by the Word, of the chaos before there was day and the dawn of the first light. Write of all the words and deeds of God achieved in the different ages through all the elements. You will learn of them through the holy books” (149–53 cane grandia coepta Tonantis, | scribe creatarum uerbo primordia rerum | et chaos ante diem primaeque crepuscula lucis, | quaeque dehinc uariis elementa per omnia saeclis | dicta uel acta Deo per sancta uolumina disces). C O S M I C AS PE C T S OF T H E NA R R AT I V E OF T H E C R E AT I ON OF M A N A N D T H E FA L L

I conclude this chapter with a look at a more extended play on cosmic themes in poetic versions of the Creation and Fall. Adam is created as the cosmic spectator and as possessor of the cosmos. The Fall plays out as cosmic drama in a tradition of biblical poetry that reaches from late antiquity to Milton and beyond. I will start near the end of the tradition. When Eve and then Adam eat of the apple in book 9 of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the natural world itself responds with “signs of woe” (780–84 Eve, 997–1004 Adam): So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate: Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe,46 That all was lost. he scrupled not to eat Against his better knowledge, not deceived, But fondly overcome with female charm. Earth trembled from her entrails, as again In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan, Sky loured, and muttering thunder, some sad drops Wept at completing of the mortal sin Original.

The two passages allude to the weird cosmic response to the union of Dido and Aeneas in the cave at Aeneid 4.166–68: “The sign was first given by Earth and Juno 46. “Woe” refers the reader back to the beginning of the poem, 1.2–3 “whose mortal taste | Brought death into the world, and all our woe,” but the woe is also that of the world; on the macrocosmic consequences of the Fall, see Fowler 2007 on Paradise Lost 9.782–84, referring to Rom. 8:22 “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain.” The thought is common in poetry on the Fall; e.g., Beaumont, Psyche 6.254 “Up went her desperate Hand, and reach’d away | All the Worlds Blisse whil’st she the Apple took: | When loe, the Earth did move, the Heav’ns did stay, | Beasts and Birds shiver’d, absent Adam shook.” For the changes in nature after the Fall, see Sylvester’s Du Bartas “The Furies,” Divine Weeks II.i.3 (Snyder 1979, 1:357–79).

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as matron of honour. Fires flashed and the heavens were witness to the marriage while nymphs wailed on the mountain tops” (prima et Tellus et pronuba Iuno | dant signum; fulsere ignes et conscius aether | conubiis summoque ulularunt uertice Nymphae).47 “The elements are all witnesses at this ‘wedding.’ ”48 The Virgilian narrator’s words in the immediately following line and a bit are not directly alluded to by Milton in Paradise Lost 9, but they have a very precise applicability to what has just happened in Eden: “That day was the beginning of her death, the first cause of all her sufferings” (Aen. 4.169–70 ille dies primus leti primusque malorum | causa fuit). The third line of Paradise Lost (1.3) may echo those words: “Brought death [leti] into the world, and all our woe [malorum].”49 The consequences of the eating of the apple are universal in both spatial and temporal terms: the immediate reactions of Earth and Nature are a prelude to the large-scale cosmic effects of the Fall that God brings about at 10.649–714 (on which see below). In temporal terms the effect of the Fall will last for the whole of human history down to the Second Coming and the general resurrection of the dead, when death will finally cease to exist (death’s death). In the Aeneid the day of Dido and Aeneas’s union in the cave is the beginning of death and woes for the individual Dido, but also the start of much longer historical processes involving huge numbers of people, culminating in the Punic Wars, viewed by the Romans as a world war of cosmic proportions.50 What happens in Eden is localized in space, and is a drama with just four actors, Adam, Eve, the Serpent/Satan, and God. But the cosmic response of Nature to the eating of the apple in Milton’s highly classicizing retelling of the Genesis story is just a part of a larger narrative whose cosmic aspects are already developed in late antique biblical poetry by overlaying elements of classical poetry of cosmos on the biblical story. According to Genesis, man was created to be lord of the world—a doctrine that has not been without its problems in an age of the advocacy of environmental stewardship, rather than mastery. As Milton’s God puts it to Adam (Paradise Lost 8.338–41): “Not only these fair bounds [of Eden], but all the earth | To thee and to 47. On the allusion, first noted by Addison, see Porter 1993, 112. 48. Pease 1935 ad loc. See also Hardie 1986, 318. 49. For the day that first brings death, cf. Paradise Lost 8.329–30 “The day thou eat’st thereof, my sole command | Transgressed, inevitably thou shalt die”; 9.762–63 (Eve) “In the day we eat | Of this fair fruit, our doom is, we shall die.” “Day” and “die” resonate against each other in both these passages; the Latin for “day” spells “dies” in English; malum (with a difference in quantity in the first syllable) is the Latin for both “apple” and “woe, misfortune”; for a possible example of the pun in Virgil, see O’Hara 1996, 268; for a late antique example, see ch. 6. Adam and Eve are already married, but in a repetition of the “sacred marriage” of Zeus and Hera in Iliad 14, they immediately fall to a love-making that Adam thinks repeats his first gaze on his wife on another “first day”: 9.1029–31 “For never did thy beauty since the day | I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorned | With all perfections, so inflame my sense”; cf. Il. 14.294–96. 50. See Lucr. 3.832–37; Hardie 1986, 168–69.

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thy race I give; as lords | Possess it, and all things that therein live, | Or live in sea or air, beast, fish and fowl”—that is, the animals that populate the three worlddivisions of earth, sea, and sky. Milton is here faithful to the phrasing of Genesis, where God names the three divisions.51 Looking to the classical tradition, one can compare, for example, the power of Lucretius’s Venus, as embodiment of desire and pleasure, over the inhabitants of the three divisions. It is no surprise that poetic rewritings of Genesis have recourse to the cosmic and imperialist language of classical epic, and of Virgil above all. Proba reaches for suitable fragments in her Cento in the account of the creation of man: after creating the animals, God debates with himself “who should hold sway over the sea and all the lands” (113 qui mare, qui terras omni dicione tenerent). This is a line in which Virgil’s Venus reminds Jupiter of his promise that in the fullness of time the Romans will rule the world (Aen. 1.236).52 After the creation of Eve, God appears in Proba’s Cento in the guise of the Virgilian Jupiter in his most sublime cosmocratic appearance in the Aeneid, as he calms the restless Olympians in the Council of Gods in Aeneid 10.53 Proba’s God addresses the happy first couple as the recipients of endless empire, with the famous line and a half in which Jupiter reaffirms his promise to Venus: “On them I impose no limits of time or place. I have given them an empire without an end” (Cento 142–43 his ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono: | imperium sine fine dedi [= Aen. 1.278–79]). Proba’s God drives the point home with a line from Virgil’s account of the immortality of the race of bees in Georgic 4, distributed over two lines in the Cento: “But the race abides immortal, and through many years” (143 and 145 at genus immortale manet, multosque per annos [= Geo. 4.208]). What Virgil means, looking through the society of bees to the ideology of the Roman state, is that although individual bees are short-lived, their race is immortal through the succession of like-minded generations: “They number their grandfathers’ grandfathers” (Geo. 4.209 aui numerantur auorum). In the prelapsarian world of Eden the race of humans is literally immortal, since death has not yet entered the universe.54 51. Gen. 1:26 et ait, “faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram, et praesit piscibus maris et uolatilibus caeli et bestiis uniuersaeque terrae omnique reptili quod mouetur in terra”; 1:28 benedixitque illis Deus et ait: “crescite et multiplicamini et replete terram et subicite eam et dominamini piscibus maris et uolatilibus caeli et uniuersis animantibus quae mouentur super terra.” 52. On Proba’s systematic conversion of Virgil’s Augustan ideology to religious ends, see Herzog 1975, 31–35. 53. Cento 136–38 his demum exactis torquet qui sidera mundi | infit: eo dicente premit placida aequora pontus | et tremefacta solo tellus, silet arduus aether (Aen. 6.637, 9.93; 10.101, 10.103; 10.102). 54. This revision of Virgilian meaning is continued in the next line and a half: Cento 145–46 nec tarda senectus | debilitat uires animi mutatque uigorem ( = Aen. 9.611–12, where Numanus’s point is that even in old age the Italians retain their vigor; old age itself does not exist in Eden). For another example of cosmic and imperial language in a verse paraphrase of Genesis, cf. Ps.-Hilary Metrum in Genesim (ca. a.d. 430; ed. Kreuz 2006) 111–16 his ubi perfectis genitor iam diuite mundo | cuncta uidet

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The early sixth-century Avitus in his De spiritalis historiae gestis works Lucretian and Virgilian language into his account of God setting man over the brute animals (1.59–68): hunc libet erectum uultu praeponere pronis, qui regat aeterno subiectum foedere mundum, bruta domet, legem cunctis ac nomina ponat, astra notet, caelique uias et sidera norit, discat et inspectis discernere tempora signis. subiciat pelagus saeuum, ingenioque tenaci possideat quaecumque uidet. cui bestia frendens seruiat, et posito discant mansueta furore imperium iumenta pati, iussique ligari festinent trepidi consueta in uincla iuuenci.

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My will is to place him with countenance erect over the animals that look at the ground, to rule by eternal decree the world subject to him, to tame the brute animals, to be the giver of laws and names to all things, to mark the stars, to understand the paths of the sky and the stars, and to learn to watch the signs and distinguish the seasons. Let him subject the cruel sea, and with steadfast intelligence be the possessor of all that he sees. Let the roaring beast be his servant, and let animals of burden put off their anger and learn to suffer his rule tamely, and let oxen accept the command to be yoked and hasten quickly to their accustomed bonds.

The Georgics rather than the Aeneid are the main source here, with the emphasis as much on intellectual mastery as physical empire.55 After the creation of Eve, Avitus’s God addresses the newlyweds with an adaptation of the Virgilian imperium sine fine to the epithalamial topos of the wish for numerous progeny, a wish that in the mouth of God looks like a certain promise (1.172–79): uiuite concordi studio mundumque replete, crescat longaeuum felici semine germen; non annis numerus uitae nec terminus esto. progeniem sine fine dedi, quam tempore toto

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curam magni deposcere regis, | qui mare, qui terras atque omnia nata gubernet, | quique altum spectet caelum laudetque potenter | munera magna dei, ne sint haec condita frustra: | tunc “faciamus, ais, hominem”; after praise of God’s handiwork in making man, 155–59 ergo hominem pleno perfectum munere terris | praeponis, genitor, et rerum tradis habenas [Aen. 7.600] | cuncta habeat subdatque sibi, : | telluris dominus, famulus tuus, omnia mundi | possideat, tantum domino tibi seruiat uni; effects of the Fall on nature and man, 175 ff. tum primum uenti coepere incumbere terris etc., 180–81 furor impius orbem | obsidet et laxis rabies defertur habenis [cf. Virg. Geo. 1.511–14]; 185–90 sin is washed away by the Flood, 186 uirque unus residet generis populique refector, 189 atque unus, multi per quem data luce renati; see Witke 1971, 191–95. 55. Cf. Geo. 1.60–61 continuo has leges aeternaque foedera certis | imposuit natura locis (aeterna/ um foedera/us also at Aen. 11.356, 12.191; Cat. 109.6); 2.477 caelique uias et sidera monstrent.

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accipies, generi primus qui poneris auctor. pronepos eductos spargens per saecla nepotes uiuentes numeret proauos, inque ora parentum ducant annosos natorum pignora natos. Live in harmony and fill the world, and let your long-lived progeny grow from blessed seed; let there be no number or limit to the years of your life. I have given you offspring without end, which you will welcome for all time, you who are the first author of your race. Let your great grandson, sowing and bringing up his grandsons through the centuries, number his living ancestors, and may their sons bring sons laden with years into the presence of their parents.

By biblically multiplying and filling the earth Adam will author an offspring that will constitute the equivalent of a worldwide imperium. This progenies will be without an end not just because it will not be limited in number, but because it will not suffer the end of death. The generational continuity, the unbroken line of fathers and sons, that is so important for classical epic here becomes generational coexistence.56 The wedding is bound by an aeternum foedus, as was Adam’s rule over the world (61). God’s hymeneal is accompanied by a choir of angels, and the wedding itself is a cosmic event, with the world for dowry and the stars as joyful witnesses (as in Claudian’s epithalamium for Stilicho and Serena, on which see above), 188–92: taliter aeterno coniungens foedere uota festiuum dicebat ymen, castoque pudori concinit angelicum iuncto modulamine carmen. pro thalamo paradisus erat, mundusque dabatur in dotem, et laetis gaudebant sidera flammis.57 Joining their marriage-vows thus with an eternal bond, he sung a festive weddingsong, and a harmonious choir of angels sung for the chaste and modest couple. Paradise was their wedding-chamber, the world was given them as dowry, and the bright flames of the stars rejoiced.

This is all ironic: the Fall will introduce the regime of death and generational (only) continuity that we are familiar with in our world, and the castus pudor of the human couple will turn into a guilty shame of nakedness after the Fall. 56. Cf. Ps.-Claudian, Epithalamium Laurentii 85–87 (Birt 1892, 407) uiuite felices quam longaque carpite saecla; | uiuite concordes, donec premat una senectus | ambo et uestra habeant natorum uota nepotes. With saecla nepotes, cf. Geo. 2.294–95 (the oak-tree) immota manet multosque nepotes, | multa uirum uoluens durando saecula uincit. With SHG 1.179 natorum . . . natos, cf. Aen. 3.98 et nati natorum et qui nascentur ab illis. Inque ora parentum reverses the use of the phrase in Virgil of sons killed before their fathers. SHG 1.176 accipies = Aen. 1.290 accipies secura. 57. Cf. Claud. Cons. Stil. 1.84–85.

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In the Alethia of Claudius Marius Victorius (ca. 430), one of Avitus’s sources, a paradoxical twist is given to the idea of the unfallen Adam’s cosmic empire, at the point where God pronounces the prohibition on eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (1.332–37): at tu, quem sacri nectit custodia iuris, ne querere, angustis quod clausa licentia metis parte sit orbe sui: nihil hac tibi lege recisum est. ante potestatem tantum terraeque marisque nanctus eras, nunc iam regni uitaeque perennis, nunc et mortis habes.

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Do not complain, you who are bound to keep the sacred law, that your freedom is partial and restricted within narrow limits: nothing is diminished for you by this rule. Before you had received power only over earth and sea, but now power over eternal rule and eternal life, now over death too.

By his freedom to choose whether or not to obey the prohibition, Adam gains power not just over the things of the earth, but over immortality and mortality.58 Man’s universal empire in Eden is contingent on the continuing awareness that he is in turn subject to the supreme ruler, the God who created the universe over which he holds final and absolute sway. The proportionality of God to man, and man to created world, is comparable to that between human kings and the Olympian king, Jupiter, as laid out by Horace: “Dread kings hold sway over their flocks; over kings rules Jupiter” (Odes 3.1.5–6 regum timendorum in proprios greges, | reges in ipsos imperium est Iouis). Or, in the words that Avitus puts in the mouth of God (SHG 1.133–37): Haec quae mundanis cernis pulcherrima rebus incrementa nouis ornatum tensa per orbem, solus habe totisque prior dominare fruendo. tu mihi, cuncta tibi famulentur; maximus ordo est te parere pio qui subdidit omnia Patri. These most beautiful additions to the new earthly kingdom which you see extending throughout the ordered world, take to yourself alone, and, set over all beings, rule and enjoy. You serve me, and let all things serve you; the greatest ordinance is that you should obey the sacred father, who has command over all.

Failure to remember this truth, disobedience to the one thing in the world that is not in the possession and power of Adam and Eve, will lead to the exchange of 58. Cf. Paradise Lost 4.427–35 “God hath pronounced it death to taste that tree, | The only sign of our obedience left | Among so many signs of power and rule | Conferred upon us, and dominion given | Over all other creatures that possess | Earth, air, and sea. Then let us not think hard | One easy prohibition, who enjoy | Free leave so large to all things else, and choice | Unlimited of manifold delights.”

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empire for exile (reversing the Virgilian plot of the path from dispossession to world-rule). False praise is the danger here, praise of a kind that is regularly dispensed to the earthly rulers of the world (for example, in the Panegyrici Latini or Claudian’s panegyrical epics), or to the godlike woman who rules the lover’s heart. This is the tactic of Milton’s serpent in his temptation of Eve in book nine of Paradise Lost, as he elevates her to the status of a universal sovereign and empress, worthy to be considered a goddess: “Wonder not, sovereign mistress, if perhaps Thou can’st, who art sole wonder. . . . ........................................ Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine By gift, and thy celestial beauty adore With ravishment beheld, there best beheld Where universally admired; . . . ........................................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . who shouldst be seen A goddess among gods, adored and served By angels numberless thy daily train. ........................................ Empress of this fair world, resplendent Eve, Easy to me it is to tell thee all What thou command’st, and right thou should’st be obeyed.” (9.532–33, 539–42, 546–48, 568–70)

By way of climax, the serpent claims that after having eaten of the tree himself, his newly acquired understanding of the cosmic show enables him to judge correctly of Eve’s cosmic sovereignty (although in fact he is awarding prizes in a beauty contest): “Thenceforth to speculations high or deep I turned my thoughts, and with capacious mind Considered all things visible in heaven Or earth or middle, all things fair and good; But all that fair and good in thy divine Semblance, and thy beauty’s heavenly ray United I beheld; no fair to thine Equivalent or second, which compelled Me thus, though importune perhaps, to come And gaze, and worship thee of right declared Sovereign of creatures, universal dame.”59 (9.602–12) 59. Fowler (2007) on Paradise Lost 9.532–48 notes that flattery of Eve as a goddess is common in Renaissance poems on the Fall; for the relevance to the fashions of contemporary gallantry, see Berkely 1951.

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Avitus’s De spiritalis historiae gestis is one of the late antique biblical epics on which Milton drew in Paradise Lost.60 Avitus’s Satan addresses something like a cosmic hymn to Eva-uirgo (SHG 2.145–60), beginning: “O happy glory of the world, most beautiful virgin” (145 O felix mundique decus, pulcherrima uirgo); and praising her as our general mother: “You are the parent of future generations, the vast world awaits you as mother” (147–48 tu generi uentura parens, te maximus orbis | expectat matrem). He then flatters her by reminding her of the empire over the world that she and Adam have been granted by God (152–56):61 uobis digna datur paradisi in uertice sedes, uos subiecta tremit famulans substantia mundi; quod caelum, quod terra creat, quod gurgite magno producit pelagus, uestros confertur in usus. nil natura negat, datur ecce in cuncta potestas. You are worthy of the seat granted you at the summit of paradise, the substantial world your subject trembles in your service; for your use is gathered whatever sky and earth bring forth, whatever the sea yields from its mighty waters. Nature denies you nothing, see, you are granted power over all things.

The serpent’s false praise is extorted by the fallen Satan’s envy at the blessed existence of Adam and Eve and their joyful lordship over the world: “Obedient to the terms laid down they are lords of a servile world, and amidst calm joys they enjoy the submission of all things” (SHG 2.79–80 lege sub accepta famulo dominarier orbi, | subiectisque frui placida inter gaudia rebus).62 The Fall triggers a radical change for the worse in all the divisions of the world over which the unfallen Adam and Eve have power. Marius Victorius and Avitus both register a sympathetic and immediate response in the natural world, but at the pronouncement of God’s judgment rather than at the moment of the eating of the apple. In the Alethia the three world-divisions shake as God begins to speak, alluding to the cosmic effects of the Virgilian and Ovidian Jupiter;63 Marius Victorius then goes further in identifying God’s sentence as the moment of the creation 60. On Milton’s knowledge of Avitus, see Döpp 2009, 98 n. 1: “Miltons Avitus-Rezeption ist noch nicht ausführlich untersucht worden” (with further references); see also Duncan 1972, ch. 3 on late antique biblical epics, and Milton’s knowledge thereof. 61. On Avitus’s temptation and fall, see Homey (2009), who points out the parallels with the Gospel accounts of the temptation of Christ. 62. Avitus may have in mind Prudentius, Hamartigenia 191–94 on Satan’s envy at seeing a creature of clay, dominum quoque conditioni | impositum, natura soli pelagique polique | ut famulans homini locupletem fundere partum | nosset et effusum terreno addicere regi. See Palla 1981 on 191–94: “Il concetto dell’ uomo signore dell’ universo.” 63. Aen. 10.100–103 et tremefacta solo tellus; Met. 1.179–80 terrificam capitis concussit terque quaterque | caesariem, cum qua terram, mare, sidera mouit.

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of the fourth world-division of the underworld: “After his inquiry had identified the chief culprits, the omnipotent began to speak—as he spoke, sky, sea, and land trembled, and the earth, shaken, laid open her vast recesses, and while he pronounced sentence, he created hell” (1.471–74 postquam excussa reos distinxit quaestio summos, | incipit omnipotens—caelum, mare, terra loquenti | intremit, et uastos pandit concussa recessus, | dumque reos punit sententia, Tartara fecit). More conventionally, Avitus registers the shaking of the earth as the response to God’s sentence on Adam at SHG 3.194 (audierat motumque dedit conterrita tellus).64 In his preceding speech (155–93) God enumerates the ills that will be inflicted on the natural world and on Adam and his posterity, as punishment for Adam’s disobedience, a punishment that will stretch through universal time, from the newly created earth (189 telluremque nouam) that will be stained with the blood of a brother murdered by brother, to the final dissolution of the world grown old (192 dum ueterem ductus dissoluat terminus orbem). Avitus narrates the degeneration of the natural and human worlds, as ordained by God at SHG 3.315–61. The biblical text is the imposition of God’s curse on the earth and on Adam, labor and toil, bread earned in the sweat of his face, and finally return to the dust whence he came (Gen. 3:17–19).65 For Avitus it is not a Stoic cosmic sympathy that makes nature respond to Adam’s crime, but a punishment that fits the crime: “Following your example the earth will always be at war with you, and, armed with brambles and thistles, will learn to resist you” (3.160–61 exemploque tuo semper tibi terra rebellans | uepribus ac tribulis armata resistere discet); this follows similar formulations in Prudentius (Ham. 213–15, 247–50) and Marius Victorius (Aleth. 1.514–15), and is in keeping with Augustine’s interpretation of the disobedience of the earth (and of the flesh, whose disobedience is registered in the new sense of shame) as a reflection of man’s disobedience to God.66 A recurrent classical model for the effects of the Fall on nature in Christian poetry is Virgil’s explanation in the Georgics of the need, in the here and now, for unremitting hard work on the farm, in a war against pests and weeds, as the result of a cosmic event in the past, Jupiter’s disturbance of nature in order to bring to an end the slothful existence of the Golden Age, the so-called theodicy at Georgics 1.118–46. Proba drops undiluted chunks of the “theodicy” into her account of the deterioration of the world (drawing also on Evander’s culture-history of Latium in Aeneid 8), locating the main process after the murder of Abel rather than after the 64. Hoffmann (2005) compares the reaction of the earth to Christ on the cross, i.e., the moment of the redemption of Adam’s sin; Hoffmann also has numerous parallels for the earth shaken, or nature frightened, by God in the Vulgate and Christian poetry, as well as the many classical parallels. 65. Maledicta terra in opere tuo in laboribus comedes eam cunctis diebus uitae tuae. spinas et tribulos germinabit tibi et comedes herbas terrae. in sudore uultus tui uesceris pane, donec reuertaris in terram de qua sumptus es, quia puluis es et in puluerem reuerteris. 66. See Hoffmann 2005 on SHG 3.160–61, citing Aug. Gen. ad litt. 8.10, p. 246.2–11; CD 13.13.

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Fall itself (Cento 290–306). Proba is followed by Prudentius (Ham. 216 ff.) and Avitus, who looks back to Virgil through Prudentius in an example of window reference.67 Prudentius and Avitus also draw on the Lucanian vision of a cosmos returned to chaos through human wrongdoing, in order to expand from the model of the Virgilian theodicy to a vision of cosmic and elemental disturbance in nature: ipsa quoque oppositum destructo foedere certo transcendunt elementa modum rapiuntque ruuntque omnia legirupis quassantia uiribus orbem. nec tamen his tantam rabiem nascentibus ipse conditor instituit, sed laxa licentia rerum turbauit placidas rupto moderamine leges. nec mirum si membra orbis concussa rotantur, si uitiis agitata suis mundana laborat machina, si terras luis incentiua fatigat: exemplum dat uita hominum, quo cetera peccent. Prudentius, Hamartigenia 236–38, 244–50

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The very elements, too, breaking down established order, overpass the bound set for them and ravage all things with their havoc, shaking the world with lawless strength. . . . Yet the creator ordained no such raging for the elements at their birth, but the loose indiscipline of the world, breaking through control, upset its peaceful laws. And no wonder if the world’s parts are shaken and tossed, if the machinery of the universe fails to work smoothly because it is thrown out of order by faults in itself, and the urge that plagues it gives the earth no rest; for the life of man sets an example for all else to sin. ipsa etiam leges ruperunt tunc elementa et uiolare fidem mortalibus omnia certant. inflatur uentis pelagus, uoluuntur et undae, excitusque nouum turgescit pontus in aestum. tunc primum tectis taetra caligine caelis ingratos hominum castigatura labores grandineos pauidis fuderunt nubila nimbos, atque polus discors inuidit germina terris. quin magis ipsa sibi tellus aduersa negauit seminis excepti uertens mentita nitorem. Avitus, SHG 3.323–32

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The elements themselves then broke their laws, and all things were eager to violate their faith with mankind. The sea was puffed up with winds and the waves rolled, and the ocean was roused and swelled into new surges. Then for the first time the heavens 67. Arweiler 1999, 313–17.

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were hidden in foul darkness, and the clouds poured out storms of hail on terrified mortals, to punish man’s thankless labors, and the sky at war with itself begrudged the earth its seeds. Furthermore the earth, at enmity with herself, refused to bear, and, making false promises, corrupted the brightness of the seed she had received.

The lines from the early fifth-century poem of Avitus are a good example of the layering of allusions to a whole range of earlier Latin poetry of cosmos, with echoes of Lucretius, Virgil, Lucan, and Claudian.68 I end with Milton, and the magnificent passage in book 10 of Paradise Lost that sums up much of this tradition, narrating the rearrangement in the cosmic system that God introduces after the Fall through the agency of his angels, “as sorted best with present things,” thus producing the flawed world inhabited by postlapsarian humanity, matching macrocosm to microcosm (10.651–714). The effects on “lifeless things” (707) are astronomical and meteorological, and Milton combines notions from classical antiquity with seventeenth-century science and geography. In the Metamorphoses Ovid tells how Jupiter put an end to the eternal spring of the Golden Age with the introduction of the four seasons in the Silver Age (Met. 1.116– 20). Milton’s prelapsarian system is one in which the ecliptic and the equatorial circles coincide, so that there are neither solstices nor seasons. God abolishes the “spring perpetual” of Eden69 by engineering the ecliptic we know, either by tilting the axis of the earth to the requisite angle or by making “the sun . . . turn [his] reins from the equinoctial road” (671–72); Milton hedges his bets between a heliocentric and a geocentric theory. Storm is the dominant image for the chaotic “outrage” that henceforth troubles the fallen world. Milton’s winds swoop down from remote lands on a map unknown to the ancients, from North America, Siberia, and West Africa, but “bursting [the] brazen dungeon” (697) of Virgil’s winds, imprisoned by Aeolus in Aeneid 1. Milton suggests, without actually stating, that the winds from the four points of the compass all blow together in a Homeric and Virgilian battle of the winds.70 Some lines earlier Milton draws on the Virgilian fantasy that the winds unchained might sweep away the three divisions of the universe (PL 10.664– 66): “to the winds they [the angels] set | Their corners, when with bluster to confound | Sea, air, and shore”; cf. Aeneid 1.58–59: “[If Aeolus did not keep the winds 68. Cf. Claud, Rapt. 1.42–43 paene reluctatis iterum pugnantia rebus | rupissent elementa fidem. With 324, cf. Lucr. 4.462–63 cetera de genere hoc mirande multa uidemus, | quae uiolare fidem quasi sensibus omnia quaerunt. With 331–32, cf. Luc. 1.647 segetes tellus infida negabit? and Virg. Geo. 1.127–28 ipsaque tellus | omnia liberius nullo poscente ferebat (used of Eden at Proba, Cento 168–69). 69. Paradise Lost 10.678–79 “else had the spring | Perpetual smiled on earth with vernant flowers”; cf. Ov. Met. 1.107–8 uer erat aeternum, placidique tepentibus auris | mulcebant Zephyri natos sine semine flores. 70. The winds explicitly all blow together in the storm raised by Satan at Paradise Regained 4.410– 15: “the clouds . . . | Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water with fire | In ruin reconciled: nor slept the winds | Within their stony caves, but rushed abroad | From the four hinges of the world.”

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in check, the winds] would catch up the sea, the earth, and the deeps of the sky and sweep them along through space” (maria ac terras caelumque profundum | quippe ferant rapidi secum uerrant per auras).71 These changes in nature extend to the cosmic scale the “signs of woe” that marked the original eating of the apple, the signs of woe that allude to the Virgilian storm from which Dido and Aeneas shelter in the cave in Aeneid 4. In the sequel to the astronomical and meterological disturbances in Paradise Lost 10 Milton moves first to the effects of Discord on the animal world, warfare among the inhabitants of earth, air, and sea (710–11 “Beast now with beast gan war, and fowl with fowl, | And fish with fish”), before returning to the source of all this woe, Adam, who watches with dismay the deterioration in nature, “but worse felt within, | And in a troubled sea of passion tossed” (717–18).72 The results of the Fall have spread outward in widening concentric circles that extend to the circles of the heavens, and now we return to the original source of the disturbance, the one man created as lord of the universe, the microcosm now reflecting back the new state of the macrocosm—“as sorted best with present things.”

71. “Confound” suggests the confusion of Chaos; cf. Ov. Met. 2.298–99 si freta, si terrae pereunt, si regia caeli, | in Chaos antiquum confundimur. 72. Cf. 9.1121–26 “They sat them down to weep, nor only tears | Rained at their eyes, but high winds worse within | Began to rise, high passions, anger, hate, | Mistrust, suspicion, discord, and shook sore | Their inward state of mind, calm region once | And full of peace, now tossed and turbulent.”

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Concord and Discord Concordia Discors

In chapter 2 I drew attention to several late antique elaborations of the Virgilian opposition of concord and discord. This is indeed “a vital but neglected thematic nexus in the Aeneid,” as Francis Cairns demonstrated in a chapter on concord and discord in his book Virgil’s Augustan Epic.1 Although it has been neglected by modern scholars, perhaps, it is a thematic nexus to which late antique poets are repeatedly drawn. Concordia and discordia figure large in both the political and the theological spheres, signs of the “late-Roman preoccupation with concord.”2 Claudian and Prudentius both draw on key Virgilian passages that dramatize a drive to concord disrupted by discord (the central plot of the Aeneid), or project an image of unity in variety (the map of empire). In the political sphere the hope for concord and fear of discord speak to the perceived danger of division between the western and eastern empires, and, in the religious sphere, to the danger of schism and heresy. The political and theological may coincide—for example, in the division between a western orthodox, and an eastern Arian, Christianity. The unity of the Roman Empire enables the harmonious coexistence of the various peoples of the world united in their Christian faith under the Christian emperor. As an interpretation of history this “Reichstheologie” reflects a more general emphasis in early Christianity on the importance of the spiritual community and unity of Christians in the act of worship: as John Chrystostom remarks in

1. Cairns 1989, 85–108. For encyclopedia articles on homonoia/concordia, see Shapiro 1990; Hölscher 1990; .Thraede 1994. 2. Brown 1981, 96.

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Homiliae in Joannem 79 (PG 59.426), for example, “In the mysteries we embrace one another, so that many we may become one.”3 Unity in variety has more specific meanings in the mysteries of the Christian faith: the Trinity combines three separate persons in one substance, and the Incarnation yokes the opposites of man and god, mortal and immortal (on the resulting paradoxes, see chapter 6). Acts 4:31–32 tells of the effect of the Holy Spirit in producing unanimity in a multitude of believers who had one heart and one soul: “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul (cor et anima una): neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common (erant illis omnia communia)” (32).4 In his versification of Acts, Arator presents this social concord as an argument for believing in the doctrine of the Trinity (Historia apostolica 1.383–88): ecce tot egregiis unum cor esse cateruis incipit, atque animam populus nanciscitur unam. quis dubitare queat mysteria dogmatis, unum personas tres esse Deum? cum milia uulgi conueniant sub mente pari numerique frequentis sint animi uelut unus homo. Lo, so many troops of distinguished men began to be of one heart, and a whole people acquired a single soul. Who could doubt the mysteries of Christian teaching, that one God is three persons? When a crowd of thousands come together in like mind, and the spirits of a numerous throng are like one man.

In Christian writers a specifically fraternal unanimity, for which there are important Virgilian texts (see below), is reinforced by biblical texts, particularly Psalm 132: 1 ecce quam bonum et quam iucundum habitare fratres in unum (“See what a good and pleasant thing it is for brothers to dwell in unity”).5 T H E HA R MON I OU S VA R I ET Y OF E M PI R E : R E F L E C T I ON S OF T H E S H I E L D OF A E N E AS

William Fitzgerald has recently drawn attention to the importance of the Shield of Aeneas for the theme of imperial diversity. He corrects David Quint’s reading of the shield in terms of a table of Pythagorean opposites between the chaos of Antony’s eastern barbarian army and the order of Augustus’s Italians and Romans, between 3. Cited by Quasten (1931, 100, with other similar examples at 91–102). 4. Cited, for example, by Ambrose at De Isaac uel anima 7.59 (PL 14.524C); in that passage Ambrose also praises the bride of Song of Songs: quod una sicut columba habens spiritus unitatem, in qua sit pax, quae fecit utraque unum et quae non sit composita ex diuersis elementis discretae conpugnantisque naturae. 5. See Burton 2017 on Sulpicius Severus, Epistula ad Desiderium 1 frater unanimis; Burton also cites Ps. 54:14 tu uero homo unanimis, dux meus et notus meus.

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the one and the many, the national unity of the western army and the disordered multiplicity of the variegated eastern army.6 Fitzgerald points to the occurrence of uarius, “diverse, manifold, varying, various,” on both sides of the table, applied to Antony’s army (Aen. 8.685 “On the other side, with the wealth of the barbarian world and warriors in all kinds of different armour, came Anthony” [hinc ope barbarica uariisque Antonius armis]), and to the peoples of the world who process in the triumph of Augustus (722–23 “The defeated nations walked in long procession, with all their different languages, and in all their different costumes and armour” [incedunt uictae longo ordine gentes, | quam uariae linguis, habitu tam uestis et armis]). Fitzgerald shows that unity in diversity is a recurrent theme in a number of texts that allude to the image of empire on the Virgilian shield. The third poem of Martial’s Liber spectaculorum describes the gathering in Rome at the emperor’s games of spectators from the remotest and most barbarian parts of the world. The poem ends: “The peoples speak in different tongues, but they speak with one tongue, when you are proclaimed as the true father of the fatherland” (11–12 uox diuersa sonat populorum, tum tamen una est, | cum uerus patriae diceris esse pater).7 What has not been fully brought out is the extent to which the Virgilian shield thematizes, and sums up, the tension between concord and discord that Cairns rightly identifies as central to the plot of the Aeneid. In his discussion of the shield, Cairns draws attention to the “civil war” between father-in-law Tatius and son-inlaw Romulus; to the battle of Actium, with Discordia at its center; and to the dithyrambic and Herculean associations of the triumph, Hercules being a Cynic figure of the reconciler and bringer of concord.8 But the opposition is from the outset built into an artifact that translates the Empedoclean polarity of Strife and Love into a Roman historical narrative of war and peace,9 establishing an analogy between political concord and cosmic harmony.10 Images of division and unity figure large on the shield, from the opening scene of the twins peacefully playing and suckling from the she-wolf, who bestows equal attention on the two (634 mulcere alternos), in a pastoral cave of Mars (itself a paradoxical combination). The Roman twins are, to use the phrase that Virgil applies to the souls of Pompey and Caesar before their incarnation in the world of civil war, concordes animae nunc, “harmonious souls for the time being” (Aen. 6.827), as they will be after their mortal lives, in the conclusion of Jupiter’s prophecy at 1.292–93: “Silver-haired Truth and Vesta, and Romulus Quirinus with his brother Remus, will 6. Fitzgerald (2016, 73–83), taking issue with Quint (1993, 25). Fitzgerald is not entirely fair to Quint, who includes under the second occurrence in his table of the opposition of “ONE/MANY” the subheading “Imperial unity out of many.” 7. Hinds (2007, 152) compares Spect. 3 with Aen. 8.720–23. 8. Cairns 1989, 97, 102. 9. Hardie 1986, 341, 358. 10. See Cairns 1989, 89 n. 19, 91, 94.

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sit dispensing justice” (cana Fides et Vesta, Remo cum fratre Quirinus | iura dabunt).11 Then they will once more be unanimi fratres “brothers of one mind” (7.335, the target of Allecto). The second scene on the shield is of a proto–civil war between sonsin-law and fathers-in-law, Romans and Sabines, peacefully concluded with treaty sacrifice.12 The third scene shows the condign punishment of the traitor Mettus Fufetius, who had set division between Romans and Albans joined by a treaty, himself bodily divided in a bloody sparagmos: “Chariots driven swiftly in different directions had torn Mettus in two” (642–43 citae Mettum in diuersa quadrigae | distulerant ).13 Diversity and unity structure the climactic scenes of Actium and triumph: in the description of the battle the division of civil war is displaced onto the chaotic diversity of the humans on one side in the battle, Antony’s non-Roman orientals (685 hinc ope barbarica uariisque Antonius armis), and of the gods who fight for them (“all manner of monstrous gods and barking Anubis” [omnigenumque deum monstra et latrator Anubis]). At the height of the battle, gods and personifications of strife and division rage, Mars, the Dirae, culminating in line 702: “Jubilant Discord strode along in her torn cloak” (et scissa gaudens uadit Discordia palla). Discordia is the Empedoclean Neikos, Strife, and she had appeared as such in Ennius’s Annals. In Virgil’s reworking of the Ennian outburst of Discordia (Annals 7) in the Allecto episode in Aeneid 7, she has become the spirit of a kind of civil war between Italians and Trojans, peoples who should, and in the future will, live together in harmony.14 And in two passages, from the first poem of Virgil’s first major work, and the last book of his epic, the line-ending discordia ciuis identifies civil war.15 However, in the scene that emblematizes the pax Augusta, the triumph of Augustus (Octavian) that concludes the shield, diversity and difference are incorporated within, subsumed under, the order, cosmos, of the victorious Augustus, sole world-ruler and representative on earth of the mon-archical Sol, seated as sunking at the threshold of the temple of the sun-god Apollo, whose name could be etymologized as “not many,” a-poll-on,16 and presiding over the orderly procession of the diverse peoples of the world (722–23 incedunt uictae longo ordine gentes, | quam uariae linguis, habitu tam uestis et armis). Line 723 is imitated by Lucan in a comment on the variety and diversity of peoples in the catalogue of Pompey’s troops: “Never . . . did so many kings obey a single leader, never did nations meet so different in dress, never was there such a 11. See Cairns 1989, 99; the Harvard school of course makes something very different of these lines. 12. See Cairns 1989, 97–98. 13. See Livy 1.28. 14. Allecto “footnotes” her identity as Ennian Discordia in her triumphant words to Juno at Aen. 7.545–46: “en, perfecta tibi bello discordia tristi; | dic in amicitiam coeant et foedera iungant.” 15. Ecl. 1.71–72 en quo discordia ciuis | produxit miseros; Aen. 12.583 exoritur trepidos inter discordia ciuis. 16. Plut. Mor. 381F, 388F, 393C.

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confusion of tongues” (Bellum ciuile 3.284–90 non . . . unum | tot reges habuere ducem, coiere nec umquam | tam uariae cultu gentes, tam dissona uulgi | ora). These peoples come together (coiere) in a common cause, but as material for the greatest catastrophe in the civil war between Pompey and Caesar, constituting nothing less than a roll call of the whole world to be offered up for defeat in one fell swoop by Caesar: “That Caesar, favoured by Fortune, might win all at a single cast, Pharsalia presented him with the whole world to conquer at once” (3.296–97 acciperet felix ne non semel omnia Caesar, | uincendum pariter Pharsalia praestitit orbem). The peoples of the world process not in a triumph, but in a funeral, that of Pompey (“provided them as a funeral train befitting the burial of Magnus” [291–92 dignas funere Magni | exequias fortuna dedit]). Claudian turns Lucan’s civil-war strife back into worldwide imperial harmony in his description of Stilicho’s inheritance of the eastern and western empires united by Theodosius: “Yet surely never had such diversities of language and arms met together to form one united people” (Cons. Stil. 1.152–54 certe nec tantis dissona linguis | turba nec armorum cultu diuersior umquam | confluxit populus). A catalogue of peoples is followed by the unifying figure of Stilicho, sole commander of the nations of the world (as regent for Honorius and Arcadius): “Stilicho alone commanded so many nations, all those looked upon by the rising and the setting sun. Amid this such varied confusion of speech and race, there was such peace beneath your rule, such fear of justice to preserve virtue” (160–64 ductor Stilicho tot gentibus unus, | quot uel progrediens uel conspicit occiduus Sol. | in quo tam uario uocum generumque tumultu | tanta quies iurisque metus seruator honesti | te moderante fuit). The identification of the limits of Stilicho’s rule with the extent of the gaze of the Sun acknowledges Virgil’s implicit equation of Augustus with the Sun on the Virgilian shield, and the cliché of “from the lands of sunrise to the lands of sunset”17 has added point when what is at issue is precisely the concord of western and eastern empires.18 Prudentius looks back to the Virgilian shield through the formulations of both Lucan and Claudian in his rewriting of Roman imperialism in Against Symmachus 2.578–633 (see chapter 2). It is the Christian God, working through the instruments of Roman imperial expansion, who has brought the discordant variety of the peoples of the world under a single rule: “God, wishing to bring into partnership peoples discordant in speech and kingdoms of dissonant customs, determined that all the civilized world should be harnessed to one ruling power and bear gentle bonds 17. See Hardie 1986, 356–57. 18. Cf. also Claudian’s reworking of the diverse peoples of the Virgilian shield at 6 Cons. Hon. 69–71: et linguis uariae gentes missique rogatum | foedera Persarum proceres cum patre sedentem | hac quondam uidere domo: cum patre sedentem; as opposed to Aen. 8.720 ipse sedens, here father and son are in harmony, pointing to the succession. See the discussion of this passage in ch. 3.

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in harmony under the yoke” (Symm. 2.586–90 discordes linguis populos et dissona cultu | regna uolens sociare Deus subiungier uni | imperio, quicquid tractabile moribus esset, | concordique iugo retinacula mollia ferre | constituit). Virgil, recall, had applied uarius to both the chaotic barbarians of Antony and the diverse nations brought into the order of Augustan empire. Prudentius uses the adjective omnigenus, applied by Virgil to the Egyptian gods, twice, firstly of the variety of pagan gods easily conquered by Rome (“It was no difficult victory to bend the soft necks of these gods of all kinds” [512–14 nec difficilis fuit . . . uictoria . . . molliaque omnigenum colla inclinare deorum]), and secondly of the diverse parts of the world now brought under the single rule of Rome (“We live in countries the most diverse like fellow-citizens of the same blood dwelling within the single walls of their native city, and all united in an ancestral home” [610–12 uiuitur omnigenis in partibus haud secus ac si | ciues congenitos concludat moenibus unis | urbs patria atque omnes lare conciliemur auito]): diversity now in con-cordant unity. Prudentius uses the oriental Egypt/western Italy contrast that structures the Virgilian account of Actium in order to belittle the significance of the victory at Actium: “It was only a musical instrument that gave Egypt the signal for battle on the waters at Actium, while on the other side the trumpet blared” (Symm. 2.528–29 fluctibus Actiacis signum symphonia belli | Aegypto dederat, clangebat bucina contra). These oriental effeminates were a pushover. Later, Prudentius effects a more radical deconstruction of this central opposition of Augustan poetry, when he counters Symmachus’s claim that there are many paths to the single truth (87 ff., 773 ff.) by asserting that there is only one, Christian, path to the one, Christian, truth, and that the paths of the cults of all other gods are paths of error. From this point of view there is no distinction between Egyptian and Roman religion: “For Isis and Serapis and the Ape with the great tail and the Crocodile are the same thing as Juno, Laverna, Priapus. Those you worship, Nile, these you, Tiber, venerate: it is a single superstition, although the error is of different colours” (2.869–72 Isis enim et Serapis et grandi simia cauda | et crocodilus idem quod Iuno, Laverna, Priapus. | hos tu, Nile, colis, illos tu, Thybri, adoras: | una superstitio19 est, quamuis non concolor error). But this is a delusive kind of unity, an equality in error rather than an equality of diverse peoples under one true god. At 2.623–33 Prudentius dwells on discord both in the larger world, before Roman rule brought the peace that prepared the way for Christ, and in the human soul divided within itself (the subject matter of the Psychomachia), with a flurry of repeated compounds in dis(discordibus, dissimili, disiunctas). This is contrasted with the ordered soul, in which reason exercises sole rule (“controls all the passions under a single order” [631 omne iecur ratione coerceat una]), in submission to the one God (“A settled way of thought draws in God in the heart and subjects itself to one Lord” [632–33 19. Cf. Aen. 12.817 una superstitio superis quae reddita diuis.

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sententia certa | haurit corde Deum domino et subiungitur uni]). A concluding prayer to the truly Omnipotent widens the focus once more from the soul’s welcome of God to the reception of Christ in the world, with repeated con- compounds: “Be present, Almighty, and pour yourself into a world in harmony. A world receives you now, Christ, which peace and Rome hold in a bond of union” (634–36 en ades, Omnipotens, concordibus influe terris: | iam mundus te, Christe, capit,20 quem congrege nexu | pax et Roma tenent). Paulinus of Nola transfers the Virgilian imperial theme of unity in diversity to the crowds of pilgrims who come to celebrate the festival of Saint Felix at Cimitile: “See, the crowds of many hues bring colour to the roads in their mottled throng, and we eye with astonishment countless cities in a single city” (Poem 13.24–25 ecce uias uario plebs discolor agmine pingit, urbes innumeras una miramur in urbe; cited above, in chapter 2). This is an example of the importance of the cult of the saints, and of the saints’ relics, in fostering a sense of community, both on a local level and at the level of the wider Christian congregation, as memorably described by Peter Brown.21 The Virgilian shield seems also to have been in the mind of one of Augustine’s correspondents, Maximus of Madaura (Aug. Ep. 16, 17; a.d. 390).22 Maximus presents the case that the plurality of pagan gods are in fact the powers (uirtutes) or parts (membra) of one supreme god without offspring. In upholding the dignity of the Olympian gods, Maximus derides the Christian cult of an endless series of Punic saints and martyrs with funny names like Miggo, Saname, and Namphamo, and sees another contest between Greco-Roman gods and monstrous foreign gods (16.20 “But at this time it seems to me almost as if another war of Actium had broken out, in which Egyptian monsters are so bold as to brandish against the gods of the Romans weapons that will not last an instant”). Virgil’s picture of the omnigenum . . . deum monstra of Egypt ranged against the Greco-Roman gods is the obvious source for Maximus’s image. That Virgil is in his mind is further seen when he quotes another line of Virgil a little later in the letter (and is answered in kind by Augustine [Ep. 17] with more quotes from “your Virgil”). The interminatus numerus, “unbounded number,” of the weird Punic recipients of cult is opposed to the unus deus summus, “one supreme god,” who lies behind the multiplicity of the Olympian family of gods. Maximus ends his letter with approving reference to the discordia concors of the pagan pantheon: “May the gods preserve you, through whom all we mortals who are borne by the earth venerate and worship, in a thousand ways and in concordant discord, the common father both of the gods and of all mortals” (16.4 dii te seruent, per quos et eorum atque cunctorum mortalium 20. Alluding to another Virgilian formulation of imperial greatness, Aen. 9.644 (Apollo to Ascanius) nec te Troia capit. 21. Brown 1981, 95–103. 22. See Horn 1998.

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communem patrem uniuersi mortales, quos terra sustinet, mille modis concordi discordia ueneramur et colimus). Maximus was fighting a losing battle, and the immediate future, at any rate, belonged to the vision of a unified Christian empire as already proclaimed by Eusebius in his speech “On Christ’s Sepulchre” (17 Sept. 335): “For while the power of Our Saviour destroyed the polyarchy and polytheism of the demons, and heralded the one kingdom of God to Greeks and barbarians and all men to the furthest extent of the earth, the Roman Empire, now that the causes of the manifold governments had been abolished, subdued the visible governments, in order to merge the entire race into one unity and concord. Already it has united most of the various peoples, and it is further destined to obtain all those not yet united, right up to the very limits of the inhabited world” (16.6).23 A rear-guard action was still being fought by Rutilius Namatianus, offering a pagan vision of Rome as fatherland of the diverse peoples of the world ten years after Alaric’s sack of Rome in On His Return 1.63–66 (Rome’s sway extends to sunrise and sunset): “You made one fatherland out of different races, and under your dominion captivity was a benefit for those who did not know justice; by offering to the vanquished a share in your own justice, you have made a city of what was formerly a world” (fecisti patriam diuersis gentibus unam: | profuit iniustis te dominante capi. | dumque offers uictis proprii consortia iuris, | urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat).24 In the City of God Augustine replies to the charge that the city of Rome could have resisted its attackers in a.d. 410 if only the pagan gods had been appeased, by taking the attack to his opponents, and arguing that the pre-Christian history of Rome was an interminable series of civil dissensions and civil wars, going back to Romulus’s foundational fratricide.25 In this, Augustine of course draws on a narrative familiar from non-Christian historians and poets of Rome. The history of discord goes back even further in Roman ancestry, Augustine notes, since the fall of Troy can be traced to the apple thrown by the uninvited Strife at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the fateful prize at the Judgment of Paris (CD 3.25). Augustine sarcastically observes that the foundation of a Temple of Concord in Rome after the Gracchan seditions was only followed by still worse outbreaks of civil strife 23. See Drake 1976. 24. Doblhofer (1977, ad loc.) compares Pliny, NH 3.39 (Italia) quae . . . sparsa congregaret imperia ritusque molliret et tot populorum discordes ferasque linguas sermonis commercio contraheret ad colloquia et humanitatem homini daret, breuiterque una cunctarum gentium in toto orbe patria fieret; Jerome, In Isaiam comm. 5.19.23 ante aduentum Christi unaquaque gens suum habebat regem et de alia ad aliam nullus ire poterat nationem: in Romano autem imperio unum facta sunt omnia. Fontaine (1974, 133–34 [= 1980, 403–4]) suggests that Rutilius may have more particularly in mind a formulation by Paulinus of Nola of the unity of the community of Christians in the body of Christ, in Poem 20 (Natal. 12).55: composuit citharam uariis ex gentibus unam (on which see further below). 25. See Armitage 2017, 84–86.

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(CD 3.25–26). The Romans might with more reason have put up a temple to the goddess Discordia. Quite other will be the concord of the city of God, described in the closing chapter on “the eternal felicity of the city of God in its perpetual Sabbath”: “And in that blessed city there shall be this great blessing, that no inferior shall envy any superior, as now the archangels are not envied by the angels, because no one will wish to be what he has not received, though bound in strictest concord (pacatissimo concordiae uinculo) with him who has received; as in the body the finger does not seek to be the eye, though both members are harmoniously included in the complete structure of the body” (CD 22.30, trans. Marcus Dods).26 L I N G U I ST I C DI V E R S I T Y A N D U N I T Y

The linguistic diversity brought within the unity of the Roman Empire on the Virgilian shield (quam uariae linguis) has an earlier, and negative, history in epic, tragedy, and historiography.27 In one of the few indications in the Iliad of racial and linguistic difference between the Trojan and Achaean armies we are told of the multiplicity of languages in the former: 2.803–4 “For there are many allies in the great city of Priam, and different peoples of those spread over the earth have different tongues”; 4.436–38 “Just so [like bleating lambs] was the battle-cry that arose in the broad army of the Trojans: for they did not all make the same noise nor did they have one voice, but they had mixed tongues, and they were men summoned from many lands.” We are perhaps to think of this linguistic diversity in the sharp contrast between the two armies as they advance to battle at 3.1–9, the Trojans whooping and shouting like clangorous cranes, while the Achaeans move in silence, “breathing strength.” Compare the contrast between the “holy paean” sung by the Greeks at Aeschylus’s Persians 393 and the “rushing noise of the Persian tongue” at 406 (Πέρσιδος γλώσσης ῥόθος). Lines 4.437–38 of the Iliad are cited by Polybius with reference to the confused shouts of the Carthaginian mercenaries at the battle of Zama (15.12.9).28 Livy characterizes the Carthaginian army negatively as a base mixture of all kinds of race: 26.20.9 turba . . . mixta ex omni genere hominum; 22.43.2 mixtos ex conluuione omnium gentium. In his account of Zama, Livy draws directly on Polybius, and may expect his Roman readership to recognize a further allusion to the Iliadic lines quoted by Polybius: 26. On concordia and discordia in Augustine, see Berrouard 1994; for Augustine the mysterious unity of the Trinity is reflected in the concord of the Scriptures, of the Old and New Testaments, of the four Gospels; concord in creatures; in man, the result of the origin of all men in one man, a human concord perfectly realized in paradise before the Fall; in society; in family; in the church, especially in monastic communities; and in the kingdom of heaven. 27. For material in this paragraph, I am indebted to Giusti 2018, 153–5. 28. See Fitzgerald 2016, 76–78 on Flaubert’s colorful working-up of Polybius’s account of the linguistic heterogeneity of the Carthaginian mercenaries in Salammbô.

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“From the Roman side came a consistent shout, that made it sound greater and more terrifying; from the other side discordant voices, as of many peoples with differing voices” (30.34.1 congruens clamor ab Romanis eoque maior et terribilior, dissonae illis, ut gentium multarum discrepantibus linguis, uoces).29 Babel and Pentecost Linguistic diversity takes on new significance in the Christian story, through the punishment of human sinfulness in building the Tower of Babel by the division of a previously single language into mutually incomprehensible diversity, accompanied by the scattering of the peoples over the face of the earth (Gen 11:1–9), and the redemption of that confusion of tongues through the Pentecostal descent of the Holy Spirit in “cloven tongues like as of fire” (διαμεριζόμεναι γλῶσσαι ὡσεὶ πυρός, dispertitae linguae tamquam ignis) to inspire the apostles to spread the one Christian message in all the languages of the world (Acts 2:1–6). Biblical poetry points up the contrast between the discord and concord of linguistic multiplicity. Marius Victorius works in a conceit of a concordant agreement in sin punished by discord of language in Alethia 3.257–61 (God the Father speaks): “But that they should know what is forbidden and denied them, let us now descend and confuse their hearts, swollen in a shared purpose of pride, with voices of different tongues, so that the sin of a people concordant in crime should be condemned to the better discord of a confusion of language” (ut tamen et uetitum norint, quod posse negatum est, | iam descendamus tumefactaque corda superbo | consensu uarii turbemus uocibus oris, | ut quod peccauit concors in crimina uulgus, | confusae damnet melior discordia linguae). In his versification of the Acts account in Historia apostolica 1.119–38, Arator presents Pentecost as the reversal of Babel: “Then a confusion of language came on a race of one kind; now many races have one language, one which rejoices that, in the likeness of the Church now coming to be, it will sound in concord, bringing back eloquence to a peaceful and modest people. A humble class of men gathers together again what haughty men have scattered” (133–38 confusio linguae | consimili tunc gente fuit; nunc pluribus una est | ecclesiae quoniam uenientis imagine gaudet | concordes habitura sonos et pace modestis | fit facunda redux, humilisque recolligit ordo | quod tumidi sparsere uiri). Humility recollects what Pride has scattered. Augustine has in mind the Pentecostal unity-in-diversity 29. Levene 2010, 88–90, 303. For other examples of the competing claims by Christians and pagans for the concordant unity of their community and the contrasting discordant disunity of their opponents, see Kahlos 2007, 68–70, citing Augustine on the pagan multiplicity and diversity of the ciuitas terrena of Babylon, “city of confusion,” contraposed with the Christian unity of the ciuitas Dei; Themistius, Or. 5.70 (a supreme deity did not want unity of worship, and has separated the Syrians [i.e., Christians] into various sects); Eusebius on the diaphonia of pagan writers, Or. 9.2, 13.9, 16.2–3, 17.13–14 (polytheism connected with ethnic dissent within the empire and as the cause or catalyst of conflict and chaos).

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of the Christian message in his commentary on Psalm 44:10 (iuxta LXX): “The queen stood on thy right hand, in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety” (adstitit regina a dextris tuis in uestitu deaurato, circumamicta uarietate).30 Augustine takes the various colors of the clothing of the bride to refer to the mysteries of doctrine as expressed in all the various languages of the world, united by the gold of what is preached: “Just as all the variety of the robe agrees in harmonious unity, so all languages agree in the one faith” (quomodo autem omnis uarietas uestis in unitate concordat, sic et omnes linguae ad unam fidem).31 Fitzgerald suspects a pun on chorda in Augustine’s use of the verb concordat, introducing a musical metaphor.32 The musical image is explicit in Paulinus of Nola’s ninth Natalicium (Poem 27), giving a highly wrought account of the unity in diversity of Pentecost at 60–106:33 “the day on which the Holy Spirit was of old sent down from the heights of heaven in parted tongues of fiery light. Then He, the one God, sped over diverse lands and with one voice spoke aloud in tongues of every kind” (62–65 [dies] qua Sanctus quondam caelo demissus ab alto | Spiritus ignito diuisit lumine linguas, | unus et ipse deus diuersa per ora cucurrit | omnigenasque uno sonuit tunc ore loquelas). The one spirit working through a variety of tongues is compared in a simile to the one plectrum that strikes the plurality of dissona fila of the cithara, or the one mouth that produces one song from the many pipes of a pan-pipe (72–80). The lyre image recurs toward the end of the passage: “Then, when a large number from Jerusalem had assembled at the unusual sound, the Spirit settled like a flame on all those present of every race, and with the same breath spoke differently but simultaneously to each of them. Like a musician strumming the strings of the lyre with fluent quill, the Spirit proclaimed the same message in different tongues, instilling into men’s ears the various sounds”34 (97– 102 moxque nouo sonitu, multis ex urbe coactis | omni ex gente uiris, sedit quasi flamma per omnes | et simul in cunctis spiramine dissonus uno, | ut lyricas facili modulatus pectine chordas, | diuiduis eadem cecinit praeconia linguis, | incutiens uarias humana per organa uoces). 30. See Carruthers 2009, 23–26; Fitzgerald 2016, 78–79. 31. For another Christian example of the harmonious unity of different languages all praising God, heard by God as if uttered with one voice, cf. Origen, Contra Celsum 8.37 (cited by Quasten 1931, 97). 32. Fitzgerald (2016, 79), referring to Ov. Met. 10.145–47 ut satis impulsas temptauit pollice chordas | et sensit uarios, quamuis diuersa sonarent, | concordare modos, hoc uocem carmine mouit (on which see more below). 33. Roberts (1989, 146) cites lines 70–71 (sed in omnibus unum | uoce Deum uaria laudabat spiritus unus) in the context of a discussion of concors discordia as an aesthetic principle of late antique poetry; see below. See Fontaine 1980, 129. 34. For another example of the lyre image, cf. Ambros. In Ps. I enarratio (PL 14.924D–925A), on the homophony of psalm-singing as pignus pacis atque concordiae, citharae modo ex diuersis et disparibus uocibus unam exprimens cantilenam.

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The Holy Spirit comes down at Pentecost in cloven tongues as of fire, diuiduis linguis in Paulinus’s paraphrase. Whether we are to think of the individual flames as divided, like the flame on the pyre of Polynices and Eteocles, or the several flames as being divided among the company present at Pentecost, this is a healing division that restores unity to a divided mankind, and redeems the harm inflicted on mankind by the original author of divisive language, Satan, whose metamorphosis into a crooked serpent is vividly described by Prudentius at Hamartigenia 186–205, with the consequent forking of his tongue into the organ of an evil variousness of language: “His darting tongue, single before, has now the trick of diverse speech, and being divided in guile, utters three-forked words” (201–2 simplex lingua prius uaria micat arte loquendi, | et discissa dolis resonat sermone trisulco). C ON C OR DIA

The Virgilian Shield of Aeneas is a foundational monument in the construction of imperial ideology, projecting forward in time an image of concordia that has its roots in earlier Greek and Roman Republican traditions. The political uses of the slogan develop to meet the changing ideological demands of the structure and institutions of the principate, and in response to new perceptions of the threat of discordia.35 A symbolic moment was Tiberius’s rededication of the Temple of Concordia as Concordia Augusta, in a.d. 10 or 12. Republican harmony between citizens comes to take second place to harmony within the imperial family, between emperor and his consort, and, from the date of the Tetrarchy and the division of the empire between a western and an eastern Augustus, concordia Augustorum. Crucial too is concord of emperor with his army, and the concord between the two armies. Concordia is a theme of panegyric in both prose and verse. Tetrarchic concordia is celebrated in the Panegyrici Latini. For example, a panegyric of Maximian (Pan. Lat. 10, a.d. 289 or 290) lauds the brotherly harmony that joins Maximian and Diocletian, equal in superlatives (10.9.3): “Now both of you are most generous, both most brave, and, through this very likeness of yours, more and more concordant (hac ipsa uestri similitudine magis magisque concordes); and, something more assured than any blood-relationship (consanguinitate), you are brothers in your virtues.” The two Augusti are compared to the two kings of Sparta, but made equal at the summit of power not by facial likeness, but likeness of moral character (non uultuum similitudo sed morum).36 So united in purpose are they that the state enjoys the benefits of one-man rule, but doubled: “For you rule the state with one mind, 35. See Amit 1962; Weinstock 1971, 260–66 (Concordia Nova); Noreña 2011, 108–11 (concordia on imperial coinage), 132–35 (Concordia); Cameron 2015, 266 (coins and dedications proclaiming Concordia Augustorum since the joint reign of Marcus and Verus); Rees 2002, 60–66 (Tetrarchic Concordia). 36. See also ch. 7.

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and great spatial distance does not prevent you from governing as if your right hands were joined together” (11.1 rem publicam enim una mente regitis, neque uobis tanta locorum diuersitas obest, quominus etiam ueluti iunctis dexteris gubernetis; the dextrarum iunctio, right hands clasped together, is a common image of concordia). The theme of concordia runs throughout the verse panegyrics of Claudian, starting, as we have seen, with the consular panegyric for Probinus and Olybrius. Against Rufinus celebrates the restoration of harmony to a Roman world threatened by the monster of discordia, Rufinus.37 Claudian combines the epic and panegyrical topos of the unus homo with the harmonization of duality in the fiction that the dying Theodosius appointed Stilicho regent of both his sons, Honorius and Arcadius, rulers of the western and eastern empires. Claudian puts these words in Theodosius’s mouth: “Succeed to my responsibilities, you alone be guardian of my sons: with your right hand protect the two brothers” (3 Cons. Hon. 152–53 tu curis succede meis, tu pignora solus | nostra foue: geminos dextra tu protege fratres). The singularity of the ruler, embodied, for example, in Augustus seated before the Temple of Apollo on the Virgilian shield, is here combined with the ideal harmony of two brothers, in a manner comparable to the play of one and two in Pan. Lat. 10.38 The topic of concordia Augustorum is transferred to the concord of the apostles Peter and Paul, regarded as founders of the Roman Church.39 Both suffered martyrdom in Rome, where they shared a festival on 29 June, and each was commemorated in one of the great basilicas of early Christian Rome, St. Peter’s and San Paolo fuori le mura. Facing busts of the two apostles are paired on glasses with gilded bases, in a manner analogous to the facing busts of the Augusti on coins that celebrate the concordia Augustorum. Augustine hails their conjoint lives on earth and in heaven in a sermon: “They both led a life of concord, both shed their blood in partnership, both took up a heavenly crown, both have sanctified the present day” (PL 38.1361 concordem uitam ambo duxerunt, socium sanguinem ambo fuderunt, caelestem coronam ambo sumpserunt, diem hodiernum ambo consacrauerunt). As founders of the Roman Church, Peter and Paul are a Christian equivalent of Romulus and Remus, but untouched by the strife that separated those two brothers. The contrast is drawn explicitly in a sermon by Leo I (29 June 441): “They were much better and successful as founders than they by whose efforts the first foundations of your walls were laid, and of whom he gave you your name [Romulus] polluted you with his brother’s blood” (Sermon 82.1 multo melius multoque felicius condiderunt, quam illi quorum studio prima moenium tuorum 37. For concordia in Claudian, see ch. 2; Ware 2012, index s.vv. concordia, concordia discors. 38. See Ware 2012, 81–88. 39. The seminal discussion is Pietri 1961; see further Huskinson 1982; Lonstrup Dal Santo 2010, 2016 (downplaying the association of Peter and Paul with Romulus and Remus); Testard 1981, 40–41.

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fundamenta locata sunt: ex quibus is qui tibi nomen dedit fraterna te caede foedauit).40 Prudentius celebrates the “apostolic triumph” of Peter and Paul in Peristephanon 12,41 a poem that diverts some of the conceits of Claudian’s panegyric for the consuls Probinus and Olybrius in order to glorify the Christian heroes, commemorated in the fasti of a Christian calendar. Paul and Peter also underpin Prudentius’s rewriting of Roman history and imperial concord in Against Symmachus, whose two books are introduced with praefationes to, respectively, Paul and Peter, possibly prompting comparison and contrast with Romulus and Remus.42 In response to the poet’s question at the start of Peristephanon 12 as to the reason for the jubilant crowds, his local interlocutor tells him (3–6): Festus apostolici nobis redit hic dies triumphi, Pauli atque Petri nobilis cruore. unus utrumque dies, pleno tamen innouatus anno, uidit superba morte laureatum. Today we have the festival of the apostles’ triumph coming round again, a day made famous by the blood of Paul and Peter. The same day, but recurring after a full year, saw each of them win the laurel by a splendid death.

This is the return, repetition, of the one single day (29 June) on which the two apostles were martyred, a commemoration of a day that at its origin was already “made new” (innouatus) through the fact that the two were martyred a year apart, in the version followed by Prudentius. This dialectic of return and novelty had informed Claudian’s introduction of the January 1 (a.d. 395) on which Probinus and Olybrius entered on their consulship (see chapter 2). Prudentius reformulates the idea at 21–22: “when the round wheel of the turning year had run full circle and the rising sun brought again the same day” (ut teres orbis iter flexi rota percucurrit anni | diemque eundem sol reduxit ortus). The juxtaposition unus utrumque in line 5 introduces repeated play on the opposition of two and one, and the unity of twoin-one. That duality is marked on the landscape of Rome by the river Tiber, which divides the tombs of the two apostles who are united in spirit and by the date of their festival: “Tiber separates the bones of the two, and both its banks are consecrated as it flows between the hallowed tombs” (29–30 diuidit ossa duum Tybris sacer ex utraque ripa, | inter sacrata dum fluit sepulcra). Similarly in the Panegyric for Probinus and Olybrius the river-god Tiber takes his stand on the insula Tiberina in the middle of the stream that divides Rome into two “cities,” the vantage point 40. On the discord of Romulus and Remus, see Aug. De consensu euangelistarum 1.12.19; CD 3.6, 15.5 (Romulus and Remus as continuing the murderous envy of Cain). 41. Roberts 1993, 167–87 (on Perist. 12). 42. See Roberts 1993, 184 with n. 106.

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from which to gaze on the unanimos fratres “brothers of one mind” (231) as they enter the Forum (226–29): Est in Romuleo procumbens insula Thybri qua medius geminas interfluit alueus urbes discretas subeunte freto, pariterque minantes ardua turrigerae surgunt in culmina ripae.43 There lies in Roman Tiber’s stream an island where the central flood flows between two cities, parted by the sundering waters; with equal threatening height the towerclad banks rise to lofty roofs.

The two sets of fasces for Probinus and Olybrius are brought forth from one door (233 atque uno biiuges tolli de limine fasces). Nearing the end of his exposition, Prudentius’s interlocutor says: “See, the people of Romulus pours through two separate streets; one day bustles with two festivals” (57–58 aspice, per bifidas plebs Romula funditur plateas, | lux in duobus feruet una festis). At the end of his Historia apostolica (a.d. 544) Arator comments on the fortunate coming together of Paul and Peter in Rome: “My subject bids me reach further back to tell how the two lights of the world came together, and, out of so many parts of the world, chose a single place in which to join their stars, which bring calm weather to all lands through the virtues of the faith” (2.1219–22 altius ordo petit duo lumina dicere mundi | conuenisse simul tantisque e partibus unum | delegisse locum, per quem sua sidera iungant | omnia qui fidei uirtutibus arua serenant). The closing lines of the poem rework the conceits of Prudentius’s Peristephanon 12: “They also shared a true/brotherly love, and through their good works achieved more than through nature; they were raised to the stars by a single, but not the same, day, as, after the revolution of a year, a martyr’s suffering hallowed the day by repetition; partners in grace they are rewarded with an eternal palm” (Historia apostolica 2.1246–50 his etiam germanus amor, quibus amplius actus | quam natura dedit, geminos quos edidit astris | non eadem tamen una dies, annique uoluto | tempore sacrauit repetitam passio lucem, | et tenet aeternam socialis gratia palmam). F R OM C O N C O R D IA T O PH YS I C A L D I S C O R D IA : SPA R AG M O S A N D DI SM E M B E R M E N T

The sparagmos of Discordia in Prudentius’s Psychomachia (on which, see chapter 2) is a critical moment in the establishment of concord in the human soul and in the Christian Church. It is also a climactic moment in the poem’s thematization of unity and discordia, which begins with the emphasis on the unity of the Trinity in 43. Cf. Stat. Silu. 1.3.24–25 (Villa Tiburtina Manili Vopisci, through which flows the Anio) litus utrumque domi, nec te mitissimus amnis | diuidit; alternas seruant praetoria ripas.

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the opening invocation to Christ: “Christ, who are glorious through your father’s power and your own, but one power (for it is one God that we worship under two names, yet not also a single God, since you, Christ, are God begotten of the Father)” (1–4 Christe . . . | qui patria uirtute cluis propriaque, sed una, | [unum namque Deum colimus de nomine utroque, | non tamen et solum, quia tu Deus ex Patre, Christe]). Prudentius continues with the description of the the war in the soul as a Virgilian rebellion (8 seditio; see chapter 2, on the Virgilian allusion). Christ is the (uniquely special) epic unus homo who stands up against sedition and civil war.44 To disguise herself in the guise of peace Discordia throws aside the attributes of division and of an evil multiplicity that define her as the personification of discord, and also identify her as a version of both the Virgilian Discordia and the Virgilian Allecto, herself an avatar of the Ennian Discordia. With Psychomachia 685–86 (“Her torn mantle and her whip of many snakes were left lying far behind amid the heaps of dead on the battlefield” [scissa procul palla structum et serpente flagellum | multiplici media camporum in strage iacebant]) compare both Discordia with her torn mantle at the battle of Actium (Aen. 8.702 et scissa gaudens uadit Discordia palla), and the multiple serpents and shape-shiftings, and thousand names and harmful arts of Allecto (Aen. 7.327–40).45 Once unmasked, Discordia identifies herself in a cacophony of alliteration and assonance, ringing changes on the prefix dis-: “I am called Discord, and my other name is Heresy; the God I have is variable” (709–10 Discordia dicor, | cognomento Heresis; Deus est mihi discolor).46 In the multiplicity of heretical constructions of God, the word Deus itself comes to sound like just a variation of dis-. Di(s)- compounds mark the culmination of the tearing apart of the body of Discordia into numberless bits, to be followed by com- compounds signaling the restoration of con-cord (724–27): discissum foedis animalibus omne cadauer diuiditur, ruptis Heresis perit horrida membris. compositis igitur rerum morumque secundis in commune bonis . . . The whole corpse is torn asunder and divided up for unclean creatures, and horrid Heresy perishes, torn limb from limb. So now that a fair and virtuous state of affairs and of behaviour has been restored for the common weal . . .

A very Roman tribunal is then mounted by the par sanctum, “holy pair” (737) of Fides and Concordia, as if they were a female version of a pair of like-minded consuls: “To this prominence mount honest Faith together with Concord, sisters 44. For discussion of Prudentius’s concordia as both a political and a theological virtue, see Smolak 2001. 45. The flagellum is that of Bellona, attendant of Discordia at Actium (Aen. 8.703). 46. On the linguistic play, see Malamud 1989, 63–64.

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sworn in holy alliance in the love of Christ” (734–36 hunc sincera Fides simul et Concordia, sacro | foedere iuratae Christi sub amore sorores, | conscendunt apicem).47 Prudentius’s account of the punishment by contrappasso of the divisive Discordia alludes to the equally just, and equally horrifying, sparagmos of Rufinus, the monster of political discord, in Claudian’s Against Rufinus 2.407–27.48 The division of the body of Rufinus is fitting punishment for his division of the “body” of the eastern and western armies, when he forbids the eastern army to join the western in fighting the Goths. When Stilicho tells the eastern army that it must obey Rufinus’s command, with one voice the two armies protest, playing off dis- and con- compounds against each other: “Shall the Getae always profit by our discord? See once again the image of civil war. Why do you divide armies of one blood, why divide standards once concordant? We are an inseparable and united body” (2.235–39 semperne Getis discordia nostra | proderit? en iterum belli ciuilis imago! | quid consanguineas acies, quid diuidis olim | concordes aquilas? non dissociabile corpus | coniunctumque sumus). In a simile Claudian compares the sparagmos of Rufinus to two of the most famous mythological examples of dismemberment, Pentheus and Actaeon (In Ruf. 2.418–20: the two are paired in Ovid, Met. 3). The fate of a third famous mythological example, Hippolytus, is replicated in Prudentius’s account of the death of the Christian martyr of the same name, in Peristephanon 11. His furious persecutor makes his name the occasion for the reenactment: “Then let him be Hippolytus, let him get a team frightened and agitated, and let him perish torn apart by wild horses” (87–88 ergo sit Hippolytus, quatiat turbetque iugales, | intereatque feris dilaceratus equis). But in Prudentius’s vision of history this “fatal charade” takes on a meaning that the persecutor certainly did not intend, an affirmation of the concord of Christian faith rising superior to discord and division.49 The manner of Hippolytus’s death is fitting, not for the pillar of orthodoxy that Hippolytus was when he was martyred, but for the schismatic that he was in the past, a follower of the schism of Novatus (19 scisma Nouati), and so an adherent of the Discordia of the Psychomachia, whose other name is Heresis. But now the mode of punishment is as ill-matched with its victim as are the two wild horses forcibly yoked together in a concordia discors: “And now the struggling pair were harnassed together, their heads tied together in discordant partnership” (95–96 iamque reluctantes sociarant uincula bigas, | oraque discordi foedere nexuerant). As he is dragged off to martyrdom, he addresses the crowds along the way with a call to religious unity (29–32): 47. Line 736 sublime tribunal = Claud. In Eutrop. 1.311. 48. For discussion of Claudian’s and Prudentius’s sparagmoi, see Malamud 1989, ch. 3, attempting to deconstruct the sharp polarity of virtue and vice, and pointing out that Rufinus was known for his strict orthodoxy and hostility to heretics. 49. My discussion follows quite closely that of Malamud 1989, ch. 4, esp. 93–101.

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The one faith is based on the concordia of the apostles Paul and Peter. The blind wandering (111 caecoque errore) of the wild horses as they career out of control echoes the doctrinal error (38) that Hippolytus has put behind him, as their furor (112) matches that of the persecutor (5 furor impius, 39 insano, 60 in furias . . . fremens). Hippolytus’s body is shredded into fragments (119 scissa . . . frusta).50 A painting at the tomb shows the stages of the martyrdom. Firstly, we see a landscape strewn and besmeared with Hippolytus’s body parts and blood. As well as the Ovidian and Senecan narratives of Hippolytus’s dismemberment, Prudentius may have in mind the picture on the Virgilian Shield of Aeneas of the dismemberment of the Alban king Mettus, torn apart tied to two chariots sent in opposite directions, as punishment for his divisive treachery (see above). The detail of the drops of blood on the foliage is particularly close (cf. Aen. 8.645 “The briars dripped with the blood sprinkled on them” [et sparsi rorabant sanguine uepres]).51 Secondly, the painting shows Hippolytus’s loving followers gathering up the bits. Unlike the body of Discordia, all parts of his body, every drop of blood, are collected up, and the sand sponged off, to make the full tally of the parts of his body when it was whole. This passage is modeled on the reassembling and reordering of the disiecta membra of the body of Hippolytus at the end of Seneca’s Phaedra. But in the Senecan play there is little comfort to be gained thereby, and no restoration of the shattered household.52 By contrast the martyr’s remains are housed in a richly ornamented subterranean shrine, an enduring source of power to heal diseased minds and bodies (177–78), and to unite in one accord the 50. Cf. Psychom. 720 frustatim of the fragmentation of Discordia’s body. Clement of Alexandria uses the image of the sparagmos of Pentheus by the Bacchae to describe the fragmentation of the one (Christian) truth by the schools of Greek and barbarian (Jewish) philosophy. But “truth is able to bring together (sunagagein) its own seeds, even if they fall on foreign soil” (Stromat. 1.13). Clement goes on to use another mythological comparandum, the dismemberment of Dionysus by the Titans, a myth syncretized by Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 364F, with Typhon’s dismemberment of Osiris, to which Milton in Areopagitica compares the mangling and scattering of the “Truth [which] came once into the world with her divine Master,” after the Ascension of Christ and the passing of the apostles. 51. Noted by Malamud 1989, 99. 52. No hint of the (Virgilian and Ovidian) story of Hippolytus’s resurrection as Virbius, which, pace Malamud 1989, 84, seems not to be alluded to in Perist. 11 either. But perhaps the memory of that version is triggered by the thought of the Prudentian dying Hippolytus’s rebirth to eternal life.

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thronging crowds of worshippers, Latin and foreign, plebeian and highborn, peoples from the various parts of Italy: “The love of their religion masses together Italians and foreigners in one mingled body” (191–92 conglobat in cuneum Latios simul ac peregrinos | permixtim populos religionis amor); “Elbow to elbow, the distinction between plebeian host and patricians is confused, thrown together by faith” (201–2 confundit plebeia phalanx umbonibus aequis | discrimen procerum praecipitante fide); “Loud sounds of rejoicing rise from diverse roads leading from different places: natives of Picenum and the people of Etruria come” (205–6 exultant fremitus uariarum hinc inde uiarum, | indigena et Picens plebs et Etrusca uenit). This mini-catalogue of the various roads on which travel the various peoples of Italy can be compared with the mini-catalogue of the various and varied peoples of the world who converge on Rome in the triumph of Augustus in the final scene of the Shield of Aeneas (see above).53 The first sixteen lines of Prudentius’s account of the martyrdom of Hippolytus (19–34) closely follow the epigram of Damasus on Hippolytus, at the cemetery of Hippolytus on the Via Tiburtina (35 Ferrúa).54 Damasus, pope from 366 to 384, was responsible for a monumental program of placing beautifully inscribed elogia of saints and martyrs at martyr shrines around the city of Rome, a program that modern scholarship interprets as “an expression of his desire to establish his authority across a city that was deeply divided along regional as well as social and doctrinal lines.”55 The theme of concord is highlighted in elogia celebrating martyrs who exemplified ideals of ecclesial or doctrinal unity, including Hippolytus, and the concordia apostolorum of Peter and Paul. Popes Eusebius (18 Ferrúa) and Marcellus (40 Ferrúa) were both victims of outbreaks of discordia; Eusebius “preserved untouched the pacts of peace” (18.7 integra cum rector seruaret foedera pacis) at a time when “the people were split into parties, as fury blazed up” (18.4 scinditur in partes populus gliscente furore).56 T H E A E ST H ET I C S OF C O N C O R D IA D I S C O R S A N D UA R I E TA S

Beyond the political and religious, concord and discord figure in the aesthetic sphere as well. The political and religious often spill over into the aesthetic. The

53. Roberts (1993, 162–66) reads the community of worshippers as an expression of communitas in Victor Turner’s sense of “a temporary release from the hierarchical and structural divisions of society in the experience of shared rejoicing.” 54. See Trout 2015; Sághy 2000; Pietri 1961, 297–98; Fontaine 1986. 55. Trout 2015, 11. 56. Alluding to a Virgilian moment of discordia, Aen. 2.39 scinditur incertum studia in contraria uulgus.

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political and the musical chime together in Laelius’s analogy between musical harmony and the concordia ordinum in Cicero’s On the Republic 2.69:57 ut enim in fidibus aut tibiis, atque ut in cantu ipso ac uocibus, concentus est quidam tenendus ex distinctis sonis, quem immutatum aut discrepantem aures eruditae ferre non possunt, isque concentus ex dissimillimarum uocum moderatione concors tamen efficitur et congruens, sic ex summis et infimis et mediis interiectis ordinibus ut sonis, moderata ratione ciuitas consensu dissimillimorum concinit, et quae harmonia a musicis dicitur in cantu, ea est in ciuitate Concordia, artissimum atque optimum omni in re publica uinculum incolumitatis, eaque sine iustitia nullo pacto potest esse. For just as in the music of harps and flutes or in the voices of singers a certain harmony of the different tones must be preserved, the interruption or violation of which is intolerable to trained ears, and as this perfect agreement and harmony is produced by the proportionate blending of unlike tones, so also is a State made harmonious by agreement among dissimilar elements, brought about by a fair and reasonable blending together of the upper, middle, and lower classes, just as if they were musical tones. What the musicians call harmony in song is concord in a State, the strongest and best bond of permanent union in any commonwealth; and such concord can never be brought about without the aid of justice.

Concentus is used in the Somnium Scipionis of the harmony of the spheres (Rep. 6.22), a sound produced through the union of disparate intervals (interuallis coniunctus imparibus), which creates a variety of harmonies in a uniform way (uarios aequabiliter concentus efficit). Cosmic harmony is the ultimate model and guarantee for concord in the political sphere.58 Augustine quotes the passage from book 2 of Cicero’s On the Republic in the City of God (2.21), the work in which he showed that the pre-Christian history of Rome was one of incessant discordia. Elsewhere in the City of God (17.14) Augustine reaches for the biblical lyre-playing of David as an image of the harmonious variety of the well-ordered state: erat autem Dauid uir in canticis eruditus, qui harmoniam musicam non uulgari uoluptate, sed fideli uoluntate dilexerit eaque deo suo, qui uerus est deus, mystica rei magnae figuratione seruierit. diuersorum enim sonorum rationabilis moderatusque concentus concordi uarietate compactam bene ordinatae ciuitatis insinuat unitatem. Now David was a man skilled in songs, who loved musical harmony not for the pleasure that the common people take in it, but for the purpose of faith, and he used it in the 57. Quoted by Augustine, CD 2.21; on Augustine’s concern to show that the pre-Christian history of Rome was one of recurrent discordia, see above. 58. Büchner 1984, 480: “In der Sphärenharmonie sieht man verwirklicht, was das Ziel des Politischen sein muß.” At Rep. 2.69 Cicero draws on Plato, Rep. 443d, but there the analogy of musical harmony is applied to the parts of the soul of the just man, not to political classes.

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service of his God, the true God, by giving a mystical prefiguration of a matter of great importance. For the concord of different sounds, according to reason and due measure, makes known the unity of a well-ordered city, fitted together in harmonious variety.

In late antiquity the unity of the Christian congregation finds expression in the homophony, συμφωνία, of worshippers singing as if with one voice, in harmony with the choirs of angels above, “who ceaselessly shout out every day, speaking with one voice, ‘Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Hosts’ ” (qui non cessant clamare quotidie, una uoce dicentes: “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth”).59 For Saint Ambrose the singing of hymns and psalms produces symphonia out of the plebis concordia, “concord of the people”; joining voices in song is a way to transcend social divisions.60 Prudentius, in his Hymn for Every Hour (Cathemerinon 9), calls on the choirs of angels, of humans, and of the natural world to join in celebrating the virtues and miracles of Christ, pointing up the universal concordia with repeated compounds in con-: 22–24 (choirs of angels) “High heaven, sing! Sing, all you angels! . . . Let no tongue be silent, let every voice accord, in harmony!” (trans. O’Daly; psallat altitudo caeli, psallite omnes angeli . . . nulla linguarum silescat, uox et omnis consonet); 25–27 (poets [i.e., Psalms] and prophets of old in concert) “Look, he is the one the sacred poets celebrated in ancient times, the truthful pages of the prophets were his guarantors; long promised, now he flashes forth—let all things praise him together!” (ecce, quem uates uetustis concinebant saeculis, | quem profetarum fideles paginae spoponderant, | emicat promissus olim: cuncta conlaudent eum!); 109–11 (human choirs of all ages and genders) “Let them praise you, the old men, you the youths, you the children’s choir, the throng of mothers and young women, innocent little girls, let their praise ring out harmoniously, as they sing in pure unison!” (te senes et te iuuentus, paruulorum te chorus, | turba matrum uirginumque, simplices puellulae, | uoce concordes pudicis perstrepant concentibus);61 112–14 (angels and men joined by harmony of nature) “Let the flowing river waters, the seashores, rain, heat, snow, frost, wood and wind, night and day, praise you, all together, for ever and ever!” (fluminum

59. From the Preface to the Mass; see Quasten 1931, 91–102; Dohmes 1948 on “die Einstimmigkeit des Kultgesanges als Symbol der Einheit.” 60. McLynn 1994, 225, referring on the issue of unity to Ambrose, Hex. 3.23; Exp. Evang. sec. Luc. 7.237–38. 61. O’Daly (2012, 287–88) points to the model of Ps. 148:11–12 reges terrae et omnes populi, principes et omnes iudices terrae, iuuenes et uirgines, senes cum iunioribus laudent nomen Domini. As O’Daly points out, Cathem. 9 begins with Horatian allusion (da, puer, plectrum; cf. Hor. Odes 3.19.10–11); Cathem. 9.109–11 may also allude to the communal songs of praise of the heroes of old with which Horace closes his last ode, 4.15.25–32 nosque et profestis lucibus et sacris . . . cum prole matronisque nostris . . . canemus. See also Heinz (2007, 165–67), commenting on Cathem. 3.90 nostra, Deus, canet harmonia: praise of God mirrors the harmony of world, mirrored also in the bodily and spiritual harmony of humans.

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lapsus et undae, litorum crepidines, | imber, aestus, nix, pruina, silua et aura, nox, dies | omnibus te concelebrent saeculorum saeculis). Concord is won from discord, or asserted in the face of the ever-present threat of discord. It has been argued that a tension between concordia and discordia lies at the heart of late antique poetics. Prudentius’s carefully organized account of the dismemberment of Discordia (Psych. 719–25) is one of the exhibits in the introductory “Anthology of Texts” in Michael Roberts’s The Jeweled Style;62 Roberts concludes his anatomy of the poetics of late antiquity by elevating concordia discors to an overarching aesthetic principle:63 “The jeweled style itself is the literary embodiment of concordia discors” (145). Roberts connects concordia discors with “variety,” uarietas, one of the recurrent themes in his book. He registers the earlier history of the phrase, first found with reference to the balance of Strife (or discordia) and Love (or concordia) in Empedoclean physics in Horace, Epistles 1.12.19. Other early imperial examples also occur with reference to the physical, or politico-physical, world, in Ovid, Manilius, and Lucan. It is tempting to air the possibility of a metapoetic reading of the phrase already in Ovid’s account of the restoration of the world after the flood, and the re-creation of animal life through the opposing forces of fire and water, elements involved in the original cosmogony, the narrative of which hints at an equation between poet and demiurge, through allusion to the Homeric ekphrasis of the cosmic and cosmogonic Shield of Achilles.64 Ovid’s use of the Horatian phrase discors concordia at Metamorphoses 1.433 in the account of conditions after the flood is anticipated in his narrative of the separation of the elements at the original creation: “God and a better nature . . . bound together things separated in space through a peaceful harmony” (25 deus et melior . . . natura . . . dissociata locis concordi pace ligauit).65 The Virgilian shield had already forced together Empedoclean physics, the creation of a poetic cosmos, and

62. Roberts 1989, 28–30; Roberts comments on the “dismembering” of sentences into cola and commata, and on the display of “antithesis and parallelism, variation and concinnity.” 63. Roberts 1989, 144–47. Roberts returns to the topic of concordia discors in his later book, on Venantius Fortunatus, where aesthetic harmony matches the harmonious coexistence of barbarians and Latin-speakers; Roberts 2009, 53–60; cf., e.g., Venant. Fort. Poems 6.2.7–8 hinc cui barbaries, illinc Romania plaudit: | diuersis linguis laus sonat una uiri; 7.8.61–70 (in praise of Duke Lupus, pointing to the harmony of diverse subjects and voices); 69–70 nos tibi uersiculos, dent barbara carmina leudos: | sic uariante tropo laus sonet una uiro. 64. As argued by Wheeler (1995a). 65. Barchiesi (2005, ad loc.) points to the contrast between the “democrazia conflittuale” of the association of Lucretius’s atoms, and Ovid’s “dominio universale e pacificatore, come l’impero romano . . . la natura di Ovidio è una forza che pianifica e unifica. . . . La crescente enfasi su risoluzione dei conflitti e ordine cosmico può essere un compenso per l’assenza di Augusto (non nominato fino a I 204).” Barchiesi’s comments are also relevant to the construction of an imperial politico-physical order on the Virgilian Shield of Aeneas.

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a culminating image of the social and political unity in variety of the new Augustan order (see pp. 105–6 above).66 The unharmonious discordia of disparate body parts painted at the beginning of Horace’s Ars poetica can be read as a parody of a discors concordia that is in fact at the center of Horace’s own poetics. That this is also an Empedoclean discors concordia is hinted at by the ring composition whereby the Ars poetica’s closing reference to Empedocles as a figure for the mad poet refers back to Empedoclean allusion in the opening description of the painter who mixes things together in a discordant manner.67 Fitzgerald, in his discussion of the aesthetics of variety, treats Latin poetic texts reaching from Horace to late antiquity and beyond.68 He also highlights a passage in the Metamorphoses that has drawn surprisingly little attention in discussions of Ovidian poetics, but whose metapoetic valence is hard to miss given that it describes the music making of one of the most important alter egos of the poet of the Metamorphoses, Orpheus (Met. 10.145–47): ut satis impulsas temptauit pollice chordas et sensit uarios, quamuis diuersa sonarent, concordare modos, hoc uocem carmine mouit.69 When he had satisfied himself by testing the strings with his finger-strokes, and perceived that the varied measures, although sounding differently, were in harmony, he began to sing the following song.

66. On the overlap of aesthetics and politics in the matter of variety, see Fitzgerald 2016, 82–83. 67. See Hardie 2018. Concordia discors is used in a discussion of Horatian poetics by Johnson (1982, 129): “The poems [of Horace] are . . . beautifully, intricately contained within their forms when we look at them and their designs. But simultaneously, when we listen to them, the designs begin to shift, their limits dissolve, and the words and music restore the elemental concordia discors (‘discordant concord’) from which they arose.” 68. Fitzgerald 2016, 57–73; Fitzgerald (70–73) discusses jewels and mosaics as images of uarietas, citing Roberts (1989) with approval. Fitzgerald refers to Macrob. Sat. 5.1.18–20 on the similitudo between mundus and the diuinum poeticum opus of Virgil; following natura, hanc pertexuit uelut in musica concordiam dissonorum; i.e., a late antique reading of the concordia discors of the great classic text. 69. Cited by Fitzgerald (2016, 79) in the context of Aug. En. Ps. 44 on unity-in-diversity of languages praising God, in unitate concordat (see above). For another early imperial example, cf. Sen. Ep. 84.9–10 non uides quam multorum uocibus chorus constet? unus tamen ex omnibus redditur. aliqua illic acuta est, aliqua grauis, aliqua media; accedunt uiris feminae, interponuntur tibiae: singulorum illic latent uoces, omnium apparent. de choro dico quem ueteres philosophi nouerant: in commissionibus nostris plus cantorum est quam in theatris olim spectatorum fuit. cum omnes uias ordo canentium impleuit et cauea aeneatoribus cincta est et ex pulpito omne tibiarum genus organorumque consonuit, fit concentus ex dissonis. talem animum esse nostrum uolo: multae in illo artes, multa praecepta sint, multarum aetatum exempla, sed in unum conspirata.

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As Fitzgerald notes, the implicit pun on concordare and chordae, “strings,” of the lyre almost forces itself on the reader,70 while the sequence diuersa sonarent, concordare rings a change on discors concordia. Orpheus’s musical harmony also has the power to bring harmonious coexistence to the natural and animal world: “Such was the grove attracted by the bard, and he sat in the middle of an assembly of wild beasts and birds” (143–44 tale nemus uates attraxerat, inque ferarum | concilio medius turba uolucrumque sedebat). In the Ars poetica Horace allegorizes Orpheus’s power to tame wild beasts as a reference to his introduction of civilization and civil society to primitive mankind (Ars 391–93). It is a cruel irony that this culture hero of musical and sociopolitical concord ends up dismembered and scattered in a sparagmos, torn to pieces by the frenzied and wild (Met. 11.37 ferae) Maenads, who drown out his music: “His limbs lie in different places; you, Hebrus, receive his head and lyre” (Met. 11.50–51 membra iacent diuersa locis, caput, Hebre, lyramque | excipis). Even after his bodily dismemberment his voice and lyre continue to sound out in tune with each other as they float down the river Hebrus, and Orpheus’s death has the effect, unintended by the infuriated Maenads, of restoring the marital con-cordia of husband and wife in the underworld (Met. 11.64–66): hic modo coniunctis spatiantur passibus ambo, nunc praecedentem sequitur, nunc praeuius anteit Eurydicenque suam iam tuto respicit Orpheus. Here at one time they both walk together, conjugally conjunct with linked steps, at another he follows her as she goes ahead, and at another he goes on in front of her, apart (diuersi) and Orpheus now looks back safely at his Eurydice.

Is this also a musical concordia? Might the alternation of movement, now together, now one or the other ahead of the other, suggest the interweaving movement of two lines of music, at one moment moving in matching rhythm, and at another with an “out of step” beat? If concordia discors is to be applied to a late antique aesthetic, it must be admitted that it is an aesthetic that goes back (at least) to the Augustan period. At most it could be said that this is an aspect of the poetics of early imperial poetry to which late antiquity responds particularly strongly. As often, the late antique can be understood as a matter of foregrounding and emphasizing aspects of an earlier aesthetic. However, concordia discors does find an application to two forms that are particularly characteristic of late antiquity, the cento and the carmen figuratum, “figured poem.” In the letter to Paulus prefatory to his Cento nuptialis, Ausonius 70. For late antique examples of the pun on chorda and cor (the root of con-cors), cf. Aug. Enarr. in Ps. 32.2.15 certus in deo tuo, tange chordas in corde; Sidon. Apoll. Ep. 9.16.3, vv. 83–84 quos (sc. patronos) tamen chordae nequeunt sonare, | corda sonabunt (see Mratschek 2017, 334 n. 142).

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playfully sets out the rules of the cento, a form that performs a sparagmos only to reunite/reform a textual body, “gather together what is scattered and make a whole out of what has been torn to pieces” (sparsa colligere et integrare lacerata). A little later Ausonius sketches an aesthetic of concordia discors with explicit reference to myths of dismemberment, including Hippolytus: “Accept this little work, continuous but made of disconnected pieces, a unity made of different bits, playful but made of things serious, my own work made of another’s, lest you should wonder at the son of Thyone or Virbius in the rituals of poetic fables, the one reshaped out of Dionysus, the other out of Hippolytus” (accipe igitur opusculum de inconexis continuum, de diuersis unum, de seriis ludicrum, de alieno nostrum, ne in sacris et fabulis aut Thyonianum mireris aut Virbium, illum de Dionyso, hunc de Hippolyto reformatum).71 Optatian draws attention to the alternating movements of dis-traction and concentration that are required if the reader is to be privy to the visual patterning and combinatorial possibilities of the poems.72 Attention is drawn to this aesthetic of fragmentation and recombination through contrasts of dis- and con- compounds, as in Poem 16.1–2: “Exalted by a good omen, the mind dares to put together / compose dissonant things with words linked together” (Dissona conexis audet componere uerbis | omine mens elata bono). Michael Squire sees a reference to the putting together of dissonant things in terms of “a switch from horizontal verses to vertical lines on the one hand, and from Latin to Greek signa on the other.”73 For Squire the “supreme example of such ‘poetry in pieces’ ” is Optatian’s Poem 25, with its repeated compounds in con- and di(s)-: Ardua componunt felices carmina Musae dissona74 conectunt diuersis uincula metris scrupea pangentes torquentes pectora uatis undique confusis constabunt singula uerbis. The blessed Muses put together difficult poems: they bind together dissonant chains from diverse measures, setting their challenges, twisting the hearts of the poet: though the words be shuffled in every way, they will still stand individually. (trans. Squire)

This four-line “Proteus poem”75 invites the reader to shuffle the words to make variant quatrains (depending on how loosely one interprets the rules, the number of 71. See Pelttari 2014, 104–7. 72. For the texts, see Polara 1973; on Poem 25, see Ernst 2012, 50–51. 73. Squire 2017b, 63. 74. Cf. Carm. 6.7 dissona componi carmine gaudens; 6.i (uersus intextus) dissona Musarum uinciri stamine gaudens; 16.1 dissona conexis audet componere uerbis. 75. The term is that of Aaron Pelttari, who discusses the poem at Pelttari 2014, 77–79.

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possible quatrains ranges from the thousands to the billions)—an invitation to combinatorial concordia discors.76 Squire emphasizes “the poem’s capacity to break down before our eyes—to self-fragment and be put together anew.” “Optatian’s works are steeped in a knowing sense of their own fragmentation—an awareness of how each compound poem can be broken down into its constituent verses, words, syllables and even letters, all the while yielding the elements for new feats of creative literary composition.”77 Others lay greater emphasis on the com-position than on the fragmentation of Optatian’s carmina figurata, seeing in their content and form “a religiously integrative foundation for the ideology of the Constantinian monarchy,” amalgamating traditional panegyric with Christian concepts.78 Examples of the late antique obsession with the theme and poetics of concordia discors can be found in a number of other poets working in more traditional forms than the cento or pattern poem: Claudian, Dracontius, Maximianus, Latinius Pacatus Drepanius.79 I end this chapter by returning to Paulinus of Nola, who gives his audiences and readers a number of extended riffs on the themes of concordia discors and of unity in diversity. We have already looked at the passage in Poem 27 on the power given to the apostles by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to broadcast the one message of the Christian faith in a diversity of languages. Poem 28 (Natalicium) contains lengthy descriptions of the old and new buildings at the shrine of St. Felix at Cimitile. An aesthetics of uarietas is the product of the combination of likeness and unlikeness, of difference and unity, with repeated contrasts of compounds in con- and dis-, oppositions of par and uarius, and of unus and diuersus. The three basilicas are adjoining, on a site that is at once spread out (11 diffuso) and united (coeunte), with beauties various but equal (13 paribus uarie speciosae cultibus). This 76. See Squire 2017a for exhaustive bibliography, and on the debate over the rules of the game in Poem 25. 77. Squire 2017b, 90, 92. 78. Wienand 2017, 153. See Bruhat 2017, 279 on the weaving of the uersus intertexti and the unitary conception of space in the carmina cancellata as symbolic of Constantine’s restoration of the unity of the empire. See Habinek 2017, 418: “The ontological diversity-in-unity characteristic of Optatian’s poetic artefacts is well-suited to the spirit of Constantinian rule, with its own productive ambiguities concerning god(s), emperor and Rome itself ”; 421, referring to Drake 2006, 204 on labarum as “a symbol that could resolve divisions between right-thinking people which had unnecessarily traumatised the empire and jeopardised its unity”; cf. Euseb. Vit. Const. 2.69.1 (letter to feuding Alexander of Alexandria and Arrius) on διχόνοια: σχισθεὶς ἐκ τῆς τοῦ κοινοῦ σώματος ἁρμονίας ἐχωρίσθη. 79. Claudian: for examples, see ch. 6; Dracontius, Satisf. 57–58 (God) sed diuersa creans et discordantia iunxit | et bona mixta malis et mala mixta bonis; Simons 2005, 35–50; 40: “Concordia discors ist die Leitidee in Dracontius’ Weltbild” (by which is meant chiefly “Ambivalenz”); Maximianus, Elegia 5.113–14 (the puella Graeca’s hymn to mentula) hac sine diuersi nulla est concordia sexus, | hac sine coniugii gratia summa perit (cf. Ov. Ars 2.463–66: sex creates concordia between quarreling lovers); Latinius Pacatus Drepanius: see Turcan-Verkerk 2003, 78 for parallels for De cereo paschali 37 (ubertat stuppas, feruet discordia concors).

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harmonious variety extends to the subject matter of the figurative art, martyrs of different sexes but equal in glory (21 [martyres] quos par in uario redimiuit gloria sexu). The aesthetics of variety extends, bizarrely, to unsightly ruins. Paulinus’s plans for extending and beautifying the cult center had been marred by two ugly (deformia uisu) wooden huts in the center of the site, whose occupants refused (reasonably enough, one might have thought) to have them demolished. By good fortune one of the huts burned down, without setting fire to the sacred buildings: Paulinus ascribes the fire to the intervention of Saint Felix, and the preservation of the sacred buildings to the power of a relic of the cross. In his rage at the loss of one of his huts to fire, their rustic owner himself demolishes the other (this too as part of his divinely ordained punishment). In an unusual focalization the obstructive owner of the huts is first allowed to lament the dwellings to which he was misguidedly attached, and then is put in the position of a detached observer “wondering” at the aesthetic effect of these two modes of destruction (160–63): dilectasque domos et inanes plangit amores. qui simul aspiciens incensa et diruta tecta, dissimiles simili miratur in aggere labes ruderis et cineris iuncti bicolore ruina. He wept for his beloved dwellings and for the objects of his vain love. When he saw the burnt and the demolished houses side by side, he gazed in wonder at the dissimilar modes of destruction in the similar heaps, one of rubble and one of ash, side by side forming ruins of two colours.

A harmonious variety is also the product of the existence side by side of the old and the new buildings. Paintings of the New Testament adorn the old church, and of the Old Testament the new church (170–74).80 The coexistence of old and new in the architecture at Cimitile mirrors the coexistence of Old and New Testaments in the Bible, and is then projected onto an ideal coexistence of old and new, age and youth, in the human individual (174–79): est etenim pariter decus utile nobis in ueteri nouitas atque in nouitate uetustas, ut simul et noua uita sit et prudentia cana, et grauitate senes et simplicate pusilli temperiem mentis gemina ex aetate trahamus, iungentes nostris diuersum moribus aeuum. Novelty in the old and old age in the new are decorations equally useful to us, for thus we can have both new life and the wisdom of age. Old men in our seriousness yet babes in our simplicity, let us derive balance of mind from the two ages, and unite these different stages of life in our characters. 80. For interpretation, see Goldschmidt 1949, 182 ff.

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Paulinus returns to the combination of architectural old and new in a passage on the restoration, “rejuvenation,” of the old buildings, which makes them look as gleaming new as the new buildings (196–219): “The age of the buildings differs, but their appearance agrees” (206–7 tectorum dissidet aetas, | concordat species). This is then interpreted as an image of the Christian (Pauline) doctrine of the renouatio of the individual human, putting off the old man and putting on the new man (Eph. 4:22–24; Col. 3:10–11). A protracted exhortation to spiritual renewal comes back finally to the lesson to be learned from the sticks and stones of the buildings at Cimitile, presented as exempla and magistri, “teachers,” for Paulinus’s audience. The dichotomy of like and unlike is then applied to the very activity of comparing and contrasting that Paulinus has been practicing throughout the poem (261–65): ut quale manu confecimus istic tale fide faciamus opus; licet absit ab uno mentis opus manuumque labor, sed ab impare causa par operis trahitur ratio; ecce, uidete, probabo dissimiles simili specie concurrere formas. so that by faith we may achieve the kind of work that we have completed here with our hands. Although the work of the mind and the labour of the hands are not combined in one single person, yet from unlike causes a like method of work is derived. Observe my demonstration that these dissimilar kinds of activity agree by their similar form.

Same and other, the new in the old—these are the dichotomies that have been set up as the guiding poetics of Poem 28 in its very first lines: “A new element is introduced in our old practice [of celebrating Saint Felix’s birthday], and the usual festival is enhanced by the completion of an unusual vow” (1–2 In ueteri nobis noua res adnascitur actu, | et solita insolito crescunt sollemnia uoto).81 One of the most striking developments of the theme of concordia comes near the beginning of Paulinus of Nola’s twelfth Natalicium (Poem 20; a.d. 406). The body of the poem contains a humorous account of animal miracles. This is prefaced with an assertion that Paulinus will not deal in the fictions of pagan poets: the historica fides of what he is about to narrate will be guaranteed by making his Christian fides the source of his art; his music is Christ. This is the cue for an unfolding of a number of variations on the theme of (discors) concordia (28–62): non afficta canam, licet arte poematis utar: historica narrabo fide sine fraude poetae: absit enim famulo Christi mentita profari: gentibus hae placeant, ut falsa colentibus, artes. at nobis ars una fides, et musica Christus, qui docuit miram sibimet concurrere pacem 81. On the theme of novelty in Poem 28, see ch. 5.

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Though I use the poet’s art, the song I sing will not be invented. I shall tell it with an historian’s truthfulness and without the poet’s deceit, because a servant of Christ should not tell lies. Such techniques can satisfy non-Christians who cultivate falsehood, but our sole technique is faith, and our art of song is Christ. He has taught us that the wondrous peace of unbalanced harmony was of old achieved in Himself, a harmony He bestowed on one body when He assumed the form of man; for He mingled with it His holy divinity by the inpouring of strength, and so established the two within Him, and fused into one two natures far different from each other. So man was God, and God was made man by God the Father also God. The Son is not the Father’s grace but His nature, because He is the sole Heir of the highest Father. He alone possesses as His own that which He affords as a gift to those whose holy faith has granted a heavenly reward. So He is truly our poetic inspiration, the true David 82. Witke (1971, 93) refers to Ps. 136:2 (“By the waters of Babylon”), where the harp is hung upon the tree as a sign of Jews’ mourning in exile.

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Concord and Discord who has restored the lyre of this body which had long lain idle, its frame crumbling. The Lord has restored it, adopting it for His use when it was silent and its strings broken by that ancient sin. By joining men to God, He has achieved the reinvigoration of all creation to the beauty of its original shape, so that all things might be new, and the dust removed from them. God our Master Himself sought to renew this lyre, and so He hung His own lyre, nailed to the wood of the tree, and gave it fresh life when the cross destroyed the sinning of the flesh. Thus He ordered mortal man from the different nations into a single lyre, and tuned it for heavenly music, drawing peoples of all races into a single body. Then He struck the chords with the plectrum of the Word, and the sound of the Gospel-instrument filled all creation with praise of God. Christ’s golden tortoise-shell resounds through the whole world; countless tongues sing a single melody; a new song rings out for God from matching strings.

Firstly, through the Incarnation Christ unites the two opposed natures of god and man, producing pacem disparis harmoniae (33–34). Christ as god made man is able to bestow a like harmony on those whose alma fides entitles them to a divine reward. As the “author of music (43 musicus auctor, picking up on 32 musica Christus), Christ is the true David, who, in his own assumption of the human body, restores the lyre of the body that had fallen silent, its frame (com-pages) in decay, and its strings broken, making it new (45 restituit, 47 reparauit, 49 reuirescere; 50 ut noua cuncta forent, cunctis abeunte ueterno, 51 renouaturus, 53 nouauit). To achieve this, Christ first hung the lyre of his own body on the wood of the cross. From the individual body-as-lyre we move to the body of the church as lyre, as Christ brings the varied and heterogeneous peoples of the world into one body (54–56 atque ita mortalem numeris caelestibus aptam | composuit citharam uariis ex gentibus unam,83 | omnigenas84 populos compingens corpus in unum),85 perhaps echoing the language used by Prudentius of the universal Christian empire in Against Symmachus (see above). The lyre is then made to sound out, as the plectrum that is the word/Word (Christ) strikes the strings (57 fidibus), bringing into the open the pun on fides that forces together the homophones fides, “faith,” and fides, “lyre.” Faith in Christ, faith in the miraculous harmonies that Christ both embodies in his own person and produces in the individual and collective bodies of the human race, is the source of, in some sense is, the harmony of the lyre of the individual human being and the lyre 83. This is the line to which Fontaine suggests Rutilius Namatianus may respond polemically at Red. 1.63 fecisti patriam diuersis gentibus unam; see ch. 2. 84. Omnigenus is the adjective used by Virgil of the chaotic diversity of the Egyptian hybrid gods at Aen. 8.698, and appropriated for the harmonious diversity of peoples in the Roman empire by Prudentius, Symm. 2.610 (see ch. 2). Paulinus uses omnigenus of the plurality of languages united in the Christian message at Pentecost, Poem 27.65 (see above); cf. also Poem 31.429–30 nam tu [Christ] fons, quo uita fluit, quo gratia manat, | quo lux omnigenos funditur in populos. 85. For Augustine’s analogy between the harmony of David’s lyre and a harmonious city, see above.

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of the church.86 The voice of the Gospel-lyre (58 uox Euangelicae testudinis, perhaps exploiting the paradox of giving the mute tortoise voice; see chapter 6) fills the world. The golden lyre of Christ (Christi chelys aurea), the lyre that is Christ, the lyre that Christ restores in the body of the church, sounds out with numberless tongues in a single melody, and the new song responds to God with matching strings, matching each other, and matching the strings of the lyre that is Christ (59–61 toto Christi chelys aurea mundo | personat innumeris uno modulamine linguis, | respondentque deo paribus noua carmina neruis). The poet Paulinus himself sounds out as the lyre of Christ, an identification that Paulinus makes explicitly in the prologue to Poem 15 (26–29), in another rejection of the false and dumb pagan sources of poetic inspiration, and in line with the notion found in commentaries on the Psalms of man as the cithara of God, singing of God in his body, words, and deeds. Paulinus also feeds in the Christology of Clement and Irenaeus, whereby Christ is the musician Logos who makes a harmony of the whole world. In Natalicium 13 (Poem 21; a.d. 407) the image of the lyre is applied to the community of a family (272–79): magnificate Deum mecum et sapienter honestis, unanimes pueri, psallite carminibus! ut decachorda sonant pulsis psalteria neruis et paribus coeunt dissona fila modis, sic pia compagis nostrae testudo resultet, tamquam uno triplex lingua sonet labio; tres etenim numero sumus idem mentibus unum, et plures coeunt in tribus his animae. Come, boys of one mind, magnify God with me and with expert voices sing noble hymns. As ten-stringed lutes resound to the plucking of strings and the discordant strings come together in matching modes, so let the holy lyre of our company resound as though three tongues were singing in one mouth. For though we are three in number, we are one in mind, and in the three of us gather a greater number of souls.

The harmonious variety of the different notes of the lyre is an image of the unison (presumably) of the separate voices singing as if with one voice (tamquam uno . . . labio). The three-in-one of line 278 presents an earthly image of the mystery of the Trinity, the analogy between human and divine community that Arator will use in the Historia apostolica (see above).

86. For the pun, cf. Paul Fest. 89 fides genus citharae dicta, quod tantum inter se cordae eius quantum inter homines fides concordet. On the lyre symbolism, see Fontaine 1974; Junod-Ammerbauer 1975 (both cited by Roberts 1989, 145 n. 5); Green 1971, 89; Witke 1971, 90–94, with further examples of the body as lyre.

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The image of the lyre is reprised at 326–43, ending with its application to the man who lives his life in harmony with the sacred law (340–43): talis enim citharam sanctis homo legibus implet, omnibus ad uitam compositus numeris, cuius uita sacrae concordat ad omnia legi; omnis enim inrupto stamine chorda canet. For such a man fills the role of the lyre by pursuing sacred laws, ordering his life well in all measures; his life is in harmony with sacred law in all things; for every string will sing out unbroken.

For Paulinus the lyre is the symbol of a unity in diversity that connects and harmonizes man with god, the individual with the community, microcosm with macrocosm, in a Christian Pythagoreanism or a Christian Orphism. This concordia discors is the result of the reformation and renewal of mankind through Christ’s Incarnation and Crucifixion, the source and subject of the noua carmina (Poem 20.61) that supersede the tired fictions of pagan poets. At the same time a poetics of concordia discors, of uarietas, is a continuation and intensification of an aesthetics that goes back at least as far as the Augustan period.

5

Innovations of Late Antiquity Novelty and Renouatio

Late antiquity has in the past frequently been regarded as a period of decline and decadence, a civilization grown old, ripe for replacement, ready for metamorphosis into something different. Late antique writers themselves, however, display an insistence on novelty and renewal with a frequency and intensity for which it might be difficult to find parallels in earlier or later periods. I have already on several occasions touched on examples of this insistence, an insistence manifested in texts on both non-Christian and Christian subjects, the two traditions operating in a mutual awareness of each other and, doubtless, in a spirit of competition and rivalry. Gerhard Ladner observes that “the reform ideas of the great Fathers of the late fourth and early fifth century . . . stood out against the spirit of the so-called ‘Theodosian Renaissance.’ ”1 Conversely, one should not rule out the possibility that imperial imagery of renewal and reparation was encouraged by the emphasis on these ideas in Christian theology. Emblematic of this late antique obsession with novelty and renewal is the phoenix, the subject of two substantial poems, one by Claudian operating within a non-Christian frame of reference, and an earlier poem attributed to Lactantius plausibly to be read as alluding to Christian ideas of renewal (on the phoenix poems, see below). The late antique discourse of novelty more often than not defines itself with reference to the past, to what is old.2 The phoenix is a bird of venerable antiquity, whose most recent self-immolation and rebirth after many centuries are but the latest in a cycle that stretches back into a distant past. Pagan late antiquity is highly 1. Ladner 1959, 18. 2. See D’Angour 2011, ch. 4.

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conscious of the antiquity of its traditions,3 while Christianity has its own, competing, constructions of a past whose history has been guided by the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:9). Return, renovation, rebirth, and rejuvenation are the commonest guises in which the new reveals itself, while more sudden and unexpected, truly new, kinds of novelty are the products of conversion, miracle, and metamorphosis.4 With reference to the late fourth century, modern historians of both art and literature speak of the “Theodosian renaissance,” arguably the first of the series of renaissances that culminate in the Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and which have in common the revival of a “classical” past that is sensed as past.5 My focus is on the Western tradition, but it should not be overlooked that Constantine’s refoundation of Byzantium as Constantinople styled itself early on as noua Roma, allowing the perception that the old had been transferred to, been reborn in, the new.6 V I R G I L IA N R E N EWA L S

In chapter 2, on “Virgilian plots,” we saw that a re-newed engagement with the poems of Virgil after the poetic wasteland of the third century is characterized by an intensive re-working of Virgilian plots of return, renewal, and restoration. The combination of novelty and return to the past, of the new and the old, is at the heart of Virgilian poetics and ideology, in its most concentrated form in the fourth Eclogue, a text that enjoys a particular vogue in the late fourth and early fifth centuries a.d. Novelty frames return in the opening lines of the main body of the poem (4–7): Vltima Cumaei uenit iam carminis aetas; magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna, iam noua progenies caelo demittitur alto. Now the last age of Cumaean song has come; the great line of the ages begins anew. Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new generation descends from heaven on high.

In the first two lines there is a contrast between a late-coming, indeed a last, age, and a fresh birth. Integer often refers to a fresh beginning of something that has happened 3. On late antiquity’s self-positioning with regard to earlier Roman history, see Eigler 2003. 4. See Hardie, forthcoming b. 5. For bibliography on the Theodosian renaissance, see ch. 2, n. 4. On the history of the idea of “rebirth,” renasci, see Borinski 1919; Trier 1950, 1961; Bösing 1968, 1970; Doblhofer 1977 (on Rutil. Nam. Red. 140). On Roman imperial “renewal” propaganda, see MacMullen’s long note (1967, 333 n. 30). 6. Ladner 1959, 18 n. 6; Kantorowicz 2016, 82–83. For a much later expression of the idea, cf. Versus Romae (probably late ninth century), Deseruere tui tanto te tempore reges, | cessit et ad Graecos nomen honosque tuus . . . Constantinopolis florens noua Roma uocatur | moribus et muris, Roma uetusta, cadis.

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in the past, rather than to the start of something unprecedented; ad or in integrum means “to a former condition or state,” often in the phrase in integrum restituere. In the second two lines of the passage there is a balance between return, of divinities and conditions (a just society, the Golden Age) that existed on earth a very long time ago, and a new child who, unlike the Virgin Justice, has not been seen on earth before. The poem in which Virgil announces this new coming is itself a striking novelty within the context of the Eclogues: not just paulo maiora, “a little greater” (line 1), than run-of-the-mill bucolic, but also noua, in solidarity with the noua carmina of the poem’s dedicatee, the new consul of 40 b.c. Pollio, whose poetic output is praised in the previous poem, Eclogue 3.86 (Pollio et ipse facit noua carmina [“Pollio himself also makes new songs”]). The novelty of Eclogue 4 rests on its use, unprecedented in bucolic poetry, of inherited prophetic and historical modes of discourse: the poem draws on the Hesiodic myth of ages, the oracular manner of the Sibylline Oracles, and Catullus 64, one of the most inventive products of the new poets of the generation before Virgil. And not the least novel aspect of Eclogue 4 is its authoritative formulation in poetic form of the idea of renouatio. Pollio is an apposite dedicatee not just because he is one of the “new poets,” but because as consul for 40 b.c. he both inaugurates the new year on the first of January and thus guarantees the annual renewal of the traditional institutions of Rome. We have seen how Claudian in the poem that inaugurates his own career, the Panegyric for Probinus and Olybrius, performs his own balancing act between novelty and return of the old (see chapter 2). Innovation through recourse to past models is also the hallmark of the Georgics, whose paradoxical claim to primacy within a tradition is made explicitly in the proem to book 3.7 The Georgics end with the miracle of the bugonia, the restoration of the hive that has been destroyed by plague through the rebirth of the bees from the carcass of a slaughtered bullock, life out of death. The combination of novelty and return is marked verbally in the lines that introduce the topic of bugonia, Geo. 4.281–82: “but if someone suddenly loses their whole stock, and has no means of restoring a new race [of bees]” (sed si quem proles subito defecerit omnis | nec genus unde nouae stirpis reuocetur habebit).8 Virgil’s most revolutionary and at the same time most traditional work is his epic the Aeneid, although the epic poet, traditionally reticent, does not come forward explicitly to make the point about the poetics of his poem. The plot of the Aeneid is that of the rebirth of a new, and greater, Troy, out of the ashes of the old. Critics may argue whether Aeneas himself emerges as a new kind of hero out of an old and outmoded model of heroism by the end of the poem. There is, however, a passage in the last book of the Aeneid that deploys the language of novelty and return to 7. On the paradox of traditional claims to primacy in Latin poetry, see Hinds 1998, 52–55. 8. Conington (1865, ad loc.) notes: “The second stock might be called either new or a restoration of the old: Virgil mixes the two.”

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indicate the moment at which the wounded hero is given the power to reinvigorate the drive that will lead to the final defeat of Turnus, the death that is necessary for the new order to come. After Venus has infused with panacea the water with which the army surgeon Iapyx washes Aeneas’s wound, we read: “new/renewed strength returns to its former state” (12.424 nouae rediere in pristina uires).9 Those words are immediately followed by a return not just in pristina, but in prima, as Iapyx urges the Trojans to return to Aeneas his arms, using the words that begin the poem (arma uirumque): arma citi properate uiro (12.425 “Quickly bring the man/ the hero his arms”). With this act of healing renovation may be compared the healing sacrifice of the bugonia at the end of the Georgics that renews Aristaeus’s hive. I M PE R IA L R E N OVAT IO A N D C H R I ST IA N N OV E LT Y A N D R E N OVAT IO

In the fourth century AD the new-in-the-old has become institutionalized in both the imperial political and the Christian religious spheres. The idea of a renewal of the empire appears in coin legends of FELICIVM TEMPORVM REPARATIO and RENOVATIO IMPERII. FELICIVM TEMPORVM REPARATIO is found on a series of bronze medallions issued by Constantius II and Constans that have been associated with the eleventh centenary of the foundation of Rome in AD 348.10 Constantine’s program of renouatio imperii has been characterized as a Christian making new of the Roman Empire, but one that stops short of a revolution in political systems and structures.11 In the religious sphere, renovation, rebirth, and reformation are central to the Christian message,12 preceded by statements of renovation and rejuvenation in Old Testament prophecy and the Psalms—for example, the Lord’s annunciation of new heavens and a new earth at Isaiah 65:17: “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind” (ecce enim ego creo caelos nouos et terram nouam, et non erunt in memoria priora, et non ascendent super cor); and the psalmist’s promise at Psalms 102:5: “Who satisfieth thy desire with good things; thy youth shall be renewed like the eagle’s” (qui replet in bonis desi9. Tarrant 2012 on Aen. 12.424: “Nouus can mean ‘restored to its original state, renewed’, see OLD 13, Ovid, Ars am. 3.185 quot noua terra parit flores, but it may be more satisfying to see the phrase as conflating two related ideas, that A. feels new strength and that his old strength returns.” For Paulinus of Nola’s allusion to this passage in his account of his own spiritual renewal, see ch. 1. 10. Felicium temporum reparatio: see Mattingly 1933; Kent 1967. On Commodus’s ideology of renouatio temporum, see De Ranieri 1997. 11. Girardet 2000; see also Ladner 1959, pt. 1; 1966. 12. Fundamental is Ladner 1959, setting the Christian idea of reform(ation) within the wider context of other ancient and postantique ideas of renewal; see also von Harnack 1918. Buchheit (1992) discusses New Testament and patristic passages on making new, the re-creation of man and world.

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derium tuum renouabitur ut aquilae iuuentus tua). Old Testament prophecy is realized in the Christian eschatology of Revelation 21.1: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea” (et uidi caelum nouum et terram nouam: primum enim caelum et prima terra abiit, et mare iam non est); and 21.5: “And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new” (et dixit qui sedebat in throno: ecce nova facio omnia). Most important for Christian notions of renewal and rebirth are the formulations of Pauline theology.13 Key passages include Romans 12:2: “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind (reformamini in nouitate sensus uestri), that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God”; Ephesians 4:22–24 “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man (deponere . . . ueterem hominem), which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed (renouamini) in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man (induite nouum hominem), which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness”; Colossians 3:10: “[Seeing that you] have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him”; and 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if any man be in Christ a new creature, the old things are passed away; behold, all things are made new” (si qua ergo in Christo noua creatura, uetera transierunt. ecce facta sunt noua). In his magisterial study of the idea of reform in Christian thought, Ladner stresses the aspect of a return to a previous optimal condition. Ladner’s definition of the idea of reform is as follows: “the idea of free, intentional and ever perfectible, multiple, prolonged and ever repeated efforts by man to reassert and augment values preexistent in the spiritual-material compound of the world.”14 He notes that “only the term reformare, and to some extent its Greek equivalents ἀναμορφοῦν, μεταμορφοῦν, etc., can contain the connotations of newness and improvement and those of old goodness in equal strength.”15 The first instances of the verb reformo are found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, probably an Ovidian coinage to designate a particular (and, it might be said, very Virgilian) kind of metamorphosis. The verb is used of the rejuvenation of Iolaus at Metamorphoses 9.399 (“Iolaus changed back in appearance to his earliest years” [ora reformatus primos Iolaus in annos]), and in Proteus’s advice to Peleus on how to master the shape-shifting Thetis at 11.254 (“But hold her tight, whatever form she takes, until she changes her shape back to what it was before” [sed preme, quidquid erit, dum quod fuit ante reformet]).16 Pliny the Younger uses the 13. Ladner 1959, pt. 2, ch. 2. 14. Ladner 1959, 35. 15. Ladner 1959, 47. 16. For an example of reformo used of the restoration of a previous state in a historiographical context, see Val. Max. 6.5.2 ext., cum saluberrimo consilio Themistocles migrare Athenienses in classem coegisset, Xerxeque rege et copiis eius Graecia pulsis ruinas patriae in pristinum habitum reformaret.

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agent noun reformator in a letter praising Titinius Capito, credited with the rejuvenation (or renascence) of literary studies (Ep. 8.12.1): “He is an excellent man, to be counted among the chief ornaments of the age; he practices learning, and is the friend of learned men . . . in short, the restorer and reformer of letters themselves which are now growing old (ipsarum denique litterarum iam senescentium reductor ac reformator).” Reformo is used frequently in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, whose plot is centered on the transformation of a man into an ass, and his transformation back into his original form. At the moment of his restitution to human form the devout onlookers pay homage to the power of the divinity Isis, who effects the miracle, and to the ease of restoration of Lucius’s form (Met. 11.13 facilitatem reformationis). T H E PH OE N I X

The phoenix appears on imperial coins with legends such as SAECVLVM AVREVM, AIΩΝ, AETERNITAS, FELICIVM TEMPORVM REPARATIO, starting with Hadrian, whose first surviving phoenix issue, of a.d. 118, has the legend DIVO TRAIANO PARTH. PATRI, a pious acknowledgment of Hadrian as the living successor to the deceased.17 In later coins the phoenix is a symbol of the aeternitas of Rome. Some decades before the phoenix’s first appearance on coins, it is found for the first time as an image of Rome in an epigram by Martial on the renewal and rejuvenation of the city, with reference to rebuilding by Domitian after the fire of a.d. 80 (5.7.1–4; ca. a.d. 90):18 Qualiter Assyrios renouant incendia nidos, una decem quotiens saecula uixit auis, taliter exuta est ueterem noua Roma senectam et sumpsit uultus praesidis ipsa sui. Just as fire renews the Syrian nest, every time that the unique bird has lived for ten ages, just so new Rome has shed its old senescence, and taken on the features of its ruler.

“New Rome” (noua Roma) is a Rome renewed (renouant), and a Rome rejuvenated (line 3),19 and also a Rome metamorphosed into the likeness of its ruler. In line 3 Martial alludes to Ovid’s account of the rebirth into divinity of Hercules on his funeral pyre, at Metamorphoses 9.262–72, and Martial may thereby hint at a connection between the rise of Rome from the ashes and the consecratio of the 17. See Davies 2000. 18. See Walter 1996. 19. Canobbio (2011, ad loc.) compares Flor. Epitome 1.8 sub Traiano principe . . . senectus imperii quasi reddita iuuentute reuiruit; Stat. Silu. 1.4.7–8 (Rutilius Gallicus, once cured) damnosaque fila senectae | exuit atque alios melior reuirescit in annos; Aelius Arist. Or. 17.2, 20.19 (phoenix image of Smyrna reconstructed after earthquake of 178). Martial also uses the idea of rebirth at 6.4.3 tot nascentia templa, tot renata (praise of Domitian).

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emperor on his pyre. Ovid compares Hercules’s shedding of his mortal body to a snake sloughing its skin (senecta can also mean the “slough” of a snake), in a simile that alludes to Virgil’s application of that image to Neoptolemus in whom is reborn the martial violence of his dead father, Achilles, as he sacks Troy and slaughters its king Priam in Aeneid 2.20 Within the wider plot of the Aeneid the theme of rebirth will be transferred from Greek heroes to cities, as the death of one city, Troy, is the precondition for the birth of another, Rome, and this is another determinant for Martial’s allusion to the Virgilian-Ovidian imagery in his fire of Rome epigram. Martial’s epigram is indebted to more than one Ovidian model, drawing for the first four lines on the account of the phoenix at Metamorphoses 15.391–407. Martial 5.7 is the first extant direct comparison of Rome to the phoenix, but it may acknowledge implicit connections in the Ovidian passage between the phoenix and both the city of Rome and the person of the emperor, whose features the rejuvenated city assumes. Within Pythagoras’s disquisition on the universal law of change, the phoenix is anomalous in that it exemplifies a metamorphosis through death and birth into the same. Ovid uses a number of compound verbs with the prefix re-: reparet, reseminet, renasci, reponit. Reponit is the last word of the section on the phoenix. While in this instance the re- suffix need not denote repetition, this is an action that is repeated on each occasion of the rebirth of the phoenix and its pious conveyance of its father’s remains to the city of the Sun, a repeated action that is mirrored in the verbal repetitions of the last two lines of the passage, coincidences of word division, metrical pattern, and sounds, which gather to a head in the repetition of Hyperionis, in the same case and in the same metrical sedes (Met. 15.406–7): perque leues auras Hyperionis urbe potitus ante fores sacras Hyperionis aede reponit.

Ovid’s unique phoenix, given a place of honor at the climax of the natural-historical part of Pythagoras’s speech, prompts various associations with other things: (1) with the reincarnations of the soul, and in particular that of Pythagoras, which remains the same through all its corporeal integuments (171); (2) with the power of the poet to survive his own death, figured by Ovid in the epilogue as a special case of metempsychosis (Met. 15.875–79); (3) with the resurgence of Troy from its ashes; (4) with the ritual of the imperial funeral and apotheosis, perhaps hinted at, or foreshadowed, in the resurrection of Hercules from his pyre at 9.266–72;21 (5) with the theme of succession: the pious (15.405) phoenix bears the burden of its father’s remains, repeating the action of pius Aeneas in carrying his father out of 20. Met. 9.266–68 utque nouus serpens posita cum pelle senecta | luxuriare solet squamaque nitere recenti, | sic ubi mortales Tirynthius exuit artus; cf. Aen. 2.473 positis nouus exuuiis nitidusque iuuenta. 21. Explicit connections between imperial apotheosis and the phoenix are attested only later: Hubaux and Leroy 1939, 239–52; on the eagle and imperial apotheosis, see Weinstock 1971, 358–59.

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Troy (Met. 13.624–26) and anticipating the burden of royal or imperial succession, a repeated Ovidian theme. The Ovidian phoenix is thus a potent bearer of the themes of renouatio and reparatio: the imperial ideology of the renouatio of the city of Rome and of its ruler, and the renewal of the individual through postmortem resurrection. Here we are close to a central Christian doctrine, and Hermann Fränkel did indeed see in the reformation of Hercules on the pyre into divinity through the sloughing of his mortal part in Metamorphoses 9 one of the tokens of Ovid’s position as a poet between two worlds, foreshadowing the Christian doctrine of the two natures of Christ.22 Through the association of the phoenix with the successive rebirths of the speaker Pythagoras, Ovid also engineers allusion to renouatio at the level of poetics, whose novelty was flagged up in the first words of the Metamorphoses, In noua fert animus. At the end of the poem Ovid’s animus, his spirit, soul, will be repeatedly reembodied in the succession of his readers, as a perpetually self-renewing carmen perpetuum, an “everlasting” as well as a “continuous song.”23 Ovid will live after his death, perpetually fresh (cf. Hor. Odes 3.30.7–8 usque ego postera | crescam laude recens [“I shall grow ever fresh in the praise of time to come”]) and renewed through his immortal poetry, the fitting apotheosis for Ovid’s poem of novelties. Recollection in the epilogue to the Metamorphoses of Ennius’s use in the prologue to the Annals of metempsychosis to express his relationship to his poetic predecessor Homer reinforces the phoenix-like renewal of poetic tradition through poetic succession and imitation. In the phoenix is thus concentrated an Ovidian elaboration and heightening of Virgilian themes of return and repetition, already in Virgil transferrable from the spheres of history and ideology to the realm of the poetic. Virgilian and Ovidian topics of renewal, rebirth, and return thus offer the makings of a template for literary and cultural renaissance. The phoenix is the subject of two substantial late antique “epyllia,” separated by the better part of a century, but closely parallel in outline, and the one almost certainly dependent on the other. The attribution of the De aue phoenice to the church father Lactantius has been disputed, but the consensus is in favor of Lactantian authorship.24 If that is correct, it is tempting to see the De aue phoenice as marking a rebirth of literary Latin poetry, and as the first literary Christian Latin poem, after the desert in Latin literature that is the third century, the beginning of a 22. Fränkel 1945, 81–82. 23. For this sense of perpetuus, cf. Met. 1.486–87 da mihi perpetua . . . uirginitate frui; 565 tu quoque perpetuos semper gere frondis honores. 24. In general on the phoenix, see van den Broek 1972. On the two late antique phoenix poems, see Richter 1993. On Lactantius, De aue phoenice, see Fitzpatrick 1933; Stock 1965; Walla 1969; Harris 1976; Isetta 1980 (a thorough bibliographical review of work to date); Fontaine 1981; Wlosok 1990; Delbey 1998; Goulon 2001; Heck 2003; Roberts 2017. On the phoenix and the Roman emperor, see Lecocq 2001.

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renaissance.25 The second poem, from the end of the fourth century or beginning of the fifth, is Claudian’s Phoenix (Carm. min. 27 Platnauer). For Will Richter (who argues that the De aue is a later, Christianizing, rewriting of Claudian’s poem), Claudian’s Phoenix is no more than a literary jeu d’esprit.26 But it is difficult to exclude symbolic meanings in either poem, given the frequency with which the phoenix is used in the later western empire as a symbol either of the imperial ideology of succession and renovation, or of the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of Christ, and of the general resurrection of mankind.27 A plausible, if not probative, case can be made for a reading of Lactantius’s De aue in line with the handling of pagan myth in his prose apologetic works, in which pagan mirabilia are used as “evidence” for Christian truth (so, for example, the wind fertilization of horses in Georgics 3 is an analogy for the impregnation of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit).28 Lactantius’s poem cannot be read off as a sustained and consistent allegory of Christian doctrine, but a number of details are strongly suggestive for many readers. Jacques Fontaine offers a list of five “undoubtedly Christian” signals: the “living fountain” in the ekphrasis of the locus felix, the grove of the Sun, where the phoenix lives (25 fons . . . quem uiuum nomine dicunt, which goes beyond the use of uiuus as an epithet of “running” water in classical authors); the description of our world, whither the aging phoenix goes to be reborn, as the place “where Death has his kingdom” (64); the phoenix’s commendation of her soul to the aromatic pyre (93 animam commendat);29 the celebration of the virginity of the self-regenerating bird (164); and the last line of the poem, “gaining immortal life through the boon of death” (170 aeternam uitam mortis adepta bono). Ovid is the point of departure for Lactantius’s phoenix, but the poem alludes to a range of other pagan texts. The first allusion is to a passage of Ennius, which Lactantius knew from its citation in Cicero’s Republic. The “blessed place,” locus felix, where the phoenix dwells is located “where stands open the greatest portal of the everlasting sky” (2 qua patet aeterni maxima porta poli), citing Ennius’s epigram 25. Fontaine 1981, 60: “une sorte de manifeste d’un néo-alexandrinisme latin”; “une gemme poétique délicatement oeuvrée,” opening the poetry of the fourth century. 26. Richter 1993, 90. 27. Clement of Rome, Epistle to the Corinthians (a.d. 95/8) 24–25: analogies for the resurrection of the dead are found in the alternation of day and night; the growth of buried seeds, and τὸ παράδοξον σημεῖον of the phoenix; followed by Tertullian, De resurrectione 13.2 illum dico alitem orientis peculiarem, de singularitate famosum, de posteritate monstruosum, qui semetipsum libenter funerans renovat, natali fine decedens atque succedens, iterum phoenix ubi nemo iam, iterum ipse qui non iam, alius idem (cf. Hor. Carm. Saec. 10–11 (the sun) aliusque et idem | nasceris); Physiologus (first redaction) 7; Commodian, Carmen apologeticum 139–40 sicut auis Phoenix meditatur a morte renasci, | dat nobis exemplum, post funera surgere posse. See Grant 1952, 239–40, “Subjects” index s.vv. “Animals,” “Phoenix.” 28. For this approach, see Wlosok 1990. 29. Fontaine 1981, 64–65. Cf. Luke 23:46 Pater, in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum; John 10:17 propterea me Pater diligit, quia ego pono animam meam ut iterum sumam eam.

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on Scipio Africanus, as quoted at Lactantius, The Divine Institutes 1.18.11: “Scipio Africanus speaks as follows in Ennius: ‘If it is lawful for any man to ascend to the regions of the gods, the greatest portal of the sky stands open for me alone’ [cf. Enn. Epig. 3b Goldberg-Manuwald Si fas endo plagas caelestum ascendere cuiquam est, | mi soli caeli maxima porta patet]. Doubtless because he had wiped out and killed a great part of the human race. O Africanus, in what darkness you lived your life! Or rather, o poet, who thought that the way up to the sky lay open for mankind through blood and slaughter!” Lactantius here polemicizes against the pagan belief in the divinization of mortals for virtue or benefactions to mankind, a polemic that may be implicit by Kontrastimitation in the De aue: if the phoenix is a figure for Christ, then he in truth is the unique man for whom the gate of heaven was open. There may also be a pun on the Ennian mi soli, since the phoenix’s home is a grove of the Sun (9 Solis nemus); Sol appears in line 4, two lines after the Ennian allusion. The Sun may be another figure for Christ, the “Sun of righteousness” (Mal. 4:2). There follows a suite of classical allusions. The grove of the Sun is “a grove green with the honours of everlasting foliage” (10 lucus perpetuae frondis honore uirens), alluding to the newly created plant claimed by the Sun’s alter ego, Apollo, at Metamorphoses 1.565, the evergreen laurel, to whom Apollo addresses the words “Do you also bear everlasting honours in your foliage” (tu quoque perpetuos semper gere frondis honores). This leads into further Ovidian material in the first of three short sections that describe the paradisal grove through negation: it was untouched by the conflagration of Phaethon and by Deucalion’s flood (11–14), as narrated in books 1 and 2 of the Metamorphoses. Absent are the personifications of ills and passions that cluster at the gate of the Virgilian underworld (15–20), so establishing the grove as not-Hades, that is, a version of heaven. This is reinforced by the description of the absence of the forces of the storm (21–24), alluding to Lucretius’s description of the calm abodes of the god at De rerum natura 3.19–22, a passage that appropriates an Odyssean description of Olympus. Eberhard Heck argues that there is further, pointed, Lucretian allusion in the epilogue of the De aue: “a happy bird, who practices none of the unions of love; to her, death is love, she finds pleasure only in death: to win her birth, she seeks first to die” (164–66 felix quae ueneris foedera nulla colit: | mors illi uenus est, sola est in morte uoluptas: | ut possit nasci, appetit ante mori).30 For Heck this reverses the Lucretian identification of the Epicurean summum bonum with “pleasure,” uoluptas, identified with a Venus who embodies a universal life-force of generation. 30. Heck 2003. Does this allude to the Lucretian doctrine that change, through which new things come to birth, is the death of what existed before? See Lucr. DRN 1.670–71 ( = 1.792–93, 2.753–54) nam quodcumque suis mutatum finibus exit, | continuo hoc mors est illius quod fuit ante; cf. especially the appearance of these formulaic lines at 1.792–93, after 790–91 immutabile enim quiddam superare necessest, | ne res ad nilum redigantur funditus omnes. The phoenix is the immutabile quiddam in a world of change.

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Heck speaks of the poem as an “anti-Lucretius”; this form of Kontrastimitation is the procedure of Lucretius himself, as he appropriates previous myth and poetry in order to turn them on their head and make them yield an Epicurean message— for example, in his polemical engagement with the Ennian version of De rerum natura in the prologue of book 1. Christian writers continue the pre-Christian tradition, inaugurated in Virgil’s reworking of Lucretian models, of responding to the materialist philosophy of the De rerum natura through a Kontrastimitation learned from Lucretius himself.31 To put the strong case for the programmatic—indeed metapoetic—value of the De aue phoenice: the poem effects a rebirth of pagan Latin poetry in the service of a Christian message, an example of Gnilka’s chrēsis, “proper use,” of pagan culture, perhaps32—a Christian renaissance. The narrative of Claudian’s Phoenix (Carm. min. 27 Platnauer) runs closely parallel to that of the De aue phoenice.33 The bird of the Sun lives in a grove in the furthest east, where the Sun’s chariot first starts its daily journey. Claudian stresses, more than Lactantius, both the phoenix’s immunity to time, through its eternal returns (“In its long life it equals the stars in its power to endure, and its renascent limbs weary the passing ages” [11–12 stellas qui uiuidus aequat | durando34 membrisque terit redeuntibus aeuum]), and its experience of the passage of time, through the enumeration of the thousand summers, winters, springs, and autumns whose passage finally weigh down each individual embodiment of the phoenix under the yoke of the years (27– 31). The aging process is further emphasized by the simile of an aged tree finally brought crashing down from the summit of the Caucasus by the combined effects of wind, rain, and “decay of years” (35 uitiosa uetustas), the last words of the simile. The simile itself embodies an aging tradition of epic similes of falling trees. The tree evokes the Rome tree of Georgics 2.291–97; “the mighty oak whose timber has hardened over long years of life” (annoso ualidam cum robore quercum) at Aeneid 4.441, the tree to which is compared Aeneas’s immobility in the face of Dido’s pleas, and which prospectively embodies the lasting traditions of Rome; and the sublime but decayed oak tree (quercus sublimis) to which Pompey is compared at Lucan 1.136–43. There is perhaps also a pointed contrast with the towering palm-tree in which Lactantius’s phoenix constructs its funerary nest (De aue phoenice 69 aerio sublimem uertice palmam), while Aeolus ensures windless and cloudless fair weather by 31. See Hardie, forthcoming a. 32. Gnilka 1984. 33. Commentary by Ricci 1995; see also Christiansen and Sebesta 1985. 34. Cf. the language used of the aesculus at Virg. Geo. 2.295 multa uirum uoluens durando saecula uincit; 291–92 may also be relevant: aesculus . . . uertice ad auras aetherias . . . tendit; a different kind of aequare. Claudian compares the phoenix to a tree a few lines later.

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shutting up his winds in their prison-cave (74–76). The focus on the aging process continues in the following lines, where Claudian compares the bird’s fading eye to the moon hidden in clouds, her light, already a pale reflection of the Sun’s, further obscured. The phoenix is aware of the long passage of time (40–41 conscius aeui | defuncti). The vast stretches of time experienced by the phoenix are emphasized again in the epilogue (101–10), where we learn that the bird was witness to the primeval flood and the conflagration of Phaethon, universal destructions to which it was immune and of which it is the sole survivor (108 solusque superstes).35 Claudian places at the end of his poem the reference to the Ovidian flood and conflagration that Lactantius had placed near the beginning, and provides a different motivation for the reference: Lactantius tells us that the grove of the Sun was untouched by the disasters of Phaethon and Deucalion, but does not allude to the experience of those events by the phoenix, the Ancient of Days. Acknowledging the major Ovidian source for the death and rebirth of the phoenix, Claudian presents it as a metamorphosis, in the authoritative voice of the Sun, who ends his reply to the phoenix’s prayer that he should gain new strength through fire with the words “With a change of shape come forth better than before” (54 mutata melior procede figura).36 Melior alludes to the transformation from old age to youth; this is a reformatio (cf. 25 reformat) in melius, a notion central to the Christian idea of “reformation,” which is focused in particular on the return to the pristine image-likeness of man to God. Claudian may well have been familiar with the patristic discourse of reformation; it is not impossible that there is a playfully polemic edge in his reworking of Lactantius’s poem, reappropriating the phoenix for a non-Christian milieu. Other Ovidian touches align Claudian’s phoenix rather with the symbols and values of Roman imperial ideology. The phoenix is pius (49; cf. Met. 15.405), and, like the Ovidian phoenix, it carries the burden of its father’s tomb to Egyptian Heliopolis, in order “to consecrate its father’s spirit” (72); Lactantius does not make this pious duty to the father explicit. There are echoes of the Ovidian Memnon episode (Met. 13.600–622), a foreshadowing within the Metamorphoses of the rebirth of the phoenix from its ashes. With “The ashes show signs of life; they begin to move though there is none to move them, and feathers clothe the formless ashes” (67–68 uicturi cineres nullo cogente moueri | incipiunt plumaque rudem uestire fauillam), compare the transformation of the ashes that fly up from the funeral pyre of Memnon into the wings of the Memnon birds (Memnonides) at Metamorphoses 13.604–9 (atra fauilla uolat . . . ). At 76 ff. Claudian’s phoenix is 35. Cf. Met. 1.351 o femina sola superstes (Deucalion to Pyrrha after the Flood). 36. Cf. Met. 1.546, 548 mutando . . . figuram; 15.373–74 agrestes tineae . . . ferali mutant cum papilione figuram; Ibis 425 mutare figuras. The association of the butterfly with the souls of the dead is perhaps significant in the Claudianic context.

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accompanied by numberless (innumerae) adoring birds. Allusion to the Memnonides episode is variously pointed. From the ashes of Memnon is born first one bird, and then a numberless host of “sisters” from the same origin (Met. 13.609 innumerae, quibus est eadem natalis origo), the very opposite of the unica auis that (re-)emerges from the ashes of the phoenix, accompanied by numberless birds of different species. The Memnon birds proceed to divide into two armies and fight and kill each other in a version of Roman civil war. The numberless birds who escort the phoenix observe a reverential cessation of all interspecies hostilities, which might also remind us of a Golden Age or paradisal peaceableness (81–82): “Neither the fierce hawk nor the eagle, the Thunderer’s own armour-bearer, fall to fighting; respect [for the phoenix] brings about a universal truce (commune facit reuerentia foedus).” There is a universal peace in the empire of birds, corresponding to the concord between the western and eastern empires that is a recurrent hope and desire in Claudian’s political panegyrics. In a striking turn, this section of the poem concludes with a long simile comparing the phoenix and its escort not to a Roman emperor, but to the Parthian king, leading his barbarian troops from the Tigris, not the Thybris. Comparable is the simile of the Achaemenid prince, Achaemenius puer, in the narrative of the hesitant succession of Thiodamas to the warrior-prophet Amphiaraus at Statius, Thebaid 8.286–93, in a context that evokes thoughts of the Roman imperial succession.37 Peder Christiansen and Judith Sebesta press strongly on the Roman and imperial aspects of Claudian’s Phoenix, concluding that “the phoenix poem belongs, along with the panegyric on Stilicho’s consulship, to the genre of political panegyric.”38 This is perhaps too crude as a statement of Claudian’s purpose, but the Phoenix does allow Claudian to explore a range of ideas and images closely related to both imperial ideology and literary-cultural ideas of return and renewal. And it is true that Claudian does use the image of the phoenix at a climactic point in his three-book On the Consulship of Stilicho, at the end of book 2, which forms a unit with book 1, both recited in Milan in January a.d. 400 (while book 3 was written for Stilicho’s triumphal entry into Rome a month or so later). Roma, at the urging of the personified nations of the empire, flies to Milan to persuade Stilicho to accept the consulship and to grant the city of Rome his presence in an aduentus (2.388). Once Roma has succeeded in her plea, Fama flies abroad to summon the leading men of Rome to the city. A simile (2.414–20) compares their eager haste to the escort of eagles and birds from every part of the world who gather to marvel at the bird of the Sun, the phoenix, as it makes its way from the furthest east to the 37. Hardie 1993, 111. 38. Christiansen and Sebesta 1985, 223. Lecocq (2011) also reads the Phoenix as an engaged political poem in praise of Stilicho, a profession of faith in the endurance of the Roman Empire, to be dated possibly between 400 and 404, the theoretical anniversary of the Saecular Games.

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Nile, bearing the ashes of its father, once it has “restored its youth through a fertile death” (414 sic ubi fecunda reparauit morte iuuentam), the first line of the simile. Catherine Ware has well discussed the summative effect of this simile as a mythical image for the themes of return, restoration, and rejuvenation that have run through the two books,39 which are recurrently punctuated by a vocabulary of repetition and return: iterum, alius, referre, reddere, reuocare, restituere, redire, priscus, nouus, iuuenescere. Claudian makes something far more momentous out of the imagery of return and restoration that is conventionally associated with the inauguration of the new consul at the beginning of the new year,40 although there is precedent both in Virgil’s fourth Eclogue, which conflates the beginning of a new consular year with the beginning of a new age (see above), and in Statius’s poem on the seventeenth consulship of Domitian, Silvae 4.1.11–14: ipse etiam immensi reparator maximus aeui41 attollit uultus et utroque a limine grates Ianus agit, quem tu uicina Pace ligatum42 omnia iussisti componere bella. Even the mighty renewer of immeasurable ages raises his faces and from both his thresholds gives thanks, Janus himself, whom under the constraint of his neighbor Peace, you have bidden to settle all the wars.

The return of Stilicho to Rome in the guise of the phoenix forms a ring with Stilicho’s first entry onto the public stage at On the Consulship of Stilicho 1.51 ff., when he was sent as pacis auctor to Assyria, a traditional home of the phoenix. The young Stilicho was the object of the stunned and admiring gaze of the rulers and people of Parthia, as the phoenix is the cynosure of the gaze of the birds in the simile. Eastern spices are burned at the peace treaty (58–59), the spices on which the phoenix immolates itself. To the admiration of the locals, Stilicho outdoes the Medes in horse-riding and the Parthians in archery; at Phoenix 83–88 the phoenix, adored by its avian acolytes, is compared to the ductor Parthus leading his troops “from the tawny Tigris” (flauo de Tigride), the river that the young Stilicho crosses (Cons. Stil. 1.53 Tigrim transgressus). The account of the birth and early years of Stilicho makes of him a version of the child of Eclogue 4. 39. Ware 2012, 111. 40. Cf. Ov. Fast. 1.81–82 iamque noui praeeunt fasces, noua purpura fulget, | et noua conspicuum pondera sentit ebur. In Fast. 1 Ovid associates Janus more with cosmic beginnings, however, than with (cosmic) restoration. Cf. also ch. 2 on consular inauguration, novelty, and renewal in Claudian’s Panegyric for Probinus and Olybrius. 41. Coleman 1988, ad loc.: “a very extravagant notion, implying here that without Janus to preside over each successive year the machinery of time would wear out”; she compares reparare used of restoring buildings; Hor. Carm. 3.3.60; Suet. Dom. 20. 42. Imitated at Claud. Cons. Stil. 2.287 Ianum pax alta ligat.

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The “bird of the Sun” is an apt comparandum for the new consul for whom the Sun prepares a year worthy of him (2.422–23). “Not less is the chorus of joy in heaven” (421 nec minor in caelo chorus est), “not less” than both the Roman proceres of 410 and the aerial troop of birds in the immediately preceding simile, which, Janus-like, looks both backward and forward. Through reference to the heavenly joy of the deified Theodosius, of Stilicho’s “own gods,” and of the Sun himself, we move on to the final passage in the book, the impressive ekphrasis of the Cave of Time,43 where the Sun comes to meet Aion and Nature in order to pick out from the storehouse of saecula the golden year to be marked with the name of Stilicho. This is a landscape of the phoenix, of time perpetually consumed and renewed, personified in the ouroboros serpent, the serpent that devours its own tail, where Aion presides over the cycle of life and death. Both the allegorical landscape and its inhabitants, and the Golden Age to follow under Stilicho’s consulship, reflect the ideal dwelling place of the phoenix in Lactantius’s and Claudian’s phoenix poems. With “a serpent whose scales are perpetually green” (428–29 serpens | perpetuumque uiret squamis), compare Lactantius’s grove of the Sun, “a grove green with the honour of its perpetual foliage” (De aue phoenice 10 lucus perpetuae frondis honore uirens). The temperate spring of the Golden Age, immune to extremes of heat, rain, and hail (458–66), repeats the vernal moderation of Lactantius’s grove. Once he has selected his golden year, the Sun enters his own gardens, a place of paradoxically refreshing, nourishing, and invigorating fires (467–70): sic fatus croceis rorantes ignibus hortos ingreditur uallemque suam, quam flammeus ambit riuus et inriguis largum iubar ingerit herbis, quas Solis pascuntur equi. So saying he entered his garden bedewed with golden fires, the valley round which runs a river of flame, pouring copious draughts of brightness on the well-watered plants, on which the horses of the Sun pasture.

This would be a suitable setting for a miraculous bird that restores itself through fire. The combination, in the sequence at the end of On the Consulship of Stilicho 2, of the phoenix simile with the Cave of Time, of the theme of repetition and renewal with a sense of the vast reaches of time, is paralleled in Claudian’s particular slant to the story of the phoenix in the Phoenix, with its similar focus on the enormous spans of time that the phoenix has experienced.

43. On Aion and the Alexandrian background, see Cameron 1970a, 205–8; Keudel 1970, 99–101 (on the phoenix simile), 102–8 (on the Cave of Time).

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The rebirth of the phoenix is at the same time the rejuvenation of the aging bird.44 The theme of rejuvenation enjoys a remarkable popularity in late antiquity. With reference to imperial ideology it continues an image that goes back at least as far as Virgil. By the fourth century it is expressive both of a self-affirming sense that the ancient city is capable of renewal, and of an anxious hope that venerable Rome is not entering on a terminal decline. For Christians, it expresses the invigoration of a belief system that is still relatively young in the overall historical perspective, together with an urgent call to the individual to make himself or herself new in line with Pauline theology. I have already looked at the most important Virgilian and Ovidian precedents. An image of rebirth and rejuvenation is used of the resurgent force of the Greeks destroying Troy in Aeneid 2. Pyrrhus, whose other name Neoptolemus, “new war,” marks him as a reincarnation of the destructive violence of his father, Achilles, is compared to a snake that has lain underground in winter, and now rears up toward the sun, “new after casting its slough and gleaming with youth” (473 positis nouus exuuiis nitidusque iuuenta). Virgil exploits the two senses of Greek γήρας and Latin senecta, both “old age” and the “cast skin, slough” of a snake.45 This is part of the serpent imagery whose positive valence is transferred from the Greeks to the Trojans over the course of book 2. It is Troy, which is fated to rise again (1.206 illic fas regna resurgere Troiae). Ovid transfers the Virgilian rejuvenated snake to his account of Hercules shedding his mortal limbs as he undergoes apotheosis (Met. 9.266–67), and Ovid also gives an extended narrative of the rejuvenation of Aeson by the magic drugs of Medea (Met. 7.159–293). Another double meaning helps the rejuvenation image in Latin: senium, another word for senectus, can mean “weariness” in contexts where old age is not in question, particularly in the phrase senio confectus.46 Virgil’s rejuvenated snake simile ultimately hints at a “rejuvenation” of Troy through refoundation on Italian soil. The rejuvenation of the city of Rome itself is a common late antique topos, with earlier precedents found in Martial’s epigram 5.7 on the restoration of Rome after a fire, discussed above, and in Florus’s account of the “ages” of Rome, comparing the Roman people to a single human being; there, infancy, adolescence, and robust adulthood are followed by senescence and rejuvenation (Epitome 1.8): “From the time of Caesar Augustus down to our own age there has been a period of not much less than two hundred years, during which, owing to the inactivity of the emperors, the Roman people, as it were, grew old and lost its potency (quasi consenuit atque decoxit), save that under the rule of Trajan it again 44. In general, see Curtius 1973, 113–14 (“Verjüngungsmotiv”). 45. On the snake simile, see Kenney 1979, 105–9. 46. See Powell 1988 on Cic. Cato maior 14 senio confectus; cf., e.g., Cic. Mil. 20 tota ciuitas confecta senio est, squalent municipia.

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stirred its arms and, contrary to general expectation, the ageing empire again renewed its vigour with youth as it were restored (senectus imperii quasi reddita iuventute reuirescit).”47 An image of an aged Rome is found earlier in the apparition to Julius Caesar at the Rubicon of the goddess Roma at Lucan 1.186–89: ingens uisa duci patriae trepidantis imago clara per obscuram uoltu maestissima noctem, turrigero canos effundens uertice crines48 caesarie lacera nudisque adstare lacertis. The huge image of his troubled fatherland was clearly seen by the general in the darkness of night, with deep sorrow on her face, and from her head, crowned with towers, the white hair streamed down; she stood beside him with tresses torn and arms bare.

But for Lucan’s Rome, unlike for Virgil’s Troy, there will be no rejuvenation. Possibly not far in date from Martial’s image of a Rome shedding old age are the three visions of the Woman Church in the Shepherd of Hermas.49 Her progressive rejuvenation marks stages in the renewal of the spirits of the recipient of the revelations, so a register of the subjective experience of Hermas, rather than of the objective condition of the institution of the church, except insofar as the strength of the church is measured by the spiritual strength of the individuals who make up the members of the church. It is not impossible that Hermas’s visions of a church rejuvenated are in conscious rivalry with representations of Rome rejuvenated. There are major images of the rejuvenation of Rome in Claudian, Prudentius, Rutilius Namatianus, and, following Claudian, in Sidonius Apollinaris.50 Here I take a closer look at just one of the most elaborate of these passages, in Claudian’s De bello Gildonico. The goddess Roma approaches Jupiter to complain that Gildo has cut the North African corn supply to Rome. She is enfeebled and emaciated, her loosely fitting helmet lets her gray hair show, and her spear is rusted through (17–27): 47. The four ages may come from the Histories of the Elder Seneca, who used this scheme according to Lactant. Inst. 7.15.4. See Tosi (1998, ad loc.), citing earlier examples of the image: Rhet. ad Her. 4.45 aliquando rei publicae rationes, quae militia nocentium exaruerunt, uirtute optimatium reuirescent; Cic. Phil. 7.1 senatum . . . ad auctoritatis pristinae spem reuirescere; Livy 28.35.7 (Scipio Africanus, after recovering from an illness) uelut renouatus flos iuuentae. 48. Roche (2009) on 1.188 canos . . . crines comments: “a pathetic detail that often appears within scenes of grief and suffering”; but all his parallels are for real old people. Lucan perhaps has in mind expressions like senio confectus. 49. See Osiek 1999; Luschnat 1973/74. 50. Claudian: Cons. Stil. 2.201–7; 6 Cons. Hon. 534–36; Gild. 17–25 (Roma enfeebled), 208–12 (Roma rejuvenated); Get. 51–53. See Prud. Symm. 2.640–42, 655–65 (see ch. 2); Rutil. Nam. Red. 1.115–40; Sidon. Apollin. Carm. 7.45 ff., 595 ff. On Claudian, see Cameron 1970a, 365 n. 2; Dewar 1996 (on 6 Cons. Hon. 533– 36); on Rutilius, see Doblhofer 1977 (on Rutil. Nam. Red. 1.115 f.), 1972; on Sidonius, see Kelly 2013, 179–82, with n. 34. In general on personifications of Rome in early fifth-century Latin poetry, see Roberts 2001.

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Rome, the goddess, fearing for her city’s destruction and weak with corn withheld, hastened to the threshold of revolving Olympus with looks unlike her own; not with such countenance does she assign laws to the Britons, or subject the frightened Indians to her rule. Feeble her voice, slow her step, her eyes deep buried. Her cheeks were sunken and hunger had wasted her limbs. Scarce can her weak shoulders support her unpolished shield. Her ill-fitting helmet shows her grey hairs and the spear she carries is a mass of rust.

The immediate source is perhaps Symmachus’s presentation of an aged Rome in his third Relatio, pleading for the relaxation of Gratian’s antipagan laws (Rel. 3.9–10 “Is it for this that I have been preserved, that in my old age I should be censured? . . . Yet it is too late, and a matter of reproach, to attempt to correct old age”). The details of the aged Roma contain elements of Ovidian personifications: the exilic Amor51 at Ex Ponto 3.3.13–20, Envy in Metamorphoses 2 and Hunger in Metamorphoses 8, and Tellus and Atlas suffering the effects of Phaethon’s disastrous ride in Metamorphoses 2.52 Roma is renewed and rejuvenated when Jupiter promises that Honorius will defeat Gildo (Gild. 208–12): dixit et adflauit Romam meliore iuuenta. continuo redit ille uigor seniique colorem mutauere comae. solidatam crista resurgens erexit galeam clipeique recanduit orbis et leuis excussa micuit rubigine cornus. He spoke and breathed into Rome a youthful improvement. Straightway her former strength returned, and her hair changed from the colour of old age; her helmet grew solid, and its crest rose up again, the round shield shone once more, and her light spear shed its rust and gleamed.

This is a reformatio in melius, emphasized by threefold repetition of the prefix re-. Rejuvenation is also metamorphosis (210 mutauere), as in the case of the phoenix at Phoenix 54 (the Sun speaks): mutata melior procede figura. Rejuvenation and 51. Roma’s palindromic secret name: see ch. 8. 52. See Ware 2012, 163.

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metamorphosis are an Ovidian pairing, as in the rejuvenations of Aeson and Iolaos in the Metamorphoses.53 Claudian also looks back to Virgil: adflauit Romam meliore iuuenta echoes Venus’s beautification of Aeneas at Aeneid 1.589–91: “For his own mother had breathed upon her son and given him beauty of hair and the purple glow of youth and a cheerful lustre in his eyes” (namque ipsa decoram | caesariem nato genetrix lumenque iuuentae | purpureum et laetos oculis adflarat honores). Aeneas is “restored” after the travails of the storm, his limbs no longer wasted with brine as they had been when the Trojans first made landfall (Aen. 1.173 sale tabentis artus). Aeneas is the bearer of hopes for a resurgent Troy. Roma’s shield shines with fresh light; Roma embodies her own history, to whose long and glorious course she has indignantly appealed in her previous complaint to Jupiter, which began with a suppliant’s abdication of the hope that the Roman consul should triumph over the Araxes (31–32 supplex uenio, non ut proculcet Araxen | consul ouans), the river whose bridging marked the furthest extent of Roman power at the end of the Shield of Aeneas (Aen. 8.728 pontem indignatus Araxes). The Virgilian shield of Roman history is also renewed and rejuvenated.54 N OV E LT Y I N PAU L I N U S OF N OL A

In the epistolary exchange with Ausonius defending his conversion to a more committed form of Christianity, Paulinus of Nola deploys a Christian Ovidianism that highlights the metamorphosis and novelty of his spiritual development (see chapter 1).55 A wide-ranging and inventive engagement with novelty is found in many of Paulinus’s later poems. Sometimes this is with direct reference to biblical texts and central Christian doctrines. The early Poem 6, “Laus Sancti Iohannis,”56 is an exercise in verse paraphrase of Scripture, a poem that does not claim novelty for itself (6.14 nec noua nunc aut nostra canam), as it narrates John the Baptist’s foretelling, even from the womb of his mother, Elizabeth, of the new age (171 noua saecula) to be ushered in at the birth of Christ. Repeated stress is laid on the renewal and rebirth effected by John’s institution of baptism: 70–71 “Whereas he shall promise salvation to those members of the human race who even after sinning will be renewed by holy water (ab sancta . . . renouabitur unda)”; 264–66 (the divine command to John) “Any man who with the mind of faith believes that you

53. See Hardie, forthcoming b. 54. For other “renewals” by Claudian of the Virgilian shield, see Prob. Ol. 94–99, 160–63 (see ch. 2) and 6 Cons. Hon. 39–52, 69–72 (see ch. 3). 55. See in particular Nicastri 1999 on Paulinus as a poet of metamorphosis and novelty; see also Hardie, forthcoming b. 56. The attribution of Poem 6 to Paulinus is, however, rejected by Dolveck (2015b, 26–27).

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wipe away his sins with holy water will be reborn (renatus)”; 275 “He made their bodies new for the new life” (praestatque nouae noua corpora uitae). Christ’s making new of human flesh through the Crucifixion, his reformation of mankind to its prelapsarian form, is repeatedly emphasized in the elaborate image of the body as lyre at Poem 20 (Natal. 12).43–61:57 47 reparauit; 48–51 “He has achieved the reinvigoration of all creation to the beauty of its original shape, so that all things might be new, as old age departs. In order to renew this lyre . . . ” (omnia rerum | in speciem primae fecit reuirescere formae, | ut noua cuncta forent, cunctis abeunte ueterno. | hanc renouaturus citharam . . . ).58 In the Christian worldview, God the Father and God the Son have miraculous powers of innovation and transformation, while God himself is unchanging, in keeping with the formulation of Wisdom 7:27 (“Remaining in herself, she [Wisdom] maketh all things new” [et permanens in se omnia innouat]), paraphrased by Paulinus at Poem 27 (Natal. 9).85–88 (ipse manens in se . . . idem nouat omnia principe Verbo) and 22.85–86 (Christus | in sese ipse manens semper nouat omnia rerum). Poem 31, a consolatio to Pneumatius and Fidelis on the death of their child Celsus, dwells on the themes of renewal and resurrection after death. Paulinus uses standard analogies from the natural world, the alternation of day and night, and the individual’s daily rising from sleep, the imago mortis (233–36); the growth of new plants from the buried seeds at the resurgence of spring after winter’s death (“When spring rises again, all creation has a new appearance restored to it, revived after the death of winter” (239–40 uere resurgenti cunctis noua rebus imago | post hiemis mortem uiuificata redit). There is the promise given by the resurrection of Christ, but also the Old Testament miracle in Ezekiel of the breathing of life into dry dead bones (Ezek. 37); Paulinus’s paraphrase of this ends: “Then the limbs are perfectly ordered more quickly than words can tell, and from the ancient dust stand forth men made new” (321–22 et dicto citius perfectis ordine membris | puluere de ueteri stare nouos homines ).59 Paul’s statement of the passing of the old and the coming of the new is referenced at 355–56: “Hence the Master says: ‘The old things are passed away. Behold all things are made new’ ” (unde Magister ait: uetera effluxere peractis | temporibus, subeunt omnia ubique noua; cf. 2 Cor. 5:17). Renovation is stamped on the rhythms of nonbiblical narratives, and of structures and processes in the world around us, in symbolic sympathy with the promise of rebirth and renovation at the core of the Christian vision. After Saint Felix’s miraculous preservation from his persecutors, he reemerges from his hiding place 57. On this poem, see also ch. 4. 58. Cf. Poem 27.607–9 de Genesi, precor, hunc orandi collige sensum, | ne maneam terrenus Adam, sed uirgine terra | nascar et exposito ueteri noua former imago. 59. Cf. Prud. Symm. 2.191–211 (God pronounces his power to resurrect the dead for their rewards or punishments); 192–93 possum quoniam renouare fauillas | antiquam in faciem; 196–97 (the example of seeds returning to life) natura docet reuirescere cuncta | post obitum.

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like one reborn (16 [Natal. 5].219–20): “When he emerged renewed to the light (nouus in lucem) of day, amid his now despairing flock, and was seen in his native city as if brought back to life (tamquam rediuiuus).” The language and imagery are Virgilian (see chapter 2), but the saint’s return to life from a dark hiding place is also in the likeness of the resurrection of Christ. The annual return of the anniversary of Felix’s birth into a new heavenly life, on 14 January, also brings renovation in the world below, with the renewal of spring. The return of the same day, near the start of the new year, a day that is also a new beginning, is a Christian version of the topics of return and renewal in Claudian’s consular Panegyric on Probinus and Olybrius (see chapter 2); see Poem 21 (Natal. 13).191–95: “This same day always comes round again for all men, when the year has completed its circular motion. But every year grace brings some new and different gifts which Christ presents to his comrade, so that Felix can give them to me” (eadem recurrit semper haec cunctis dies | acto per orbem circulis anno suis; | uerum quotannis innouante gratia | diuersitatem munerum, quae dat suo | Christus sodali, donet ut Felix mihi ).60 The new gifts brought by this return of the old day are new converts, formerly Roman noblemen, but now destined to dwell in heaven. Among them is Apronianus of the gens Turcia, a young boy old in years, a puer senex,61 who combines the glory of both his ancient and his new birth: “a boy in years, but old towards the motions of the flesh, a nobleman of ancient stock of Roman citizenry, but more famous in his title as Christian. The glory of his ancient and of his recent birth is intermingled; he is a longstanding member of the Roman senate, but new to Christ’s” (211–15 aetate puerum, sensibus canis senem, | ueteri togarum nobilem prosapia | sed clariorem christiano nomine, | qui mixta ueteris et noui ortus gloria, | uetus est senator curiae, Christo nouus).62 In his own person Apronianus embodies the Rome-rejuvenated topos. In the second part of Poem 24 Paulinus gives instruction to Cytherius and his wife on the formation of their son, who has been entrusted to Sulpicius Severus’s monastery at Primuliacum. This is another youth whose Christian commitment leads to marvelous combinations of old and new, reliving the deeds of figures of the age of law in the Old Testament, in the new age of grace under the dispensation of the New Testament: “So may our boy, nursling of both Law and grace, be formed from both for spiritual glory, to bring forth things old and new” (24.669–72 puer ergo noster legis atque gratiae | alumnus ex utroque sit | in spiritalem comparatus 60. Cf. also Poem 23 (Natal. 7).9–20 for a vivid picture of the new and variegated world of nature on Felix’s anniversary; 16 (Natal. 5).1–16, playing on the themes of novelty, metamorphosis, and time, and combining Horatian, Ovidian, and biblical allusion; 5–7 tandem igitur, reuoluta dies, mihi nascere, toto | exoptata dies anno, quae dulcia festa | et mea uota nouas. Cf. Prud. Perist. 11.195–96 (feast of St. Hippolytus) iam cum se renouat decursis mensibus annus | natalemque diem passio festa refert. 61. See Curtius 1973, 108–12. 62. See Nicastri 1999, 879 on this passage, and on the contrast of uetus and nouus in relation to Paulinus’s historical perception.

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gloriam, | ut uetera promat et noua). Paulinus develops a lengthy “typological” parallel between the careers of Joseph and the boy. When he has made his land rich in spiritual sustenance, his parents will journey as a second Israel, in their old age, to his house, and be fed by him as, in bestiary lore, aging eagles are fed by their young, and the parents regrow their feathers, and are rejuvenated (857–66):63 donec replumi uestiantur corpore pennisque florescant nouis. uersi uicissim more naturae nouo sunt filiis pulli senes. at cum ueterno defaecata fecerit nouos iuuenta praepetes, desueta pennarum remigia denuo natis magistris inchoant mixtique pullis conuolant altoribus leni per auras impetu.

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Then their bodies gain a covering of fresh feathers, and they blossom out with new wings. By a strange law of nature, the aged birds are transformed with the aid of their offspring into fledglings. Then, once their youth is purged of its senility and has made new birds of them, schooled by their offspring they learn afresh to use their unpractised wings as oars. They mingle with their fostering offspring and fly with smooth course through the breezes.

The eagle, like the phoenix, is a symbol of a Christian rejuvenation.64 The products of the human hand are also used by Paulinus as illustrations of spiritual renewal and rejuvenation. In Poem 28 (Natal. 10) the contrast and coexistence of old and new are combined with an aesthetic and ethic of variety and concord in the lengthy description of the new buildings and paintings at Cimitile: the presence side by side of old and new buildings mirrors the cycles of paintings of Old and New Testaments, and is further mirrored in an ideal coexistence of old and new, age and youth, in the human individual.65 The move from architectural novelty to spiritual novelty is made again in the description of the consecration of the baptismal chapel, drawing on the spiritual rebirth effected by the ritual of baptism (193–99): 63. Cf. Ps. 102:5 qui replet bonis ornamentum tuum, innouabitur sicut aquilae iuuentus tua; Isa. 40:31 qui autem sperant in Domino mutabunt fortitudinem, adsument pinnas sicut aquilae. The rejuvenation of the eagle is a favorite theme of Ambrose. 64. In the first redaction of the Physiologus, the eagle (§6), preceding the entry for the phoenix (§7), flies up to the sun in its old age, burning off the heaviness of its wings and restoring its sight; it then descends to bathe thrice in a spring to rejuvenate itself; Sbordone 1936, 22–28. 65. Nicastri (1999, 898) adduces Ov. Fast. 1.223–26 nos quoque templa iuuant, quamuis antiqua probemus, | aurea: maiestas conuenit ipsa deo. | laudamus ueteres, sed nostris utimur annis: | mos tamen est aeque dignus uterque coli.

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nam fons ipse semel renouandi missus in usum desinit esse nouus; sed tali munere semper utendus numquam ueteres renouare facesset. hoc Domini donum, hanc speciem, qua munere Christi idem homo fit nouus et uetus interit, ecce refectis cernite culminibus gemina Felicis in aula. quae fuerant uetera, et noua nunc extare uidentur. When once the font has been used for causing new life, it ceases to be new, but since it will be used perennially to bestow this gift, it will never cease to bring new life to the old man. Observe here, in the twin basilicas of Felix with their walls renewed, this gift of the Lord, this manifestation by which through Christ’s gift the old man dies and the new man is born in the same person.

The paradoxes of old and new, and the theme of rejuvenation material and spiritual, receive their most pointed formulations in lines 214–22, in particular 218–19: “They are simultaneously old and new—neither equally new nor equally old. They are the same yet not the same” (suntque simul uetera et noua, nec noua nec uetera aeque, | non eadem simul atque eadem).66 Renewal also forms part of Paulinus’s narrative, at once realistic and allegorical, of the restoration of the aqueduct from Abella to Nola in Poem 21 (Natal. 13). The waters are granted in answer to Felix’s prayer to Christ, who brought it about that “new draughts (noua . . . pocula) poured abundantly from the flowing stream up through wells, cisterns and huge containers” (685–86). The aqueduct, which had been cut off through long neglect (745 longo . . . ueterno), “with its abundant stream poured into the house of our Felix and filled the new cistern (nouum calicem)” (749–50). These new waters are a spiritual, as well as a material, refreshment. In a narrative that so insistently infuses the quotidian with supernatural grace, even the dawn that sees the inhabitants of Abella hurry en masse to undertake the restoration of the aqueduct assumes the overtone of a spiritual new dawn, 731 mane nouo excitos ad opus concurrere laetos.67 Finally, Paulinus is a poet of the novelty of paradox and miracle. Nouus and nouitas are applied by Paulinius to miracles at the shrine of St. Felix: the animal miracles of Poem 20 (Natal. 12).136 (noua forma rei, the behavior of a horse), 305 (mira nouitate, a story of a pig); or a strange phenomenon at the tomb of the saint 66. The spiritual symbolism of the architecture at Cimitile is also the subject of an inscription found at Cimitile itself, 30.ii.5–8 Hartel cuncta deo renouata placent, nouat omnia semper | Christus et in cumulum luminis amplificat. | sic et dilecti solium Felicis honorans | et splendore simul protulit et spatio. 67. The phrase mane nouo is found only in late antique texts. For a comparison between the dawn of a new day and the worldwide advent of Christ as the gospel shines through the whole world (euangelio totum radiante per orbem), see Poem 19 (Natal. 11).219–28. Cf. also Prud. Cathem. 1.99–100 (Hymnus ad galli cantum) tu [Christe] solue peccatum uetus | nouumque lumen ingere; 5.132 (Christ’s return from his descent to hell) maior sole nouum restituens diem.

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in Poem 21 (Natal. 13).597 (mira nouitate), 600 (noua res). One of the greatest paradoxical miracles is the Virgin birth, at which Paulinus exclaims: “How remarkable was the Lord’s contrivance for the salvation of mankind! Without intercourse, a woman’s womb became pregnant” (25.161–62 o noua ad humanam domini commenta salutem! | fit sine concubitu femina feta uterum).68 P OET I C S OF N OV E LT Y: L AT E A N T I QU E “N EW P OET S”

Renovation and restoration are central themes in the poetry of Claudian, Prudentius, and Paulinus of Nola (less so, it would appear, in Ausonius). In all three it is also possible to make out a poetics of novelty, or a poetics of renovation, making of them poetae noui of late antiquity. In fact, a late antique poetics of novelty can be found decades before the poets of the “Theodosian renaissance” in a poet of the Constantinian age, Optatian, whose figured poems are “novelties” in more ways than one. In his letter to Optatian (if genuine), Constantine compliments the poet on his combination of the old and the new: “In composing verses [your virtuosity] maintains old traditions while laying down new laws for itself ” (Ep. Const. 9 ut in pangendis uersibus dum antiqua seruaret etiam noua iura sibi conderet). As Michael Squire observes, nouus is found repeatedly in the corpus of the poems themselves, often in a self-referential application that draws attention to the way in which Optatian spins his strikingly new poems through an intertextuality with a wide range of earlier authors.69 The first lines of Claudian’s first extant panegyric, for the consular brothers Probinus and Olybrius, open themselves to a metapoetical reading of the topos of the inauguration of the consuls at the start of the year as a new beginning that is at the same time a return of the past, as time’s cycle progresses through its own footsteps (see chapter 2). Ware develops at length a metapoetic reading of the Cave of Time at the end of book 2 of On the Consulship of Stilicho,70 in terms of Claudian’s own renewal of poetic tradition, in particular as an allegory of his rewriting of both Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Fasti, as the two first books of Stilicho recapitulate 68. Cf. Prud. Apoth. 570 (the Virgin birth) incomperta ortus nouitas. 69. Squire 2017a, 71 with n. 45. Schierl and Scheidegger Lämmle (2017) comment on the novelty of Optatian’s panegyric of Constantine, as an answer to the problem of the sameness of imperial panegyric already identified by Pliny, Ep. 3.13.2 in hoc consideres uelim ut pulchritudinem materiae ita difficultatem. in ceteris enim lectorem nouitas ipsa intentum habet, in hac nota uulgata dicta sunt omnia. For ideas of originality in late third- and fourth-century poetry, see Pelttari 2014, esp. 5–7 on Nemesianus, Cyneg. 46–47 haec iam magnorum praecepit copia uatum, | omnis et antiqui uulgata est fabula saecli and Claud. Rapt. 1 praef. Cf. also the insistent language of renewal and rebirth (renouo, renascor, resurgo, reuiresco) in Eumenius’s appeal to Constantius in the late 290s to rebuild the Maenian schools of rhetoric at Autun; Pan. Lat. 9 pro instaurandis scholis. 70. Ware 2012, 114–16.

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cosmic history from Chaos to the present day, the trajectory of the Metamorphoses as a whole, presented in miniature form in the speech of Janus in Fasti 1, and extending the story to Claudian’s own tempora, the tempus of Stilicho’s consulship, the aureus annus (2.474). Like book 1, book 2 ends with two lines on the subject of renewal: “And the stars, as the pole of heaven turns back again to new courses, write Stilicho in the celestial fasti” (475–76 inque nouos iterum reuoluto cardine cursus | scribunt aetheriis Stilichonem sidera fastis). These are lines that, in Ware’s words, “summarise Claudian’s literary and temporal revolutions.” She brilliantly points out that the framing inque nouos and fastis references the two Ovidian works, the one beginning In noua, and the other entitled Fasti.71 The writing attributed to the stars is in reality Claudian’s own writing. Inque nouos iterum points up the coexistence of repetition and novelty that characterizes a poetics of revival such as that of Claudian. It takes us back to the opening of Claudian’s first consular panegyric: iam noua germanis uestigia torqueat annus | consulibus, laetique petant exordia menses (Prob. Ol. 6–7; on which, see chapter 2).72 Ralph Hanna identifies renouatio as both subject and poetics of Prudentius’s Psychomachia.73 Prudentius’s theme is the Pauline making new of the man, conveyed in a poem that creates something new out of inherited poetic materials (a procedure that is continuous with the practice of Hellenistic and earlier Roman poets). At the end of the Psychomachia, Wisdom, Sapientia, assumes her throne in the newly built Temple of Wisdom and takes in her hand her scepter (878–87): in manibus dominae sceptrum non arte politum sed ligno uiuum uiridi est, quod stirpe recisum, quamuis nullus alat terreni caespitis umor, fronde tamen uiret incolumi, tum sanguine tinctis intertexta rosis candentia lilia miscet nescia marcenti florem submittere collo. huius forma fuit sceptri gestamen Aaron floriferum, sicco quod germina cortice trudens explicuit tenerum spe pubescente decorem inque nouos subito tumuit uirga arida fetus.

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In the sovereign’s hand is a sceptre, not finished with craftsman’s skill but a living rod of green wood; severed from its stock, it draws no nurture from moist earthly soil, yet flourishes with still living foliage and with blooms of blood-red roses intermingles white lilies that never droop on withering stem. This is the sceptre that was prefigured by the flowering rod that Aaron carried, which, pushing buds out of its dry 71. Ware 2012, 116 n. 66: Keudel (1970, 117) suggests allusion to Fast. 5.11–12 post chaos, ut primum data sunt tria corpora mundo | inque nouas species omne recessit opus. 72. On the more conventional poetics of primacy in Claud. Rapt. 1 praef., see Harrison 2017. 73. Hanna 1977.

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bark, unfolded a tender grace with burgeoning hope, and the parched twig suddenly swelled into new fruits.

The scepter combines Old Testament with New Testament: it is the tree of life of Revelation 22:2 (“the tree of life [lignum uitae] which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations”), symbolizing the life-giving cross, and it is also compared to the miraculously sprouting Aaron’s rod.74 Hanna comments: “As a symbol Aaron’s rod refers backward, into the poem, collects and summarizes its themes. . . . The scepter provides a forceful renovatio of Aaron’s rod, for it sprouts not simply leaves but also flowers.”75 It is also a renouatio of a Virgilian model, the scepter by which Latinus swears the eternal endurance of the peace established by the treaty between the Latins and Trojans in the last book of the Aeneid (12.206–11): ut sceptrum hoc (dextra sceptrum nam forte gerebat) numquam fronde leui fundet uirgulta nec umbras, cum semel in siluis imo de stirpe recisum matre caret posuitque comas et bracchia ferro, olim arbos, nunc artificis manus aere decoro inclusit patribusque dedit gestare Latinis.

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Just as this sceptre—at that moment he was holding his sceptre in his hand—will never sprout green or cast a shadow from delicate leaves, now that it has been cut from the base of its trunk in the forest, leaving its mother tree and losing its limbs and leafy tresses to the steel. What was once a tree, skilled hands have now clad in the beauty of bronze and given to the fathers of Latium to bear.

That peace very quickly breaks down, whereas the peace and concord monumentalized in Prudentius’s Temple of Wisdom are eternal. Unlike Latinus’s scepter, that of Wisdom is not the product of the craftsman’s hand.76 Both have been cut from the living stock, but Aaron’s rod continues to sprout both leaves and flowers, in a miracle of new regeneration that echoes the miraculous regeneration of Aristaeus’s bees through the bugonia at the close of the fourth Georgic; with Psychomachia 887 inque nouos subito tumuit uirga arida fetus, compare Georgics 4.554 subitum ac dictu mirabile monstrum (“a sudden portent, wonderful to speak of ”)—the miraculous birth of a noua stirps (Geo. 4.282). Aaron’s rod is a type of the Incarnation and the Virgin Birth, and there is a pun on uirgo-uirga in line 887. The Virgin puts into the shade the Virgilian virgin who lurks behind the lilies and roses of 881–82, 74. Numbers 17:8 sequenti die [Moses] regressus inuenit germinasse uirgam Aaron in domo Levi, et turgentibus gemmis eruperant flores, qui foliis dilatatis in amigdalas deformati sunt. 75. Hanna 1977, 114. 76. Arte politus: Culex 86 illi falce deus colitur non arte politus; Calp. Sic. Buc. 4.14–15 nunc mea rusticitas, si non ualet arte polita | carminis.

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lines that allude to the similes applied to Lavinia’s blush at Aeneid 12.67–69: “As when Indian ivory has been stained with the blood-red dye of the cuttlefish, or when white lilies are crowded by roses and take on their red, such were the colours on the virgin’s face” (Indum sanguineo ueluti uiolaverit ostro | si quis ebur, aut mixta rubent ubi lilia multa | alba rosa, talis uirgo dabat ore colores). Line 883 (nescia marcenti florem summittere collo) alludes to dying Virgilian flowers that will not be resurrected, the poppies in the simile of the dying Euryalus at Aeneid 9.436–37, “[like] poppies that have bowed their heads with wearied necks” (lassoue papauera collo | demisere caput). Prudentius’s blood-tinged roses and white lilies are symbols for Christian martyrs and virgins, assured of their place in heaven. Wisdom’s scepter is also a symbol of Prudentius’s Virgilian poetics: the Christian poet plucks a branch from the stock of the Virgilian poem, making of it something new and endowing it with a miraculous new life through the mysteries of the Christian faith that is Prudentius’s subject matter.77 Paulinus of Nola’s interest in novelty extends to the novelty of his own Christian poetry. Poem 22 (with Ep. 16) is a protreptic to his learned friend in Gaul, Jovius, urging him to turn to writing poetry on Christian subjects. When Jovius raises his mind aloft to God, a new light will announce the arrival of a sacred inspiration (22.6–8): “Then before your eyes the sky will open and a new light will emerge (mox oculis caelo noua lux orietur aperto). The Holy Spirit will enter with silent movement your hidden parts, and will shake your heart with his glad breath.” This is an old Virgilian new light, put to new use, the flash of light that attends the epiphany of the Magna Mater at Aeneid 9.110 (hic primum noua lux oculis offulsit).78 The sudden light of flames that announced the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost is narrated by Paulinus in Poem 27 (Natal. 9) in a manner that assimilates the inspiration of the apostles to poetic and musical inspiration (95–102): conspicuo tamen adlapsu ruit igneus illic, pubis apostolicae concors ubi coetus agebat, moxque nouo sonitu multis ex urbe coactis omni ex gente uiris sedit quasi flamma per omnes et simul in cunctis spiramine dissonus uno, ut lyricas facili modulatus pectine chordas, diuiduis eadem cecinit praeconia linguis, incutiens uarias humana per organa uoces.

77. Prudentius alludes to a number of other Virgilian plants: with 881 fronde tamen uiret, cf. Aen. 6.206 (the Golden Bough) fronde uirere noua; with 885 sicco quod germina cortice trudens, cf. Geo. 2.30– 31 (another miraculous growth) quin et caudicibus sectis (mirabile dictu) | truditur e sicco radix oleagina ligno; 2.74 nam qua se medio trudunt de cortice gemmae; 2.335. On Satan’s perverted self-poetics of novelty at Prud. Hamartigenia 186–205, see Hardie, forthcoming b. 78. Cf. also Aen. 9.731 continuo noua lux effulsit (the “epiphany” of Turnus).

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Innovations of Late Antiquity The Holy Spirit’s fiery presence was visible gliding speedily over the place where the harmonious gathering of young apostles was in session. Then, when a large number from Jerusalem had assembled at the unusual sound, the Spirit settled like a flame on all those present of every race, and with the same breath spoke differently but simultaneously to each of them. Like a musician strumming the strings of the lyre with fluent quill, the Spirit proclaimed the same message in different tongues, instilling into men’s ears the varying sounds.

In the extended image of the renewed and restored lyre in Poem 20 (Natal. 12) (see chapter 4), the golden lyre of Christ fills the world with noua carmina: “Christ’s golden tortoise-shell resounds through the whole world, as countless tongues sing a single melody; new songs from matching strings answer back to God” (59–61) These include the noua carmina of Paulinus, who identifies his own throat and tongue as the lyre and plectrum for a song that is inspired and given voice by Christ at Poem 15 (Natal. 4).26–49. New years and newcomers at the shrine of St. Felix at Cimitile are met with new songs from Paulinus. In Poem 21 (Natal. 13) the poet asks what new thing the saint’s anniversary has brought for him this year, to make him bloom in new song (198–9 uideamus ergo, quid mihi hoc anno nouum | attulerit, unde uocibus uernem nouis).79 Earlier in the same poem Paulinus comments on the crowds of guests who have come to celebrate the saint’s day. Felix himself marvels at his followers of both sexes, “like an old planter who sees the tenants at work in his fields, and gets pleasure from olive-shoots on a fertile hill, new-grown from the divine seed of Christ” (97–99 sicut oliuarum fecundo in colle nouellas80 | laetatur senior diuino a semine Christi | plantator cernens inter sua rura colonos). Paulinus responds to these “newgrown shoots” with a prayer that “the flower-bed of his song may flourish in its new meadow” (100 floreat ergo nouo mihi carminis area prato).

79. Similarly 23.18–20 nunc placidum mihi uer gaudente renascitur anno, | nunc libet ora modis et carmina soluere uotis | uocibus et uernare nouis. 80. Cf. Ps. 127:3 filii tui sicut nouellae oliuarum (“Your children are like young olive plants”).

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Paradox is often said to be characteristic of the late antique mind-set, or rather mind-sets, since somewhat different things tend to be said about the uses of paradox in texts with non-Christian content, and in texts on Christian subjects. In the case of the former, paradox, and related phenomena such as antithesis and oxymoron, are frequently seen as (mere) play, the mark of an exhausted literary culture reduced to formal rhetorical exercises on the inherited material of a tradition that has run out of new ideas. Antonio La Penna’s post-Antonine literary “reign of futility” is one characterized by “conceits, witticisms, paradoxes of situation and of style.”1 For La Penna this is a cultivation of paradox not closely tied to real issues and problems. Michael Roberts is much more sympathetic to the poetics of late antiquity, and antithesis and paradox are among the defining features of Roberts’s “jeweled style.”2 But he too differentiates between Christian and non-Christian, commenting on New Testament epics as follows: “Although antithesis and paradox abound, they serve to enhance the doctrinal content of the poetry rather than to create the brilliant patterns of words so prized by contemporary critics.”3 Res versus uerba. In Christian writers, verbal paradox is viewed as the expression of a paradoxical worldview and a paradoxical world history, inverting conventional oppositions of heaven and earth, immortal and mortal, high and low, life and death, glory and ignominy, success and failure; and, in the creation of Adam and Eve, and in the Incarnation of the second Adam, Christ, subverting the normal relationships that 1. La Penna 1993, 732. 2. See Roberts 1989, index s.vv. “Antithesis” and “Antithesis and paradox,” a substantial entry. 3. Roberts 1989, 131.

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define families and generations.4 The connection between wit and theology has a long history: in an article of 1947 Walter Ong made a case for the rehabilitation of medieval Latin hymnody as a precursor of the seventeenth-century “metaphysical” poetry that was coming back into fashion in the middle of the twentieth century.5 Ong looks at liturgical poetry by Adam of St. Victor (d. by 1102) and Thomas Aquinas (1224/5–1274), for example, in a sequence for the Assumption by Adam on the paradoxes of generation involving the second person of the Trinity: Verbum patris sine matre Facta mater sine patre Genuit in tempore.

“She who became a mother without a father gave birth in time to the Word born of his Father without a mother”: the eternal generation of the second person by only the Father, and his temporal birth from only a mother—paradoxes already formulated in late antiquity by Augustine.6 For another example take a couplet in Aquinas’s vesper hymn Pange lingua that plays on the Incarnation of the Word, and the transubstantiation of the Eucharist: Verbum caro panem uerum Verbo carnem efficit. The Word [made] flesh makes real bread into flesh by His Word.

Summing up, Ong says: “In this poetry interest in word-play and witty conceit go handin-hand with preoccupation with genuinely distinctive ‘mysteries’ of Christianity.”7 4. Christian paradoxes arise out of a worldview that is obsessively protective of its coherence as a unified and exclusive system; in this there is a marked difference from the conditions that made the Renaissance an age of paradox, according to Rosalie Colie (1966, 33): “Quite clearly, paradoxes are phenomena by no means peculiar to the historical period called the Renaissance, but occur in any period or place where intellectual speculation goes on. They tend to constellate, however, in a period, like the Renaissance, of intense intellectual activity, with many different ideas and systems in competition with one another. The epidemic of paradoxy in the Renaissance coincides with active speculation on the market of ideas.” P. G. Platt (2009, 8), however, emphasizes the importance of Christian paradox in the Renaissance: “Christianity lay at the heart of the ‘signifying system’ that was Renaissance culture, and its very foundations and mysteries are utterly paradoxical: creation ex nihilo; the notion of the felix culpa, or fortunate fall; Christ’s being both man and God, flesh and spirit; and, because of Christ’s coming to earth, the death of death, or, the ability to proclaim, in John Donne’s words, ‘death, thou shalt die’ [Holy Sonnet 10].” On Renaissance paradox, see also Crockett (1995, 19), who explores “the widespread concern—one might even say obsession—with the simultaneous experience of contrary states” in the early modern period. 5. Ong 1947. 6. Ong 1947, 314, citing Aug. Sermo 184 (In Natali Domini Nostri Jesu Christi; PL 38.997) denique natus est Christus de patre, et de matre; et sine patre, et sine matre: de patre Deus, de matre homo; sine matre Deus, sine patre homo. “generationem” ergo “eius quis enarrabit” [Isa. 53:8]: siue illam sine tempore, siue istam sine semine. 7. Ong 1947, 323.

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Averil Cameron, in her Sather Lectures volume, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, views paradox as something that sets Christianity apart, in a chapter entitled “The Rhetoric of Paradox: The Other Side of Christian Discourse.”8 Cameron discusses, inter alia, Saint Paul’s liking for paradox,9 Gregory of Nyssa and apophatic (or negative) theology, and the paradoxes of the Virgin Mary. Cameron sees the emphasis on paradox as part of Christianity’s self-presentation within the traditional culture of the Roman Empire: “Thus, through its insistence on mystery and religious paradox on the one hand, and through its appeal to the imagination on the other, Christian discourse after Constantine resisted the danger of overassimilation into the public realm.”10 But she also allows that while the epigrams of Gregory of Nazianzus push Christian paradox to the limits, it is expressed through the rhetorical antithesis of traditional classical culture. More recently, Peter Brown notes that post-Nicene Christology is “unusually charged with paradox,” because of the tension between Christ as an unprepossessing human being and Christ as the fullness of divinity.11 But a few pages later Brown describes paradox as a part of the sensibility of late antique culture as a whole, both pagan and Christian: “The ability to contrast and then to connect opposites was deeply embedded in the late antique aesthetic sense. Each dramatic image was expected to conjure up its antithesis.”12 If that is so, then we might expect Christian paradoxes to have a ready appeal to ears attuned to paradox and antithesis by traditional literary education and culture. Of course, paradox is not the special preserve of particular periods or creeds, although it tends to be associated with some belief systems more than others (for example, Stoicism, of the ancient schools of philosophy),13 and with some periods more than others. Revisionist interventions are always possible: a volume that I edited titled Paradox and the Marvellous in Augustan Literature and Culture sought to bring into greater relief these qualities in a period of Roman culture, the Augustan age, often seen as an age of classicizing balance and rationality.14 Nevertheless, some periods and genres do seem to have a particular attraction for the paradoxical. In earlier Roman antiquity this is true of post-Augustan, early imperial Latin literature (Seneca, Lucan, Statius, and so on). This is a period whose penchant for paradox and antithesis was once itself regarded as the mark of a decadent and rhetoricized culture, as the paradoxes and antitheses of late antique poetry are still

8. Cameron 1991, ch. 5. 9. On which, see Keller 1974. 10. Cameron 1991, 188. 11. Brown 2012, 221. 12. Brown 2012, 231. 13. See Demanche 2013. 14. Hardie 2009b.

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regarded by some.15 This is an example of a wider phenomenon, the replication, witting or unwitting, in criticism on late Latin literature of characterizations and value judgments that formerly prevailed in criticism on earlier imperial literature. These days Neronian and Flavian paradox has been rehabilitated as the product of the politics, ethics, and psychology of an age under stress, or of an age of imperial marvels. In the present book the reception of Virgil looms large, but this should not obscure the fact that the post-Virgilian poets, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius above all, are also very important models for late antique Latin poetry. Ovid, Lucan, and Statius are the authors of very long poems, which include firework displays of paradox, antithesis, and wit. Of the shorter genres, epigram lends itself to paradox in snappy and pointed formulations, particularly in the brand of epigram brought to perfection by Martial. Martial is another author once dismissed as lightweight and ephemeral, but now reevaluated as a classic of his kind.16 Two recent book-length studies, by William Fitzgerald and Victoria Rimell, take paradox to be a defining feature of Martial’s aesthetic.17 Rimell’s book closes with a statement about “Martial’s endlessly clever play with paradox.”18 Epigram is one of the favored forms of late antiquity: while some of the business with paradox and antithesis is undoubtedly recycled and routine, late antique epigram is still capable of some seriously clever play. Another standard pairing is that of pagan mirabilia and Christian miracula. Here again attention may be drawn either to the contrast between the two (implausible or trivial pagan wonders, as opposed to true miracles revelatory of Christian mysteries), or to the convergence between them.19 And again, when it comes to marvels and wonders we are not dealing with a taste that is confined to late antiquity: the tradition of paradoxography, writings about ta paradoxa, things incredible and the marvelous, goes back to at least the fifth century b.c., enjoying a vogue in the Hellenistic period and then on into Augustan Rome. Gordon Williams, in his Sather Lectures volume, is scathing on the early imperial taste for paradoxa, in the sense of “marvels”: “A more trivial form of irrational stimulation in this period was something to which the great scholars of Alexandria had succumbed several centuries earlier. This was the interest in παράδοξα or ‘wonders of the world’. . . . It was an aspect of the flight from reason in that it valued the savouring of discrete

15. On paradox and wit in Ovid, in relation to first-century a.d. imperial literature, see Hardie 2002a, 42–45. 16. Important in the early rehabilitation of Martial as a “classic” was Sullivan (1991). 17. Fitzgerald 2007; Rimell 2008. 18. Rimell 2008, 201; see also index s.v. “paradox, as defining Martial’s aesthetic.” 19. See Mandile 2011 on mirabilia and miracles in late antique poetry. On the interaction between pagan and Christian in this matter, see Grant 1952; Remus 1982; Perrin 2004. On the “poetics of wonder” in late antique accounts of Christian miracles, see de Nie 2011.

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facts above the intellectual labour of constructing arguments and works of art.”20 But we have moved on from value judgments of this kind. Late antique poems on mirabilia of nature and technology repeatedly focus on instances of paradox and antithesis. Christian miracles, as one-off events rather than objects, often involve metamorphosis (water changed into wine, the dead changed into the living),21 but, quite apart from the surprising and unexpected change, the previous and subsequent states of a miracle often present a paradoxical antithesis, or inversion: life as opposed to death; dry land as opposed to sea, and other elemental inversions. In what follows I will firstly turn to poetic formulations of some of the major Christian areas of paradox. Secondly, I will offer readings of some of Claudian’s shorter poems on mirabilia, and attempt to show that their paradox and point are something more than superficial glitter. In both these sections I shall be alert to convergences between the Christian and non-Christian, but also open to the real differences between the two. Finally, I will look at a truly weird and wonderful text, an epigram book of a special kind. And throughout I will keep an eye on the lines of continuity reaching back to the earlier Latin poetic tradition. I begin with paradoxes of life and death, and of good and evil. The reversal of the natural order through the conversion of death into life is the central mystery of the Resurrection, Christ’s triumph over death, and, thereby, Christ’s redemption of mankind into eternal life. There is a pointed formulation in one of the most famous of late antique hymns, Venantius Fortunatus’s Vexilla regis prodeunt, with reference to Christ’s Passion, “by which life endured death and through death restored life” (31–32 qua uita mortem pertulit | et morte uitam reddidit). Paulinus of Nola has several versions—for example, in Poem 31, a consolatio for the death of the child Celsus (Christ speaks): 177 “By dying I have conquered death” (mortem moriendo subegi); 181 “Death has perished in the body, and life has risen in the body” (corpore mors cecidit, surrexit corpore uita); 191–92 “I have died my death, I am dead to and victorious over myself, so that for me the death of sin means life in God” (morte mea functus mihi mortuus et mihi uictor, | ut mors peccati sit mihi uita dei). The reversal of death through renewed life is the extreme case of a making new, a renouatio, that is an important theme of late antique poetry both imperial and Christian, the expression respectively of an ideology of the renewal of empire, and a theology of the new age of the New Testament, and of the new man in that new

20. Williams 1978, 190–91. 21. De Nie (2011) refers to the “transformational moments.” On metamorphosis in late antique poetry, including reference to miracle narratives, see Hardie, forthcoming b.

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dispensation.22 The mythical phoenix, paradoxically reborn from the ashes of its father, is used as a symbol of life out of death, and a making new of the old, by pagan and Christian authors alike. The rejuvenation of Rome is a recurrent theme in late antique panegyric of the city as a paradoxical theme, and the object of a tugof-war between imperial panegyrists and Christian apologists, with their opposed views of what constitutes that rejuvenation. The rebirth or renovation of Rome is an extension of the central Virgilian plot of the birth of Rome out of the ashes of Troy, yielding the paradoxes of a conquered people who conquer, and construction that comes from destruction. Ovid gives typically pointed oxymoronic form to the plot of the Aeneid in the prophecy of the mother of Evander at Fasti 1.523–24: “Conquered you will yet conquer, and overthrown you will rise again, Troy; that downfall will be the downfall of the enemy’s homes” (uicta tamen uinces euersaque, Troia, resurges; | obruet hostiles ista ruina domos). This theme is developed at length by Rutilius Namatianus in his panegyric of Rome, expanding on the ditia damna, “rich losses” (Red. 1.122) of the city’s history, culminating in the triumphant couplet “That which destroys other kingdoms restores you: the law of rebirth is the power to grow through disasters” (139–40 illud te reparat quod cetera regna resoluit: | ordo renascendi est crescere posse malis). This is also the shape of the Christian plot of the redemption of mankind after the Fall viewed as a felix culpa, “fortunate fault, fortunate fall”—a phrase seemingly first attested in the Exultet of the Easter Vigil, “O fortunate fault that deserved to find such and so great a redeemer” (O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem).23 The related phrase felix casus, “happy accident/happy fall,” is used by Paulinus of Nola in one of the Natalicia for Saint Felix (Poem 23 [Natal. 7]), which recounts the minor miracle of the saint’s intervention to allow the safe removal from the eye of one of Paulinus’s brother Christians of the hook of a lampholder that the unfortunate fellow had walked into in the dark. Paulinus muses on how to describe the accident: “Almost a disaster, but through Christ’s will with happy outcome, for he happily converted that dangerous accident into a cause of memorable joy for us” (158–59 paene male at nutu Christi bene, qui bene uertit | feralem nobis memoranda in gaudia casum). The narrative climaxes in a sequence of oxymora: “o happy accident, wholesome wounds, sweet danger” (332 o felix casus, bona uulnera, dulce periclum). Felix casus (332) puns on the efficacious Felicis manus “hand of Saint Felix” in the line before, and the dulce periculum is a famous Horatian oxymoron (Odes 3.25.18), transferred by Paulinus from the experience of the pagan worshipper of Bacchus to the helping hand of the Christian

22. For fuller discussion of renouatio, see ch. 5. 23. For an earlier foreshadowing of the conceit, cf. Ov. Her. 17.49–50 illa bene errauit uitiumque auctore redemit. | felix in culpa quo Ioue dicar ego? (Helen, as opposed to her mother, Leda).

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saint. This is not the first time that Paulinus adapted Horace’s Bacchic ode 3.25 for a Christian message.24 Felix casus occurs in a lighthearted context in an epigram on a pantomime dancer by Ausonius (Epigr. 95 Green): “A happy chance combined with a fault in skill: a tumbler, dancing the part of Capaneus, fell to the ground” (Deceptae felix casus se miscuit arti: | histrio, saltabat qui Capanea, ruit);25 here the primary opposition is between casus (fall/chance) and ars. Paulinus may well have known this epigram by his old teacher, but it might be unwise to suggest intentional Kontrastimitation. It is perhaps slightly more tempting to suspect an awareness of the Christian paradox in the phrase felix iniuria in Claudian’s account of the presentation to Honorius of a newly manumitted slave as part of the new year celebrations of the emperor’s consular inauguration. Manumission took place alapa et festuca, the administering of a slap with a rod (4 Cons. Hon. 615–18): “He is introduced into your presence and thence dismissed, a free man thanks to that envied stroke. A blow upon the brow and his base condition is gone; reddened cheeks have made him a citizen, and with the granting of his prayer a happy insult has given his back freedom from the lash (in ciuem rubuere genae, tergoque remouit | uerbera permissi felix iniuria uoti).” The convergence of the pagan Virgilian and Christian plots has a long history, reaching down to Milton’s Paradise Lost. In his survey of the whole of human history in the last two books, after showing Adam a preview of the Flood, the archangel Michael pauses between books 11 and 12, “Betwixt the world destroyed and world restored” (12.3). Destruction, in the shape of the loss of Eden through the fault of the first man and woman, and restoration through another single human being, the Christian version of an epic unus homo (1.4–5 “till one greater man | Restore us, and regain the blissful seat”), is the outline of the grand plot of the Fall and Redemption sketched out in the proem to the whole poem, a plot that extends still further to the Second Coming. Milton’s “till one greater man | Restore us and regain the blissful seat” also echoes the dum clause in the proem to the Aeneid (1.5 dum conderet urbem [“until [Aeneas] founded a city”]), the first of the city foundings on Italian soil that will reverse the destruction of Troy. Milton’s Adam responds to Michael’s prophecy of the Last Things as follows (12.469–76): O goodness infinite, goodness immense! That all this good of evil shall produce, And evil turn to good; more wonderful Then that which by creation first brought forth Light out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand, Whether I should repent me now of sin By me done and occasioned, or rejoice Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring. 24. On the allusion to Hor. Odes 3.25 in Paulin. Poem 10, see ch. 1. 25. Based on details of AP 11.254 (Lucillius), which does not, however, have this oxymoron.

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The Christian story also introduces acute paradoxes into personal relationships and personal identity, through inversions and cancelings of the biological laws of generation, which determine our own nature as human individuals. There are three focuses for this kind of paradox. One exists outside of time altogether, the relationships within the Trinity, and in particular the relationship between Father and Son. Two occur at turning points in the history of the world, the creation of Eve out of the side of Adam, and the Incarnation of the Son in the virginal body of Mary. Defending Nicene orthodoxy against Arianism, Sedulius contrasts the lex carnalis, “law of the flesh,” that adheres among humans, whereby the son is lesser, minor, than his father, who in turn was the son of a father, with the abolition of this distinction between the first two persons of the Trinity. Sedulius’s hexameters develop the crucial passages in John: “The father is in me and I in him” (10:38 in me est Pater et ego in Patre; cf. Carmen Paschale 1.321 ego in Patre et Pater in me); “I and my father are one” (10:30 ego et Pater unum sumus; cf. Carm. Pasch. 1.322 ego atque Pater unum sumus). The paradox is chiastically sharpened at Carmen Paschale 1.316–18: “For just as he is glorified remaining in the Father, so also is the Father glorified remaining in him” (nam sicut clarus habetur | in genitore manens, genitor quoque clarus in ipso | permanet). The contrasting lex carnalis, “law of the flesh,” that applies to humans is sealed with Virgilian tags for the generational, biological continuity that is so important for pagan views of the continuance of society and dynasties: “Thus through every generation of descendants a new set of offspring comes along, and the ancestors are counted of ancestors” (310–11 sic per genus omne nepotum | it noua progenies et aui numerantur auorum).26 The paradoxes of the first human relationship of any kind, that between our general parents, are highlighted in biblical epic. Dracontius (ca. 455–ca. 505) narrates Adam’s first waking encounter with Eve at De laudibus Dei 1.387–89: “The young man is shaken out of sleep, and he sees the girl standing before his eyes, her father and now her husband, yet her father not through sexual intercourse, but the author of his wife (pater, inde maritus, | non tamen ex coitu genitor, sed coniugis auctor)”; 400 “His own rib returns to the man, he takes back his own limbs” (et remeat sua costa uiro, sua membra recepit). Claudius Marius Victor (ca. 430), in his biblical epic the Alethia, poses the question of why Eve was formed from Adam, and not from dust, and answers: “so that a kinship should mingle love for another with care for himself, forcing him to recognize himself in the limbs of another” (1.378–80 ut cognatio quaedam | alternum curae propriae misceret amorem, | semet in alterius cogens agnoscere membris). With the creation of Eve out of the substance of Adam’s body, mankind from its origin is blessed, or doomed, depending 26. Cf. Aen. 6.757 Itala de gente nepotes; 8.628–29 genus omne futurae | stirpis ab Ascanio; Ecl. 4.7 iam noua progenies caelo demittitur alto; Geo. 4.208–9 at genus immortale manet, multosque per annos | stat fortuna domus, et aui numerantur auorum.

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on your point of view, to a still ongoing history of narcissism. The Ovidian story of the mythical Narcissus also exerts a fascination on late antique composers of epigram and cento in a non-Christian tradition.27 Again we can look ahead to Milton for an exploration of the psychology and paradoxes of narcissism on the grandest scale, wedding Ovidian narrative to biblical narrative and Christian theology.28 Perhaps the most paradoxical figure in the Christian story is Mary, virgin and mother, married and unmarried, impregnated and inviolate, mother of her own parent. I give some examples from Prudentius and Sedulius: Prudentius, Cathemerinon 11.14–15 (“Your mother is Chastity herself, a mother who is free of a husband” [quem mater edit Castitas, | parens et expers coniugis]);29 Apotheosis 571–75 (“The unwedded maid is wedded to the Spirit . . . pregnant within, she is untouched without . . . a mother now, but still a maiden, a mother that has not known husband” [innuba uirgo | nubit spiritui, . . . grauis intus, et extra incolumis . . . iam mater, sed uirgo tamen, maris inscia mater]); Sedulius, Carmen Paschale 2.40 (Virgin Mary) (“She rejoices that is about to be mother to her father” [gaudetque suum paritura parentem]). The institutions and sacraments of the Christian community also invert biological chronology in paradoxical fashion. I take an example from Paulinus of Perigueux’s versification (ca. 470) of the life of Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus: “Then he received his mother as the gift of Christ. Blessed in so great a child, she who gave birth to a son through whom she was born to god, through a single parturition made both mother and child! A birth-mother to be birthed, her blessed womb formerly produced him through whom she is now born in the font” (De uita Martini 1.231–35 tum saltim matrem Christo donante recepit. | o tanto partu felix enixaque natum, | per quem nata deo est, unoque et mater et infans | facta puerperio! genetrix generanda beato | ante utero peperit, per quem nunc orta lauacro est). These Christian paradoxes of identity and generational relationships do find precedents in classical literature, but for the most part in negative contexts. A companionability approaching the limit of identity with self is an ideal of the ancient theorizing of friendship, which speaks of the bosom friend as alter idem, and of a close friendship as secum loqui.30 But Ovid’s Narcissus story is a dire warning of the dangers of too close a relationship with oneself. Pagan gods may with impunity transgress biology and the incest taboo. Ovid’s Juno, both sister and wife to Jupiter, schemes successfully to evade the need for sexual intercourse in order to conceive Mars, by way of revenge for Jupiter’s parthenogenetic procreation of Minerva, at Fasti 5.239–42 (Juno): “If Jupiter has become a father without the use of a wife, and 27. See ch. 1, n. 23. 28. See Hardie 2015, with further references. 29. See Buchheit 1988, 300 n. 18 for examples in the two Gregorys and Augustine. 30. Cic. Laelius de amicitia 22 quid dulcius quam habere quicum omnia audeas sic loqui ut tecum? 80 (the uerus amicus) est enim is qui est tamquam alter idem; see Powell 1990, ad loc.

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unites both titles in his single person, why should I despair of becoming a mother without a husband, and of bringing forth without contact with a man, as long as I am chaste?” (si pater est factus neglecto coniugis usu | Iuppiter et solus nomen utrumque tenet, | cur ego desperem fieri sine coniuge mater, | et parere intacto, dummodo casta, uiro?). But on earth sexual procreation is the rule, and the orderly sequence of generations is broken only through the perverted confusions of a house of Oedipus. From Christian mysteries I turn to the carmina minora of Claudian, a poet well known, notorious even, for his liking for antithesis and oxymoron as stylistic devices.31 Alan Cameron describes an oxymoron in Claudian’s Aponus (Carm. min. 26.48), fida ruina (literally, “a trustworthy downfall,” or “trusty though seeming so unsure,” as the Loeb translation puts it), referring to a light crust that surrounds the lake, as “Claudian’s own signature.”32 Cameron cites the early eighteenth-century essayist Joseph Addison on the topic: “There is none of the poets that delights so much in these pretty kinds of contradictions as Claudian . . . some of his greatest beauties as well as faults arise from the frequent use of this particular figure.” My wider aim here will be to show that isolated figures of speech or of thought form part of larger ways of envisioning the world that gesture to philosophical or ideological positions. The Aponus (Carm. min. 26) is an example of Claudian’s interest in the mirabilia of the natural world, of which the Carmina minora contain a number of examples.33 The thermal springs of Aponus (Abano in the Colli Euganei near Padua) are the subject of repeated play on the contrast of fire and water (hot and cold, fire and ice, fire and snow), of a kind that is as clichéd in the extensive late antique repertory of epigrams (and other poems) on baths34 as are the paradoxes

31. See Fo 1982 on Claudian’s acutum dicendi genus, his constant use of plays of ideas and words, conceits, etc.; 167 “è soprattutto nel campo delle antitesi che Claudiano esercita la propria Musa in un modo del tutto inconsueto e personale”; 168 (on Claudian’s unparalleled use of oxymoron); on Claudian’s language and style, see Fuoco 2008, 22–28. 32. Cameron 1970a, 295. 33. For extensive discussion of Claudian’s exercises in the traditions of mirabilia, see GuipponiGineste 2010, 201–80; on Claudian’s interest in the wonders of nature, see also Fargues 1933, 311–20. 34. On Roman poetry on baths, see Busch 1999. Hot/cold, fire/water contrasts in epigrams from the Anthologia Latina on baths and other subjects: Anth. Lat. (Shackleton Bailey) 111 (sunny baths), Phoebus et unda: 83 (candle); 134–35 (Narcissus); 140 (Galatea); for commentary, see Kay 2006. For a Virgilian example of “waves of fire,” see Aen. 12.672–73 flammis . . . undabat uertex. On fire and water in Claudian’s Aponus, see Fuoco 2008, 50–59. See also Rutil. Nam. Red. 1.249–60 on the flagrantia . . . lauacra of the waters of Thermae Taurianae; Felix, Anth. 2101–4 (PLM IV, 389–93); Epigr. Bobb. 1 (imitating Claud. Carm. min. 26), 38.

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of ice and fire in the postclassical tradition of Petrarchan love poetry.35 The hill is “fertile in burning water” (13 ardentis fecundus aquae); it is a “damp region of flames” (17 umida flammarum regio). The lake is a “picture of a sea burning far and wide” (27 pelagi late flagrantis imago). The place also confounds, or threatens to confound, the distinction between land and water: that phrase fida ruina is applied to a crust that runs round the lake and forms a path, with the result that solid earth floats: “Earth floats lightly with a slender crust” (46 et leuis exili cortice terra natat). A later imitator of Claudian, Ennodius (473/4–521), piles on the paradoxes in a poem on Aponus, ending: “Here is a furnace in the waves, the water undulates with sparks: its life is sustained through a friendship of alternating death. To avoid death, Vulcan is plunged in those water-nymphs; a warring concord has broken the laws of nature” (11–14 hic pyra gurgitibus, scintillis fluctuat umor: | uiuitur alternae mortis amicitia. | ne pereat, Nymphis Vulcanus mergitur illis, | foedera naturae rupit concordia pugnax).36 The last line of Ennodius’s poem generalizes to a statement about the “laws of nature,” foedera naturae. concordia pugnax is a variant on the more familiar discors concordia, the phrase that is first found, in philosophical contexts, in Horace’s Epistles (1.12.19) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1.432–33), in the latter with specific reference to the cosmic opposition of fire and water: “And although fire fights with water, a moist heat creates all things, and an inharmonious harmony suits the coming to birth” (cumque sit ignis aquae pugnax, uapor umidus omnes | res creat, et discors concordia fetibus apta est).37 At the end of the Aponus, Claudian combines the religious language of hymn (67–70 “Hail, generous giver of the waters of healing” [Salue Paeoniae largitor nobilis undae]) with the pseudoscientific device of a multiple explanation (71– 78).38 The third possible reason for the thermal waters speaks the language of foedera naturae: “Or whether it is that the mountain in impartial arbitration summons the two elements to a treaty, balancing fire in equal measure with water that neither yield to the other but under a just law of equipoise each may withstand the other’s might” (75–78 siue pari flammas undarum lance rependens | arbiter in foedus mons elementa uocat, | ne cedant superata sibi, sed legibus aequis | alterius uires possit utrumque pati). This suggestion of a providential dispensation is reinforced in the sequel, where Claudian assures the reader that, whatever the explanation, it

35. On Petrarchan icy fire, see Forster 1969. 36. Ennodius, Ep. 5.8.6. 37. Cf. Fasti 4.787–88 an, quia cunctarum contraria semina rerum | sunt duo discordes, ignis et unda, dei. On concordia discors, see ch. 4. 38. On which, see Hardie 2009a, 231–63. Claudian may have in mind especially the use of the multiple explanation in discussions of Etna, another marvelous subterranean source of heat and fire; cf. Claud. Rapt. 1.173–78 (two explanations for the eruptions of Etna).

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is to be put down to the merciful agency of the gods, and not to chance.39 If there was a tension between the religious and the scientific, it is here reconciled. For Claudian, unlike Ennodius, the concordia discors of the miraculum that is the Aponus (“seeing that your miracles give voice even to the dumb” [3 cum tua uel mutis tribuant miracula uocem])40 is proof of the existence of a natural order, foedera naturae, governed by a divinity. This converges with the Augustinian doctrine that miracles are signs of God’s acting within his own creation. Claudian’s demiurge has created this paradoxical body of medicinal water to give health (70 salus) to the sufferings of mankind, out of his pity for the feebleness of our human bodies (85 et fragilem nostri miseratus corporis usum). Healing and salvation are the result of many miracles in the Christian story of the world, miracles that often operate through the amazing confusion of elemental boundaries. One of the earliest, and grandest, examples is the crossing of the Red Sea41—for example, in Sedulius’s account: “As they went through the deep, the dry sea was amazed at the strange sight of the soles of their feet. Nature changed its path” (Carm. Pasch. 1.139–41 perque profundum | sicca peregrinas stupuerunt marmora plantas. | mutauit natura uiam). Here, as often, a Christian poet of miracles uses language that diverges from Augustine’s inclusion of miracles within the divine order of things, and describes the miraculous event as going against nature.42 39. Carm. min. 26.83–86 ille pater rerum, qui saecula diuidit astris, | inter prima poli te quoque sacra dedit | et fragilem nostri miseratus corporis usum | telluri medicas fundere iussit aquas; the language here perhaps echoes the pity of a Christian god for feeble humanity, although one might also think of the pity for ignorant farmers for which Virgil asks from the god-to-be Octavian at Geo. 1.41 ignarosque uiae mecum miseratus agrestis. 40. A sentiment for which both Christian and pagan parallels could be adduced: cf. Mark 7:37 bene omnia fecit et surdos facit audire et mutos loqui, and Hor. Odes 4.3.19–20 o mutis quoque piscibus | donatura cycni, si libeat, sonum. On the general issues of Claudian’s relationship with Christianity, and possible Christian overtones in the “pagan” poetry of late antiquity, see Ware 2011. 41. On narratives of the crossing of the Red Sea, see ch. 3. 42. Examples of “against nature”: Paulin. Poem 14 (Natal. 3).107–9 Dolveck spargite flore solum praetexite limina sertis. | purpureum uer spiret hiems, sit floreus annus | ante diem, sancto cedat natura diei; 28.130–31 quanta crucis uirtus! ut se natura relinquat, | omnia ligna uorans ligno crucis uritur ignis. Cf. Ennodius, Hy. Virg. (Carm. 1.19) 1, 7–8 Vt uirginem fetam loquar . . . quid, mens, requiras ordinem? | natura totum perdidit; Sedulius, Carm. Pasch. 1.85–102 (a programmatic statement of the divine power of metamorphic miracle); 85–87 subditur omnis | imperiis natura tuis, rituque soluto | transit in aduersas iussu dominante figuras; 1.220–21 (introducing a recapitulatory list of miracles) dic, ubi sunt, natura, tuae post talia leges? | qui quotiens tibi iura tulit? 4.5–8 nil igitur summo de se sperantibus umquam | difficile est conferre Deo, cui prona facultas | ardua planare et curua in directa referre; | et quidquid natura negat se iudice praestat, followed by comment on the difficulty for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, as difficult as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, 4.13–17 ni genitor rerum, qui mundum lege coercet | et nulla sub lege manet, cui condere uelle est, | quem frons nulla uidet, sed totum conspicit ipse | “hoc impossibile est homini” dixisset, “at alto | possibile est ius omne Deo.” De Nie (2011,

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Claudian’s Aponus is a small-scale example of the paradoxical working of the foedera naturae through a concordia discors. Verbal antithesis is used in support of what is offered as a worldview. Harmony, the threat of disharmony, and the desirability of harmoniously linking opposites are of wider concern in Claudian’s poetry, in the natural, the divine, and the human spheres. These spheres in fact are not to be kept separate: Stephen Hinds notes how Claudian’s cosmic dualism, seen on the grand scale in the Rape of Proserpina, and in Against Rufinus, mirrors the division on earth between the western and eastern empires.43 When the two fall apart, whether these are the upper and lower worlds, or the western and eastern empires, concordia is replaced with discordia (see chapter 4). Early on in the Rape of Proserpina Claudian develops a paradox of the harmonious coexistence of fire and snow on the peak of Etna, a contrast with the threat presented to the heavens by the volcano, a threat that is a continuation of the mythological assault on the gods by Enceladus, the giant pinned under the mountain: “But though it boils and bursts forth with such great heat, yet it knows how to observe a truce with the snow, and together with glowing ashes the ice grows hard, protected from the great heat and secured by indwelling cold, so that harmless flame licks the neighbouring frost with loyal smoke” (1.166–70 sed quamuis nimio feruens exuberet aestu, | scit niuibus seruare fidem pariterque fauillis | durescit glacies tanti secura uaporis, | arcano defensa gelu, fumoque fideli | lambit contiguas innoxia flamma pruinas; flamma and pruinae are indeed contiguous within the line). Harmony in the midst of violent discord. Claudian here closely imitates Silius Italicus’s description of the mirabile of the unmelting snows on the summit of Etna (Pun. 14.64–69).44 To the Silian model Claudian adds a political vocabulary in the words fidem and fideli, opening up the possibility of a political allegory in the wider plot of the Rape of Proserpina. An obvious Virgilian allusion in the last line of the passage also forges a link between natural wonder and Roman history: the harmlessly licking flame comes from the omen of the fire that harmlessly licked the head of Iulus at a critical moment on the night of the sack of Troy in Aeneid 2: “Lo, from above the head of Iulus a light tongue of flame was seen to shed 384) observes that in contrast to Augustine’s view of the whole creation as a continuous miracle, and individual miracles as extensions of this, for Sedulius inversion is the central dynamic in almost every event. One of Claudian’s formulations of the overgoing of nature by art is diverted to Christian miracles by Venantius Fortunatus; with Claud. Rapt. 1 praef. 4 (of the Argo) quas natura negat praebuit arte uias, cf. Venant. Fort. Carm. 3.10.10 quo natura negat cogis habere uiam; 10.6.48 quo natura negat crux facit ire uiam (a cross reverses the direction of a tree falling on a saint). 43. Hinds 2013b, 5–8. 44. Sed quamquam largo flammarum exaestuet intus turbine et adsidue subnascens profluat ignis, | summo cana iugo cohibet, mirabile dictu, | uicinam flammis glaciem, aeternoque rigore | ardentes horrent scopuli: stat uertice celsi | collis hiemps calidaque niuem tegit atra fauilla. Claudian improves on Silius, with contiguas sharpening up the vaguer uicinam, and with the added image and allusion in lambit.

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a gleam and, harmless in its touch, lick his soft locks and pasture round his temples” (Aen. 2.682–84 ecce leuis summo de uertice uisus Iuli | fundere lumen apex, tactuque innoxia mollis | lambere flamma comas et circum tempora pasci). In book 3 of the Aeneid Virgil had already folded his hyperbolical and paradoxical description of Etna into the Gigantomachic political allegory of his epic.45 In another of the Carmina minora, Poem 17, De piis fratribus et de statuis eorum quae sunt apud Catinam (“On the pious brothers and their statues at Catina”), Claudian introduces further allusion to Aeneas’s experiences on the night of the sack of Troy into another Etnean miraculum. This poem tells a familiar story, of the two brothers at Catina (Catania) who saved their parents during an eruption of Etna, which held back its flames in recognition of their pietas. Claudian’s poem is both one of his exercises in mirabilia and an ekphrasis, of statues of the two brothers on display at Catina; it might also be seen as a pagan equivalent of a Christian miracle, as nature responds to pietas. As in the poem Aponus, a word from the mira- root is used in the opening lines to flag that this is an example of mirabilia: “Etna marveled and drove back his rampant flames” (4 et mirata uagas reppulit Aetna faces). This is a natural miraculum that is the product of nature marveling at a human miraculum.46 The analogy between the pietas of the brothers of Catina and the pietas of Aeneas, carrying his aged father out of Troy, is already present in the version of the story that ends the pseudo-Virgilian Aetna (603–45).47 Claudian lends an additional element of wonder to this Sicilian version of the Virgilian story by introducing the volcano as a character. There is in fact a third layer of wonder, at the skill of the artist in conveying the emotions of both the parents and the brothers in the perilous situation, and in capturing the dissimilarity in similarity of the appearance of the two brothers (21–26).48 The introduction of an element of paradox through the conceits on likeness and unlikeness is the result of splitting the single Aeneas into the two brothers—another kind of concordia discors. Virgil’s unus homo Aeneas is the type of the single ruler Augustus; in the conjoint piety of the 45. On the allegorical implications of Virgil’s Etna, see Hardie 1986, 263–67; on paradox in the Virgilian description, see Hardie 2009b, 96. 46. The combination of natural and human miracula, the latter outdoing the former, is Lucretian, for whom the greatest of the miranda of Sicily is Empedocles, 1.716–33: note esp. 726–30 quae cum magna modis multis miranda uidetur | gentibus humanis regio [summing up a list of natural wonders] . . . nil tamen hoc habuisse uiro praeclarius in se | nec sanctum magis et mirum carumque uidetur, with which, cf. Claud. Carm. min. 17.43–44 plura licet summae dederit Trinacria laudi, | nouerit hoc maius se genuisse nihil. Lucretius’s Empedocles has a diuinum pectus and seems hardly human; Claudian’s brothers are diuino meritos semper honore coli (2). 47. Introduced as a miraculum, 603 insequitur miranda tamen sua fabula montem. With 631–32 hanc rapiunt praedam mediumque exire per ignem | ipso dante fidem properant, cf. Claud. Rapt. 1.166–70 (cited above); Carm. min. 17.35 senserunt elementa fidem. 48. A variant of the topos of distinguishing indistinguishable twins that goes back to Aen. 10.390– 96. Cf. 25 et noua germanis paribus discrimina praebens (although not twins).

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Sicilian brothers Amphinomus and Anapis49 one might see a reflection of, or at least homology with, an ideal, if unrealized, harmony between the brothers Honorius and Arcadius, the western and the eastern Augustus, respectively. Claudian’s poem ends with a sharply focused antithesis: “The great disaster purchased immortal fame” (47 emptum est ingenti clade perenne decus); only through the devastation of the houses of Catina could pietas properly be put to the test. This is a variant of the underlying paradox of the Aeneid, that only through the destruction by fire of Troy could the urbs aeterna of Rome come to birth, a pagan precedent for the Christian felix culpa, “fortunate fall” (see above). The miracle of the shrinking flame is both witness to a demonstration of uncorrupted human nature, and a demonstration of a divine order of things: “Youths faithful to Nature’s law, proofs of divine justice” (27–28 o bene naturae memores, documenta supernae | iustitiae; might the last three words hint at a Christian view of divinity?). Fire miracles in which flames are miraculously beaten back by persons or objects endowed with piety or sanctity are recurrent in Christian miracle narratives. I give an example from Paulinus of Perigueux’s account of the miracles at the shrine of St. Martin,50 the last of which tells of the holy candle that turned back a firestorm from the shrine, fighting fire with fire: “And placing the burning candle in the middle of the flames, he drove back the threatening fire with the help of fire” (6.487–88 atque inter medias statuens flagrantia flammas | ignis praesidiis urguentem reppulit ignem).51 With the polyptoton of ignis . . . ignem, compare the figurative flame of faith that fights literal flames in Sedulius’s epigrammatic summary of the miracle of the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel (3) at Carmen Paschale 1.204–5: “The flame of the furnace was put out by the flames of burning faith” (flammis | ardentis fidei restincta est flamma camini). The magnet is another standard ancient example of paradoxographical mirabilia, and Claudian elaborates a tour de force on the noua . . . miracula saxi, “novel wonders of the stone” (13) in the small compass of the fifty-seven lines of Poem 29.52 49. Claudian’s names for the two brothers; the tradition varies. 50. A versification of Gregory of Tours’s De miraculis S. Martini. 51. For other examples, cf. Paulin. Poem 26 (Natal. 8).395–412, the buildings at Cimitile saved by Felix, 401–6 quem prope corporeo praesentem uidimus actu | obiectare manus flammis et nostra tueri | limina iuncta suis, quae tamquam territa sancti | obstantis facie prope tangens flamma pauebat | pulsaque de nostri rapiendo culmine tecti, | comminus in tuguri uicina strage perarsit; 28 (Natal. 10).60–166, fire driven back by a fragment of the cross, 124–26 nostram cognouit flamma salutem . . . sed uis Crucis ignem | terruit; 130–31 ut se natura relinquat, | omnia ligna uorans ligno Crucis uritur ignis; 136–37 nos ligno extinximus ignem, | quamque aqua non poterat uicit breuis astula flammam. 52. Bibliography: Cristante 2001/2, 2004; Fuoco 2004; Guipponi-Gineste 2010, 257–66; 2011. On ancient automata, see Pugliara 2003.

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The poem is a good example of the combination of genres that is often seen as typical of the “neo-Alexandrianism” of late antique poetry.53 It combines didactic natural questions with mythology, infusing anthropomorphic desire into the workings of minerals. The power of the magnet is illustrated through the attraction for each other of two statuettes, an iron figure of Mars and a lodestone in the shape of Venus. The union of Mars and Venus is presented as a formal wedding, an alternative tradition to the adulterous liaison of the Homeric song of Demodocus. As a description of a wedding in effigy the poem thus also incorporates epithalamium within ekphrasis, two of Claudian’s favorite forms. The combination of natural questions and myth places the poem in a tradition that goes back to the interpretation of the scandalous Homeric tale of Ares and Aphrodite as an allegory of the cosmic Empedoclean principles of Strife and Love. Claudian’s allegory is an unusual kind in that the “performance” narrative, so to speak, of the union of Mars and Venus is a visual allegory for the physical phenomenon that actually animates the automaton. “Animal magnetism” was a little more than metaphor in antiquity, and the attraction exercised by the lodestone could be thought of as literally a kind of desire.54 Claudian’s Mars and Venus automata elide the boundary between image and reality in the same way as Pygmalion’s statue in Metamorphoses 10, where “lifelikeness” turns into life. In Ovid’s narrative the miraculous animation of the statue is granted to Pygmalion’s prayer by Venus, and we are told “golden Venus herself was present at her festival” (10.277 ipsa suis aderat Venus aurea festis). Golden Venus was present, as a golden statue, but that statuary presence becomes a living praesens numen through its/her response to Pygmalion’s prayer. Similarly, in Claudian’s Magnet the presence-in-figurine of Venus becomes a real presence through the operation of magnetic desire that leads to “living embraces” (35 uiuis . . . complexibus).55 Claudian alludes both to Lucretius’s allegorical tableau of Venus’s embrace of Mars at the beginning of the De rerum natura and to Lucretius’s own very long account of the phenomenon of magnetism, in which Lucretius removes the 53. An influential statement is Fontaine 1977. 54. For the comparison of sexual desire to magnetism, cf. Anth. Pal. 12.152; Achill. Tat. 1.17.2 (in a series of examples of the power of love in the natural world); Orphic Lithica 306–14 (the attraction of a magnet to iron compared to snow-white virgin and Ares). Cf. also the language suggestive of desire in Lucretius’s account of the magnet; e.g., 1001 causa . . . quae ferri pelliciat uim; 1016 caecisque in eo compagibus haesit (cf. 4.1205 ualidis Veneris compagibus haerent). Lucretius uses this language to reduce a mystical view of magnetism as a kind of desire to basic materialist terms (as he does with human sexual desire). 55. The miracles of Pygmalion and the magnet both take place at festivals: Met. 10.270 Festa dies; Claud. Carm. min. 29.27–30 (the ritual conubium), 28–29 festa . . . limina. For the figurative “life” of lifelike statues, cf. Aen. 6.847–48 spirantia mollius aera . . . uiuos ducent de marmore uultus; it is a literally physical breath that animates the lodestone and iron (Carm. min. 29.36 ille lacessitus longo spiraminis actu). See Fritzsche 1902; Radl 1988, 98–99 (on Claudian’s Magnet).

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element of the marvelous from the magnet through an atomistic explanation (6.906–1089).56 The catalogue of natural questions in the opening lines (1–9) of Claudian’s poem is indebted primarily to Virgilian models in the Georgics and Aeneid. Claudian’s Magnet thus allusively traces a literary genealogy of scientific poetry stretching back to Homer, a late specimen of what I have elsewhere labeled “Empedoclean epos.”57 At the same time the poem connects with an epigrammatic tradition that pointedly contrasts and combines the spheres of Mars and Venus.58 Claudian’s account of the magnet begins with the paradox that so plain and insignificant a stone (10 decolor, obscurus, uilis) should have such marvelous powers, which elevate it in worth above the richest pearl of the Orient. The poem closes with antitheses between hard stone and metal and the penetrating and softening effects of love, between insensate material and the sensation of Cupid’s arrows, between cold stone and the flames of love, and concludes with the ringing paradox “Fire reigns in the hard stone” (57 rigido regnant in marmore flammae), opposing stiff and mobile, cold and hot. There are also contrasts of large and small. The figurines of Mars and Venus are miniatures, but they embody cosmic principles. Natura herself is the pronuba, matron of honor, at their wedding (38), and a few lines later (41) Claudian uses language that elsewhere is applied to the large-scale structures of the natural and political worlds, foedera and concordia. The concordia of bride and groom is a conventional topic of the epithalamium;59 here it is also the concordia of Empedocles’s cosmic Strife and Love, or, to give them their divine names, Ares and Aphrodite (Mars and Venus), whose daughter is Harmonia/Concordia (Heraclit. Hom. Probl. 69.10). The final contrast of small and large is in the conventional paradox that the boy-god Cupid has power over the greatest god, superior to the thunderbolt of Jupiter himself: “Cruel boy, is anything beyond your powers? You master the mighty thunderbolt, and you force the thunderer to leave the sky and bellow amid the waves” (51–53 quae tibi, saeue puer, non est permissa potestas? | tu magnum superas fulmen caeloque relicto | fluctibus in mediis cogis mugire Tonantem).60

56. DRN 6.910 hunc homines lapidem mirantur; 1056 illud in his rebus mirari mitte. 57. Hardie 2009a, 136–52. 58. Examples in Anth. Lat. S-B 89, 104 De pyrrhica, 118 De Martio cinaedo. See also Cristante 1999 on Reposianus, De concubitu Martis et Veneris. 59. In Claudian, cf. Epithal. Hon. 202–3 tu festas, Hymenaeae, faces, tu, Gratia, flores | elige, tu geminas, Concordia, necte coronas; Carm. min. 25.130 (Venus’s address to groom and bride) uiuite concordes et nostrum discite munus; see also ch. 4. 60. For Cupid’s superiority to Jupiter and his thunderbolt, cf. Ov. Am. 2.1; Aen. 1.664–65 (Venus to her son) nate, meae uires, mea magna potentia, solus | nate patris summi qui tela Typhoëa temnis; imitated by Ovid’s Venus at Met. 5.365–70 : illa, quibus superas omnes, cape tela, Cupido, | tu superos ipsumque Iouem, tu numina ponti | uicta domas ipsumque, regit qui numina ponti.

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Cosmic miniaturization is a favorite of Claudian’s. Another short poem (Carm. min. 51) is on the subject of the sphere of Archimedes, a famous miniature working model of the universe. The poem begins: “when Jupiter saw the heavens in a little sphere of glass, he laughed” (1–2 Iuppiter in paruo cum cerneret aethera uitro | risit). The model is made to move, probably by some pneumatic mechanism, and is thus another example of a work of art that miraculously comes to life (8 et uiuum certis motibus urget opus). The animation of both the small sphere of Archimedes and the magnet uses the language that Virgil applies in Aeneid 6 to the breath that nurtures and sets in motion the whole universe: “A spirit within sustains [the universe], and mind, spread through the limbs, moves the whole mass and mingles with the mighty body” (726–27 spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus | mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet). Compare Claudian Carm. min. 29.18–19 (the magnet’s “nourishment” by iron): “This bitter food spread through its limbs renews its hidden powers” (hinc fusa per artus | aspera secretum seruant alimenta uigorem); and 51.7–8 (Archimedes’ sphere): “A spirit enclosed within serves the various courses of the stars and activates the living work with defined motions” (inclusus uariis famulatur spiritus astris | et uiuum certis motibus urget opus). Claudian also draws paradoxical contrasts between large and small in his nine epigrammatic variations, in Latin and Greek, on the theme of a crystal containing a drop of water.61 In one of the Greek epigrams (AP 9.753) (where the crystal has been worked by human hand, perhaps inviting a comparison with the divine Demiurge), the crystal is explicitly described as a microcosm: Χιονέη κρύσταλλος ὑπ’ ἀνέρος ἀσκηθεῖσα δεῖξεν ἀκηρασίοιο παναίολον εἰκόνα κόσμου, οὐρανὸν ἀγκὰς ἔχοντα βαρύκτυπον ἔνδοθι πόντον.62 The snow-white crystal, fashioned by the hand of man, showed the variegated image of the perfect universe, the heaven clasping within it the deep-voiced sea.

There are hints of a microcosmic view of the crystal in the Latin poems.63 In the final Latin epigram (Carm. min. 39) there is a suggestion that the crystal, so far from being a cosmos worked by a craftsman, is like the universe before it was given shape: like the magnet (Carm. min. 29.14–15), the marmoreus globus surpasses kingly display and is as valuable as the pearls of the Red Sea, despite its being “shapeless ice, unpolished rock, a form without beauty” (3–4 informis glacies, saxum rude, nulla figurae | gratia), like the rudis indigestaque moles of the Ovidian Chaos (Met. 1.7). 61. Carm. min. 33–39 in Latin, and in Greek Anth. Pal. 9.753–54. Bibliography: Ricci 1993–94; Formicola 2004; Laurens 2008, 1–25; Guipponi-Gineste 2010, 266–79. 62. In support of Claudian’s authorship of the epigram, Cameron (1970a, 14) compares Carm. min. 51.1 (In sphaeram Archimedis) Iuppiter in paruo cum cerneret aethera uitro. 63. Drawn out by Guipponi-Gineste 2010, 274–77, perhaps too far.

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The aesthetics and paradoxes of miniaturization have a long history in the ancient world. Contrasts of large and small are placed at the center of Victoria Rimell’s recent reading of Martial’s epigrams: “Martial captures a Rome in miniature, an oxymoronic microcosm of monumental spaces made tight and constraining. At the same time he visualises the most minute and humble of poetic forms expanding to fill and become the greatest city on earth.”64 But epigrammatic multum in paruo goes further back, to the Hellenistic period, and spills over into other genres and other media—for example, the statuette type of Herakles Epitrapezios, the mighty Herakles small enough to be placed “on the table,” perhaps originally the work of Lysippus, and the subject of poems by Statius (Silv. 4.6.36–38 “He granted you, Lysippus, to behold him, small to the eye but huge to the sense” [seseque tuendum | indulsit, Lysippe, tibi, paruusque uideri | sentirique ingens]; 43 “So great is the deception in that tiny form” [tam magna breui mendacia formae]) and Martial (9.43.2 “a mighty god in a small bronze” [exiguo magnus in aere deus]).65 The Tabulae Iliacae, tiny relief carvings with inscribed texts (probably mostly to be dated between the late first century b.c. and early first century a.d.), miniaturize the Iliad in both text and image: one of the Tabulae is a sculptural realization of the Homeric Shield of Achilles, small enough to be held in the hand, a miniaturization of the 130-line Homeric description of the shield, itself long for a poetic ekphrasis, but small in scale as a textual miniaturization of the cosmos, of which it is an image, εἰκόνα κόσμου, as Claudian labels his crystal with its drop of water. The Tabulae are the subject of a recent game-changing study by Michael Squire, a very big book on some very small objects.66 Nevertheless, the miniature and the miniaturist do seem to enjoy a renewed vogue in late antiquity, at least if we are to believe two recent attempts at a period characterization. Jas´ Elsner speaks of “exquisite miniatures” as typical of a late antique aesthetic,67 and Jesús Hernández Lobato points to “late-antique aesthetic miniaturization.”68 If this is correctly identified as a late antique feature, then a taste for the paradoxes of large and small that inhere in the miniature may have been encouraged by, and in turn helped to encourage, Christian paradoxes of scale, of the sublime made humble, of cosmic power concentrated in something very small. The tension between Christ as an unprepossessing human being, and Christ as the fullness of divinity (in Peter Brown’s words),69 is felt at its most acute in the image of the 64. Rimell 2008, 182, 64 (Martial’s epigram as like the Coliseum, wanting “to swallow and package up the Roman world”). 65. See Squire 2011, 267–69. 66. Squire 2011. 67. Elsner 2004, 283–84 on the shift from large-scale sculpture to “exquisite miniatures” in ivory, silver, glass, precious stones, painted manuscripts. 68. Hernández Lobato 2012, 320–50. 69. Brown 2012, 221.

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Christ-child in the manger—for example, in Sedulius’s account of the Nativity, Carmen Paschale 2.56–62: “He who has clothed all things born, from the very beginning of the world, with their unique endowment, was himself covered with tiny swaddling clothes as his garment. He whom the shifting waves on the stormy deep, the expanse of the whole earth, and the vast extent of the wide sky could not contain was fully enclosed in a boy’s body, and God took his rest in a narrow manger” (primique ab origine mundi | omnia qui propriis uestit nascentia donis | obsitus exiguis habuit uelamina pannis; | quemque procellosi non mobilis unda profundi, | terrarum non omne solum, spatiosaque lati | non capit aula poli, puerili in corpore plenus | mansit, et angusto Deus in praesepe quieuit). This boy-god is Jupiter. In this theology vast spiritual power can be concentrated in tiny pieces of matter—the theology of the relic, one might call it, or what Peter Brown in an earlier work discussed under the heading “Inverted Magnitudes,” the effect “by which the object [i.e. a relic] around which boundless associations clustered should be tiny and compact.”70 It is with a small piece of a fragment of the cross that Paulinus of Nola turns back the massive fire that threatened to destroy the shrine at Nola: “I bring out a piece of wood, of modest dimensions but great in its power to save, that I had taken from a fragment of the eternal cross” (Poem 28 [Natal. 10].115–17 modicum sed grande saluti | de crucis aeternae sumptum mihi fragmine lignum | promo); “A little stick conquered the fire which water was powerless to conquer” (137 quamque aqua non poterat uicit breuis astula flammam). Most powerful of all are parts of the body of Christ himself; in an invocation to Christ for inspiration, Paulinus compares the figurative liquids of the fountains of divine poetry to the liquid of Christ’s blood, a drop of which sufficed to save the world: “Christ God, pour into my heart and slake my thirst with heavenly waters. Even a drop from you sprinkled into my heart will be a stream. It is not surprising that you can fill my minuscule soul with a tiny drop, for though born a man with small frame, you filled the world with undying seed, and saved the whole world with a drop of your blood?” (Poem 23 [Natal. 7].20–26 Deus, influe cordi, | Christe, meo et superis sitientem fontibus explel! | sed de te uel gutta meis aspersa medullis | flumen erit. quid enim mirum, si rore pusillo | tu minimam repleas animam, qui corpore paruo | factus homo aeterno complesti semine mundum | et totum gutta seruasti sanguinis orbem?). This conceit has a long afterlife, given pointed expression in Aquinas’s Eucharistic hymn Adoro te deuote, latens Deitas: “Pious Pelican, Lord Jesus, cleanse my uncleanliness with your blood, of which one drop has the power to bring the whole world salvation from all sin” (25–28 Pie Pelicane, Jesu Domine, | Me immundum munda tuo sanguine: | Cuius una stilla salvum facere | Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere). Mar70. Brown 1981, 78, with particular reference to Victricius of Rouen’s sermon De laude sanctorum; ibid., index s.vv. “inverted magnitudes.” See also de Nie 2011, 90 on the presence in the tiny relic of the whole body of the saint, with all its Christ-given power.

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lowe’s Faust hopes in vain for the redeeming power of even half a drop in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus 5.4: “See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament! | One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ!” I conclude with a look at a work that is founded on paradox, the Aenigmata, “Riddles,” of Symphosius.71 Antithesis, paradox, and a sense of the marvelous that operates through a kind of reenchantment of the everyday world are defining features of the genre of the riddle (aenigma, griphus). The riddle has a venerable history: riddling language goes back to Hesiod and Aeschylus, and the riddle as a stand-alone formal puzzle was a familiar feature of the symposium. But the first surviving free-standing collection of riddles is Symphosius’s Aenigmata, of uncertain date, although the consensus is for a date in the late fourth or early fifth century. This is another late antique poetic text that has been dismissed as idle lusus, a merely rhetorical exercise, in contrast with the sacramental symbolism of the Anglo-Saxon Aldhelm’s Christian Enigmata, modeled on those of Symphosius.72 Just recently, however, there has been a sudden upsurge of interest in the extreme kinds of wordplay and formal patterning in late antique poetry—riddles, pattern poems, the cento, and the figured poems of Optatian.73 Growing energy and ingenuity are being directed to taking seriously texts that hitherto have usually been dismissed as symptoms of levity and triviality. The Aenigmata consist of one hundred three-line riddling hexameter epigrams, each prefaced by a lemma giving the solution to the riddle. The collection is introduced by a hexameter Praefatio recounting the origin of the collection in riddle contests at the Saturnalia. The Aenigmata are an example of the late antique revival of the epigram. Symphosius owes a particular debt to the Xenia and (Saturnalian) Apophoreta of Martial (books 13 and 14), epigrams that label objects often in riddling fashion. The Praefatio to the Aenigmata shares the rhetoric of triviality and frivolity, of composition in one’s cups, with the introductory epigram to Martial’s Apophoreta (14.1), and with Ausonius’s prefatory letter to Symmachus introducing his Griphus ternarii numeri, “Riddle of the Number Three.”74 The precedent of Martial, whose rhetoric of triviality and frivolity is at least in part ironic, should make us wary of taking entirely at face value Symphosius’s apology for a foolish and hasty production: “I composed these verses extempore. . . . In the company of the insane there is no 71. There are two full recent commentaries, by Bergamin (2005) and Leary (2014). On Symphosius’s reworking of the riddle form, see Sebo 2013. 72. Scott 1979. 73. On Optatian, see Squire and Wienand 2017. 74. On Ausonius’s Griphus, see Lowe 2013.

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need to be sane” (Praef. 15–16 hos uersus feci subito . . . | insanos inter sanum non esse necesse est). And indeed Symphosius follows Martial’s careful ordering of the Xenia and Apophoreta, in the intricate composition both of the individual poems and of the collection as a whole, which proceeds in groups related by subject.75 There is an extensive network of verbal and conceptual links between poems adjacent or near to each other in the sequence, as well as parallels and repetitions that reach over longer sections of the collection. The game of spotting these connections is another aspect of the mental gymnastics that are called for by the individual riddles, in an extension into a more free kind of play of the matching up of the single riddles to their solutions. Riddling paradox is generated by the formulation of apparently absurd contradictions that are resolved once the solution has been found, and the world restored to its familiar normality.76 The subjects of riddles are, for the most part, individual objects—plants, animals, human artifacts—objects with clearly demarcated boundaries but which yet contain within themselves, when seen through the lens of the enigmatist, antitheses, paradoxes, contradictions. A trace of the paradoxical persists once the solution has been found: the riddle is not only a way to reduce the contradictory to the commonsensical, but also a form that defamiliarizes the world we see around us. This is all the more the case when, as in Symphosius’s Aenigmata, the solution is given before the riddle: we start from the familiar object, and are then invited to contemplate the strangeness of the quotidian. Holding together the moments of familiarity and unfamiliarity results in another kind of concordia discors. When riddles come in their droves in a self-contained book, such as Symphosius’s, one might speak of a “world of enigma,” or “a world of paradox,” a generically conditioned way of looking at reality. The trick in many of the epigrams is to identify an opposition or antithesis between different aspects of an object, often expressed through a balanced contrast between the two halves of the hexameter. A good example is epigram 5: catena nexa ligor ferro, multos habitura ligatos. uincior ipsa prius, sed uincio uincta uicissim; et solui multos, nec sum tamen ipsa soluta. A chain. I am bound, fastened with iron, and will hold many bound. I am restrained myself first but, having been restrained, I restrain in turn; and I have loosed many and am nonetheless not set loose myself. (trans. T. J. Leary) 75. Leary 2014, 13–26; for example, the first four subject areas identified by Leary are writing equipment, house and household, winter weather, small creatures and birds. In general on the patterning and ordering of Martial’s books of epigrams, see Fitzgerald 2007, 221 n. 1. 76. Of the recurring devices in riddles noted by Luz (2013), paradox is one, and another the fact that the largest group of riddles is made up of those whose solution consists in an everyday object.

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In each line the opposition hinges at the third-foot caesura, and the antitheses are worked through verbal polyptoton, with a contrast between active and passive uses of the same verb in lines 2 and 3. Elsewhere paradox is engineered through puns and wordplay—for example, in epigram 16: tinea littera me pauit, nec quid sit littera noui. in libris uixi, nec sum studiosior inde. exedi Musas, nec adhuc tamen ipsa profeci. A bookworm. Literature has nourished me, but I do not know what literature might be. I have lived in books, but I am not more learned in consequence. I have devoured the Muses, but I myself have not yet made progress.

Here paradox is generated through the figurative senses available for the verbs in the first half of each of the three lines, pauit, uixi, exedi, of the reader’s “feeding on,” “living with,” and “devouring” books. If the epigrams are grouped by paradoxical theme, some familiar oppositions emerge. Life out of death is exemplified by the viper, which kills its mother in the process of being born; by the tortoise, dumb when living, but singing in death (as a tortoiseshell lyre); and by the phoenix. There are paradoxes of family relationships: for example, smoke (epigram 7) says: “And he who gave birth to me is not born without me” (3 et qui me genuit sine me non nascitur ipse). A riddle on ice, attributed to Symphosius (Anecd. Helvet.; Leary 2014, 249), probably falsely, is cited as a typical aenigma in the grammatical tradition: “My mother gave birth to me, and she is soon given birth to by me” (mater me genuit, eadem mox gignitur ex me).77 There are repeated contrasts between two or more of the four elements, or between the three divisions of the world—earth, sea, and air; for example, epigram 62: “A bridge. A grove stands in the waters, in the deep stream stands a wood, and the oak remains unmoving in the midst of the waves” (pons. stat nemus in lymphis, 77. Donatus (Holtz p. 672) cites this as an example of aenigma: aenigma est obscura sententia per occultam similitudinem rerum, ut “mater me genuit, eadem mox gignitur ex me”, cum significet aquam in glaciem concrescere et ex eadem rursus effluere. Diomedes (Keil 1.450) illustrates aenigma’s use of the impossible with a riddle on Jocasta and her children-cum-grandchildren by Oedipus, an aenigma cited down into the Renaissance (see Cook 2001). Cf. the riddle in Shakesp. Pericles I.i.64−71: “I am no viper, yet I feed | On mother’s flesh which did me breed. | I sought a husband, in which labour | I found that kindness in a father. | He’s father, son, and husband mild; | I mother, wife—and yet his child. | How may they be, and yet in two, | As you will live, resolve it you.” For the riddle form as incestuous, see Abrahams 1980, 20 (referring to Lévi-Strauss): “Many commentators have referred to the relationship of the context of riddles with the ‘incest−motive.’ This seems especially appropriate in an understanding of the boundary-breaking activity of riddling, for nothing could confuse cultural categories more than the licensing of incest.”

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stat in alto gurgite silua, | et manet in mediis undis immobile robur). A favorite opposition is that between big and small—for example, a key (epigram 4): “Great powers I bring from small strength” (uirtutes magnas de uiribus adfero paruis), as controlling access to and keeping the house safe; or a violet (epigram 46): “To be sure I am not big; but there is in me the greatest attraction. Although I might be of small stature, my aura [of perfume] is large” (magna quidem non sum, sed inest mihi maxima uirtus. | spiritus est magnus, quamuis sim corpore paruo). At the very least the Aenigmata show a sustained application of ingenuity and verbal skill in rethinking the world from the perspectives of enigma and paradox. Part of that skill is directed to constructing a poetry book of one hundred epigrams with its own internal dynamics and intratextual interconnectedness. The collection is framed by epigrams that refer to the activity and products of the riddle poet himself. The first two describe writing implements, a stylus and a reed pen. Symphosius’s aspiration to literary fame is sealed with the last poem, 100 monumentum, which comes after a sequence of four poems, 96–99, on “shadowy or insubstantial phenomena” (as Timothy Leary labels them), which can all be also read as containing poetic or metapoetic meanings (uerba, umbra, Echo, somnus): monumentum nomen habens hominis post ultima fata relinquor. nomen inane manet, sed dulcis uita profugit. uita tamen superest morti post tempora uitae. Monument. Bearing the name of a man, I am left after his final destiny. The empty name remains, but sweet life has fled. Yet life survives death after the time of his life.

This is the riddle poet’s variation on Horace’s Odes 3.30 Exegi monumentum, with Ovidian overlays. Opening and closing epigrams draw Symphosius into his own world of riddling paradox, and the book ends with a matter of life and death for its author, anxious that his work should live on after his biological death. In the third line of epigram 100, uita tamen superest morti sounded too much like a formulation of a Christian belief in an afterlife to eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury editors, who accordingly emended to multis or meritis, thus destroying the paradoxical punch of the last line of Symphosius’s monumentum. Of course, the kind of survival here referred to is not that of Christian belief. But the question remains as to whether a late antique readership, the great majority of whom would have been Christian at the time of Symphosius, whenever exactly that was, would have been put in mind of Christian paradoxes and miracles by this and other formulations in the Aenigmata. Epigram 83 is on wine turned into vinegar, a metamorphosis described in language that is close to formulations of the Incarnation in Christian poetry: “What it was it is not; it has begun to be what it was not” (83.3 quod fuerat non est; coepit quod non erat esse). And might the Christian reader also think of a famous metamorphosis involving wine in the Gospels? The previous epi-

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gram (82) is on the three-in-one compound of seasoned wine: “Once we were three who are joined in a single name. From three there is one and three are mixed in one” (conditum, tres olim fuimus qui nomine iungimur uno. | ex tribus est unus, et tres miscentur in uno). Would it be possible not to be put in mind of Trinitarian formulations, although of course the Trinity is not a mixture, and there is no before or after with the persons of the Trinity? Ausonius’s “Riddle of the Number Three” ends with three lines that combine sympotic levity, the mystery of the Trinity, and a self-referential call to the reader to note that the poem we are reading has thrice ten times three, or nine times ten, lines: “Thrice drink! The number three is above all, Three Persons and one God! And that this conceit may not run its course without significance of number, let it have verses thrice ten times three, or nine times ten!” (88–90 ter bibe. tris numerus super omnia, tris deus unus. | hic quoque ne ludus numero transcurrat inerti, | ter decies ternos habeat deciesque nouenos). Epigram 84 on the apple, malum, ends with the wish “that my first syllable should not be read short,” as malum, “evil.” In the Bible there is an apple that is the source of evil.78 The two most recent editors of the Aenigmata, Manuela Bergamin and Timothy Leary, disagree as to whether it contains Christian reference. It seems difficult to me to exclude the possibility that some, and perhaps many, contemporary readers would have been put in mind of Christian paradoxes in such cases as I have mentioned. When it comes to paradox, as with other aspects of late Latin poetry, it strikes me as wrongheaded to try to seal off non-Christian from Christian practices: there is inevitably seepage, and possibly greater flows in each direction. The riddle has a long history, but Symphosius’s innovation in putting together a “world” of riddling paradox in a unified poetry book was perhaps in part prompted by a Christian habit of seeing the world as a mysterious and enigmatic place, in keeping with the teaching of Paul at 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see through a mirror in an enigma [the King James Version’s “through a glass, darkly”], but then face to face” (uidemus nunc per speculum in enigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem).79

78. See ch. 3, n. 49. 79. Echoing Numbers 12:8 (God and Moses) ore enim ad os loquor ei et palam non per enigmata [Hebrew hida] et figuras. Discussed by Augustine in Trin. 15 (see Cook 2006, 39–42).

7

Allegory

A L L E G ORY AS A L AT E A N T I QU E M I N D - S ET

Late antiquity is often thought of as especially given to allegorical and figurative ways of thinking.1 Patricia Cox Miller characterizes the period as one in which “almost anything—flocks of sheep, a bride munching apples, even the letters of the alphabet—could be subjected to the metaphorizing process that turned the ordinary into an extraordinary vehicle of meaning.” Miller “call[s] attention to the late ancient sensitivity to image, metaphor, and sign and . . . highlight[s] the figurative sensibility that is a distinctive feature of many of the texts of the period.”2 Miller’s gaze ranges over both Christian and non-Christian texts, alert to a figurative sensibility encouraged by both Christianity and Neoplatonism. Jacques Fontaine notes the sensibility shared between a Christian writer, Ambrose (taking as an example his De virginitate), and a pagan writer, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, with their liking for “jeux de la pensée” and analogical expressions. In both cases Fontaine detects sources in the symbolist traditions of the Greek East: in Ambrose’s case this is the indirect influence of Philonian exegesis and more generally the hermeneutical traditions of the Christian Church, in Ammianus’s case the influence of philosophical exegesis of Homer and hermeneutic of myth. Both Ambrose and Ammianus, says Fontaine, tend to allegorize.3 Averil Cameron, in her Sather Lectures on Christianity and rhetoric, is concerned just with the discourses of 1. There is a vast literature on the history and theory of allegory; for useful orientation and further bibliography, see Copeland and Struck 2010. Important works on the history of ancient and late antique allegory include Buffière 1956, Pépin 1976, Dawson 1992 and 2002, and Ramelli 2011. On typology, see n. 14 below. 2. Miller 2001, 1. 3. Fontaine 1977.

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Christianity: “The figural quality of Christian expression, and the theory of reference on which it rested, were major enabling factors in its development toward a totalizing discourse. Metaphor is at the heart of Christian language.”4 More recently Jesús Hernández Lobato has his sights on both Christian and non-Christian texts when he describes late antiquity as a whole as “una auténtica era de la interpretacíon.”5 My aim in this chapter is not to attempt a survey of the vast topic of allegory in late antiquity, but to look at a sample of allegorical texts with reference to the two major questions that underly this book: firstly, is there a qualitative difference between the allegorical practices of late antiquity and phenomena observable in earlier Latin poetry, particularly of the first centuries b.c. and a.d.? Secondly, is there a sharp divide between the kinds and quantity of allegory found in Christian and non-Christian texts of the period, as Averil Cameron suggests, or is there more of a continuum between poetry on Christian and non-Christian subjects, as Miller, Fontaine, and Hernández Lobato suggest? Taking a diachronic view of things, a history of allegory in Western literature and art will recognize a decisive staging-post in late antiquity, en route to the dominant allegorism and figuralism of the Middle Ages. There is perhaps a paradox here, in that the late fourth century is also thought of as a classicizing Renaissance (the “Theodosian renaissance”), a reaching back to models of the Augustan and early imperial periods after the decline in both the quality and the quantity of poetic output in Latin in the third century. That paradox, if it is one, is lessened if we take due notice of the fact that the traditions of allegory and personification go back to the beginnings of Greek literature and to the earliest exegesis of Greek literature. In Latin literature, major landmarks include the personifications in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and in Statius. But a new stage is undoubtedly reached with Prudentius’s Psychomachia, an epic whose main characters are all personifications, a poem with a particularly rich afterlife in the Middle Ages. As well as being a narrative epic poem, the Psychomachia is also one of Prudentius’s doctrinal poems, an exposition of a devout Christianity that draws on the fully developed late antique forms of biblical exegesis and allegory. At the same time, the Psychomachia is a good example of Prudentius’s classicizing, replete above all with Virgilian allusion. T H E A L L E G ORY OF PRU DE N T I U S’ S P SYC HOM AC H IA

In this section I focus on the quality of the Psychomachia as an allegorical epic, and ask how Virgilian, or non-Virgilian, are its allegorical themes and procedures.6 4. Cameron 1991, 58. 5. Hernández Lobato 2012, 91, taking as his text Ambrose, Expos. Psalmi 118, on Christianity’s taking of the “spoils” of the Old Testament: lex spiritalis est; non illam audit Iudaeus qui audit corporaliter, sed ille audit qui audit in spiritu. 6. A shorter version of this discussion of the Psychomachia has appeared as Hardie 2017.

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One view, upheld by Reinhart Herzog, is that there is a world of difference between the sacramental and typological forms of allegory used by a writer like Prudentius, and the “panegyrical allegory” of a Claudian, working within a Virgilian epic tradition. Herzog seeks to demonstrate this through a comparison of the allegorical praefationes of Prudentius and Claudian. For Herzog, Prudentian allegory is rooted in a belief system that holds allegorical equations to correspond to relationships that a long Christian exegetical tradition has discerned as having a real existence in the world of nature and the world of history, whereas Claudian draws on a mythological tradition that has become meaningless in itself, in order to make specific and refined points.7 I will test this hypothesis, by asking what kinds of similarity or identity underlie the allegorical and figurative practice of poets treating of Christian and non-Christian materials respectively. Even if we are dealing with different belief systems, or a contrast between belief and nonbelief (or suspension of disbelief), in actual practice are the linguistic and imagistic procedures in the two cases distinguishable? For a study of intertextuality, I pose the further question of whether reading the Psychomachia through the Aeneid also brings yields in terms of reading the Aeneid through the Psychomachia. In other words, does attention to Prudentius’s allusive practice sensitize us to the allegorical qualities of the Aeneid? How Prudentian is the Aeneid?8 The Virgilianism of the Psychomachia is signaled in the first line of the main hexameter poem, one of the poem’s closest adaptations of a Virgilian line.9 Prudentius manipulates the Virgilian line in ways that could already be described as allegorical. Christe, graues hominum semper miserate labores (Psychom. 1 “Christ, who has always taken pity on the heavy labours of men”) echoes Aeneas’s prayer to Apollo in his interview with the Sibyl at Cumae: Phoebe, grauis Troiae semper miserate labores (Aeneid 6.56 “Apollo, who has always taken pity on the heavy labours of Troy). This ostentatious referencing of a Virgilian line has been compared to the Horatian use of a “motto,” a close adaptation of a Greek lyric model, 7. Herzog 1966, ch. 4. For the issue that Herzog discusses compare the late antique and medieval tension between allegory as verbal trope (the rhetorical tradition) and allegory as profound bearer of hidden spiritual meaning; thus Augustine distinguishes between theological allegory and literary trope; Bernardus Silvestris distinguishes between allegory proper to Scripture, where a historical truth points to a spiritual truth, and “integument,” a fictional covering appropriate for secular philosophy. See Turner 2010 on Hugh of St. Victor and Aquinas on the distinction between the metaphorical (included in the literal sense of the Bible) and the allegorical (the spiritual senses authored by the Holy Spirit, and beyond the capability of the human authors). 8. This kind of approach has points in common with my first book (Hardie 1986), which had as a subtext, not stated overtly, that medieval and Renaissance allegorical readings of the Aeneid might be as worthy of a modern reader’s attention as the models of reading dominant in most nineteenth- and twentieth-century interpretation. 9. Prudentius and Virgil: Mahoney 1934; Schwen 1937; Lühken 2002.

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in the opening words of an ode.10 Christian Gnilka, among others, has analyzed the continuities and contrasts with the Virgilian plot that emerge from Prudentius’s replacement of two words in the original line: Phoebe by Christe, and Troiae by hominum.11 Further observations on the Kontrastimitation operative here may be added. After invoking Christ, Prudentius immediately asserts the orthodox oneness of the Son with the Father: “you who are renowned for your father’s power and for your own, but one power (for it is one God that we worship under two names, but not at the same time a God on his own, since you, o Christ, are God born of the Father)” (2–4 qui patria uirtute cluis propriaque, sed una, | unum namque Deum colimus de nomine utroque, | non tamen et solum). The Christian God is truly one, A-pollo, “not many,”12 whereas Apollo is only one of many gods (and Aeneas makes the point emphatically when he goes on to invoke “all gods and goddesses” (Aen. 6.64 dique deaeque omnes). Non . . . solum may hint that Christ is not to be identified literally with the Sun, Sol, for all that figuratively— allegorically—he is the Christian sun, the Christian Apollo-Helios. By placing his adaptation of the Virgilian line at the beginning of his epic, Prudentius puts the reader in mind of Virgil’s programmatic use of labores at the start of the Aeneid, 1.10 tot adire labores (also at line end). Similarly, the initial placing of miserate hints at Virgil’s address to another “god,” Caesar Octavian, at the beginning of the Georgics: ignarosque uiae mecum miseratus agrestis (1.41 “taking pity with me on the countryfolk who do not know the way”). Recollection of that opening alerts the reader to the strong presence of didactic elements in the Psychomachia (closely related to Prudentius’s more overtly didactic poems, Apotheosis and Hamartigenia).13 10. By Magazzù 1975, 15. On Horatian “mottos,” see Cavarzere 1996. The parallel must rest at the level of a comparison, since Prudentius, despite being as careful a student of Horace as he was of Virgil, is unlikely to have been aware of Horace’s Greek models. 11. See Gnilka 2001, 58–61 for a subtle and penetrating discussion of Prudentius’s revalorization of the Virgilian line. Gnilka notes the adaptation of the same Virgilian line by Paulinus of Nola in Carm. 18.260 (the cowherd seeking the return of his oxen) Felix sancte meos semper miserate labores. 12. Cf. Macrob. Sat. 1.17.7 Apollinis nomen multiplici interpretatione ad solem refertur . . . ἢ ὅτι μόνος ἐστὶ καὶ οὐχὶ πολλοί, nam et Latinitas eum, quia tantam claritudinem solus obtinuit, solem uocauit. 13. The Psychomachia opens with a request for instruction, 5–6 dissere, rex noster, quo milite pellere culpas | mens armata queat nostri de pectoris antro; cf. Lucretius’s use of dissero in setting out his didactic program at De rerum natura 1.54–55 nam tibi de summa caeli ratione deumque | disserere incipiam et rerum primordia pandam; 6.940; for the indirect didactic question introduced by quo, cf. the indirect questions that open the Georgics, 1.1–5 Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram | uertere, etc. With quo milite epic military subject matter is diverted to didactic ends. The military-didactic function of the Psychomachia has already been signaled in the Praefatio, 6–10 docens ad aram cum litare quis uelit . . . pugnare nosmet cum profanis gentibus | suasit. The closing thanksgiving to Christ addresses him as a teacher, 888–89 reddimus aeternas, indulgentissime doctor, | grates, Christe, tibi. On the importance of Lucretius as a model for the Psychomachia, see Smolak 2001.

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The replacement of Troiae by hominum hints at an allegorization of the woes of Virgil’s Trojans as the woes of all mankind after the Fall. Finally, Aeneas’s prayer to Apollo and all the gods, and to the Sibyl, to be granted an ending to the wanderings and toils of the Trojans and to be allowed to settle in their promised land of Latium, is followed by the vow of a temple to Apollo and Diana (Aen. 6.69–70); to this corresponds the Temple of Wisdom built by the Virtues after their successful defeat of the Vices at the end of the Psychomachia. For Virgil’s reader, Aeneas’s vow of a temple in Latium foreshadows the Palatine Temple of Apollo dedicated in 29 b.c. by Augustus, and which appears at the climax of Roman history in the ekphrasis of the Shield of Aeneas (Aen. 8.720–22). Prudentius overbids the Virgilian sequence of temples of Apollo (that founded at Cumae by Daedalus, in the legendary past, and those to be founded in the future on Latin soil and in Rome, by Aeneas and Augustus) with a temple that marks the end of a Christian history, a temple that alludes to a sequence of biblical temples: the Temple of Solomon (1 Kings 6), the vision of a temple at Ezekiel 40–47, and finally the celestial Jerusalem of Revelation. Under “allegory” I shall consider a range of phenomena. The Psychomachia is noted above all as a pioneering work of personification allegory. It also draws on forms of allegory developed in biblical exegesis: typology (the prefiguration of New Testament events and persons in the events and persons of the Old Testament),14 eschatological foreshadowing, and the moral lessons to be drawn from biblical history. This last category converges with the classical use of historical exempla of virtues and vices. Typology is a peculiarly biblical way of thinking about the figuration of historical events, but there are many other ways of alluding to, foreshadowing, or echoing historical events that do not presuppose the Christian model of the “concrete prophecy” of typology. The legendary characters and narrative of the Aeneid often mirror historical personages and events, and the Psychomachia likewise alludes to history in ways other than the typological. The Psychomachia, “battle of the soul,”15 is a narrative of a struggle within the individual human being, but it also incorporates a narrative about the history of the church, both in this world and the next. The movement from the local to the universal, from the temporally limited to the eternal, from the microcosm to the macrocosm, is one that is rooted in Christian theology and Christian exegesis, but this shuttling back and forth between the small-scale and the large-scale is also a feature of Virgilian poetic practice, itself a stimulus for Prudentius.

14. Important works on biblical typology and its literary uses include Auerbach 2014, Charity 1966, Daniélou 1960, Fabiny 1992, and Goppelt 1982. 15. For this way of understanding the title, see Gnilka 1963, 26: “Die Psychomachie ist ein Kampf der Seele in der leiblichen Person um die Befreiung des ganzen Menschen.”

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PE R S ON I F I C AT I ON A L L E G ORY I N PRU DE N T I U S AND VIRGIL

I begin my discussion of Prudentian personification allegory’s exploitation of Virgilian models through a consideration of the relationship between personification and history. Personification allegory is sometimes perceived as inherently timeless, putting on stage abstractions detached from particular historical events. Typology, by contrast, is a form of allegory rooted in history. But a number of studies have brought out the ways in which the prevailing personification allegory of the Psychomachia is itself inseparable from the history of the church.16 This is especially true of the first and last of the seven confrontations: Fides versus Veterum Cultura Deorum, and Concordia versus Discordia. Time is built into the first of these meetings, which results in the death of something old, the ueteres dei, thus allowing for the renewal, re-nouatio, that is at the heart of both the Christian theology and the imperial ideology of late antiquity.17 Furthermore Fides, both in her own unarmed defiance of her violent persecutor, old paganism, and in the thousand martyrs who accompany her, takes us to the heroic days of the early church, the time of the martyrs, which had ended the better part of a century before the time of Prudentius’s first readers.18 This host of martyrs includes the individuals whose histories form the subject of Prudentius’s Peristephanon. The death of Veterum Cultura Deorum is not easy or quick: “Long gasps make a hard and difficult death” (35 difficilemque obitum suspiria longa fatigant); commentators refer this to the length of time it took the Christian emperors to extinguish pagan idolatry.19 The last of the encounters in the Psychomachia, between Concordia and Discordia, breaks out after what has seemed to be the definitive conclusion of hostilities once the other Vices have been defeated. Discordia is here the divisiveness of heresy, by which name the unmasked creature christens herself before she is torn to pieces: “I am called Discord, my other name is Heresy” (709–10 Discordia dicor, | cognomento Heresis). Her treacherous assault on Concordia after the establishment of peace is a reflection of a historical situation, the emergence of heretical 16. Shanzer 1989a; Deproost 1995 (reading the Psychomachia as the product of a privileged moment of the Theodosian empire); Smolak 2001; Schmidt 2007. Gnilka (2008, 31) identifies the interpenetration of history with the battle in the soul as a challenge for the exegete of the Psychomachia: “Das große Thema der Psychomachie ist . . . die triumphale Überwindung der alten Sündenwelt durch die sittlichen Kräfte der neuen Religion.” 17. The attack of Christian faith on the old paganism is conducted at length in the two books of Prudentius’s Against Symmachus, which takes as its starting point a specific event in the history of the conflict between Christianity and paganism, the emperor Gratian’s order for the removal of the Altar of Victory from the Senate-House in Rome in a.d. 382, and the appeal for its restoration by Symmachus, prefect of Rome, in his third Relatio of a.d. 384. 18. Buchheit 1990. 19. Rohmann 2003.

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doctrines after the establishment of the “peace of the Church”20 with the Edict of Milan in 313, and the ending of persecution, the ending of the “age of martyrs.”21 The episodes of Fides versus Veterum Cultura Deorum and of Concordia versus Discordia have Virgilian models, each of which has a strongly allegorical quality, but each of which is firmly rooted in Roman history. Discordia’s attack on Concordia is modeled on the assault by the Fury Allecto on a number of Italian victims in book 7 of the Aeneid, to the end of disrupting Latinus’s wish to perpetuate Italy’s long-standing state of peace through the concord reached with the Trojans.22 Allecto is a close relative of Ennius’s Discordia, and Allecto crows to Juno that she has “made perfect discord in the horror of war” (Aen. 7.545 en, perfecta tibi bello discordia tristi), thus fulfilling Juno’s statement “You have the power to arm for battle brothers of one mind” (335 tu potes unanimos armare in proelia fratres), where un-animos is virtually synonymous with con-cordes. Allecto, as we shall see, is also the dominant Virgilian model for the vice Libido, whose confrontation with Pudicitia is the second in the series of duels in the poem. The Allecto sequence is one of the most allegorical, and least mimetically realistic, episodes in the Aeneid. But the madness visited by Allecto in Aeneid 7 is a mythical representation of historical as well as psychological realities, a foreshadowing in particular of the civil war between Pompey and Caesar. Ennius’s Empedoclean Discordia had also been tied to a particular moment in Roman history, the revolt of Falerii in 241 b.c. The major Virgilian model for the first combat in the Psychomachia, between Fides and Veterum Cultura Deorum, comes in the following book, book 8, of the Aeneid. The fight between Hercules and Cacus is narrated by Evander on the occasion of the annual commemoration of Hercules’s victory at the Ara Maxima, and is thus an event built into the Roman fasti, the religious calendar that memorializes events in Roman history. But this is an episode that might be seen as programmatic for a narrative manner that departs from the usual standards of mimetic realism in epic warfare, and it also combines historical and moral allegory in a way suggestive for the Psychomachia.23 Evander claims at Aeneid 8.185–88 that the recently instituted worship of Hercules is not unmindful of the old gods: “This 20. On the “peace of the Church,” see Cameron 2008. 21. The structure of the Psychomachia is reflected, inversely, in the structure of the hexameter component of Prudentius’s oeuvre: preceding the Psychomachia are two poems that combat heresy, the Apotheosis and the Hamartigenia, and following are the two books of Against Symmachus, attacking paganism; see Ludwig 1977. 22. Aen. 7.46 (Latinus) iam senior longa placidas in pace regebat; 284–85 talibus Aeneadae donis dictisque Latini | sublimes in equis redeunt pacemque reportant. 23. Prudentius inverts the order of the Allecto and Hercules and Cacus episodes in his imitations. The two Virgilian episodes were particularly adaptable to Christian narratives: Allecto as an allegory for original sin, the serpent in the garden; and Hercules’s defeat of the chthonic Cacus as foreshadowing Christ’s harrowing of hell.

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annual rite, this set feast and this altar to a great divinity have not been imposed upon us by any vain superstition working in ignorance of our ancient gods (uana superstitio ueterumque ignara deorum).” At 189 meritosque nouamus honores, nouamus is ambiguous, meaning either “renew (annually) the divine honours he deserves” or “invent, innovate with.”24 This religious aition, marking a particular “date” in history, is the earliest point in a history of Rome, sketched out allusively and prophetically in Aeneid 8, that includes the actual foundation of the city itself, and reaches down to the present day, to Augustus. Evander’s story of Hercules and Cacus tells of the victory of a new god whose worship is nevertheless accommodated within the cults of the ueteres dei. Hercules is, after all, the son of the supreme father-god Jupiter, whose awe-inspiring presence in the heart of the future Rome is revealed by Evander when he takes Aeneas on a tour of the place (Aen. 8.349–54). Hercules’s divine paternity is emphasized at 8.301 by the Salii in their hymn: “Hail, true son of Jupiter, glorious accession to the gods.” However, the relationship between Hercules and Jupiter, son and father, is very different from the relationship between God the Son and God the Father, whose indivisible unity is the starting point of the main, hexameter, section of the Psychomachia (2–4). Christ was always god, whereas Hercules only became a god. Hercules’s defeat of Cacus alludes to Epicurus’s defeat of the personification Religio at the beginning of the De rerum natura.25 But Virgil reverses the Lucretian message, since the dira religio of Jupiter is still rooted in the soil of Rome, now as it was in the time of Evander. By putting Veterum Cultura Deorum in the role of Cacus, Prudentius sets an absolute divide between the old pagan religion and the new Christian religion, in a manner that reverts to the Lucretian savior Epicurus’s uncompromising destruction of the previous religious regime.26 For Prudentius, Veterum Cultura Deorum is synonymous with uana superstitio,27 collapsing the opposition in Evander’s claim “This annual rite . . . has not been imposed upon us by any vain superstition working in ignorance of our ancient gods.” The Lucretian inversion whereby superstitio ends up being trampled underfoot is also a model for the typical Prudentian

24. See Henry (ad loc.), who sides with Wagner, against Heyne and Peerlkamp, in understanding “Facimus haec et insolita sacra”; “Neque excusatione opus esset Evandro, si non esset noua atque insolita haec superstitio.” 25. See Hardie 2009a, 171–72, referring to Gildenhard 2004. 26. Smolak (2001, 128–29), in the context of Lucretian models for Prudentius, notes the parallel between the replacement of Apollo by Christ in the first line of the Psychomachia and the replacement of Hercules by Epicurus in the proem to DRN 5. 27. Vana superstitio is used elsewhere by Prudentius at Apoth. 510 (in the context of Christ’s conquest of the images of pagan gods on the Roman Capitol) and Symm. 1.198; cf. also Symm. 1.39 utque superstitio ueterum procul absit auorum.

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punishment of a vice through lex talionis or as contrappasso.28 But Prudentius will install his own, Christian, version of superstitio at 640–43, after the preliminary conclusion of hostilities: agmina casta super uultum sensere Tonantis adridere hilares pulso certamine turmae, et Christum gaudere suis uictoribus arce aetheris ac patrium famulis aperire profundum. The squadrons, happy at the ending of the contest, see the face of the Thunderer smiling from above on their chaste forces, and they see Christ in the height of the sky, rejoicing in his victorious troops, and opening to his servants the deep of his Father’s home.

The smiling face of the Christian God in the heavens above (super) is in contrast to the fear-inspiring face of Lucretius’s Religio, standing over mortal men (DRN 1.65 horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans, where super . . . instans provides an etymology for superstitio). Prudentius’s choice of the pagan Tonans to refer to the Christian supreme god reminds us that thunderbolts inspire the religious dread from which mankind is freed by Epicurus: “whom neither stories about the gods, nor thunderbolts, nor heaven with threatening roar could quell” (DRN 1.68–69). The new, Christian, sky religion welcomes mankind to the heavens, rather than keeping it in oppression on earth. According to Lucretius, Epicurus’s victory over Religio brings us level with the sky (DRN 1.79 nos exaequat uictoria caelo). For Prudentius it is the victory of the Christian virtues over the Vices that will allow the return of mankind’s heavenly nature (Psychom. 901 caeleste ingenium) to its true home. There are other reasons why the Hercules and Cacus episode is a privileged one for Prudentius. Freed from the constraints of mimetic realism that govern the encounters in the warfare of the primary narrative of the war in Latium, this clash between a chthonic, hellish monster and the son of the supreme Olympian, himself to become an Olympian god, comes close to an allegorical battle. The sense of a conflict between virtue and vice is reinforced by the onomastic opposition of Evander “good man” and Cacus “bad (man).” The fight between Hercules and Cacus stands outside the series of single combats in the war in Latium, but at the same time it is the first such “duel,” and it also foreshadows—or “prefigures”—later single combats, in particular the final duel between Aeneas and Turnus in Aeneid 12, and also the final battle represented in book 8, the battle of Actium, the “last battle” of Roman history. Indeed, the Hercules and Cacus story has some claim to be the most allegorical episode in the Aeneid, both as a moral allegory of a struggle between good and evil, and as an event that enters into allegorical relationships with other events, in the language of biblical exegesis, as a “type.” Book 8 of the 28. See Gnilka 1963, ch. 3.

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Aeneid is the book to which the model of biblical typology can most readily be applied (see below). The fight between Fides and Veterum Cultura Deorum is an allegory of the larger historical process of the confrontation of Christianity and paganism, and it is also a model for, or prefiguration of, other individual combats, between martyrs and their persecutors, unarmed and defenseless Christians whose faith allows them to be victorious over those who torture and kill them.29 The very brief episode of Fides and Veterum Cultura Deorum encapsulates the trajectory of the Psychomachia as a whole, from entrance onto the field of combat, through defeat and killing of the enemy, to victory celebration. This microcosmic recapitulation is shared with the Virgilian Hercules and Cacus episode, in which (narrative of) the combat is followed by celebration of the laudes and facta of Hercules in the hymn of the Salii. This sequence in turn foreshadows the larger pattern of Roman history represented on the Shield of Aeneas, the history of Roman wars, bella, climaxing in the clash between Augustus and Antony, sketched in unrealistic and allegorizing ekphrasis, and including an image of Discordia (Aen. 8.702), followed by a scene of triumph and a newly built temple. The second Prudentian combat, between Pudicitia (Chastity) and Libido (Lust),30 like the final encounter between Concordia and Discordia, activates another focal point of Virgilian allegory, or what might perhaps be labeled “protoallegory,” the figure of the Fury.31 Libido is first anchored in a biblical context, introduced as “Lust the Sodomite, girt with the firebrands of her fatherland” (42 patrias succincta faces Sodomita Libido), and then identified as a monster from the classical world, labeled Furiae flagrantis, “blazing Fury,” and dirae | . . . lupae “dire whore” (46–47). Here the reader might initially take dirae as a noun, Dirae, synonymous with Furiae, until we read on to the next line and realize that it is an adjective. After killing Libido, Pudicitia addresses her as “greatest of the Furies” (96 Furiarum maxima = Aen. 3.252, 6.605), and sends her packing to hell, there to roll in waves of fire and sulfur forever, condign punishment for one whose weapons are the sulfurous torches of lust. This is a Christian rewriting of the destination of Virgil’s Allecto, who returns to the infernal shadows of the underworld whence 29. See Buchheit 1990, 391 on the parallel with Perist. 2.2 ff., Laurence’s victory over barbarous cult, through the power of Fides. 30. See Corsano 2004. 31. Libido is one of a number of Prudentian Vices modeled on Furies, a plurality adumbrated already in the proem: 10 furiis inter praecordia mixtis, 130 (Ira) nec mota est iaculo monstri sine more furentis; cf. Aen. 7.376–77 (Amata infected by Allecto) tum uero infelix ingentibus excita monstris | immensam sine more furit lymphata per urbem; Psychom. 466 (in the train of Auaritia) Eumenides uariae monstri comitatus aguntur; 697 (Concordia) quid iuuat indomitos bello sedasse Furores; on Discordia and Allecto, see above. See Gnilka 1963, 52 n. 7 on 96 Furiarum maxima. The late antique artist who designed the archetype of all surviving illustrated manuscripts of the Psychomachia was inspired by ancient representations of Furies in his image of Anger; see Katzenellenbogen 1939, 15.

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she came, after infuriating the inhabitants of the world above. There are two differences: Libido’s point of origin is in the world of men, as a citizen of Sodom (with 42 patrias succincta faces Sodomita Libido, contrast Aen. 7.324–25 “[Juno] rouses Allecto, bringer of grief, from the home of the dread goddesses and the darkness of the underworld”), and she goes to hell to suffer the torments that the pagan Fury inflicts on others. Libido’s mode of operation is that of the Virgilian Allecto and of Allecto’s human victims. “She thrusts into Chastity’s face a pine torch blazing with pitch, attacking her modest eyes with the flames and trying to cover them with foul smoke” (43–45 piceamque ardenti sulpure pinum | ingerit in faciem pudibundaque lumina flammis | appetit, et taetro temptat subfundere fumo); compare Aeneid 7.456–57 (Allecto attacking Turnus): “With these words she threw a burning torch at the warrior and fixed it in his breast, smoking with black light” (sic effata facem iuueni coniecit et atro | lumine fumantis fixit sub pectore taedas); and 9.71–72 (Turnus, Allecto’s agent, attacking the Trojan ships): “He demanded fire from his exultant comrades, and ablaze with fury he took up a burning torch in his hand” (manum pinu flagranti feruidus implet). Virgil’s Allecto is a full mythological person, but she comes close to being a personification of furor, furia, with a small f. That is one reason why Allecto is an important model for two of the four major personification allegories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Inuidia and Fames. (Another reason is that her mode of operation, which is to transform her victims into versions of herself, makes of her an agent of metamorphosis.32) And for Prudentius this quality of Allecto and of the results of her inteference in the world of humankind is a kind of license for the slippage from a narrative whose characters are fully human beings to a narrative of the deeds of personifications. This can be seen working in the opposite direction in the case of the Prudentian Vices, whose actions are modeled on those of fully human characters in the classical epic tradition, but humans acting in the grip of a ruling passion. Anger’s breaking of her sword on the invulnerable helmet of Patience is modeled on the scene near the end of Aeneid 12 where Turnus’s sword shatters on the divinely made armor of Aeneas (12.728–45). Turnus, victim of Allecto, becomes a hypertrophied specimen of the angry epic hero: anger caps the catalogue of disturbed emotions that erupt in Turnus’s breast after Allecto thrusts her smoking torches into it, at Aen. 7.460–62: “In his frenzy he roared for his arms, he looks for his arms in his bed and in the palace; lust for iron raged within him, and a criminal madness of war, and, in addition, anger” (saeuit amor ferri et scelerata insania belli, | ira super). This is followed by the simile of a cauldron boiling over, which alludes to a Lucretian description of lions as the embodiment of ira (DRN 3.294–98). Turnus is of course more than simply an embodiment of anger, and his response to his 32. Hardie 2002b, 233–34.

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shattered sword is to panic and flee. Anger’s reaction is to turn her anger against herself: “Her savagery fires her to kill herself ” (150 ad proprium succenditur effera letum). This is the response of another obsessively angry hero, Ajax, at Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.384–85: “Anger was the only thing that the man who so often singlehandedly withstood weapons, fire and Jupiter, could not withstand” (Hectora qui solus, qui ferrum ignesque Iouemque | sustinuit totiens, unam non sustinet iram). There is also an allusion to the archetypal epic angry hero, Achilles, via a Horatian intertext, applied, however, not to Anger but to her opponent Patience’s helmet: with “The steel that could not yield receives the vain attack, and stands up to the striker without hurt” (143–44 dum cedere nescia cassos | excipit adsultus ferienti et tuta resistit), compare Horace, Odes 1.6.5–6: “the oppressive anger of Achilles, who could not yield” (grauem | Pelidae stomachum cedere nescii). The Ovidian quote shows that the unrestrainable anger of one angry hero, Ajax, does have its weak point, itself, and to that it does yield. Prudentius’s Pride (Superbia) is modeled on a number of proud and haughty Virgilian heroes, including Chloreus and Turnus. Her long speech (206–52), addressed to her opponent Humility (Mens Humilis), takes as a primary model the boastful and intimidating speech to the besieged Trojans of the Italian warrior Numanus Remulus (Aen. 9.598–620). Numanus is puffed up (tumidus) by his recent marriage into the Rutulian royal family; Pride looks down on the battlelines with swollen disdain (Psychom. 182 tumido despectans agmina fastu). Numanus also comes close to being an instantiation of the major Virgilian personification of Fama.33 EXEMPLA

The operation of a Fury is one way to erase the boundary between person and personification. Another is through exemplarity, whereby a historical individual is proposed as the type (in a nonbiblical sense) of a virtue or vice. Exemplarity is a fundamental feature of pre-Christian historiography and rhetoric. The word exemplum is used in the Praefatio to the Psychomachia (10) of Abraham’s battle with the kings who had taken Lot prisoner, a model for our own spiritual battle with the vices. In the body of the poem the first biblical exemplum is adduced by Chastity (Pudicitia), in the person of Judith, who beheaded the lustful Holofernes (58–65): tene, o uexatrix hominum, potuisse resumptis uiribus extincti capitis recalescere flatu, Assyrium postquam thalamum ceruix Olofernis caesa cupidineo madefactum sanguine lauit, gemmantemque torum moechi ducis aspera Iudith 33. See Hardie 1994 on Aen. 9.590–91, 595, 614–20.

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Allegory spreuit et incestos compescuit ense furores, famosum mulier referens ex hoste tropaeum34 non trepidante manu uindex mea caelitus audax!

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Shall you, o troubler of mankind, have been able to resume your strength and grow warm again with the breath of life that was extinguished in you, after the severed head of Holofernes soaked his Assyrian chamber with his lustful blood, and the unbending Judith, spurning the lecherous captain’s jewelled couch, checked his unclean passion with the sword, and woman as she was, won a famous victory over the foe with no trembling hand, maintaining my cause with boldness heaven-inspired?

The word furores (63) edges Holofernes toward himself being the embodiment, or personification, of lustful furor, reinforcing Chastity’s identification of his head with that of Lust. That Lust was able to rear his head again after the decapitation of Holofernes is taken by Chastity as a result of the fact that Judith (66–69) “perhaps did not have sufficient strength as a woman fighting in the shadow of the (Old Testament) Law (sub umbra | legis), while she prefigured our times, in which real virtue has passed into earthly bodies (dum tempora nostra figurat, | uera quibus uirtus terrena in corpora fluxit), to cut off the great head through feeble agents.” As figura Judith is also a type of the chaste Virgin Mary, the woman who with her helpless child, Christ, was able finally to dispatch Lust. Exemplum and type, in the biblical sense (figura), merge in the person of Judith. Intratextually, the paragon of pudicitia, Judith, also provides a model for the standard pattern of the allegorical encounters in the Psychomachia, a woman triumphant over her opponent. The pointed juxtaposition of famosum mulier (64) encapsulates the revision of epic values and of epic narrative expectations that runs through the poem, often associated with the promotion of feminine kinds of action and heroism. In the third combat, between Patience and Anger, the personification of the virtue patience is accompanied by a historical character, Job.35 Job is an exemplum of patience. He also comes close to being a personification of patience, to whose side he has clung during the battle (163–64); however, he falls short of being a personification, insofar as he has a personal history: he appears multo funere anhelus, “panting from the slaughter of many foes,” and he bears the, now closed, wounds of a thousand battles. The allegorical battles of the man, as opposed to that of the virtue, are not a matter of quiet and tranquil endurance, but the result of his victory, won through the patient endurance of violence inflicted and received, will be the tranquility that is the undetachable quality of Patience. “Him the heavenly one bids rest (requiescere) at last from all the din of arms” (169–70), thus realizing 34. Cf. perhaps Aen. 11.782 femineo praedae et spoliorum ardebat amore. 35. With 163 egregio comitata uiro, cf. the comitatus of minor personifications that sometimes attend a god or a major personification; e.g.. Stat. Theb. 4.661 (personifications in attendance on Mars); Psychom. 466.

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Patience’s own essential quietude “so Patience remains undisturbed” (128 inde quieta manet Patientia). The close alliance of historical personage and personification is also seen in the martyrdom of Saint Vincent, at Peristephanon 5.213–16: “Now they have reached the wrestling-ground of glory; hope and cruelty contend, and the martyr on this side, the torturer on the other, join in doubtful struggle” (uentum ad palaestram gloriae; | spes certat et crudelitas, | luctamen anceps conserunt | hinc martyr, illinc carnifex). CITIES

Prudentius includes within his primary narrative what Virgil leaves beyond the limit of his primary narrative, the city-building activity of peacetime, which is defined as one of Aeneas’s missions in the proem: 1.5 dum conderet urbem. The city that Aeneas will found shortly after the end of the Aeneid, Lavinium, will succeed the destroyed city of Troy, and foreshadows the later cities of Alba Longa and, climactically, Rome. Prudentius also lays out a series of cities and temples in the image of cities. The Temple of Wisdom is to be built in the city of the body cleansed by the defeat of the Vices (818 purgati corporis urbem; cf. 753–54 barbaries, sanctae quae circumsaepserat urbis | indigenas [“the barbarians who had beset the dwellers in the sacred city”]).36 Fides instructs her fellow captains to build an allegorical temple in their camp on the model of a historical building, the First Temple of Solomon, a temple that had also been built after a turning point from war to peace: “[the task] that Solomon, the peaceful heir of a warlike throne, the unarmed successor to an armed court, set on foot” (805–7 regni quod tandem pacifer heres | belligeri, armatae successor inermus et aulae, | instituit Solomon). Literary, as well as royal, succession is at issue here: like Virgil’s Troy, the First Temple (as also the Second Temple) no longer exists in Prudentius’s day. This new temple built in the individual human being is also in the image, firstly, of the Christian Church, the communal “temple” of present-day Christians, and, secondly, of the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21, the primary model for Prudentius’s description of the building of his temple, and another architectural monument that exists in history, or rather at the end of history. The image of the body as temple is Johannine (John 2:19–21) and Pauline (1 Cor. 6:19), with classical comparanda (e.g., Tac. Ann. 4.38.2 haec mihi in animis uestris templa).37 There is also implicit in the Prudentian 36. The ultimate model for Spenser’s House of Alma: Nohrnberg 1976, 290. 37. See Deproost 1995, 67–73 on biblical and classical sources and analogues for the Temple of Wisdom, including Lucretian and Senecan mental templa; Deproost sees reflexes of Virgilian scenes of city building (and destruction: Carthage, Troy), and a possible glance at the building of the New Rome, Constantinople; he also sees in the foundation of the Templum Sapientiae by the harmonious sisters Concordia and Fides a pointed contrast to the fratricidal founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus; cf. the implicit contrast between those brothers and the concordant consular brothers Probinus and

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spiritual warfare and temple building an analogy with Roman plots of warfare and construction, and, more particularly, parallels with Claudian’s highly Virgilian panegyrical epics.38 Augustine’s fundamental contrast between the city of man and the city of God, Rome and the New Jerusalem, already underlies the intertextual contrast between Virgil’s Rome and the Temple of Wisdom in Prudentius.39 Prudentius’s temple itself stands in a tradition of Virgilian succession to, but also renovation of, Troy. The typological and anagogical correspondences that make of the Temple of Wisdom an allegory of the historical temples in Jerusalem, of the Christian Church of the present age of grace, and of the eschatological New Jerusalem, draw our attention to the way in which Troy in the Aeneid, and more widely in early imperial literature, is not just the city that has to make way for Rome, but in various respects a model for Rome, in ways for which “allegory” would not be an inapposite term.40 ST OR M S

The storm in Aeneid 1, the first narrative block of the poem, is programmatic not least in that it generates a range of allegorical and imagistic relationships that are determinative for the poem as a whole. The divine, the natural, and the human political worlds are drawn into a mutually implicative network of signification. The interaction between microcosm and macrocosm, between individual psychology and the workings of the state, is engineered through a furor that is both the expression of the psychology of an individual, here in fact a goddess, Juno, but a divinity behaving in a very anthropomorphic way, and the motive force for the disruption of a polity, in the shape of the seditio that threatens the cohesion of the Roman state in the statesman simile, and in which the word furor appears for the first time in the poem in a quasi-personification: iamque faces et saxa uolant, furor arma ministrat (Aen. 1.150 “And now torches and rocks fly, wild passion supplies arms”), followed by the full-blown personification of Furor at the word’s second appearance, at the Olybrius in Claud. Prob. Ol. (see ch. 2). For the metaphor of the temple of the mind, see also Gnilka 1963, 83–91 (“Templum pectoris”); on the Templum Sapientiae, see also Gosserez 2001, 248–73. 38. See Shanzer 1989a, 361–62 on the close parallels in Claud. Cons. Stil. (399/400): 2.6–49 (Clementia and Fides have made their temples in Stilicho’s cor at 31); 100–116 (the Virtues [deae] are resident in Stilicho’s pectus at 102: Iustitia, Patientia, Temperies, Prudentia, Constantia; while the importuna numina produced by Tartarus, including Auaritia and Ambitio, have been put to flight [109 fugantur; cf. also with 100–101 puro quae crimina pellunt | ore, Psychom. 5–6 quo milite pellere culpas | mens armata queat nostri de pectoris antro). On Prudentius’s use of Claudian, see also Shanzer 1989b. 39. Shanzer (1989a, 362–63) suggests that Augustine may allude to the Psychomachia at CD 19.10. Cf. the contrast between the earthly Cleopolis and the New Jerusalem in Spenser, TFQ I.x.55–59, with Red Crosse’s synkrisis of the two cities in favor of the latter. Cleopolis is the Faerie shadow of Troynovant, Spenser’s name for London, viewed as a successor to Virgil’s Rome as a “new Troy”; see Manley 1982. 40. See Hardie 2013.

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end of the speech of Jupiter, in the image of Furor bound (294–96 Furor impius intus); Aeolus’s royal control of the winds is also a psychotherapy: “Holding his sceptre he soothes their spirits and tempers their anger” (57 sceptra tenens mollitque animos et temperat iras), with the pun on animus (~ ἄνεμοι, “winds”). The analogy of soul and state (church) is central to the Psychomachia. Kurt Smolak sees this as a Platonic analogy.41 However, the analogy is first introduced through Virgilian allusion in the opening prayer to Christ (5–11): dissere, rex noster, quo milite pellere culpas mens armata queat nostri de pectoris antro,42 exoritur quotiens turbatis sensibus intus seditio atque animam43 morborum rixa fatigat, quod tunc praesidium pro libertate tuenda quaeue acies furiis inter praecordia44 mixtis obsistat meliore manu.

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Tell us, our king, with what soldiery our mind is armed and enabled to expel the sins from the cavity of our breast, whenever our senses are in turmoil and rebellion arises in us, and the strife of our diseased passions wears out our spirit—say what help there is then to guard our liberty, what army can resist with superior force the furies combined in our heart.

Seditio, the word used by Virgil of the civil disturbance in the statesman simile,45 the first simile in the poem, suggests that the battle of the soul is like a conflict within a polity. The singular mens armata (6) becomes an army, acies, in line 10, arrayed against the f/Furiae (the third term for “Vices,” after 5 culpas, 8 morborum, before the introduction of the word Vitia itself at line 13, after Virtutum at the same place in the line before). Seditio also looks forward to the climactic “civil war” of heresy within the church, embodied in Discordia’s underhand assault on Concordia at 665 ff. That is after what had seemed the conclusive end of the war, the establishment of Pax, and the return to camp under the leadership of Concordia.46 That point is marked by further Virgilian allusion, and by the first—and only proper—simile in 41. Smolak 2001. The Platonic analogy is one that would have been familiar to Virgil. 42. Cf. Aen. 1.52 uasto rex Aeolus antro; 60 sed pater omnipotens speluncis abdidit atris. 43. Cf. Aen. 1.57 mollitque animos et temperat iras. 44. Cf. Aen. 7.347 praecordia ad intima subdit. 45. Otherwise only at Aen. 11.340 seditione potens. 46. For the analogy between the bringing of peace in the wider world and in the human breast, cf. Symm. 2.619–33 (the triumphs of Rome prepare the way for the coming of Christ, with peace in the world and in human breasts); 623–25 nam locus esse Deo quis posset in orbe feroci | pectoribusque hominum discordibus et sua iura | dissimili ratione tuentibus . . . ? (with the further analogy between order in the soul and in the state at 629 at si mentis apex regnandi iure potitus; discussed by Deproost 1995, 74–75).

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Prudentius’s epic, which compares the victory song of the Virtues to the song sung by Moses and the children of Israel after the crossing of the Red Sea (Exod. 15:1– 21). The biblical historical event is “post-figured”47 in the victory of the soul. The crossing of the Red Sea and the drowning of the Egyptians use the language of the storm: “the yawning gulf of the sea that raged menacingly behind them” (650–51 hiantem | . . . rabiem ponti post terga minacis), “The hanging mountain of water crashed down hissing at the tips of their heels, and the flood falling back caught in its depths the black-skinned people of the Nile” (653–55 stridensque per extima calcis | mons rueret pendentis aquae nigrosque relapso | gurgite Nilicolas fundo deprenderet imo). Compare Aeneid 1.105–7: “There came towering over them a sheer mountain of water. Some of the ships were hanging on the crests of the waves; for others the waters opened and revealed land amidst the waves” (insequitur cumulo praeruptus aquae mons. | hi summo in fluctu pendent; his unda dehiscens | terram inter fluctus aperit).48 The combination of triumphal celebration in newly bright weather,49 after a victory allusively compared to a storm, repeats the combination on the Shield of Aeneas of a final battle that alludes, in a ring, to the storm at the beginning of book 1,50 followed by the scene of triumph, watched by Augustus from the gleaming temple of the sun-god Apollo. The linguistic figure of simile introduces an event in Old Testament history, Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea, that was a particular focus for typological exegesis, beginning with Paul’s interpretation of it as a figure for baptism.51 Moses is a figure for Christ, Egypt a figure for the world, and Pharaoh a figure for Satan who rules the world. The entry into the Promised Land also prefigures the Christian soul’s entry into paradise, as in Prudentius’s generalization of the story of Exodus to a message about God’s guidance of his people at Cathemerinon 5.109–12: “He calls the weary across the world’s sea, guiding his people, cutting through the storms, souls tossed about by countless struggles—he bids them climb to the homeland of the just” (trans. Richardson; fessos ille uocat per freta saeculi | discissis populum turbinibus regens, | iactatasque animas mille laboribus | iustorum in 47. I use the term of Roston 1968. 48. Cf. also the allusions to the Virgilian storm in Prudentius’s account of the drowning of the Egyptians at Cathem. 5.77–79 currus tunc et equos telaque naufraga | ipsos et proceres et uaga corpora | nigrorum uideas nare satellitum; cf. Aen. 1.118–19. On Prudentius’s use of classical epic storms in his several verse renderings of Jesus’s calming of the storm, see Charlet 1989. 49. Psychom. 638–39 suda redit facies liquidae sine nube diei, | purpuream uideas caeli clarescere lucem. 50. See Hardie 1986, 102–4 on the imagery of Gigantomachic convulsion that links storm and Actium. 51. 1 Cor. 10:1–2 nolo enim vos ignorare fratres, quoniam patres nostri omnes sub nube fuerunt et omnes mare transierunt. et omnes in Mose baptizati sunt in nube et in mari. Cf. Psychom. 89 ff. (Pudicitia plunges Libido in the fiery waters of the underworld, and then washes her sword in the waters of Jordan); 103–4 abolens baptismate labem | hostilis iuguli. On the allegorization of the Red Sea crossing, see Daniélou 1960, pt. 4.

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patriam scandere praecipit). These lines combine a reprise of the crossing of the Red Sea (discissis hints at the division of the Red Sea) with the language of the Virgilian storm-tossed hero (iactatas, laboribus). A similar combination of Virgilian and biblical is found in the description of Christ’s joy in the victory of his troops, and invitation to the celestial homeland, at Psychomachia 642–43: “And [they saw that] Christ in the height of sky rejoiced in his victorious people, and opened up for his servants the depths of his Father’s home (patrium famulis aperire profundum).” The choice of profundum to refer to the heights of heaven anticipates the opening of the depths of the Red Sea in the simile a few lines later; patrium . . . aperire alludes to the opening of the heavens above Augustus in the description of the battle of Actium at Aeneid 8.681, revealing Augustus’s father in heaven, Julius Caesar, in the form of the Julian star, patriumque aperitur uertice sidus. T H E PR O G R A M M AT I C P R A E FAT IO

Unlike the Aeneid, the Psychomachia has a freestanding programmatic preface,52 in the form of a sixty-eight-line iambic Praefatio that places the following poem in the contexts of faith and history, and of the history of the faith, sketches a framework of interpretation reaching from Genesis to the New Testament and applicable to Prudentius’s individual Christian reader, and puts on the table a range of the kinds of allegory deployed in the poem. Verse prefaces in a meter different from the main poem are a feature of late antique poetry, but Prudentius’s prefaces are more particularly a response to the verse prefaces found before many of Claudian’s poems. It is through a comparison of Claudian’s and Prudentius’s prefaces that Herzog sharpened his contrast between Christian and non-Christian forms of allegory, a contrast in part dismantled by Fritz Felgentreu.53 The Praefatio narrates the Old Testament story of Abraham’s rescue of his nephew Lot, Abraham’s blessing by Melchisedech, the visitation of the three angels to Abraham’s tent, and Sarah’s conception, accompanied by typological annotations, and with a separate moralization (50–68) of the story in terms of the fight that we must wage within ourselves, the fight that will be narrated at length in the body of the poem.54 Taking the Praefatio together with the closing description of the building of a temple that is a version of the New Jerusalem of Revelation, the Psychomachia 52. For an excellent analysis of the Praefatio and its programmatic quality, see Smith 1976, 206–22; see also Charlet 2003. On the prefaces of late antique panegyrical epics, see Zarini 2000. 53. Herzog 1966, ch. 4; Felgentreu 1999, 219–27 on the clear response to Claudian in Prudentius’s Praefationes, of which four “einem gleichnishaft-allegorischem Stil verpflichtet sind,” with a deliberate avoidance of Claudian’s elegiac meter. 54. Charlet (2003) suggests that the moralization may depend on Ambrose, Abr. 1.3.14.

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spans the whole of the Bible, from its first book to its last, from Genesis to Revelation. The word “first” occurs in the first line of the Praefatio, “Abraham, the faithful elder who first showed the way of believing” (Senex fidelis prima credendi uia | Abram . . . ), to be picked up as the first word in the first line of the main narrative, after the proem, 21–22 prima petit campum . . . Fides.55 There may be another Virgilian allusion here, since primus occurs in the first line of the Aeneid, of Aeneas, whose claim to primacy as a traveler from Troy to Italy perplexes the commentators. There can be no doubt of the primacy of Abraham and of Fides. By the time we reach the end of the poem we will have reached what are truly the last things, in the Christian view of history, τὰ ἔσχατα. This is a plot that exceeds that of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, prima ab origine mundi ad mea tempora; it also outbids the allusive span of Virgil’s Aeneid, which reaches from the Chaos, to which the storm of book 1 threatens to return the ordered cosmos, to the triumph of Octavian/Augustus and the return of the Golden Age with the pax Augusta, beyond which Virgil’s vision of history cannot extend (see chapter 2 for these universal plots). In the Praefatio the history of Abraham is both an exemplum (10) of how to behave, in an ethical rhetoric (10 suasor, suasit), and part of a typology that foreshadows Christ. The close connection of the typological and the tropological (moral sense) is perhaps signaled in the application of the language of figura and of foreshadowing to the moral lesson to be taken away by the reader: “This sketch has been drawn beforehand to be a figure, for our life to carve out again with upright steps” (50–51 haec ad figuram praenotata est linea, | quam nostra recto uita resculpat pede).56 Abraham’s fight against the captors of his nephew Lot, with the aid of 318 of his homegrown servants, is allegorized as the fight that we must undertake with our own inner forces to liberate our body from its enslavement to desire. This fight the reader undertakes as one of the faithful (“We must be vigilant in the armour of faithful hearts” [52 uigilandum in armis pectorum fidelium]) in Christ, who is foreshadowed, typologically, in the number of Abraham’s servants, 318,57 and in Melchisedech, whose bringing of bread and wine to Abraham after his victory (Gen. 14:18) is a type of the Eucharist, while the three men who appear to Abraham (Gen. 18:1–5) are a type of the Trinity. The Praefatio thus presents a tightly woven and interconnected set of exegetical approaches that is programmatic for a reading of the main body of the poem. The Praefatio starts from an Old Testament narrative and develops typological and 55. Fides is prima as the first of the Virtues to enter the lists, but prima also as the first foundation of all the Virtues. Fides also has the last word in the poem, as the last of the Virtues to be given direct speech, when she orders the building of the temple. Abraham is the outstanding example of a faithful man; cf. Gal. 3:9 igitur qui ex fide sunt benedicentur cum fideli Abraham. 56. But Whitman (1987, 87) sees here a confused and failed use of figura, a sign that Prudentius is unable to integrate figural and other kinds of allegory. 57. In Greek ΤΙΗ, Τ representing the cross, and ΙΗ being the first two letters of the name of Jesus.

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moral allegories from it. The agents in the narrative of the main body of the poem are moral personifications, but the moral allegory incorporates exemplary characters from the Old Testament, for example, Judith and Job, as well as allusions to New Testament salvation history, and the poem concludes with a foreshadowing of the last things of Revelation in the shape of the Temple of Wisdom.58 The progress of the individual soul in its struggle to free itself from sin is framed within, and underwritten by, a Christology that works historically through the supersession of the Old Testament age of the law by the New Testament age of grace. One might compare the inversion in the legendary narrative of the Aeneid of the historical epic project sketched out in the proem to Virgil’s third Georgic. There the inversion is of historical and legendary, but in such a way that the legendary narrative of the Aeneid constantly looks through to the historical. In the Psychomachia the inversion is of biblical-historical and personification-allegory, but in such a way that the allegory of the main poem is recurrently accompanied by biblical characters, and incorporates a historical framework. C ON C LU S I ON S

The allegory of the Psychomachia cannot, of course, be understood without reference to biblical and patristic59 sources and interpretative practices. Katherina Glau argues that the Psychomachia may be read in accordance with a version of the threefold senses of the Bible in the scheme constructed by Origen: the somatic (or literal sense), manifested at the rhetorical level of the concrete concepts of the virtues and the vices; the psychic sense, that is, the moral sense of the battle in everyman’s soul; and the pneumatic sense, the mystical-allegorical sense of eschatology, bodied forth in the building of the Temple of Wisdom, drawing largely on the New Jerusalem of Revelation.60 Even if Origen’s threefold scheme does not map exactly onto the Psychomachia (the literal/somatic sense in particular doesn’t quite work), there is clearly a copresence of the psychological, at the level of the individual soul, and the ecclesiological, at the level of the institution of the church, in both its earthly and its heavenly manifestations. The histories told within the narrative of the poem are placed within a yet larger salvation history by the Praefatio, which sets forth both (to use the Origenist term) a psychic allegory of the story of Abraham and Lot, and a typological interpretation of Melchisedech-Christ and of the appearance to 58. For a useful table of “the types, their scriptural sources, and their mode of existence in the allegory,” see Smith 1976, 179. 59. Gnilka (2007, 377) quite rightly affirms that “Prudentius muß aus den Vätern erklärt werden.” 60. Glau (2000), reviving the interpretation of Beatrice (1971), and including a convenient review of various earlier accounts of the relationship between the allegorical practice of the Psychomachia and biblical allegoresis. Origen’s three senses—somatic, psychic, and pneumatic—correspond to body, soul, and spirit. On Origen’s theory and practice of biblical allegorical interpretation, see Lauro 2005.

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Abraham and Sarah of the three angels. Nevertheless, while the theology, ontology, and theory of history of Prudentius’s allegory are undoubtedly specific to Christianity, the ways in which the text articulates and connects the various levels are comparable to the workings of the Aeneid. The infolding of an individual or local history within larger histories of a people or nation, and, beyond that, of the universe, informs the structure and dynamics of the Aeneid. The interaction between the psychological and the institutional is introduced programmatically in the storm in Aeneid 1, where furor is both the expression of the psychology of an individual, the goddess, Juno, and the motive force for the disruption of a polity, in the shape of the seditio that threatens the cohesion of the Roman state in the statesman simile. Prudentius takes over Virgil’s programmatic storm and uses it as one of the foundations for his allegorical epic. More generally, the strongly unified quality, as I see it, of the plot- and imagestructures of the Psychomachia,61 and of Prudentius’s other works, and their intratextual cohesion operating at and between a number of levels, function intertextually as a reflection of the multiplicity-in-unity of the Virgilian text (also reflected in post-Virgilian epics of the early imperial period). The Aeneid is already an intensely allegorical poem. Virgil’s works, above all the Aeneid, are privileged models for late antique Latin poetry, and so a major impetus for the allegorical habit of the period, reinforcing and reinforced by the other determinants, Christian and non-Christian. The Psychomachia, as even more overtly Prudentius’s Against Symmachus, seeks to correct the theology and ideology of the Aeneid, not by effacing the Virgilian text, but by deploying its structures and strategies in the service of the true faith. Forms of allegory specific to Christianity are grafted onto Virgilian practices. Marc Mastrangelo makes the point with reference to that most characteristic form of Christian exegesis, biblical typology: he shows how Prudentius extends typology beyond the one-to-one Old and New Testament correspondences to include Roman figures, in a “unified, historical continuum serv[ing] as the foundation of a new allegorical poetry, which expresses the political, intellectual, and literary ideals of his age,” providing a literary structure for unifying Hebrew, Roman, and Christian narratives. I find myself agreeing with Mastrangelo that Prudentius’ typological historical program “rivals the historical dialectic between mythic and Augustan Rome in Vergil’s Aeneid,” adding up to a “literary achievement [which] rivals the political and historical sophistication of the Aeneid, which helped shape Roman identity for centuries.”62 61. But contrast the view of Whitman (1987, 88) that there are “radical breakages” between the Praefatio and the body of Psychom. 62. Mastrangelo 2008, 6, 67, 81. The approach to Prudentian allegory taken by Mastrangelo and myself is in contrast, for example, to that of Hanna (1977), who notes (114 n. 16) that “Prudentius has

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T Y P OLO G Y A N D SY N K R I SI S

A number of scholars in the last century found in the typology of biblical exegesis a useful model for thinking about the allegory and symbolism of the Aeneid.63 Prudentius had got there before, with his easy combination of typology with Virgilian allusion. As a form of exegesis that establishes correspondences between two personages or two events in different historical periods, typology shares its basic structure with both the exemplum, which urges the reader to imitate the virtuous deeds of great men in the past, and synkrisis, the panegyrical comparison of the character and deeds of the laudandus with great men of the legendary and historical past.64 Typology and synkrisis are both deployed in Eusebius’s Life of Constantine: Constantine is compared, after the fashion of non-Christian panegyric, with Cyrus and Alexander, while a connection of a typological kind is drawn between the divine favor shown to Moses in the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea and the divine favor shown to Constantine in the drowning of Maxentius in the Tiber at the battle of the Milvian Bridge.65 Strictly speaking, typology connects events in the two Testaments, Old and New, but it is easy to extend these manifestations of a providential Christian history to events and person in post– New Testament history. Murray Roston, writing of early modern England, coins the term “postfiguration” to refer to Protestant reenactment of incidents from lives of scriptural heroes.66 If synkrisis of the present day with the mythological past can be hard to distinguish from typology, conversely a suspicion of fictionality may attach to biblical narratives adduced in typological interpretation: in comparing the recent historisignaled this reliance on multiple allegory, the method of late fourth-century exegesis, at the start of the poem. By replacing a more conventional address to the Muses with the opening, ‘Christe . . . dissere, rex noster’ . . . he makes the incarnate Word (his subject) the speaking voice of his poem as well. Because the poem represents divine language, just as does Scripture, it may rely on the same multiple allusiveness of meaning contemporary theologians found in the Bible.” The divine authority makes a difference as to the source of what is taught through the allegories, but it is compatible with nonChristian linguistic and imagistic structures. 63. See Knauer 1964, 355–56; Horsfall 1995, 162–67; see 164 n. 19 for bibliography, referring to works by Ernst Zinn, Vinzenz Buchheit, Gerhard Binder, K. W. Gransden, Georg Knauer, Antonie Wlosok, of whom Knauer and Wlosok were both grounded in patristics; Buchheit turned later to Christian Latin poetry. 64. Claudia Rapp distinguishes between the two rhetorical traditions of exemplum, emphasizing continuity between earlier and later, and comparatio (synkrisis), whose premise is one of progress and improvement; see Rapp 1998. Cf. also Rapp 1997. Dörrie (1969) argues for an analogy between biblical typology as a historical form of allegory and Plutarch’s parallel Lives, with the Roman lives as a providential continuation of the Greek series. 65. See Hollerich 1989. On the typological equation in the Life of Constantine of Constantine with Moses, and even Christ, see Cameron 1991, 53–56; Cameron and Hall 1999. 66. Roston 1968.

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cal event of the drowning of Maxentius in the Tiber to the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. Eusebius in his Life of Constantine casts doubt on the historicity of the story in Exodus; the recent event is “greater than according to the myths,” μειζόνων ἣ κατὰ μύθους.67 Herzog, so adamant in distinguishing between Christian and non-Christian forms of allegory in his discussion of the praefationes of Claudian and Prudentius, later noted the convergence in the orations on Basil by Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa of typology and “synkrisis-Überbietung.”68 In a discussion of the sculptural spolia of the Arch of Constantine, Jas´ Elsner sees in the resultant compression into the present day of Constantine of the eras of Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius a “parallel with Christian typological pairings of Old and New Testament scenes in the presentation of a Constantinian narrative of victory against the backdrop of the glorious deeds of earlier emperors.” At the same time Elsner refers to the non-Christian parallels of exemplum and synkrisis: “Effectively, the reliefs of the Arch of Constantine clothe the emperor in the virtually mythologized deeds of his Roman forebears—as the Ludovisi youth is clothed in the grandeur of Roman victory and Claudius’ Augustus was clothed in the frame—both aesthetic and myth-historical—of Apelles’ Alexander.”69 Elsner also draws a parallel with the use of previous imperial examples in the fourth-century Panegyrici Latini. These prose panegyrics are characterized by the dense overlay on their subjects of comparisons with gods, heroes, and earlier great men, of a kind shared with Claudian’s panegyrics. While this kind of comparison has precedents reaching far back in Greco-Roman literature, the density is striking, dissolving the historical emperor or statesman into a plethora of allegorical (or “typological”) correspondences. This is in part a matter of genre: the narrative drive of even so allegorical an epic as the Aeneid ensures that the primary actors remain in the foreground. By contrast, at the panegyrical climax of the Parade of Heroes in Aeneid 6, the historical Augustus almost disappears within a succession of comparisons to Saturn (as ruler of the Golden Age), Hercules, and Bacchus (Aen. 6.791–805). Nevertheless, there is something characteristically late antique in this allegorical carpeting, as it might be called. There is of course an element of the accidents of survival. It is the case that we happen to have very few prose imperial panegyrics before the late third and fourth centuries, but it may be significant that neither Pliny’s Panegyricus, which stands as a kind of foundation stone for the genre within the collection known as the Panegyrici Latini, nor a proto-imperial 67. Hollerich (1989) sees Eusebius as defending himself against the skepticism of Josephus, and possibly of Porphyry in a lost section of Against Christians. 68. Herzog 1971, 174–85 on orations on Basil; see also Herzog 1979, 57 on the interference of typology and synkrisis, Überbietung. 69. Elsner 2000, 170, 174.

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panegyric such as Cicero’s Pro Marcello (praising Julius Caesar) contains so dense a tapestry of comparisons. In the case of Claudian we are not dealing entirely with the accidents of survival, if modern scholars are correct in attributing to Claudian a new genre of “panegyrical epic.” I take examples from the Panegyrici Latini and from Claudian’s panegyrical epics. Pan. Lat. 10 is the earliest of the late antique panegyrics, possibly by Mamertinus, delivered, presumably in Trier, on the birthday of Rome, 21 April, possibly in 289 or 290.70 The thought of the city’s foundation takes the speaker back in time to a yet earlier foundation, that of the palatium, the proto-Rome founded on the Palatine Hill by Evander, and consecrated by Hercules. This allusively takes us to a Virgilian chain of correspondences, between Evander, Romulus, and Augustus, as (re)founders, conditores, of cities on the site of Rome,71 and between Hercules and later Roman leaders. In the case of Maximian the equation with Hercules is one of name as well, since Maximian had the cognomen Herculius,72 while the senior Augustus, Diocletian, was Iouius, with the fiction that the two emperors are literally of the race of the supreme god and his deified son (10.1.3 “that author of your race and your name” [principem illum tui generis ac nominis]). Similarity and comparison verge on identity: similarity to his ancestor, similitudo ipsa stirpis tuae (1.4), has the effect of making Maximian as generous to the city founded by Evander and Hercules as if he had founded it himself (1.4). This similarity is drawn tighter still through the idea that as restitutores of the city73 the two Augusti are as close as can be to being conditores (1.5), this too a conceit that goes back to the ideology of the first Augustus. Pan. Lat. 10 goes beyond Virgil in affirming the historical truth of the story of Hercules and Evander (“for this is not a fable arising from poetic licence, nor a belief arising from the tradition of antiquity, but something evident and demonstrated” [1.3 neque enim fabula est de licentia poetarum nec opinio de fama ueterum saeculorum, sed manifesta res et probata]),74 its veracity guaranteed for the present day by the existence of the Ara Maxima of Hercules and the continuing guardianship of the rites of Hercules by the gens Pinaria (1.3, another Virgilian allusion; cf. Aen. 8.270 et domus Herculei custos Pinaria sacri). 70. See Nixon and Rodgers 1994; Nixon 1990; De Trizio 2009, 23–25. 71. Aen. 8.313 tum rex Euandrus, Romanae conditor arcis. The author of the speech may have been familiar with Virgil commentaries: the story of the (unnamed) Octavius Herrenus alluded to at 13.5 is told by Servius Dan. on Aen. 8.363 (also Macrob. Sat. 3.6.11, from Masurius Sabinus; see Nixon 1983, 89–90, with n. 7). 72. Maximian also shares with Hercules the (cult) title inuictus; Pan. Lat. 10.1.4. 73. Restitutor is found on coins of Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Aurelian, Probus, and Carus. 74. On the relationship of late antique panegyric to fabulae poetarum, see Ware 2017a.

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The claim that past historical (as opposed to mythical) persons and events are repeated in the present brings the Virgilian brand of “typology” closer to the biblical. The present-day Hercules is also a fuller version of the shadows of the past: if the magistrates and priests of Rome celebrate Hercules’s victory in the past over Geryon in the far west and his driving of the cattle of Geryon to the Palatine, leaving traces (uestigia) for your coming, Maximian, how much more enthusiastically should we now celebrate you as a praesens deus, victorious over the whole world (2.1). The contrast between mere uestigia and the fullness of divine presence, and the suggestion that Hercules was preparing the way for Maximian, are a variation on the standard claim in a rhetorical synkrisis that the subject of praise excels those great men of the past with whom he is compared. This is not of course to suggest that a pre-Constantinian imperial panegyrist has his sights on the practices of biblical exegesis, but merely to show how easily non-Christian and Christian traditions can converge. The comparison with Hercules is developed in further directions. Hercules defeated the three-headed monster Geryon; Maximian has defeated the much fouler monster (2.1 prodigium multo taetrius), the usurper Carausius. This standard demonization and dehumanization of the enemy is repeated in the routine image of Gigantomachy, here introduced through the comparison of Maximian Herculius standing beside Diocletian Jovius to Hercules standing beside Jupiter in the Gigantomachy (4.2–3). Maximian himself is compared to Jupiter, in the hallowed tradition of imperial panegyric since the time of the first Augustus: Maximian was brought up on the Pannonian frontier where the sound of weapons drowned out his infant wailing (2.4), just as the Curetes clashed cymbals to drown out the crying of the baby Jupiter to hide him from his cannibalistic father Saturn. Here the truth of the recent past is contrasted with the fictions of myth: “In the case of Jupiter these are fictions, but in your case, emperor, they are true” (2.5 finguntur haec de Ioue, sed de te uera sunt, imperator). Lucretius denies the veracity of the story of the Curetes and the infant Jupiter, but draws out a moral allegory from it (DRN 2.629–45); here too one might think of the relationship between mythical fiction and historical truth as allegorical. The comparison of Maximian with Jupiter is continued in the reference to his panoptic gaze at 3.3, “standing in so lofty a summit of human affairs, from which, as it were, you look down on all lands and seas” (in tam arduo humanarum rerum stare fastigio, ex quo ueluti terras omnes et maria despicias), alluding to the Virgilian image of the universal gaze of Jupiter when he first appears in book 1 of the Aeneid (see chapter 3). In the latter part of the speech (8–14) there is a multiplication of comparanda, in a discourse of aemulatio (8.1; 8.4 magnarum rerum aemuli, with reference to Scipio taking the war to Carthage; 9.4); of imitatio (8.6 quod et tu Africanum et te Diocletianus imitatus est); of similitudo (9.5); of comparatio (10.2); and of exemplarity (9.2 exempla uirtutum, 10.2 Herculeae gentis exemplum). Maximian is

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compared to Scipio Africanus and Alexander the Great, and found superior to both, in the conventional Überbietung of the synkrisis. The two Augusti together, Diocletian and Maximian, are superior to the double kings of Sparta (9.4) and the Roman twins, Romulus and Remus (13.1–2, without their fatal rivalry). In the next generation, Maximian’s son need not look beyond his father and Diocletian for examples to inspire him to a love of praise (14.2): “It will not be necessary to propose for imitation Camilli, and Maximi and Curii and Catos.” The two Augusti will be worth more than a whole Virgilian Parade of Heroes. In this later passage aemulatio with a view to surpassing the great men of the past is checked only when it comes to the divine “ancestor” Hercules (10.2): “I can find nothing in the whole of antiquity to compare with you, unless it be the example (exemplum) of the race of Hercules.” Aemulatio and Überbietung also cease in the case of the synchronic mirroring that operates between the par of the two Augusti, who share a common empire “without any rivalry” (9.4 sine ulla aemulatione), two rulers “whose equality in the highest position is assured by a similarity not of facial appearance, but of character” (9.5 quos in summis rebus aequauit non uultuum similitudo sed morum). This is concordia rather than competition, two ruling with one mind, and distinguished by an “equality in success” (11.1 aequalitas successuum). Likeness leads to like-mindedness, a being of one heart (con-cors), a brotherhood of virtue: “through this similarity of yours increasingly in harmony with each other, and, something firmer than any blood-relationship, brothers in virtue” (9.3 hac ipsa uestri similitudine magis magisque concordes et, quod omni consanguinitate certius est, uirtutibus fratres).75 This is the similarity that is expressed visually in the famous porphyry group of the Tetrarchs now built into the corner of St. Mark’s in Venice. The habit of comparing that pervades the speech also finds expression in the use of a simile from the natural world, in the manner of epic poetry, at 5.3 (the one man Maximian present all over the battlefield): “You ranged over the whole battlefield, just as a great river swollen by winter rains and snows flows all over the plain.” Yet another similitude is constructed through the language used of Rome, far from the present celebrations in Trier, in the concluding sections of the speech. After imagining Maximian and Diocletian entering Rome in triumph together, the speaker exclaims (13.4) that the city would be much more majestic, augustior, more like Augustus, if the two Augusti were present on the citadel of Jupiter Capitolinus. Even now Rome is surely imagining, feigning, your presence, praesentiam uestri sibi fingit, by thronging the temples of “your gods” and “invoking Jupiter Stator and Hercules Victor.” Their imagined presence is, once again, located in the likeness of the gods whose names they bear in their own cognomina; if they were present in person, the city would be more in the likeness of the Augusti. As it is (14.3), the city of Trier is favored with the likeness of Rome’s greatness, as Maximian 75. On concordia in this passage, see also ch. 4.

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“confers on it a majesty similar to your own (similitudinem maiestatis tuae) by celebrating your birthday with that customary magnificence which is your, Rome’s due.” The magnificentia of Maximian creates the likeness of the majesty of Rome. For this close association of the person of the ruler with the city, the likeness verging on identity between Augustus and Rome76 one may compare the intricately allusive near-identification of Honorius with Rome in Claudian’s On the Sixth Consulship of Honorius. (see chapter 8). Here I will concentrate on the allegorical and imagistic layering applied to the person not of the honorands, Honorius and Stilicho, but of the enemy, Alaric. Through what might be labeled a summative allusive technique, Alaric emerges as the essence of previous hybristic sinners. In his retreat after the battle of Pollentia, Alaric is “weakened [lit. ‘made thin’] by the deaths on the battlefield” (127 Pollentini tenuatus funere campi). This shadow of his former self becomes a screen on which are projected images of various kinds. An elaborate simile compares Alaric to a pirate ship that has been crippled by an encounter with a trireme man-of-war (132–40). The simile draws on the image of the ship of state, and in particular owes substantial debts to the laboring ship of Horace, Odes 1.14, taken by Quintilian and many commentators since as an allegory of the ship of state.77 Reference to the retreating Alaric’s terror at the rivers that he had scorned in his advance triggers the introduction of the personification of the river Po (Eridanus), who taunts Alaric. An elaborate ekphrasis of the river-god includes descriptions of his cloak, embroidered with Phaethon in the chariot of the Sun, and of his urn, engraved with images of the stars into which the grieving Sun has transformed the various characters in the story of Phaethon and his downfall (see chapter 3). The political allegory in the Phaethon myth is made explicit by the river-god’s mocking speech, which compares Alaric both to a Giant in his mad and impious assault on Rome, and to the exemplum of Phaethon, who, like the Giants, was blasted by Jupiter’s thunderbolt, falling into the Po: “Did not at the least my own Phaethon fill you with the fear of his own example?” (186–87 nec te meus, improbe, saltem | terruit exemplo Phaëthon?). It may be noted that, within the world of myth inhabited by the river-god Eridanus, the Giants and Phaethon are historical characters, whose hubristic ventures are repeated in Claudian’s historical world by Alaric. Allusion to Statius and Silius Italicus imports the further models for Alaric’s criminal behavior of the Theban brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, and of Hannibal, another Gigantomachic enemy of Rome.78 76. For a much earlier example, see Martial 5.7.1–4 Qualiter Assyrios renouant incendia nidos, | una decem quotiens saecula uixit auis, | taliter exuta est ueterem noua Roma senectam | et sumpsit uultus praesidis ipsa sui (discussed in ch. 5). 77. See Dewar 1996 on 132–40 for the detailed parallels with Hor. Odes 1.14. 78. See Dewar 1996 on 182–84 (Hannibal), 184–86 (authorial curse on Eteocles and Polynices at Stat. Theb. 11.574–75).

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In this summative technique Alaric is presented as the culmination, the fufillment one might say, of a series of characters legendary and historical whose criminal exploits foreshadow those of Alaric. One might also talk of a summative poetics: Claudian’s panegyrical epic is a container, a sedes, for the previous epic and panegyric tradition, firmly rooted in Virgil,79 but looking forward through the line of post-Virgilian epic: Ovid, Lucan, Statius, Silius Italicus.80 A L L E G OR I C A L A N D I M AG I ST I C L AY E R I N G I N C H R I ST IA N P OET RY

Christian poets share with Claudian and the author of Panegyrici Latini 10 the impulse to layer their texts with images and interpretations. We have already seen this exemplified in Prudentius’s Psychomachia, where the techniques for relating to one another the various levels of Christian theology and Christian history were found to be closely related to the levels of allusivity in Virgil’s Aeneid. The multiple allusiveness of patristic biblical exegesis coheres with the more general allegorical mind-set that many have seen as characteristic of late antiquity. A comparable layering of exegetical levels, and interweaving of images and allegories, are to be found in the works in both verse and prose of Paulinus of Nola. Catherine Conybeare offers a penetrating and sympathetic account of the “multidimensional weaving” of Paulinus’s meditations in his prose Letters.81 Similar readings are possible for the poems, but with one major difference: Paulinus writes his prose letters as a tissue of scriptural language, in which the scriptural floscules are subjected to allegorical readings, often of an idiosyncratic kind, providing stepping-stones in a a proliferating sequence of spiritual readings. Incorporation of this kind of scriptural exegesis is only occasional in the poems. I conclude with another Prudentian example, in a different genre from the Psychomachia. Cathemerinon 5, a “hymn for the lighting of the lamp,” is, according to Herzog, Prudentius’s “most mature hymn.”82 As with the Psychomachia we find a combination and interaction of different kinds of image and allegory, deeply inwoven with Virgilian, and in this case also Horatian, techniques. Herzog stresses the great inner unity of Prudentius’s allegorical poetry, a unity that he views 79. There are elements of the Eclogues (the theme of exile and return), the Georgics (laudes Italiae of the journey from Ravenna to Rome), and, massively of the Aeneid. 80. Richly documented in Dewar’s commentary. 81. Conybeare 2000, chs. 4 and 5 are two stages of an inquiry into Paulinus’s figuralism. 82. Herzog 1966, 81: “der reifste Hymnus des Dichters.” For bibliography on Cathem. 5, see O’Daly 2012, 157 n. 2; commentary: Assendelft 1976. Assendelft (1976, 13–21) joins those who criticize Herzog’s exclusive insistence on Pauline and Christian (typological) allegory; Assendelft emphasizes the “inner cohesion” of the morning and evening hymns, and judges Cathem. 5 to be “an unqualified Christian allegory, possibly the most intricate and well-balanced Prudentius composed” (26).

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exclusively within the context of Christian practices of exegesis and allegory;83 but this is a unity that could also be seen as a Virgilian inheritance. Cathemerinon 5 weaves a complex allegorical, imagistic, and exegetical web. Light, the central theme of the hymn, links god and man, heaven and earth, the inner and the outer worlds.84 The hymn starts with the synecdochic relation of Christ to the light of the sun as its inuentor: “Author of glowing light, our kindly guide” (1 Inuentor rutili, dux bone, luminis). At the end, God is identified with light: “Thou art the true light for our eyes, light also for our minds” (153 tu lux uera oculis, lux quoque sensibus). Light is both light visible to the eyes, and light visible only to reason, a contrast between outer and inner made explicit in the next line, 154 (intus tu speculum, tu speculum foris [“You are the glass by which we see within, the glass by which we see without”]), alluding to a Pauline formulation of the transformation of men into the glorious and brilliant image of God, in the age of grace when the veil that lies over the reading of the Old Testament in the age of law has been taken away: “But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18 nos uero omnes reuelata facie gloriam Domini speculantes, in eandem imaginem transformamur a claritate in claritatem, tamquam a Domini Spiritu). That text is also alluded to three lines later: “Through Christ thy son, o father most supreme, in whom thy glory is made manifest” (157–58 per Christum genitum, summe Pater, tuum, | in quo uisibilis stat tibi gloria); Christ is in the image of the Father, and it is through his Incarnation that we humans can be transformed into the image of His glory. Christ’s servant offers to him a light dipped in the peacemaking consecrated oil: “Take now this light which I, thy servant, offer, dipped in the unction of the chrism of peace” (155–56 lumen quod famulans offero, suscipe, | tinctum pacifici chrismatis unguine). This is both a physical lamp, fed by oil (13–14), but also the Christian worshipper’s own inner light or flame, “baptized” with the oil used to anoint after baptism.85 As such the lumen is the igniculus of line 12, the soul-spark struck from the rock of Christ. There a bold use of the relative pronoun had already suggested a symbolic identification between our soul-sparks and the artificial lights that Christ has taught us how to make: “which with the dew of dripping lamps we feed soaked in rich oil, or with our torches dry” (13–14 pinguis quos olei rore madentibus | lychnis aut facibus pascimus aridis), where the antecedent of quos (which) is nostris igniculis (12), the little fires of our souls. Marion van Assendelft argues for yet a further identification of the light, lumen, offered by the servant of Christ at 155, with “the works of Prudentius, sparked by

83. Herzog 1966, ch. 2. 84. Translations are those of Nicholas Richardson, adapted. 85. See Assendelft 1976 on 155–56.

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God and offered again, as a light, to Him.”86 She points to the singular offero, inappropriate if it is the grex, “congregation,” of line 150 that is still doing the offering (we would expect the first-person plural in that case). A similar identification of fiery soul with work is found in the last lines of Prudentius’s summary of his life and works in the Praefatio: “While I write or speak of these themes, o may I fly forth in freedom from the bonds of the body, to the place whither my busy tongue’s last word shall tend!” (43–45 haec dum scribo uel eloquor, | uinclis o utinam corporis emicem | liber, quo tulerit lingua sono mobilis ultimo!). Prudentius wishes that at his death his soul may dart forth like a flame or spark from his body,87 while he writes or speaks his poetic works, with a pun in līber, “free,” on lĭber (with a short i), “book.”88 A plurality of meanings of light is already hinted at in the fourth line, “Grant to thy faithful ones, O Christ, thy light” (lucem redde tuis, Christ, fidelibus). The striking description of night in the previous line as chaos . . . horridum suggests that what is called for is not just the restoration of physical light. In the following six stanzas we learn of one way in which Christ restores light to mankind when the sun sets: Christ, the “inventor” of light (cf. Gen. 1:3), shows men how to invent artificial sources of light by striking fire from flint (“Thou teachest us by striking of a flint to search for light within the rock-born spark” [7–8 incussu silicis lumina nos tamen | monstras saxigeno semine quaerere]), suggesting a divinely motivated version of cultural history.89 The inventiveness of mankind is then exemplified in three stanzas (13–24) that catalogue in vividly realistic detail a variety of kinds of light, lamps, candles of rush and tow.90 Later in the hymn Prudentius gives us more detailed technological description of artificial lighting, this time the newly invented glass lamp (141–44).91 Herzog comments on the tension between the

86. Assendelft 1976, 193. 87. Emico of flames: TLL 5.2, 484.48 ff. 88. The pun is Ovidian; Hinds 1985, 13–14; Hardie 2002b, 298; see also Maltby 1991, 337. The last lines of Prudentius’s Praefatio also look to the liberation of Ovid’s poetic fama from his mortal body in the epilogue to the Metamorphoses. On the last lines of the Praefatio, see Malamud 2011, 194–96. In the modesty topos of his own Epilogus Prudentius dedicates his works to his divine master in the figure of an offering that is pointedly the opposite of shining, a worn earthenware vessel (25–30), as opposed to a more costly vessel, such as a shining golden cup (15) (cf. 2 Tim. 2:20–21). For a reading of Prudentius in terms of a poetics of light, see Gosserez 2001. 89. The language echoes Virgilian histories of culture: Geo. 1.135 ut silicis uenis abstrusum excuderet ignem; Aen. 6.6–8 quaerit pars semina flammae | abstrusa in uenis silicis, pars densa ferarum | tecta rapit siluas inuentaque flumina monstrat. 90. For the symbolic meanings of the detailed descriptions of the various kinds of light, see Assendelft, ad loc.; Gosserez 2001, 175–81. 91. See Clarke (2007, 114), who concludes that “God, heaven and the human soul [are] manifested upon earth in the form of the glass lamp.”

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realist and spiritual, a recurrent technique of late antique (and later)92 allegory that brings out the spiritual and the divine that lurks in the mundane.93 Prudentius’s small-scale artificial lights imitate, are in the image of, the natural lights of the cosmos. The light of the lamps and candles plays the part of daylight, in rivalry: “Emulous lights rival the absent day” (27 absentemque diem lux agit aemula). Later an ekphrastic equivalence is drawn between the glass lamps hanging from the paneled ceiling and the celestial constellations (“You could believe the starry realm above stood decked with the twin Bears” [145–48 credas stelligeram desuper aream | ornatam geminis stare trionibus), reversing the earlier artistic image of Christ setting the stars in the sky (“although with countless stars thou hast adorned thy heavenly court, and with the moon’s bright lamp” (5–6 quamuis innumero sidere regiam | lunarique polum lampade pinxeris). The comparison of human lights to the stars is one example of the connection of the small and the large that lends unity to the several layers of the hymn. Related is the shuttling back and forth in time that constructs a coherent divine history of the world, one of whose manifestations is typological and tropological allegory. This is a hymn ad incensum lucernae, for the lighting of the lamp at the daily moment of nightfall (probably not specifically for the lighting of the lamp at Easter, although that would make no difference for my point), in the regular succession of days alluded to in the second line, “[Christ] who dost divide the times with changes sure” (qui certis uicibus tempora diuidis). The first line, referring to God’s making of light on the first day of creation, has already set the quotidian in the largest time frame. The phrase chaos horridum for “night” in the third line suggests that every nightfall is felt as threatening a return to a primal condition of nondiscrimination. In Latin chaos can also denote the underworld, and here it anticipates the eschatology later in the hymn (113–36), and more specifically the account of Christ’s return from hell after the Crucifixion, that pivotal moment in history when Christ heard the prayer to “restore light to the faithful” (4): “upon that night when holy God returned from Acheron’s waters to the world above . . . greater than the sun, the new-born day restoring” (127–32 illa nocte, sacer qua rediit Deus | stagnis ad superos ex Acherunticis . . . maior sole nouum restituens diem). The “new day” is both the day that brings the new age heralded by Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection, and the new day that dawns every morning. Since that moment in sacred history, every new day is a figure for the new dawn of the age of grace ushered in by the Light of the World (John 8:12 lux mundi). Finally, lucem redde may also be taken eschatologically as a call for the Second Coming of Christ.94 92. For example, the combination of natural realism with symbolism in early Netherlandish painting; see Panofsky 1953. 93. See Assendelft 1976, ad loc. for the various symbolic charges in the catalogue. 94. So Assendelft 1976, 127.

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At line 29 the focus shifts from the daily alternation of night and day to the linear track of Old Testament history, introducing an extended passage of narrative comparable to those in some Horatian odes. The divine origin of light is clear for all to see (29–30 quis non . . . cernat ..?), in Moses’s vision of “God aflame with brilliant light” in the burning bush. It was the same burning light that led the Israelites at night through the desert, pursued by Pharaoh. This introduces an extended, highly epic, and Virgilianizing (49 sumunt arma uiri) narrative of the crossing of the Red Sea, followed by praise of Christ (whose name occurs at the exact center of the hymn, at line 82 out of 164) for the parting of the waters of the Red Sea, and for other miracles during the Israelites’ wandering in the desert: the striking of water from a rock, the bitter waters at Mara made sweet by wood, and the feeding of the Israelites with manna and quails. The last three of these miracles are accompanied by explicit typological exegesis: the wood that sweetens foreshadows the cross to which men pin their hopes, and the manna and quails foreshadow the mystic feast of the Eucharist. Prudentius does not overtly gloss the rock from which water is struck, but latices nouos, “new waters” (90), contains another pregnant use of nouus: both the new waters that flowed in Moses’s time from the dry rock, and the water of baptism that renews the believer in the new age of Christ, an allegorization of the water struck by Moses from the rock found in the fathers.95 Paul had interpreted the Old Testament rock as Christ the spiritual rock, the source of spiritual drink (1 Cor. 10:4).96 That Pauline verse is perhaps alluded to in the third stanza (9–12), which interprets the flint from which men strike fire as Christ “who willed that he be called the steadfast rock from which our tiny fires should have their birth” (replacing water with fire, part of the play on fire and water that runs through the hymn).97 If the Pauline verse is an intertext there, then one of Prudentius’s own stanzas of allegorical exegesis enfolds a Pauline allegory, layering allegory upon allegory. The typological interpretation of the manna and quails as the Eucharist joins past and present, Old Testament history and the experience of Prudentius’s own congregation in the here and now: “These blessings to our fathers once were given, through the great goodness of the one true God: and by his sustenance we too are fed, nourishing our hearts with mystic festivals” (105–8 haec olim patribus praemia contulit | insignis pietas numinis unici, | cuius subsidio nos quoque uescimur | pascentes dapibus pectora mysticis). In the next stanza an anagogical allegory (i.e., an allegory relating to the eternal significance of the last things), and one again applicable to Prudentius’s audience, is read into the history of the crossing of the Red 95. E.g., Tert. Bapt. 9.3 (cited by Assendelft 1976, 90–92). 96. Et omnes eundem potum spiritalem biberunt (bibebant autem de spiritali consequenti eos petra; petra autem erat Christus). 97. O’Daly (2012, 158) suggests the reference to 1 Cor. 10:14.

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Sea and the journey toward the Promised Land: “He calls the weary through the sea of life: cleaving the storms he leads his people on, and bids those souls tossed by myriad troubles to climb up to the homeland of the just” (109–12 fessos ille uocat per freta saeculi | discissis populum turbinibus regens | iactatasque animas mille laboribus | iustorum in patriam scandere praecipit). The common image of the “sea” of the world is here more particularly an allegorization of the journey of Aeneas and his Trojans, storm-tossed and enduring of labors in their voyage toward their “promised land”: with iactatas . . . laboribus, compare the programmatic phrases at the beginning of the Aeneid: 1.3 multum ille et terris iactatus et alto (“much tossed both on land and at sea”); 10 tot adire labores (“to confront so many labours”).98 This is the culmination of a series of Virgilian allusions in the preceding stanzas. The storm in Aeneid 1 is also echoed in the account of the crossing of the Red Sea in the Psychomachia (see above), as it is in other verse paraphrases of the Old Testament narrative. Yet another allegorical level associates Pharaoh with Satan, in another standard identification. Pharaoh seethes with the bile of envy (“But Pharaoh, ruler of the shores of the Nile, burning with jealous venom” [45–46 sed rex Niliaci litoris inuido | feruens felle]), the envy and bile elsewhere attributed to Satan (“Envy that cannot endure the joys of the righteous stains his spiteful eyes with burning gall” [Ham. 132–33 liuentes oculos suffundit felle perusto | inuidia impatiens iustorum gaudia ferre]), and also to the Satanic pagan persecutors of the martyrs in Prudentius’s Peristephanon. Pharaoh’s army display their war standards, gleaming with inflated dragons (55–56 tumidis clara draconibus), a kind of standard borne by Roman armies, inflated by the wind like a wind sock,99 but in this context continuing the identification of Pharaoh with the serpent Satan, puffed up in his pride and envy. I have left until last a discussion of the relationship of Cathemerinon 5 to Horace Odes 4.5, an ode pro reditu imperatoris Caesaris diui filii Augusti.100 The allusion is unmistakably signaled in the first stanza, Inuentor rutili, dux bone, luminis . . . lucem redde tuis, Christe, fidelibus; compare Horace, Odes 4.5.1–5: “Offspring of the good gods and best guardian of the race of Romulus, too long have you been absent. You promised the sacred council of the Fathers a swift return, so return. Give back your radiance, good leader, to your homeland” (Diuis orte bonis, optime Romulae | custos gentis, abes iam nimium diu; | maturum reditum pollicitus partum | sancto concilio, redi. || lucem redde tuae, dux bone, patriae). Antonio Salvatore saw a sustained tropological reading of the Horatian ode in Cathemerinon 5, but this has 98. Cf. also Aen. 1.628–29 me quoque per multos similis fortuna labores | iactatam hac demum uoluit consistere terra. 99. Cf. Claud. 4 Cons. Hon. 545 tument post terga dracones. 100. On Prudentius’s use of Hor. Odes 4.5, see Salvatore 1958, 62–71; Lühken 2002, 222–26; O’Daly 2012, 169–70. I have not seen Breidt 1887. Herzog, Assendelft, Lühken, and O’Daly downplay the importance of Hor. Odes 4.5.

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been criticized by some later commentators, who seek to downplay the importance of the Horatian allusion. But Kurt Smolak has rightly, in my view, emphasized the centrality of Odes 4.5, comparing Prudentius’s eschatological reworking of the Augustan plot of Virgil’s Aeneid with his reworking of Horace’s reditus ode, 4.5, replacing Augustus as the savior of Rome with the true savior, Christ.101 This amounts to an appropriation of the terms of Horace’s and the Roman people’s longing for, and praise of, the absent Augustus that could be labeled “allegorical”— comparable, for example, to the recurrent appropriation of the Virgilian Hercules and Cacus story for the Christian message of the Psychomachia. Augustus and Christ are both bringers of light to their faithful peoples: with Cathemerinon . 5.4 lucem redde tuis, Christe, fidelibus, compare Horace, Odes 4.5.15–16: “Your homeland, stricken with faithful longing, looks for its Caesar” (desideriis icta fidelibus | quaerit patria Caesarem). Both are identified with light, Augustus through the hints at the panegyrical equation of the pagan ruler with the sun. Both poems are framed by references to light. The opening address in Cathemerinon 5, Inuentor rutili, dux bone, luminis, is answered in the closing prayer at 153, tu lux uera oculis, lux quoque sensibus; Odes 4.5 opens with a prayer to Augustus to “restore the light to your fatherland,” and the sun is present through its absence in the last line, 40 cum sol Oceano subest. But this is a night that holds no terrors for the Romans, now that Augustus’s conquests at the ends of the earth have brought in a new age of universal peace and prosperity, comparable to the new age of Christ. Augustus’s subjects pray for a “long holiday” both in the morning and at nightfall (37–40), confident that each new day will see the return of the sun, rising on the pax Augusta. Prudentius, of course, is confident that his “sun” is greater than Horace’s. Augustus is addressed as Diuis orte bonis (Carm. 4.5.1); Christ truly is the son of God, and himself always God (cf. Cathem. 5.157–60). Suns shine more brightly (soles melius nitent) when Augustus smiles, “like the spring,” on his people (Hor. Carm. 4.5.6–8). When Christ returned from the underworld after the Crucifixion, he was “not like the morning star, with gleaming torch, from Ocean rising and filling the shades with light” (Cathem. 5.129–30); rather, Christ was “greater than the sun (maior sole), restoring to lands made sad by our Lord’s cross, the new-born day” (131–32). The comparative, applied by Horace to the light of the sun (melius), is now applied to Christ, in an outbidding synkrisis, or Kontrastimitation, with the sun. Both poems display an interest in, indeed are founded on, comparisons and equations. The first stanza of the Horatian ode contains a sustained allusion to a famous passage of Ennius on the longing of the Roman people for the dead Romulus, signaled by the adjective from Romulus’s name in 1–2: Romulae . . . gentis, “Romulus’ people.”102 To use the biblical term, Romulus is a “type” for Augustus, 101. Smolak 1994. 102. Enn. Ann. 105–9 Skutsch (cited at Cic. Rep. 1.64).

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respectively the first and second founders of Rome. For Prudentius we might say that Augustus, the light of his people, the bringer of a new age in history, is a shadow of the brilliance of the truly divine universal ruler, Christ. Toward the end of the ode Horace compares the libations offered to Augustus by the Romans to those offered by Greece in commemoration of Castor and Hercules (33–36 . . . uti Graecia Castoris | et magni memor Herculis). Horace’s Augustan reader will be reminded that in Virgil’s recently published Aeneid Hercules had functioned as a “type” for later Roman heroes and leaders, above all for Augustus. The typological function of Virgil’s Hercules is the object of close attention, of both a positive and a negative kind, on the part of Prudentius, in the Psychomachia and in Against Symmachus.103 It goes without saying that a poem like Cathemerinon 5 cannot be fully understood without reference to Christian traditions of exegesis and allegory. At the same time, it is shot through with allusion to the pagan poets of Augustan Rome, Virgil and Horace. Through his allusive practice, the Christian Prudentius clearly polemicizes with the non-Christian views of history and theology contained in those poets’ works, but in a manner not dissimilar, formally, to the Kontrastimitation familiar from classical literature. The complex interweaving of images and allegories, and the layering of different scales of time and place, find parallels in many other poetic texts of late antiquity, but there is also continuity with, and intensification of, the practice of earlier Latin poets, above all Virgil. Here we identify another reason why Virgil plays so important a role in the literary culture of late antiquity.

103. Other allusions to and parallels with Hor. Odes 4.5 in Cathem. 5: with Odes 4.5.9–16 ut mater iuuenem, quem Notus inuido | flatu Carpathii trans maris aequora . . . dulci distinet a domo, || uotis ominibusque et precibus uocat . . . sic desideriis icta fidelibus | quaerit patria Caesarem, cf. Cathem. 5.109–12 (Christ calling to the souls of the faithful in the storm of the world from the shores of heaven) fessos ille uocat per freta saeculi | discissis populum turbinibus regens, | iactatasque animas mille laboribus | iustorum in patriam scandere praecipit; with Odes 4.5.2 abes iam nimium diu, cf. Cathem. 5.27 absentemque diem lux agit aemula. Holidays: with Odes 4.5.37–38 longas o utinam, dux bone, ferias | praestes Hesperiae! cf. the temporary holiday enjoyed by the damned at Cathem. 5.126 poenarum celebres sub Styge feriae; with the festal celebration of Augustus at Odes 4.5.31–40, cf. the festive celebration and prayer at Cathem. 5.137–40 nos festis trahimus per pia gaudia | noctem conciliis (cf. also Hor. Odes 4.15.25–32 nosque et profestis lucibus et sacris). With the agricultural age of peace and prosperity of Hor. Odes 4.5.17–20, 29–30, compare generally the picture of paradise at Cathem. 5.113–24.

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Mosaics and Intertextuality

Recent work on late antique Latin literature has expended much energy in attempts to define a period. This energy has been directed both to a discussion of the chronological limits of late Latin, and to the characterization of a late antique aesthetic. Both kinds of definition turn out to be fraught with difficulty, raising the question of whether the attempt to define is itself a chimera, a question that could be raised about the enterprise of periodization in general. The concern to define a period might itself be seen as a sign of the relative newness of the current attention to late antique literature, poetry in particular. These global definitions are no longer in fashion when it comes to other periods of ancient literature that were once relatively neglected—for example, Hellenistic Greek literature, or, in Latin, literature from the reign of Nero or of the Flavian emperors. In the case of these literatures, attention is paid to historical and cultural determinants of one kind or another, with a focus, when it comes to themes and aesthetic, on emergent trends, on emphases rather than essences, and on evolution and innovation within particular forms and genres, rather than within a period as a whole. In this chapter I take a look at a metaphor that has often been invoked in attempts to define something characteristically late antique. That metaphor is the mosaic.1 Some of the most memorable artworks of late antiquity are mosaics— 1. For some recent invocations of the mosaic image, see Ware 2012, 34–35, with references to other scholars who use the image; Pelttari 2014, 131–43 on “non-referential allusion” and “juxtaposed fragments of classical poetry,” referring to the frequent use of the mosaic image. In this chapter I draw my material primarily from scholarship on late antique Latin poetry, but the image is also domiciled in modern discussion of late antique Greek poetry, in particular Nonnus’s Dionysiaka, as early as Keydell’s RE article; Keydell 1936, 910: “Die Ereignisse des langen Gedichtes rollen zwar in buntem

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the biblical scenes in Santa Maria Maggiore and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, and the scenes with Justinian and Theodora in San Vitale in Ravenna, are just a few examples. This is late antiquity looking forward to the bejeweled formality and hierarchy of Byzantium. A related medium is opus sectile, brightly colored images pieced together from sawn marble, hard stones, and glass paste. Mosaics and opus sectile have both been used in comparisons between the visual and verbal arts of late antiquity. The fact that many of the most striking mosaics to survive from the ancient world are from late antiquity has no doubt helped to foster the analogy. And the persistence of this analogy from the visual arts has perhaps been helped by the fact that, in the surge of interest in late antiquity over recent decades, there has, hitherto, been a greater investment of theoretical and critical energy in the visual arts than in poetry.2 The popularity of the mosaic metaphor is in part a reflection of the fact that it can be used in a variety of ways, not always self-consistent, but whose plurality responds to a number of the key ways of characterizing late antique poetics. Mosaics typically strike the eye with their polychromy, the variety of colors produced by the great variety of tesserae, thus offering an apt visual analogy for the variety, uarietas, poikilia, often identified as a feature of late antique poetry.3 A representational mosaic uses hard imperishable bits of matter, whether naturally occurring (minerals) or manufactured (glass, enamel), to create the illusion of a living natural world. Mosaic’s inorganic materials are in contrast to the pigments of the painter, which include plant and animal dyes. But the bright colors of Wechsel, aber ohne klare Beziehung von Ursache und Wirkung, von Spiel und Gegenspiel wie auf einer Fläche vor uns ab; was sich von seinen Schlachtschilderungen sagen läßt, daß sie aus Mosaikstückchen zusammengesetzt sind, das gilt im großen von dem ganzen Epos. . . . Das Ziel des Dichters is nicht der Zusammenhang des Ganzen, sondern die Wirkung des Einzelnen, nicht Klarheit der Linie sondern Intensität der Farbe.” Cf. also, e.g., Riemschneider 1968, 90: Nonnus’s Dionysiaka as “ein Mosaikwerk nachträglich zusammengestellter Einzelteilen, die mitunter nicht einmal mehr als ein paar Zeilen umfassen, ohne daß der Dichter oder Herausgeber sich überhaupt die Mühe macht, wenigstens einen angefangenen Satz zu Ende zu führen”; Agosti 2004/5, 362, defining a late antique “estetica della frammentazione e della miniaturizzazione, la cura verso i dettagli preziosi e l’abbandono della narrazione lineare. Il confronto con la tecnica dei mosaici tardoantichi permette di tracciare un efficace parallelo fra le tesserae e il gusto per la parola preziosa, per le piccole unità curate in modo squisito, con la conseguenza dell’interruzione continua del flusso narrativo, che fa perdere di vista lo schema generale: si può senz’altro parlare di ‘estetica digressiva.’ ” See Shorrock 2001, 18 n. 36 for examples of metaphors of both textile and mosaic applied to Nonnus. 2. The point is made forcibly in Elsner and Hernández Lobato 2017. 3. E.g., Fontaine 1977, 469: “Dans ce siècle de la polychromie où triomphent les symphonies chromatiques des mosaïques e de l’opus sectile, comment s’étonner, dans la création littéraire, d’être mis en présence d’une résurgence si vivace des valeurs hellénistiques de la poikilia?”

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a mosaic can make it seem particularly lifelike, thus heightening the contrast between the illusion of organic life and the reality of the lifeless mineral. Viewed from this perspective, a mosaic calls attention to its artificiality, falling clearly on the art side of the art/nature opposition. The mosaic may thus become a figure for a precious artificiality. This jewel-like quality of mosaic tesserae is one reason why Michael Roberts draws repeatedly (and in different ways) on the analogy of the mosaic in what is still one of the most ambitious essays in defining a late antique poetics, his 1989 book, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity. In the chapter “The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement” Roberts arrives at his first use of mosaic as a literary metaphor on a path that begins with consideration of variation and variety as typical of a late antique striving for vividness and visuality, often in the “ekphrasis”, or rhetorical description of a work of art or a landscape.4 Ekphrasis is a form rooted in Homeric epic, but it enjoys a particular vogue in late antiquity. Roberts then proceeds via the common use of flos, “flower,” to refer to the color and brightness of rhetorical embellishment, and then on to the metaphor of “jewels” for flowers in meadow,5 and also as a metaphor for literary ornaments. From here it is a short step to mosaics. An early specimen of late antique poetry is Tiberianus’s Amnis ibat, “There flowed a river,” probably of the late third or early fourth century a.d., a lush twenty-line description of a river landscape.6 Ernst Curtius called it the most beautiful exercise in the locus amoenus, “description of a beauty spot,” in late antique poetry; at the same time Curtius noted its formal rhetorical underpinnings.7 A recent account of the poem characterizes it as “not an organism that lives with its own life . . . but a ready-made picture, a mosaic that the poet is content to put together according to a variety of schemata.”8 In this case the modern scholar is perhaps encouraged by Tiberianus’s own use of an interference between art and nature that long predates late antiquity, going back in the tradition of the locus amoenus at least as far as Ovid. The river “laughs with the gleam of its pebbles” (2 luce ridens calculorum),9 suggesting perhaps a natural mosaic riverbed,10 and it is “painted” (or “embroidered”) with 4. Roberts 1989, 54. 5. Roberts 1989, 53 n. 53, noting that gemma also means “bud,” probably the original meaning. 6. See the commentary of Mattiacci (1990). 7. Curtius 1973, 202. 8. Mandile 2011, 16; 42 on Claudian’s Aponus, dismissing any serious speculative content on the grounds that the “slancio meditativo . . . risulti di fatto esso stesso tassello del mosaico che il poeta mette insieme.” 9. Cf. Pliny, NH 4.31 hac labitur Penius uiridis calculo, amoenus circa ripas gramine, canorus auium concentu. 10. Although it should be noted that calculus is not used of the tesserae of a mosaic. Cf. the description of the spring at Met. 5.587–89 inuenio sine uertice aquas, sine murmure euntes, | perspicuas ad

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“flowers of the meadow” (2 flore pictus herbido). In the line “amidst those gifts of springtime and gem-like graces” (8 inter ista dona ueris gemmeasque gratias) the adjective gemmeus plays on the mineral/organic contrast, since gemma in Latin can mean both “bud” of a plant or flower (its original sense) and “gem.”11 The mosaic analogy is often pinned to features of compositional technique and intertextual practice. A mosaic is a visual composition made out of little pieces, and late antique poetry is often characterized as put together out of bits, individual episodes loosely strung together. With regard to the wider development of Latin literary history, it may be noted that this is a criticism that used to be leveled at post-Virgilian epic, from Ovid on to Lucan and Statius, but which has now largely faded, as Latinists have found new ways of reading for thematic and structural coherence in these texts. One of the best-known, and best-loved, late Latin poems is another river poem, Ausonius’s Mosella, an account of a journey down the Moselle, which falls into various stages—as journeys do—and which describes various aspects of riverscape and landscape. The poem is also polymorphous in terms of genre. Jacques Fontaine refers to what he calls the poem’s “epigrammatic medallions,” a “ ‘tonal division’ that is related to the polychromy of the tesserae juxtaposed in the art of mosaic.”12 Similarly Antonio La Penna, commenting on the generic mixture in the Mosella of journey poems and encomiastic literature on cities and countries, sees the poem as a variety of miniatures, reminiscent of the “mosaics so dear to late antiquity.” La Penna also uses the image of a “tapestry,” thus combining the tessellated and the textile.13 At this point one may suspect that the metaphors are being applied in a less than rigorous way. “Episodic” is often a pejorative term. Recently, however, the notion of the fragment and the fragmentary, positively valorized in modernist and postmodern discourse, has enjoyed an increasing vogue in the rehabilitation of late antique poetry—for example, in Jesús Hernández Lobato’s recent (2012) and massive humum, per quas numerabilis alte | calculus omnis erat, quas tu uix ire putares; Rosati (2009, ad loc.) notes the play in numerabilis on calculi used as counters in calculation. See Galand-Hallyn 1994, 371–73 on the Ovidian motif of sparkling pebbles in a river-bed at Auson. Mosella 63–74, and on the reflections in moving water of a mosaic ceiling at Prud. Perist. 12.39–43. 11. For both senses of the adjective, cf. Pliny, Ep. 1.3.1 euripus uiridis et gemmeus; 5.6.11 prata florida et gemmea. At Prud. Perist. 3.191–200 the variegated marbles in the shrine of Eulalia are compared to flowers; Prudentius goes on to construct an analogy between the gathering of real purple violets and blood-red crocuses as an offering for the virgin (whose death has been compared to the cutting of a flower, 109–10 flore quod occidis in tenero | proxima dotibus et thalamis) and the poet’s anthology of textual flowers (208–10 ast ego serta choro in medio | texta feram pede dactylico, | uilia, marcida, festa tamen). 12. Fontaine 1977, 440 on the “ ‘division du ton’, qui s’apparente à la polychromie des tesselles juxtaposées dans l’art de la mosaïque”; Newlands (1988, 403 n. 2) refers approvingly to Fontaine. 13. La Penna 1993, 736.

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attempt to define a late antique poetics for the twenty-first century. Yet the association of the mosaic with the postmodern fragmentary runs the risk of anachronism. Lucien Dällenbach points out in his book Mosaïques that Christian mosaics of such subjects as the Pantocrator aim to bring heaven down to earth, not to embody a fragmentation symbolizing the imperfections of this world.14 “Episodic” and “fragmentary” direct attention to a work in pieces on the synchronic level. But what is fragmented may also be viewed diachronically, in terms of tradition. Thus “mosaic” is also used as a label for an intertextuality viewed as an indiscriminate piecing together of textual fragments taken from the rich stores of “classical” literature. This implies a relationship to a classical past seen as something set apart from a present day viewed as epigonal, capable perhaps of little more than taking spoils from the riches of past glories. Sabina MacCormack, in one of the pioneering exercises in the rehabilitation of late antique discursive and representational forms, applies the mosaic image in a more positive way when talking about “the world of the panegyrists,” the world of elaborate and theatrical late antique imperial ceremony, in her 1981 book, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity. Speaking of the role of the rigid rhetorical training in the Gallic schools, MacCormack says that “it was by such a discipline that what might strike the modern observer as a single, fossilized lump of classical imagery was cut up into fine fragments, like glittering tesserae, from which mosaics of widely differing patterns might be made.”15 A couple of pages earlier MacCormack advocates “the re-evaluation of the role of the traditionalist elements in late antique culture,” rejecting their dismissal as “so many ‘fossilized’ remnants of the past,” and asserting the renewed “vigour” and “flexibility” of rhetorical practice. The use of the mosaic image, while distancing itself from the “fossilized lump,” still retains the idea of something mineral and hard—and now glittering. This is a positive reevaluation of the sclerosis diagnosed in a negative view of a decadent late antiquity. But the “mosaic” image more often implies a conglomeration of untransmuted and inert fragments, suggesting a difference in kind between the allusive practices of earlier poets, a Virgil or a Statius, and those of late antique poets. Here “mosaic,” as a putting together of hard little fragments, may be contrasted with the etymology easily activated in the term “inter-textuality,” of “interweaving,” intertexere,

14. Dällenbach 2001, ch. 4. 15. MacCormack 1981, 4. Antonio La Penna uses a very similar image of the creation of mosaic tesserae from the smashing of the block of inherited tradition; La Penna 1995, 5–6: “Sul rapporto di emulazione, di allusività secondo il metodo alessandrino, neoterico, augusteo, prevale di gran lunga l’uso della ricca tradizione letteraria latina, specialmente di quella poetica, come una materiale da frantumare per ricavarne pietruzze da collocare in un mosaico, senza tenere troppo conto delle differenze di genere letterario.”

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intertwining threads of different colors so that they lose their separate, atomistic, identities and work together in a larger pattern.16 “Larger pattern” instantly reveals a major problem with the way in which the mosaic analogy is used—for a mosaic, or at least any successful mosaic, is either a recognizable representation or a unified nonrepresentational pattern that is more than the sum of its tessellated parts. A successful mosaic is one that gives the impression that it is all of one piece, deceiving the eye into thinking that it is not carefully composed of hundreds or thousands of little pieces. Many ancient mosaics are copies in stone and glass of paintings (think of the Alexander mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii), aspiring to the trompe l’oeil effect of seeming to be a painting, a goal most nearly achieved in micromosaics, mosaics composed of very small tesserae. Late examples of these on a grand scale are the mosaic imitations of paintings that line the side altars of St. Peter’s in Rome—for example, the mosaic copy of Raphael’s Transfiguration.17 In one of the few examples of a mosaic analogy from late antiquity, it is the coherence of a mosaic that Augustine insists on in his use of the analogy for the universal order of God’s creation, not visible as a whole to those who take offense at some minor flaw, a single tessera in the pattern, and regard it as evidence for a macrocosmic deformity (De ordine 1.1.2): sed hoc pacto si quis tam minutum cerneret, ut in uermiculato pavimento nihil ultra unius tessellae modulum acies eius ualeret ambire, uituperaret artificem uelut ordinationis et compositionis ignarum eo, quod uarietatem lapillorum perturbatam putaret, a quo illa emblemata in unius pulchritudinis faciem congruentia simul cerni collustrarique non possent. nihil enim aliud minus eruditis hominibus accidit, qui uniuersam rerum coaptationem atque concentum imbecilla mente complecti et con16. Further starting points for a longer history of the mosaic image may be gleaned from the Oxford English Dictionary entries for “tessellate” and “tessellated”: e.g., 1828 Macaulay Misc. Writings (1860) I. 224 “Laborious and tessellated imitations of Mason and Gray”; 1839 H. Hallam Introd. Lit. Europe IV. v. 443 “The Latin poems of Ménage [a seventeenth-century French author] are not unpleasing; he has indeed no great fire or originality, but the harmonious couplets glide over the ear, and the mind is pleased to recognise the tesselated fragments of Ovid and Tibullus”; 1858 E. FitzGerald Lett. (1889) I. 269 “It is most ingeniously tessellated into a sort of Epicurean Eclogue in a Persian Garden” (the passage and the metaphor are discussed in Poole et al. 2011, p. xxi). 17. See Dällenbach 2001, ch. 4. On the mosaic “paintings” of St. Peter’s, see DiFederico 1983, 33–34: “Painting became the ideal toward which mosaics aspired. . . . From a distance the viewer accepts the mosaics as paintings, admiring them for their pictorial qualities. . . . As the viewer comes closer, though, he realizes that the pictures are not paintings, that the boundaries of reality and illusion are even more tenuous than they first appear. . . . As the viewer perceives the conceit, he understands, to his delight, that what he is looking at is a mosaic giving the illusion of a painting giving an illusion of the real.”

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siderare non ualentes, si quid eos offenderit, quia suae cogitationi magnum est, magnam putant rebus inhaerere foeditatem. By the same token, if someone were to look in such minute detail that his eye was unable to take in more than the measure of one tessera in a mosaic floor, he would accuse the artist of being ignorant of order and composition, because he would think it a confused variety of little stones, when it was he who was unable to see and survey in a single glance the mosaic work coming together in a single beautiful image. Just the same happens with learned men, who because of weakness of mind are unable to embrace and contemplate the joinery and harmony of the universe, and if they take offense at something, because it is large to their way of thinking, they consider that there is a large deformity in the world.

Rather than subscribing to an aesthetics of the fragmentary, Augustine sees in the mosaic an analogy for that harmonious concordia that is such a recurrent obsession of late antique thinkers and writers, and which is registered in the coacervation in this passage of compounds in co(n)-.18 But at the same time as the mosaic aims to give the impression of a single and unified composition, a part of the medium’s visual impact does undoubtedly lie in the viewer’s awareness that the image is composed of numerous small pieces, and the gaze may focus on the multiplicity of autonomous fragments so skillfully, and laboriously, fitted together. There is a double optic of the mosaic, a Janus-headed nature, duckrabbit duality, such that the eye can either attend to the whole image or zoom in on the fragments.19 This aspect of the mosaic is foregrounded by Dällenbach. He defines the mosaic as “a whole in pieces,”20 an object with facets, a montage of detached pieces, with two poles—the unity of ensemble and the discontinuity of the components— structurally in tension. Dällenbach notes that a literal mosaic puts the accent on the first, while figurative uses of “mosaic” put the accent on the second. This is certainly true of many applications of the image in discussions of late antique poetry. If we are thinking of intertextual mosaics, there is a, perhaps productive, analogy with the polarity in approaches to allusion diagnosed by Stephen Hinds, in Allusion and Intertext, in a section where he distinguishes between studies of local contact and studies of systematic contact: “Either the alluding text or the model text is accorded the privilege of a systematic reading—but not both at the same time. Either the incorporating text is read systematically, with the incorporated text 18. For commentary on the De ordine, see Trelenbert 2009. The comparison of the universe to a carefully composed mosaic has no parallels, and Augustine may have been inspired by the fragment of Lucilius quoted by Cicero and Augustine (see below). 19. One might compare the dualities of the labyrinth as analyzed by Reed Doob (1990): the eusynoptic pattern viewed from above, the view of Daedalus or God, and the sense of being lost for the wanderer within the labyrinth. 20. Dällenbach 2001, 40.

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fragmented into discrete events ‘alluded to’, or the incorporated text is read systematically, with the incorporating text fragmented into discrete acts of allusive gesturing.”21 It’s a matter of perspective. The mosaic analogy is also double-headed in that it can be used in either positive or negative evaluations of the texts under discussion. This is not new: this dichotomy may be illustrated from nineteenth-century literary criticism of authors not of late antiquity, but of the Augustan period. This is yet another example of an attempt to define the late antique with terms that have previously been used of earlier periods. So, for example, tendencies to the rhetorical, to the episodic, and a liking for vivid description and enargeia, all seen as characteristic of late antiquity, have also all been identified as characteristics of post-Virgilian literature of the earlier imperial period.22 Sometimes we are dealing with a conscious application to late antiquity of an aesthetic model associated with an earlier period, as in JeanLouis Charlet’s diagnosis of a late antique “neo-Alexandrianism,”23 but often one suspects that the repetition of literary history is unwitting. At a time when Virgil’s stock had sunk low in Germany, the poet and critic August Wilhelm Schlegel, best known as the German translator of that great original genius Shakespeare, described Virgil as “a skilled craftsman of mosaics who possesses a good cement in which to fasten the pebbles that he has gathered together, and a good piece of sandpaper, with which to polish them up and conceal the joints.”24 Schlegel views Virgil as an imitator, who gathers together tesserae from earlier poets and skillfully polishes them up and fits them together—a civilized polish, as opposed to the raw energy of Homer, or Shakespeare’s native woodnotes wild, ars as opposed to ingenium, artificiality as opposed to natural genius. Schlegel’s image of “gathering together little stones” perhaps varies Horace’s self-deprecating image of himself at Odes 4.2.25–32 as the Callimachean bee, busy gathering thyme flowers to mold into the honey of his laborious poetry, as opposed 21. Hinds 1998, 101. Hinds holds up Alessandro Barchiesi’s 1984 La traccia del modello (translated as Barchiesi 2015) as showing how to negotiate, dialectically, between the two ways of reading. Following Barchiesi’s tracks, we come across another example of the mosaic image; Barchiesi 2015, 79: “The reuse of the genre model involves two basic strategies. The cliché can be recuperated ‘as such’ and inserted like a mosaic tile colored by contrast; there is then a play on the arbitrariness of the image, which acts to recall an antique code of expression. Or else the cliché can find new motivation in context, which contrasts with the greater rigidity of the Homeric usage.” 22. Hall’s review (1989) of Roberts 1989 notes that many of the features of the “jeweled style” described by Roberts are already found in Statius. 23. Charlet 1988, 74, diagnosing a “combination of neo-classicism and neo-alexandrianism in the triumphalist expression of constantino-theodosian ideology.” 24. Schlegel 1964, 166: “ein geschickter Mosaikarbeiter der einen guten Teig besitzt, um die zusammengelesenen Steinchen darin zu befestigen, und einen guten Schmirgel, sie zu polieren und die Fugen zu verbergen.” The quote comes after a paragraph detailing the authors from whom Virgil borrowed.

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to the soaring swan of Pindar’s natural genius. Nietzsche had a rather different line on Horace’s compositional technique, in his much-quoted use of the mosaic image to describe his pleasure in reading a Horatian ode: “Up to this day I have not had an artistic delight in any poet similar to that which from the beginning an Ode of Horace gave me. What is here achieved is in certain languages not even to be hoped for. This mosaic of words, in which every unit spreads its power to the left and the right over the whole, by its sound, by its place in the sentence, and by its meaning, this minimum in the extent and number of the signs, and the maximum thereby attained in the energy of the signs—all that is Roman and, if you will believe me, noble par excellence. All the rest of poetry becomes, in contrast, something too popular—mere sentimental blather.”25 Nietszche’s attention is to the cunning craftsmanship, the careful fitting together of the verbal pieces in formally demanding meters, but he is looking not at the overall gestalt so much as at the dynamics of the (multiple) interactions between the separate pieces. For Nietzsche this operates on a synchronic level, but one could transfer it to a diachronic model of a “mosaic” of intertextuality, in which a carefully organized network of allusions offers a dynamic and multifaceted reading experience. The use of the mosaic analogy to reinforce either negative or positive literary judgments has a much longer history. I will touch on aspects of that history in order to bring out some of the continuities with the ways in which the analogy has been applied in the field of late antique literature. The important classical text is a fragment of the Roman satirist Lucilius, 84–85 Marx (74–75 Krenkel),26 cited by Cicero and Quintilian in the context of rhetorical discussions of style: quam lepide lexis compostae ut tesserulae omnes | arte pauimento atque emblemate uermiculato,27 “How charmingly the words are joined 25. Nietzsche 1927, 113. The quotation is regularly picked up by critics of Horace: e.g., Commager 1962, 50–58; Fitzgerald 1989, 82–83; Nash 1993, 23: “In all the Odes there is scarcely a strophe, perhaps hardly a line, that does not transmute word order into word mosaic, a deliberate fragmentation that creates for the reader the pleasurable tension of wondering how the sense will be resolved, accompanied by the stimulus of casual associations, as one word runs against another.” See also Fitzgerald 2016, 71–73, in the context of a discussion of variety. 26. The fragment is cited at Cic. De or. 3.171, Or. 149, Brut. 274; Quintil. Inst. 9.4.113. On the Lucilian fragment, see Goh 2012, 77–79; Gowers (1993, 147) relates the fragment to Hor. Sat. 2.4.84–5 ten lapides uarios lutulenta radere palma | et Tyrias dare circum illota toralia uestis, which she reads as suggesting “that Lucilius managed to spoil his own intricate designs.” On the history in antiquity and after of the use of the Lucilian quotation, see MacPhail 2003. 27. On the term uermiculatus, see Gioseffi (1975, 25–38), according to whom it is used by modern scholars as a name for mosaic in which the outline of figures is marked by a painterly wavy (wormlike) line, but in antiquity, in keeping with its derivation from uermiculo, “infest,” referred to the variegated, screziato, “speckled,” effect of mosaics. See also Dunbabin 1999, 25: “the technique which modern scholars call vermiculatum: minuscule fragments of stone, so small that the eye hardly distinguishes them as separate entities. Their use permits the artist genuinely to rival the effects of painting.”

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together, like all the little cubes set artfully in a mosaic floor and in a vermiculated inlay.” The lines come from Quintus Mucius Scaevola’s courtroom criticism of Titus Albucius’s over-careful (Asiatic) composition.28 Cicero and Quintilian cite the passage in the context of collocatio or compositio uerborum; both advocate close attention to the fitting together of words, but warn against excessive care and labor. The mosaic, as in other contexts, is associated with labor—ars potentially at the expense of ingenium. Nietzsche is also talking about the cunning arrangement of words in a Horatian ode, and may have picked up the mosaic image from the passages in Cicero and Quintilian. At any rate, Cicero, Quintilian, and Nietzsche all have an eye on the compositional coherence of a mosaic, as does Augustine. The mosaic image is picked up by Renaissance writers reflecting both on their own compositional practice, and on their relationship to classical antiquity, in a way comparable to the use of the image by modern scholars to describe the relationship of late antiquity to “classical antiquity.” In the preface to the first century of his Miscellanies (Miscellaneorum centuria prima, 1489), critical notes on philological points, Angelo Poliziano applies the mosaic image to his own linguistic practice:29 Ergo ut agrestes illos, et hircosos quaedam ex his impolita, et rudia delectabunt, exasceataque magis quam dedolata, nec modo limam, sed nec runcinas experta, nec scobinas, ita ediuerso uermiculata interim dictio, et tessellis pluricoloribus uariegata, delicatiores hos capiet, uolsos et pumicatos . . . Nec enim gustus idem omnibus, sed suum palatum cuique. Those rustic and goatish types will take pleasure in the parts of this which are unpolished and rough, hewn out rather than smoothed off, which are innocent not only of the file, but even of the plane or the rasp. On the other hand, however, a mosaic of words, made up of a variety of multicoloured tesserae, will captivate the more dainty sort, those who are plucked smooth and pumice their skin. . . . For not all have the same taste, but each man has his own palate.

Poliziano applies the mosaic image to one aspect of his verbal performance in the Miscellanies, but modern scholars have broadened it as an image of his characteristic variety, uarietas, and diversity, disparilitas, and as an image of his eclectic imitative practice.30 Poliziano was opposed to the exclusive Ciceronianism of some of his contemporaries (those who maintained that Cicero should be the sole model for prose composition). Erin MacPhail, in his article on the topos of the mosaic in the Renaissance, says that “from Poliziano’s eclectic point of view, the 28. Marx ad loc.: “Ludit aperte Scaeuola his uerbis Albucii adulescentis orationem diligenter elucubratam uerborumque collocatione inusitata pueriliter numerosum.” 29. Poliziano 1489, a ii V. 30. See the Italian scholars cited by McLaughlin 2000, 151 n. 34. On Poliziano’s mosaic image, see also McLaughlin 1995, 197–98.

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mosaic of speech suggests the rich variety of the classical heritage, even as it carries with it a connotation of preciosity,”31 generalizing without apparent justification from Poliziano’s local use of the mosaic image in the preface to his Miscellanies. If Poliziano is aware not just of the many colors of his linguistic mosaic but also of its diachronic layering, he may have sensed a particular affinity with the virtuoso exploitation of the poetic tradition reaching back four centuries before his own time by the late antique Claudian, to whom modern scholars have also repeatedly applied the mosaic analogy (see below). Poliziano’s description of the kingdom of Venus and Amor in his Stanze per la giostra, “Stanzas for the tournament of the Magnificent Giuliano de’ Medici” (1.70–120), has as its main model the description of the kingdom of Venus in Claudian’s Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria, and among the ornaments of Poliziano’s bejeweled mythological fantasy is a mosaic pavement (Stanze 1.96):32 Le mura a torno d’artificio miro forma un soave e lucido berillo; passa pel dolce oriental zaffiro nell’ampio albergo el dí puro e tranquillo; ma il tetto d’oro, in cui l’estremo giro si chiude, contro a Febo apre il vessillo; per varie pietre il pavimento ameno di mirabil pittura adorna il seno. By marvellous artifice a lovely lucid beryl forms the surrounding walls; pure and tranquil daylight passes through sweet oriental sapphire into the spacious house; the roof of gold which closes in the uppermost floor forms a canopy against the sun; the pleasing pavement adorns its breast with various stones in wonderful design. (trans. David Quint)

That Poliziano thinks of his linguistic and stylistic mosaic as a mosaic of tradition might find support in the use of the mosaic analogy by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), a writer admired by Poliziano. In the preface to book 3 of the dialogue Della tranquillità dell’ animo [Profugiorum ab aerumna libri] (ca. 1441),33 one of the interlocutors, Niccola de’ Medici, praises another, Agnolo Pandolfini, for his combination of “an unbelievable brevity” (“una incredibile brevità”) with “a wonderful abundance and plenitude of the most weighty and most suitable words and thoughts” (“una maravigliosa copia e pienezza di gravissimi e accommodatissimi detti e sentenze”). Niccola introduces a comparison to the artist who adorned the bare floor of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus with the “minute fragments” (“minuti 31. MacPhail 2003, 253. 32. Cf. Claud. Epithalam. Hon. 85–91. See Perosa 2000, 55, referring to Carducci 1912, 298–337, for a comparison of the passages in Poliziano and Claudian; Perosa labels Claudian “un poeta decadente.” 33. Alberti 1843–49, 1: 89 ff. See Ponte 1988; Schöndube 2011.

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rottami”) left over from the marble, porphyry, and jasper that had gone into the marvelous structures of the temple itself. Correspondingly, in the world of letters, the ancient Asian and Greek inventors of all arts and disciplines constructed a temple of moral and natural philosophy. Men of the present day, says Niccola, gather not leftovers, as in the case of the mosaic floor of the temple at Ephesus, but rather take from the noble public edifice of antiquity that which seems most suitable for their own designs. Niccola speaks now of himself as an example of this latter-day practice: “I divided it up into a number of little pieces, distributing them where I saw fit” (“e divisilo in più particelle distribuendole ove a me parse”). This is proof of the proverb “Nothing is said which has not been said before” (Terence, Eun. 41 nihil dictum quin prius dictum. All that is left for men of the present day is “to collect and sort them and then put them together with some variation from other writers and adaptation to one’s own work, as if one’s policy was to imitate in this matter the man who made the pavement” (“el raccogliere e assortirle e poi accoppiarle insieme con qualche varietà dagli altri e adattezza dell’opera sua, quasi come suo instituto sia imitare in questo chi altrove fece el pavimento”). Alberti uses a vocabulary of ornament and variety, a variety in which the individual “tesserae” are gathered and fitted together (“coattate,” “connodare”) in a marvelous whole through a skillful compositio (“compositissima opera”). Alberti perhaps has in mind the Ciceronian uses of the Lucilian mosaic fragment.34 Alberti here has a clear sense of classical antiquity as something completed and in the past, from which what we call the Renaissance takes fragments in order to produce a reconstituted classicism. This is quite close to MacCormack’s use of the image of the mosaic as fragments of tradition, with the difference that MacCormack makes a greater claim for the novelty of the recombinations of the old than does Alberti’s interlocutor. Like Poliziano, Erasmus is a vocal anti-Ciceronian in the Renaissance debate over imitation, but unlike Poliziano, he uses the mosaic image on the negative side of the balance sheet, in a discussion of imitation in his Ciceronianus:35 (Bulephorus) Rursus imitationem probo non uni addictam praescripto, a cuius lineis non ausit discedere, sed ex omnibus auctoribus aut certe praestantissimis, quod in quoque praecellit maxime tuoque congruit ingenio, decerpentem nec statim attexentem orationi quicquid occurrit bellum, sed in ipsum animum uelut in stomachum traicientem, ut transfusum in uenas ex ingenio tuo natum, non aliunde emen34. Cardini (1990, 4–7) takes Alberti’s mosaic metaphor as applicable to all humanist texts, authorizing a critical approach of “smontaggio dei testi”; this passage of the Della tranquillità dell’ animo is a “guida metodologica permanente alla lettura di qualsiasi testo albertiano, e più in generale umanistico. Intanto ci informa che per l’Alberti non vige più, o non tanto vige il principio dell’ut pictura poesis, vige bensì l’apparentemente affine ma in realtà ben diverso principio che la letterature è arte musiva.” See also Bianchi Bensimon 1998. On the passage, see also McLaughlin 1995, 164; 1996, 234. 35. Erasmus 1972, 332. The passage is discussed by MacPhail 2003, 260–61.

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dicatum esse uideatur ac mentis naturaeque tuae uigorem et indolem spiret, ut, qui legit, non agnoscat emblema Ciceroni detractum, sed fetum e tuo natum cerebro, quemadmodum Palladem aiunt e cerebro Iouis uiuam parentis imaginem referentem, nec oratio tua cento quispiam uideatur aut opus musaicum, sed spirans imago tui pectoris aut amnis e fonte cordis tui promanans. Again, I approve of imitation—but imitation not enslaved to one set of rules, from the guidelines of which it dare not depart, but imitation which gathers from all authors, or at least from the most outstanding, the thing which is the chief virtue of each and which suits your own nature, ingenium; imitation which does not immediately incorporate into its own speech any nice little feature it comes across, but transmits it to the mind for inward digestion, so that transfused into your own veins, it gives the impression not of something begged from someone else, but of something that is born from your own nature, something that breathes the force and character of your own mind and personality. Your reader will see it not as a mosaic inset stolen from Cicero, but a child born from your own brain, as they say Minerva was born from the brain of Jupiter, reproducing the living image of its father. Your speech will not appear to be a cento or a mosaic, but a breathing image of your inner being or a river flowing from the fountain of your heart.

In this rich passage, surely self-conscious in its eclecticism, Erasmus weaves together—or should that be pieces together?—various images and topics from the repertory of classical and Renaissance discussions of imitation: decerpentem hints at the image of the bee gathering honey from a multiplicity of different flowers, another image of unity out of a colorful plurality, but one in which the plurality of the sources is not apparent in the product.36 This is also the case with the standard image of digestion, converting what comes from outside and is alien into what is a part of one self. Through the allusion to the birth of Minerva from the head of her father, Jupiter, Erasmus forges a link between the idea of a self-origination from one’s own natural talent or genius (ex ingenio tuo natum activates the etymology of ingenium from in + gigno), and another common image for good imitation, the likeness of a son to his father (uiuam parentis imaginem referentem). Erasmus uses the mosaic image twice, separating out two aspects: firstly, the emblema, the highquality prefabricated panel of mosaic inserted as the centerpiece of a larger mosaic, here referring to a chunk of Cicero bolted onto one’s own discourse; and secondly the opus mosaicum, a mosaic regarded as a whole made up of a plurality of parts whose sources are still recognizable. Erasmus pairs mosaic with cento, a text composed entirely of a patchwork of quotations from another work or works, as, for example, Proba’s Cento retells the Bible story through a recombination of half lines and lines of the works of Virgil. 36. A key text is Seneca, Ep. 84. In general on the theory of imitation in the Renaissance and the classical sources, see Pigman 1980; McLaughlin 1995.

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The cento is a form particularly associated with late antiquity. The cento was once neglected and derided; Shackleton Bailey excludes the Virgilian centos from his Teubner edition of the Anthologia Latina as “disgraces to literature, which do not require much help from the textual critic, and I cannot bear to bring reproach on the august bard by editing them once more.”37 By one of those sudden reversals in fortune the cento has in recent years come to feature as a privileged expression of late antique poetics. But from one perspective the cento could be seen as a return to the most archaic form of poetic composition that we know from classical antiquity, the formulaic system of the Homeric oral tradition. Indeed it does not take long to track down applications of the mosaic metaphor to archaic formulaic composition—for example, in the words of a leading Homeric scholar of the last century, Alfred Heubeck, “We may also regard as a special signum of poetic creativity the ability of the improvising oral epic poet to form new mosaics out of the treasure of coloured stones at his disposal by carefully aimed, conscious selection and arrangement in such a way that these typical heroic scenes come alive for the listener each time in a different form.”38 The term “cento” is often used in a looser way to characterize what is held to be a typically late antique compositional practice, one that pieces together a patchwork of bits and pieces from a variety of earlier texts.39 And in another example of the comparison of textual practice to phenomena in the visual arts, the cento is set beside spolia, the reuse of fragments of earlier sculpture and architecture in new monuments, the standard example being the Arch of Constantine.40 In turn, visual spolia are used as an analogy for late antique poetic productions other than the cento proper, whether works of a more conventional cast,41 or the figured poems of Optatian, grid-shaped texts that break down the letters into atomistic fragments 37. Shackleton Bailey 1982, p. iii: “Centones Vergiliani (Riese 7–18), opprobria litterarum, neque ope critica multum indigent neque is sum qui vati reverendo denuo haec edendo contumeliam imponere sustineam.” 38. Heubeck, 1978, 8. On a post-Homeric Greek poet working in the Homeric manner, Theognis, cf. Knox 1985, 141 (on Theognis 237–47, 251–54): “The passage . . . is a mosaic of Homeric phrases and formulas, some unchanged, some subtly varied.” 39. E.g., Gruber 2013, p. x, on the experience of a commentator on Ausonius: “Dennoch vermögen die im Laufe einer langen Kommentartradition gesammelten loci paralleli einen Eindruck sowohl von der immer wieder genannten centohaften Art des Gedichts zu vermitteln wie auch von dem meisterhaften Umgang des Ausonius mit einer in Jahrhunderten geformten Sprache der lateinischen hexametrischen Poesie.” 40. See Elsner 2000. 41. E.g., on Ausonius’s Cupido cruciatus, see Schmitzer 2006, 183–84: “Wie der Konstantinbogen in Rom am Beginn des 4. Jahrhunderts vorhandene Architekturelemente zusammenfügt und ihnen neuen Sinn gibt, so schafft wenige Jahrzehnte später der Cupido cruciatus aus Zitaten, Entlehnungen und Eigenem eine Synthese, die ihren Platz in einer Phase qualitätvoller literarischer Produktion der Spätantike behaupten kann.”

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that are recombined on the page in shapes and patterns superimposed on the leftto-right and line-by-line reading of a text.42 For Michael Squire, Optatian’s spolialike carmina figurata are a quintessentially late antique form. The visual analogy is not restricted to modern scholars: Ausonius, the composer of one of the most ambitious of late antique centos, the Cento nuptialis, gives an account of the “rules” of the game, in which he compares the cento to the picture puzzle, associated with Archimedes, called the stomachion (or ostomachion). This consisted of a set of pieces of bone made into triangles of different shapes that could be fitted together into a great variety of different figures. The effect is closer to that of opus sectile than to the mosaic. Textual cento and sculptural and architectural spolia, once seen as the products of an enfeebled and uninspired late antiquity, have been revalorized, on the coattails of the privileging of an aesthetic of the fragmentary and of bricolage.43 The cento is the ne plus ultra of literary composition through the fragmentation of previous texts. Here it would surely seem that, to use Hinds’s terminology, it is possible to read systematically only the incorporating text, say, the biblical narrative of Proba’s Cento, while the incorporated text, Virgil, is fragmented into discrete events.44 Yet, even within the rigid rules of the cento, it is possible to read for systematic patterns of intertextual engagement with the incorporated, or model, text.45 So far I have shied away from one major topic when thinking about allusive assemblages in late antique poetry, and about modern critical responses to such assemblages. What difference does it make whether a poet is writing on a Christian or a non-Christian subject? And, in the case of Christian poetry, what difference in allusive (or citational) practice is there between the use of intertexts from the

42. Squire 2017b, 95–97. 43. Central to the characterization of a late antique aesthetic in Hernández Lobato 2012, ch. 6 on fragment and detail, an “aesthetics of the fragment” links the spolia of the Arch of Constantine, relics, cento, experimental figurative poetry, and encyclopedia, all symptoms of a late antique literary program of multiplex et uarium (in other words the poikilia of Fontaine 1977), in contrast to a Horatian simplex et unum; 264 Sidonius’ poetry as a “centón cultural,” the product of “la estética musiva”; 282 ff. Constantinople as “cento-city”; 316 on Macrobius’s Saturnalia as “una obra-fragmento que hace gala de su propia naturaleza, provocando en el lector un ‘efecto mosaico’, muy en consonancia con los gustos de su tiempo.” The chapter ends with the (characteristically) sweeping reference to a late antique “nuevo modo de entender la realidad, centrado en el concepto medular y omnipresente del fragmento.” 44. Hinds 1998, 101. 45. The reading strategy of, e.g., Hardie 2007; Elsner 2017. On the cento and intertextuality, see McGill 2005. For a sympathetic reading of the intertextual and “typological” strategies in Proba’s Cento, see Cullhed 2015.

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classical Latin poetic tradition and intertexts from Scripture?46 These are questions that still largely await answers, and on which I can here only touch. Answers to the first question, of whether there is a difference between poems on Christian and non-Christian subjects, may depend on the parti pris of the reader. A 1975 summary of earlier modern judgments of Prudentius’s Psychomachia, the Virgilian-style narrative of the war in the Christian soul between the Virtues and Vices, identifies a consensus on “a cento-like imitation of the classics, and especially of Virgil,” viewed as a defect of Prudentius’s poetry.47 Macklin Smith, in what is still one of the best studies of the Psychomachia, also reads for a cento-like fragmentation, but with a purpose: Smith detects a willful fragmentation by Prudentius of his Virgilian models, in order to make a point about the incoherent babble to which the Christian message reduces the pagan classics, and he reaches easily for the model of the cento: “The cento-like form of the Vergilian clusters is literally a confusion of tongues, a Babylonian language composed of fragments”; “[Prudentius] puts forth Vergil in cento-like fragmentation in order to summon up an image of the City of Man disordered by sinful strife: if Vergil is the architect of this city, so much the worse for him.”48 Smith clearly has the Tower of Babel in mind.49 This is a supersessionist view of Prudentius’s relationship with Virgil, in which the pagan poet is completely superseded by the new Christian poetry.50 The alternative could be a symbiosis in which the Christian poet works 46. I leave aside the problem of the nonfixed nature of the Latin Bible before the establishment of the Vulgate as the standard text. 47. Magazzù 1975, 13 “si sono visti accumulati tutti i difetti che vengonon imputati alla poesia prudenziana in genere: prolissità, magniloquenza, gusto dell’orrido, e per di più, in questo caso, un’imitazione centonistica dei classici, e specialmente di Virgilio.” For a recent summary of Prudentius’s use of his classical sources, see O’Daly 2012, 20–23, concluding that there is “no simple way of describing Prudentius’ relation to the classical writers that influence him.” On Prudentius’s allusions to Virgil and Horace, see Lühken 2002, 269–84. 48. Smith 1976, 281, 296. 49. One might think of the archangel Michael’s description of the Tower of Babel in Paradise Lost 12, where God (52–55) “in derision sets | Upon their tongues a various spirit to raze | Quite out their native language, and instead | To sow a jangling noise of words unknown” (see Hardie 2012, 545–46). This is the punishment for Nimrod’s attempt (43–45) “to build | A city and tower, whose top may reach to heaven; | And get themselves a name”—a search for fame that ends up in discordant linguistic variety. Milton’s Tower of Bable has affinities both with Virgil’s Fama, “Rumour,” who is also a monstrous personification of tradition, or intertextuality, her body a mosaic of eyes, ears, mouths, and with Ovid’s House of Fama, an architectural fantasy that combines hierarchical order with random chaos. Virgil’s Fama and Ovid’s House of Fama can both be read as the poets’ reflection on the difficult task of imposing order on the proliferating hubbub of intertextual voices in the echo-chamber of tradition. 50. Supersessionism or replacement (or fulfillment) theology is the theology that holds that the Christian Church has replaced Israelites as God’s chosen people, and that the New Covenant has replaced the Mosaic Covenant. A key biblical text for this view is Hebrews 8:13 dicendo autem nouum, ueterauit prius. quod autem antiquatur et senescit prope interitum est.

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with the classical tradition, if often in an antagonistic relationship, which, however, may not be easy to distinguish from the “opposition in imitation,” or Kontrastimitation, long familiar as a mode of reading the intertextuality of Hellenistic or pre-Christian Latin poetry. There are indeed impressive recent studies of Prudentian intertextuality along these lines.51 Yet allusive plurality and variety may serve a mimetic function within a theology of unity and multiplicity. In his discussion of the tension between unity and discontinuity inherent in mosaic as a form, Dällenbach notes that “in comparison with the reputedly seamless coat of Christ, the mosaic is on the side of the unstitched/disjointed and the multi-coloured—which is to say on the side of Bakhtinian polyphony and carnivalesque.”52 For Bakhtinian polyphony read satanic polymorphism. An earlier study of Prudentius and Virgil uses the mosaic image with reference to the metamorphic fall of Lucifer into the form of a serpent in the Hamartigenia, the didactic poem on the origin of sin: “Satan . . . pictured as a serpent (Hamart. 199 sqq.), is a mosaic of typical Vergilian phraseology on serpents”:53 inflauit fermento animi stomachante tumorem bestia deque acidis uim traxit acerba medullis; bestia sorde carens, cui tunc sapientia longi corporis enodem seruabat recta iuuentam, complicat ecce nouos sinuoso pectore nexus, inuoluens nitidam spiris torquentibus aluum. simplex lingua prius uaria micat arte loquendi, et discissa dolis resonat sermone trisulco. hinc natale caput uitiorum, principe ab illo fluxit origo mali, qui se corrumpere primum, mox hominem didicit nullo informante magistro. Hamartigenia 195–205

195

200

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The beast swelled up with the passion working in his heart, and in his bitter hate drew force from his soured marrows; a beast hitherto without spot, for upright wisdom then kept his long, young body straight, he suddenly begins with sinuous breast to gather himself in strange twinings, twisting his bright belly in intricate coils. His darting tongue, single before, has now the trick of diverse speech, and being divided in guile, utters three-forked words. From him is the original fountain-head of sin, from its beginning in him sprang the source of evil; for he learned to corrupt first himself and then man, with no teacher’s instruction.

51. Lühken 2002; Heinz 2007. 52. Dällenbach 2001, 47 n. 22. 53. Mahoney 1934, 200; cf. Schwen 1937, 48–49.

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This is the moment of transformation at which the once beautiful Lucifer corrupts himself into the serpentine devil, twisting the unknotted uprightness of wisdom into the coils of pride and envy, a physical complication mirrored in the discordant variety of speech issuing from the newly forked tongue, a linguistic variety mirrored, it may be suggested, in the plurality of intertexts, not just Virgilian, writhing around in Prudentius’s text.54 When it comes to Christian allusion to, or citation of, scriptural texts,55 something like a cento or mosaic of biblical texts can be found in both verse and prose works by Christian authors. In chapter 1 I drew attention to Paulinus of Nola’s programmatic combination of a patchwork of biblical echoes in Poem 10 (43–52), following a virtuoso display of the manipulation of intertexts from classical Latin poetry that was performed in a pas de deux with Ausonius’s own allusive prowess. But the technique is different: where the classical intertexts were subjected to various kinds of recontextualization and deformation, the biblical fragments are presented straight. They mean what they mean in the source text, the Bible. “Citation” might be a more appropriate term than “allusion.” Yet things may not be quite that simple: by the late fourth century what a biblical passage “means” is anything but straightforward, at the mercy of an increasingly elaborate tradition of exegesis and commentary, frequently of a figural or allegorical nature. Gian Biagio Conte and others have focused our attention on the affinity between allusion and metaphor; the standard ancient rhetorical definition of allegory is a series of metaphors run together, continuae tralationes. A similar practice can be observed in Christian prose texts—for example, the dense concatenation of fragments of the Bible in the prologue of Augustine’s Confessions.56 James O’Donnell notes in his commentary that “A.’s regular recourse to scriptural language is a sign of a deliberate attempt to accept—or to appropriate— the divine language for his own discourse.”57 However, this is not an assertion of independence, as successor and heir to a previous author and his texts, but an attempt to approach as closely as possible to the one true source of all things. The word of God is fragmented, but God Himself remains whole, present entire in 54. The primary Virgilian source is Geo. 3.414–39, with allusion also to the serpents at Aen. 2.203 ff., 471–75 (drawing on the passage in Geo. 3); Prudentius also draws on Ovid, Met. 3.32–34, 77–78 (the serpent of Mars on the site of Thebes). With Hamart. 199, cf. Persius 5.27 ut quantum mihi te sinuoso in pectore fixi; with 201–4 simplex . . . corrumpere, cf. Geo. 3.480–82 et genus omne neci pecudum dedit, omne ferarum, | corrupitque lacus, infecit pabula tabo. | nec uia mortis erat simplex. 55. In general, see Nazzaro 1993. 56. On Augustine’s citation of the Psalms in the Confessions, see Knauer 1955 (the publication of his 1952 Hamburg dissertation), to be followed by his 1961 Freie Universität, Berlin Habilitationsschrift on Virgil’s allusions to Homer, published as the monumental Knauer 1964. See also Clark 1995, 10–12, with bibliography also on late Latin as spoken and written. 57. O’Donnell 1992, 2: 28.

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all things. In pouring Himself out in creation, over us, God is not broken up in pieces, but rather gathers us together into Himself: “When you are poured out on us . . . you are not scattered apart, but you gather us together” (Conf. 1.3.3 cum effunderis super nos . . . nec tu dissiparis sed conligis nos).58 The biblical fragments pieced together by Augustine in his own discourse are part of the author’s attempt to be made whole in God, who is ubique totus, entire in every part of His word.59 Other practitioners in prose of what scholars have described as a scriptual mosaic or collage are Paulinus of Nola (again), in his letters,60 and Saint Ambrose in his sermons, characterized by Neil McLynn as “an exercise in scriptural mimesis.”61 The cento is a fragmenting form, but as well as disordering a previous order to produce a new order, it may also pay homage to a canonical text, whose material substance, in the shape of its words and phrases, is religiously preserved as linguistic relics. A section of Prudentius’s Hymn for 25 December approaches the condition of the biblical Virgilian cento in its repurposing of fragments of Virgil’s fourth Eclogue on the birth of a Wunderkind who will make history anew. Here there is the added twist that this work of Virgil’s was seen as already containing the Christian truth. This is an example intermediate between Christian recombination and revalorization of classical texts and Christian “citation” of a scriptural text.

58. Cf., e.g., Ps. 146:2 aedificans Hierusalem dominus, et dispersiones Israhel conligens, with correlatives in Neoplatonic language (Plotinus). 59. O’Donnell 1992, 2: 21–22: “The coincidence points to a late antique habit of thought that perceived the world-as-experienced as a place of shards and fragments, and supplemented that perception with a yearning for wholeness. A. knew Manichean, Platonic, and Christian forms of that perception and that yearning and chose to use Christian ones here, without having to abjure echoes of other forms.” Clark 1995 on Aug. Conf. 1.5.6: “The language here is cramped and fractured like the angusta et ruinosa domus animae, but A. has shored fragments of Scripture against his ruin.” 60. See Walsh 1966, 16: “When Paulinus writes to Christian friends on his staple scriptural topics, his stylistic presentation is dominated by constant quotation from the Old and New Testaments, especially from the Psalms and Saint Paul, so that frequently his paragraphs take on the appearance of a verbal mosaic, with sentences and phrases gathered from various books of Scripture and linked ingeniously together.” Walsh seeks to explain this by reference to Paulinus’s rhetorical training in Bordeaux, but does it beome something qualitatively different when the source texts are biblical? 61. McLynn 1994, 238: “The mainspring of Ambrose’s preaching should therefore be sought in the dense and intricate chains of scriptural citations which alone hold together the sprawling ‘collages’ of his exegetical writings. The bishop’s constant recourse to biblical quotation and paraphrase suggests what was truly distinctive about his pastoral style. For Ambrose reproduced in his sermons the texture and rhythm of the Bible itself: his preaching was nothing less than an exercise in scriptural mimesis.” On Ambrose’s use of scripture, see Nauroy 1985, 371–408; on Ambrose’s exegetical method, see Pizzolato 1976.

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cathemerinon 11.53–76 62

Eclogue 4

(hymn for 25 december) sentisne, uirgo nobilis, matura per fastidia pudoris intactum decus 55 honore partus crescere? o quanta rerum gaudia aluus pudica continet, ex qua nouellum saeculum procedit et lux aurea! 60 uagitus ille exordium uernantis orbis prodidit, nam tunc renatus63 sordidum mundus ueternum64 depulit. sparsisse tellurem reor 65 rus omne densis floribus, ipsasque harenas Syrtium fragrasse nardo et nectare. te cuncta nascentem, puer, sensere dura et barbara, 70 uictusque saxorum rigor obduxit herbam cotibus. iam mella de scopulis fluunt, iam stillat ilex arido sudans amomum stipite, 75 iam sunt myricis balsama.

6 Virgo 61 fastidia 11 decus hoc aeui 49 magnum Iouis incrementum 52 laetentur ut omnia 7 noua, 5 saeclorum, 52 saeclo 12 procedere, 9 gens aurea 60 risu (in contrast) 5 nascitur 50 mundum 23 flores 5 nascitur, 8 nascenti puero, 18 tibi . . . puer 30 durae quercus 28 molli . . . arista 30 mella 30 sudabunt, 25 amomum 2 humilesque myricae

O noble Virgin, do you feel, through all your weary waiting time, the glory of your purity grow with the honour of this birth? How great the joys for all the world which are contained in your chaste womb, from which an age renewed comes forth, and golden radiance proceeds! That baby’s cry the signal gave, which marked the springtime for our world: for then the universe reborn cast off its sordid lassitude. The earth then thickly, I believe, sprinkled the countryside with flowers: even the very desert’s sand with nard and nectar were perfumed. And all things harsh and barbarous were conscious of Thy birth, O Child: the rigour of the rocks was quelled, and stony hills were clothed in grass.

62. On this passage, see Buchheit 1992, 267–69; Buchheit shows how Prudentius’s selection of “moments” from Eclogue 4 also facilitates the incorporation of biblical and patristic themes and images. Salvatore (1958, 83) sees this passage as approaching the condition of a cento, “gli echi della quarta ecloga nell’inno per il Natale come nell’ hymnus ante cibum son tali e tanti da far pensare quasi ad un centone, se non sapessimo che essi sgorgano spontanei da un virgilianismo di fondo.” 63. Cf. Calp. Sic. 1.42 aurea secura cum pace renascitur aetas. 64. Cf. Geo. 1.124 nec torpere graui passus sua regna ueterno.

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Now honey from the crags flows down: now drips the sweating ilex-tree with spices from its arid trunk, and balsam grows from tamarisks. (trans. N. Richardson)

Centos and pattern poems are striking and distinctive products of late antique Latin poetry, but they make up a small portion of the surviving output. It is a distortion, in my view, to generalize from this part of the corpus to overarching formulations of a late antique aesthetic. This chapter has largely been a survey of the uses and implications of a metaphor. I will end with a close reading of a few lines of one of the greatest late Latin poets, Claudian, turning the microscope on the micromosaic, to make the point that the episodic, the fragmentary, the kaleidoscopic (but that is another story), need not be the privileged terms for our own reception of these texts.65 The mosaic image has been applied to Claudian as much as to any late antique poet. Isabella Gualandri, one of the pioneers of Claudian studies in the last century, uses it to begin and end her 1968 study of Claudian’s compositional technique. In her introduction she writes of Claudian’s selection “from within the vast material placed at his disposal by his education as a man of letters, of fragments, true and proper tesserae of a mosaic of varied colours, which go to make up a picture that is not new in its general outlines, but in which, at its most successful moments, the old colours seem to take on new light and brilliance, purely by virtue of new juxtapositions.” In her conclusion Gualandri defends her author from the charge of being a “banal imitator”; rather, Claudian draws on tradition “in the manner of a mosaicist who, tessera by tessera, selects colours to give liveliness and brightness to his works.”66 A recent commentator on Claudian’s Rape of Proserpina, Marco Onorato, uses Roberts’s metaphor of the “jeweled style.” Following Roberts, Onorato sees the jeweled style in terms of “a dazzling mosaic of varied colours.”67 Gordon Braden opines that “Claudian brought to some kind of completion the rhetoricization of Latin poetry . . . and virtually his entire work can be analyzed as a tessellated surface of identifiable topoi.”68 To test the appropriateness of the mosaic image, I take as an example of Claudian’s allusive practice three and a half lines from the Panegyric on the Sixth Consulship of the Augustus Honorius 77–80:69 65. For an attempt to construct a typology of Claudian’s imitative practice, see Keudel (1970, 158), who reaches a somewhat negative conclusion: “Die aemulatio . . . ist bei Claudian nur selten freie, produktive Verarbeitung wie bei Vergil oder Ovid, sondern besteht in einer Fülle von Reminiszenzen, deren Motivierung gewöhnlich nicht nachprufbar ist, und von Anspielungen, die eine bestimmte interpretierende Funktion haben.” 66. Gualandri 1968, 69. 67. Onorato 2008, 41. 68. Braden 1979, 206. 69. My reading of these lines was written before I saw Stephen Wheeler’s detailed and sensitive reading of lines 77–78 (Wheeler 2016, 205–13), with which there is considerable overlap.

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From this time Rome clung to you more firmly, her roots growing into you, and implanted herself deeply in your inmost marrow, and the love of the city you adored, conceived from earliest childhood, grew even as you did.

The occasion was the inauguration of the nineteen-year-old Honorius’s sixth consulship in Rome on 1 January 404. This was also a triumphal occasion, celebrating the regent Stilicho’s victories over Alaric and the Visigoths at the battles of Pollentia and Verona, and so a celebration of the resurgence, temporary as it turned out, of Rome and its traditions of triumph. It was also the first time that Honorius had been to the ancient capital of the Roman Empire—now ruled from Milan—since visiting the city, with his father, Theodosius, as a four-year-old boy in 389. The lines quoted describe the love for the city of Rome that the child conceived at that time, and which, Claudian says, has grown since. Memory is now revived as presence. Honorius’s memories of the ancient imperial city coalesce with—grow into—Claudian’s textual memories of the poets most closely associated with the literary formation of the Augustan image of Rome four centuries in the past. In the first two lines Claudian combines elements from two Virgilian passages. The phrase concreta radice is taken from the advice not to work the earth when the north wind blows in winter, at Georgics 2.317–18: rura gelu tum claudit hiems, nec semine iacto | concretam patitur radicem adfigere terrae (“Then winter shuts up the countryside with frost, and, when the seed is scattered, does not allow the frozen seed to take a hold on the earth”). In Claudian’s line concreta means not “frozen,” as it is usually taken at Georgics 2.318 (as at Geo. 1.236, 2.376, 3.463), but “growing into.” It may also have this sense in the Georgics passage—modern commentators are divided70—and this is the sense that it must have at Aeneid 6.738 and 746, in Anchises’s account of the deep-seated infection of the soul by bodily impurity: 6.735–39 quin et supremo cum lumine uita reliquit, | non tamen omne malum miseris nec funditus omnes | corporeae excedunt pestes, penitusque necesse est | multa diu concreta modis inolescere miris. | ergo exercentur poenis (“When life has departed with the last look on the light, the wretches are not entirely freed from all evil and all the plagues of the body, and it needs must be that many a taint, long ingrown should in wondrous wise become deeply rooted in their being. Therefore they are disciplined with punishments”); 745–47 donec longa dies perfecto temporis 70. Conington (1865, ad loc.) entertains both possibilities, but prefers the sense “ita ut concrescat”; Mynors (1990) sees the two possible senses, and notes that Claud. 6 Cons. Hon seems to have taken it in sense 2, proleptic “so as to grow into”; Thomas (1988) takes it as “frozen.”

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orbe | concretam exemit labem, purumque relinquit | aetherium sensum atque aurai simplicis ignem (“until length of days, when time’s cycle is complete, had removed the ingrown taint and leaves unsoiled the ethereal sense and pure flame of spirit”). Claudian takes penitus and inoleuit, “implanted itself, grew into” (repeating the sense of concreta) from the first passage in Aeneid 6. Virgil uses inolesco also at Georgics 2.76–77 (on grafting): huc aliena ex arbore germen | includunt udoque docent inolescere libro (“In this, from an alien tree they insert a bud, and teach it to grow into the sappy bark”; where Servius glosses the verb as “inhaerere, concrescere, συνφύειν”). The notion of “growing” is expressed for a third time in 80 tecum creuit amor: Michael Dewar, in his commentary on the poem, gives a number of parallels for creuit amor, but the first passage he cites is, I think, the important one: Eclogues 10.73–74 Gallo, cuius amor tantum mihi crescit in horas | quantum uere nouo uiridis se subicit alnus (“Gallus, for whom my love grows from hour to hour as fast as the green alder shoots up when spring is young”). Virgil’s closing homage to his friend the love-elegist Gallus echoes words put in the mouth of Gallus earlier in Eclogue 10, where he is speaking of carving his girlfriend’s name on the bark of trees: 53–54 tenerisque meos incidere amores | arboribus: crescent illae, crescetis, amores (“to carve my loves on the tender trees; they will grow, and you, my loves, will grow with them”).71 Claudian’s lines also include the word tenero, also in the context of growth from tender youth. Virgil’s love for Gallus expresses itself in intertextual, as well as personal, terms: Eclogue 10 grafts Gallus’s elegy onto Virgil’s pastoral, and does so by recycling what was almost certainly one of Gallus’s own elegiac and Callimachean motifs, the carving of one’s love on the bark of trees, trees that now become part of the landscape of Virgilian pastoral siluae, “woods.” Claudian’s expression shares with the Eclogues passage the conceit of an immaterial love that grows together with something physical, here the body of the boy Honorius, and memory of Eclogue 10 continues the vegetable imagery of the allusions to the Georgics in lines 77 and 78. The anatomical, rather than vegetable, vocabulary of 78–79—medullis, “marrow”; ungue “fingernail”—has already suggested that the love of Rome is rooted in the body of the boy Honorius, and will grow as that body grows; the analogy between the growth of a human body and the growth of a plant is a common one. Dewar glosses these lines as follows: “On his first visit to Rome love for the City put down roots which reached into the very marrows of Honorius’ bones.”72 Grammatically, however, the subject of the verbs haesit and inoleuit is not “love for the City,” but Roma herself. Honorius and Roma grow together as conjoined bodies; 71. These details about the growth of trees also look forward to the matter of the Georgics (see Hardie 2009a, 29), as well as picking up the reference to the size—and so growth—of trees at Ecl. 1.25 quantum lenta solent inter uiburna cupressi. 72. Dewar 1996, 114.

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“love,” amor, is the subject only of the third main verb, creuit, replacing Roma, a substitution that activates the link between Roma and amor, which some have taken to be the palindromic secret name of Roma.73 Honorius’s love for Rome, his near identification with Rome, is expressed through allusion to the three major works of the poet of Rome, Virgil: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid. In lines 77–78 a passage from the Georgics is fused with a passage from the Aeneid. Georgic imagery of “taking root” and “grafting” aptly describes Claudian’s allusive practice, as he cunningly transplants Virgilian shoots to take root in the body of his own poem. Recently a number of scholars have suggested a metaliterary reading of Virgil’s description of grafting as a figure for intertextuality, with a nod to Derrida’s use of the textual graft.74 By Roma, Claudian means of course not the physical city of Rome, but the memory, the idea of Rome—Rome’s history and traditions. Rome and love of Rome grows in Honorius like a tree: there is a tradition of comparing cities to deeply rooted and long-lived trees, as there is a tradition of comparing heroes and rulers to trees. Here there is a hint of the further equation, itself traditional, of ruler and city. The Rome-tree, then, is rooted in and supported by the emperor Honorius. The context of the lines in Aeneid 6 to which Claudian alludes is Anchises’s account to his son, Aeneas, of the nature of the soul, in order to introduce the doctrine of metempsychosis, a necessary prelude to Aeneas’s vision of the unborn souls of Roman heroes, a preembodiment of Roman history. Virgilian metempsychosis is also a figure for poetic succession, and Claudian delicately hints at further rebirths and renovations, of the greatness of Roman power in the Augustus Honorius, and of the vigor of Augustan poetry in Claudian’s poetry. But there is innovation as well as renovation. Claudian reverses the negative image in Aeneid 6 of a corporeal sin stubbornly “ingrown” in the soul, and makes of it a positive and pure love rooted in the soul of Honorius. Tenero conceptus ab ungue similarly reverses the valence of a famous Horatian passage, which is also a notorious interpretative crux, describing a young girl whose behavior is a symptom of a social and moral process of staining and corruption, at Odes 3.6.22–24: innupta uirgo . . . incestos amores | de tenero meditatur ungui (“The unwed maiden contemplates unchaste love affairs de tenero ungui”). Commentators disagree as to the meaning of the last phrase: is it “from her earliest childhood,” when a baby’s fingernails are soft, or “with every fibre of her being,” “from the quick of her nails”? Robin Nisbet and Niall Rudd spend a page of their commentary on Odes 3 sparring over 73. See Cairns 2010. 74. Allusion as grafting: Pucci 1998, 99–108; Clément-Tarantino 2006; Hinds 2014, 184–85 (on metapoetic “grafting” in Proba, Cento 148); Henkel 2014, 58–61. Girolamo Vida already gives an intertextual leçon par exemple when he grafts Virgil’s instructions on grafting into his own instructions on literary furta, in his 1527 De arte poetica (3.231–34 ceu sata, mutatoque solo felicius olim | cernimus ad caelum translatas surgere plantas. | poma quoque utilius sucos oblita priores | proueniunt).

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the point.75 Claudian’s context imposes unambiguously the meaning “from earliest childhood” (as Nisbet takes it in Horace), rather than “with every fibre of her being” (as Rudd takes it). One may compare the way in which Claudian’s concreta resolves—or takes sides in—an interpretative ambiguity in the Georgics. The impure love of Horace’s degenerate woman (unambiguous whichever way we take de tenero ungui) contrasts with “Honorius’ long-standing pure love for the mother city.”76 More generally, Horace’s bleak vision of the decline of Rome, generation by generation, is reversed in Claudian’s vision of the renewal of Rome through a consulship inaugurated in Rome itself. These three and a half lines reveal a dense and agile intertextuality, which maneuvers into place three passages of Virgil, from three separate works, and a passage of Horace. The relationship between all four components is not one of simple juxtaposition, as if they were tesserae of a mosaic, or pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but of a weaving together, or, to shift the metaphor again, a melding and a fusing that could be labeled “organic”: the Virgilian and Horatian imagery of grafting, taking root, and growth applied by Claudian to the young Honorius’s attachment to Rome can readily be applied to Claudian’s own attachment to his classical models and to his conversion of them to his own ends. This is an intertextuality that calls attention to its own history and to its own recognizability. The boy Honorius’s love for Rome and his coalescence with the city of his desire matches the poet Claudian’s rootedness in the traditions of Roman poetry. Honorius’s ceremonial aduentus, “arrival,” in the ancient city is also a poetic journey back to the texts of early imperial Rome.77 The organic imagery also suggests that Roman poetic tradition has grown to become a part of Claudian’s own nature. This is a way of both acknowledging and attempting to remedy a gap between the poet’s own day and a classical, Roman, past that is perceived as past. Like Honorius, Claudian, or let us say rather the

75. Nisbet and Rudd 2004, 107. 76. Dewar 1996, 116. 77. Yet another figure for intertextuality may be suggested by the evocation in the sublime vision of the buildings and statues of Rome at 6 Cons. Hon. 39–52 of the ekphrastic visions of Rome and its history on the Shield of Aeneas, as Catherine Ware (2012, 136–39) acutely demonstrates. As metapoetic object the shield suggests an alternative artistic medium to the mosaic as a figure for the intertextual work of the poet, the metalworker’s forge, as molten metals harden to clear form; cf. Aen. 8.445–46 (Vulcan forges the Shield of Aeneas) fluit aes riuis aurique metallum | uulnificusque chalybs uasta fornace liquescit. Another commentator on Claudian, Werner Taegert, speaks of “the sovereign fusion (Einschmelzung) of manifold models—their re-formation, modification, contamination, outbidding” (Taegert 1988, 11). Gualandri (1968, 69), follows her use of the mosaic image (see above) with the language of fusing and mixing: “In ciò l’imitazione claudianea raggiunge il suo aspetto più caratteristico, di continua fusione e mescolanza d’elementi di provenienza diversissima, dove gli echi dei poeti precedenti si sovrappongono e si confondono in un intrico di reminiscenza.”

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“Theodosian renaissance” of which Claudian is a chief representative, is coming home. The idea that the art of imitatio can coalesce with ingenium, a poet’s own nature, is itself rooted in ancient and Renaissance ways of thinking. A seventeenthcentury Neo-Latin poet, the Bavarian Jesuit Jakob Balde (“the German Horace,” 1603/4–1668), whose own compositional methods may not have been so very different from those of Claudian, praises Claudian as an example of the correct kind of imitation, in his “Dissertatio de studio poetico,” chapter 9:78 Multorum uotum, paucorum est donum, ab ueterum auctoritate non recedere; ab iisdem tamen, propriis inuentis, nouis loquendi modis, tropis, atque figuris ex uitali cordis fonte manantibus, recedere. At fieri id ipsum posse, docuit Cl. Claudianus, auctor clarissimus, quadringentis annis post aureum seculum, nouo consulari auro, nitidissime, uenustissimeque effulgens. Thebas, Trojam, Pharsaliam peragrauerat; Maronem, Ouidium, Lucanum, Statium euoluerat; haut dubie in florem sanguinis, et animae suae uerterat: non tamen apparet, quid Virgilio, quid caeteris debeat. Gazam suo labore acquisitam, facundissime dispensauit, ut propriam. Nec facile reperias segmenta, ex quibus deprendas, accuses, aut uelut ueterum pedissequum despicere possis. Diuitiis animosus suis, prisco non indiget aeuo. It is the wish of many, but given to few, not to depart from the authority of the ancients, but at the same time to depart from them through one’s own inventions, new ways of speaking, with tropes and figures that flow from the living fountain of one’s heart. That this is possible is shown by Claudian, that most illustrious author, who, four hundred years after the Golden Age [of Latin poetry]79 shines most brightly and with the greatest charm in the gold of new consular robes. He had travelled through Thebes [Statius], Troy [Homer and Virgil] and Pharsalia [Lucan]; he had turned the pages of Virgil, Ovid, Lucan and Statius, whom he had transformed, without a shadow of doubt, into the flower of his own blood and spirit. Yet one cannot tell what he owes to Virgil, what to the others. Through his labours he acquired a treasure which he dispensed as his own. You could not easily detect patches,80 by which you could catch him in wrongdoing, or bring an accusation against him, or look down on him as a lackey of the ancients. Bold in his own riches, he stands not in need of ages of old.

This is imitation as transformation and appropriation, mindful of the standard Senecan images of the bee making honey from an anthology of previous poets, 78. The passage, cited by Taegert 1988, 11 n. 6, is in Balde 1729, 326; see Burkard 2004, 16. On the place of Claudian in the Jesuit ratio studiorum, see Burkard 2004, 131; see also Lange 1968, 103–6. 79. On the history of the application of a scheme of metallic ages to the history of Latin literature, see Ax 1996; Kaspar Schoppe (1576–1649) was apparently the first to apply the scheme consistently. 80. Balde perhaps has in mind the segmenta, colored patches, on the late antique toga picta and other costumes, “purple patches,” used as an analogy for textual episodes by Roberts (1989, 112–17); cf. also Guipponi-Gineste 2010, 391–93.

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and of the conversion by the consumer of other people’s writings through digestion into one’s own flesh and blood (Sen. Ep. 84). This is the kind of imitation that Erasmus had put on the other side of the reckoning from imitation as cento or mosaic (see above). The difference between Balde’s view of things and that by which I have steered my own reading above is that Balde subscribes to the ideal of the dissimulation of imitation, a digestion, assimilation, and re-production of the classical models so thorough that the imitating poet covers his tracks (to vary the metaphor). But it is a matter of perspective, of what one attends to, and what one sees: those who are looking for fragments will find—just fragments; those who attend to the smooth surface of Claudian’s Latin verse will see—just Claudian; those who take time to recognize the tissue (to revert to the weaving image for inter-textuality), and to reflect on their contexts in the source texts, will end up with a reading of the kind that I have just exemplified.81

81. My critique of the application of the mosaic image to the intertextuality of late antique poetry, and my more general skepticism about the cogency of a late antique periodization, and of the (essentializing) idea of a late antique poetics or aesthetic, are very much in tune with Gavin Kelly’s critique of the frequent use of the mosaic image to identify something supposedly “late antique” in the intertextual practice of a prose author, Ammianus Marcellinus; Kelly 2008, ch. 4; see esp. 214–20, 215–16 on the mosaic metaphor. The use of the mosaic image for something supposedly typical of late antique allusive practice is also undermined by an awareness that the image has accompanied “intertextuality” since Julia Kristeva coined the term; see Kristeva 1969, 85 (in the essay “Le mot, le dialogue et le roman,” reporting Bakhtin’s dialogism): “Tout texte se construit comme mosaïque de citations, tout texte est absorption et transformation d’un autre texte” (where the picture of the hard mosaic is already combined with the more fluid and organic notions of “absorption” and “transformation”). The quotation from Kristeva (1969) is applied to the intertextuality of Ausonius’s Mosella in a rousingly postmodernist manifesto for a late antique poetics by Nugent (1990); yet if for Kristeva all intertextuality is like a mosaic, what can be specifically late antique about it? For a sustained use of the image of weaving for a late antique prose text, the Letters of Paulinus of Nola, see Conybeare 2000, ch. 5.

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General Index

Aaron’s rod, 160 Abrahams, R. D., 185n77 absent presence, 29–30, 38, 73, 78 Actaeon, 119 Actium, battle of, 86, 105–106, 108, 109, 204–205 Adam as master of cosmos, 91–97 Adam of St. Victor, 164 Addison, Joseph, 172 aduentus, 28, 59, 77, 213, 247 adynaton, 29 aemulatio, 212–213, 218 Aeneas, renewed, 137–138, 153 Aeolus, 47–48, 87, 145, 203 Aetna (pseudo-Virgilian), 176 Agosti, G., 224n1 Alaric, 58, 80, 86, 214–215 Alberti, Leon Battista, 233–234 Albinovanus Pedo, 25 Aldhelm, Enigmata, 183 alius, 23, 25 allegory, ch. 7 passim; 20; biblical, 22; tension between realist and spiritual, 217–218 allusion. See intertextuality. Altar of Victory: removal from Roman Senate House, 54 Ambrose, St., 54, 123, 188, 241 Amherdt, D., 7n4 amicitia, 7, 29–30, 33; friend as alter ego, 171; spiritalis, 10

Ammianus Marcellinus, 188, 249n81 Ancient of Days, 136 antithesis, 23 Apollo, 7, 17–18, 20, 79, 190; return from Hyperboreans, 84; sun-god and god of unity, 106 Aquinas, Thomas, 164 Arator, Historia apostolica, 104, 112, 117 Arcadius, 47 Asche, U., 87n37 Assendelft, M. M. van, 215n82, 216–217 Augustine, 99; as reader of Virgil, 44–45, 60; on miracles, 174; on mosaics, 228–229; the two cities, 45, 110–111, 202 —City of God, 110–111 —Confessions, 240–241 Augustus, compared with Christ, 221–222; prophecy of, 26, 59 Ausonius, ch. 1 passim; and Christianity, 8, 37; use of Horace, 33–38; use of Lucretius, 31–33 —Cento nuptialis, 126–127, 237 —Griphus ternarii numeri, 16, 183, 187 —Mosella, 226 Avitus, De spiritalis historiae gestis, 94–95, 96, 98, 99–101 Babel, Tower of, 112, 238 Bakhtin, M., 239 Balde, Jakob, 248–249 baptism and rebirth, 153–154, 156–157, 219

273

274

General Index

Barchiesi, A., 124n65, 230n21 Bellerophon, 25 Bergamin, M., 187 biblical citation and intertextuality, 22, 237–238, 240–241 Bordeaux, 6, 14 Braden, G., 86n35, 243 Brooke, M., 9n10 Brown, P., 109, 165, 181, 182 Bruhat, M.-O., 128n78 Büchner, K., 122n58 Cairns, F., 68n67, 103, 105 Cameron, Alan, 8nn7,8, 172 Cameron, Averil, 165, 188 Cardini, R., 234n34 carmen figuratum, 126, 127–128, 236–237 carpe diem, 26, 28n79 catasterism, 82 cento, 21, 126–127, 235–237, 238, 241 Charlet, J.-L., 3n7, 205n54, 230n23 Chiappiniello, R., 30n89 Chin, C. M., 7n4 chresis, 2, 145 Christ, blood of, 182–183 Christiansen, P. G. & Sebesta, J. L., 147 Chrysostom, John, 103 Cicero, 232; Pro Marcello, 76, 210; Republic, 80, 122 civil war, 53, 105–107, 110, 119, 147; epic of, 48–49 Clarke, J., 74n77, 217n91 Claudian, and Christianity 8; and Golden Age, 46; and Ovid, 158–159; as a new Virgil, 51; concord and discord, 48–49, 53–54, 115; cosmic imagery, 81–87; epigrams on a crystal containing a drop of water, 180; imagery of renewal and return, 51–52, 148–149; intertextual practice, 243–249; panegyrical epics, 46, 75–76, 211; phoenix, 145–149; poetics of novelty, 158–159; use of paradox and oxymoron, 172–180 —Aponus (Carm. min. 26), 172–174 —De piis fratribus (Carm. min. 17), 176–177 —Magnes (Carm. min. 29), 177–179 —On the sphere of Archimedes (Carm. min. 51), 180 —Phoenix (Carm. min. 27), 145–147 —Rape of Proserpina, 83, 86, 175–176 Clement of Alexandria: image of sparagmos, 120n50 Coleman, K. M., 148n41

Colie, R. L., 164n4 concordia, ch. 4 passim; 17, 48–50, 229; concordia Apostolorum, 115–117; concordia Augustorum, 114–115, 213; concordia ordinum, 80, 122; epithalamial and marital, 68–69, 126, 179; history of in Rome, 114; Tetrarchic, 114. See also discordia. concordia discors, 109, 173–174, 176; aesthetics of, 121–134; metapoetics of, 124–125 consolatio, 154 Constantine the Great, 78, 209; Arch of, 210, 236 Constantinople, as noua Roma, 136 Constantius I, 79 Conte, G. B., 240 conversion, 15, 17 Conybeare, C. 8, 23n59, 215 cosmic sense, 4 creation, Genesis account, 43, 89–96; Ovidian accounts, 42 credulitas, 29 Crockett, B., 164n4 Cupid, power over Jupiter, 179 Curtius, E. R., 225 Dällenbach, L., 227, 229, 239 Damasus, Epigrammata, 121 David as lyre-player, 122–123, 132 Delphic oracle, silence of, 18n18 de Nie, G., 174n42 Deproost, P. A., 201n37 desired haven, 60 Deucalion and the flood, 144 devils, councils of, 47 Dewar, M., 84n31, 84n32, 86 Dido, 30n88 DiFederico, F., 228n17 Diocletian, 77, 211–212 discordia, ch. 4 passim; 17, 48–50, 63, 102. See also concordia. diversity, linguistic, 111–114 Doblhofer, E., 110n24 Dolveck, F., 21n52 Domitian, 76, 148 Donatus, Tiberius Claudius, 44 Döpp, S., 98n60 Dracontius, 128, 170 Drepanius, Latinius Pacatus, 128 dualism, cosmic, 175; theological, 46–49 ecclesia, 8 echo/Echo, 12, 21, 37

General Index ekphrasis, 52–53, 83–86, 120, 149, 176, 214, 218; cosmic, 83; late antique predilection for, 225 Elsner, J., 12n23, 181, 210 Empedocles, 4, 105–106, 124–125, 178–179; Empedoclean epos, 179 emperor, apotheosis of, 47, 56, 82; control of elements, 78, 82 enargeia, 28, 230 Ennius: Discordia, 48, 106, 118; metempsychosis of poet, 142 Ennodius, 173 epic, as poetry of praise, 75; biblical, 87 Epicureanism, 32, 42 Epicurus, 195–196 epithalamium, 39, 67–69, 82, 94–95; non-Christian, 69 epigram, and paradox, 166; late antique revival of, 12, 183; on baths, 172n34 Erasmus, 234–235 Etna, 175–176 euhemerism, 56 Eusebius, 58, 110 —Life of Constantine, 209, 210 Eve, as cosmic sovereign, 97–98 exempla, 199–201 exile, 27–8, 30 Fall of Adam and Eve, 91–102 Felgentreu, F., 205 Felix, St., 6, 38–39, 60–67, 154–155, 162; architecture and art of his shrine at Cimitile, 128–130 felix culpa, 168–169, 177 Fielding, I., 7n4 figura, 200, 206 Filosini, S., 18n37, 21 Fitzgerald, W., 104–105, 111n28, 113, 125, 166 Florus, Epitome, 150 Fo, A., 72n75, 172n31 Fontaine, J., 3n7, 110n24, 132n83, 143, 188, 224n3, 226 fragmentation, 128, 226–227, 238, 240–241 Fränkel, H., 25, 142 Frigidus, battle of, 87 Fulgentius, 60 Furies, 46–48, 49, 197–198 Galerius, Arch of (Thessalonica), 81 gemma “bud”/”gem”, 226 Gibbon, Edward, 50–51 Gigantomachy, 77, 80, 81, 83, 212, 214 Gildo, 151–152

275

Gioseffi, D., 231n27 Glau, K., 207 Gnilka, C., 2, 191, 192n15, 193n16, 207n59 Golden Age, 46, 47, 51, 55, 101, 137, 149 Gowers, E., 231n26 grafting, 245–246 Green, R. 21, 25n69 Gregory of Nazianzus, 165, 210 Gregory of Nyssa, 165, 210 Gruber, J., 236n39 Gruzelier, C., 86 Gualandri, I., 243, 247n77 Habinek, T., 128n78 Hadrian, 140 Hall, J. B., 230n22 Hanna, R., 159, 208n62 harmony of the spheres, 122 Heck, E., 144 Heinz, C., 123n61 Heptateuch-poet, 87–9 Herakles Epitrapezios (statuette), 181 Hercules, 56, 58, 77, 105; compared to Christ as son of a god, 195; figure for emperor, 211–213; rebirth into divinity, 140–141, 142 heresy, 50, 118, 193–194; as civil war, 203 Hernández Lobato, J., 181, 189, 226, 237n43 Herzog, R., 2, 190, 205, 210, 215, 217 Heubeck, A., 236 Hinds, S., 20n43, 48, 81, 175, 229–230 Hippolytus (mythical character and saint), 119–121, 127 Hoffmann, M., 99n64 Hollerich, M., 210n67 Homey, H. H., 98n61 Honorius, 47, 82, 83–86, 87, 243–249 Horace, 14; and Maecenas, 14n25 —Ars poetica, 125–126 —Epistles, 33–5 Hutchinson, G., 76n6 hymn-singing, symphonia of, 123 iambic prefaces, 16n33, 205–207 imitation, Renaissance theory of, 235, 248; Seneca the Younger on, 248–249 impietas, 64. See also pietas intertextuality, ch. 8 passim; 20–22, 72n75; grafting image of, 245–246; metal-founding image of, 247n77; textile image of, 226, 227–228, 249n81 iugum “yoke”, 7, 15–16, 27, 32–33, 38–39, 60–61

276

General Index

John the Baptist, 59, 153 Johnson, W. R., 125n67 Jovius, 40–43 Julian (emperor), 78 Julian of Eclanum, 68–69 Jupiter, figure of emperor, 77, 79, 83, 211–212 Juvenal, 1–2 Kahlos, M., 112n29 Kaufmann, H., 20n43 Kelly, G., 249n81 Keudel, U., 243n65 Keydell, R., 223n1 Knauer, G. N., 22n54, 240n56 Knox, B. M. W., 236n38 Kontrastimitation, 8, 39, 144–145, 191, 222, 239 Kristeva, J., 249n81 Lactantius: pagan mirabilia as evidence for Christian truth, 143 —De aue phoenice, 142–145; Lucretian allusion in, 144–145 Ladner, G. B., 135, 138n12, 139 La Penna, A. 7, 39n115, 163, 226, 227n15 Last Judgement, 26 Leary, T. J., 184n75, 186, 187 Lecocq, F., 147n38 Leo I, Pope, 115 locus amoenus, 225 Lucan, 65, 71–72, 106–107; praise of Nero, 79; vision of return to chaos, 100 Lucilius, 231–232 Lucretius, 2; on magnetism, 178–179 lyre, image of, 113, 121–122, 130–134, 154, 162 MacCormack, S., 227 machina mundi, 80 MacPhail, E., 232–233 Macrobius, 44 Madec, G. 15n29 Maecenas, 34–36 Magazzù, C., 238 magnetism and sexual desire, 178n54 Mahoney, A., 239 Malamud, M., 119n48 Mandile, R., 225n8 Mars and Venus, 178–179 Martial, and paradox, 166 martyrs, 193 Mastrangelo, M., 208 Maximian, 77, 79, 211–214

Maximianus, 128 Maximus, bishop of Nola, 64 Maximus of Madaura, 109–110 McLynn, N. B., 241 Memnon and the Memnonides, 146–147 memory, 13, 30–31; and intertextuality, 243–248; and recognition, 85 metallic ages of Latin literature, 248n79 metamorphosis, 10, 15, 23–5, 146; metamorphic power of unchanging God, 154 metrical variation, 16–17 Mettus Fufetius, sparagmos of, 106, 120 microcosm, 86, 101–102, 180, 181 Miller, P. C., 188 Milton, Paradise Lost, 11, 91–93, 97, 101–102, 169; use of Avitus, 98 miniaturization, 181–183 mirabilia, ch. 6 passim miracles, ch. 6 passim; 65, 130; and laws of nature, 173, 174; and metamorphosis, 167; Christian fire miracles, 177; fiery furnace, 177; in Ezekiel, 154; healing, 174 Mondin, L., 29n84 mosaic, image of, ch. 8 passim; 21–22; applied to Ammianus Marcellinus, 249n81; applied to Claudian, 243; applied to Homer, 236; applied to Horace, 231; applied to Nonnus, 223n1; applied to Virgil, 230; used by Kristeva, 249n81 motto, Horatian, 190–191 Müller, G. M., 76n4 multiple explanation, 173 Muses, 7, 17–18 Namatianus, Rutilius, and Christianity, 8 Narcissus, 12, 171 Nash, W., 231n25 Nemesis, 37–38 neo-Alexandrianism of late antique poetry, 178, 230 Nesselrath, H.-G., 48n10 new poets (poetae noui), 137, 158–162 new world, 25 Nietzsche, F., 231 Nisbet, R. G. M. & Rudd, N., 246–247 novelty, ch. 5 passim; 24, 55; of paradox and miracle, 157–158; poetics of, 158–162 Numanus, Remulus as figure of pride, 199 O’Daly, G., 123n61 O’Donnell, J., 240, 241n59

General Index Odysseus, 73–74 officium, 7, 9 omnigenus, 106, 108, 132n84 one and two, play on, 53n27, 116–117 Ong, W. J., 164 Onorato, M., 86n35, 243 Optatian, 127–128, 236–237; and novelty, 158 opus sectile, 224, 237 orbis in urbe, 62, 75 Origen, threefold sense of bible, 207 Orpheus, 125–126 otium, 33 ouroboros, 149 Ovid, exile poetry, 11, 24, 30, 72–74; personifications, 152, 198 —Heroides 11–12 —Metamorphoses and split identity, 24–25; Pygmalion’s statue (Met. 10), 178; speech of Pythagoras (Met. 15), 90, 141 oxymoron, 23, 168 paganism, 55, 74 Palatine Hill, 83–85 Panegyrici Latini, 49, 76–81, 114–115; “allegorical carpeting”, 210–214 paradoxes, ch. 6 passim; 10, 23; and riddles, 183–187; early imperial, 165; generic, 39; of Adam and Eve, 170–171; of Christ-child, 182; of fire and water, fire and snow 172–174; of generation and family relationships, 164, 170–172, 185; of land and water, 173, 174; of large and small, 179–183, 186; of life and death, 22, 167–168, 185, 186; of likeness and unlikeness, 176; of old and new155, 157; of the Incarnation, 22, 132, 164, 186; of the Trinity, 170; of the Virgin Mary, 68, 158, 171; Petrarchan, 173; Stoic, 165 paradoxography, 166–167 paraphrase, biblical, 40, 153 parthenogenesis in classical myth, 171–172 pater, 13–14, 38 patria, 13 patronus, 13–14 Paul, St., 115–117 Paulinus of Nola, ch. 1 passim; concordia discors (aesthetics of variety), 128–134; journey from Spain to Nola, 60–62; novelty, 153–158; poetics of novelty, 161–162; use of Horace, 33–38; use of Lucretius, 31–33 —Letters, 215 —Natalicia, 38–39, 60–67

277

Paulinus of Pella, Eucharistikos, 60n45 pax Augusta, 48, 52, 59, 86, 106 Pelttari, A., 127n75, 223n1 Pentecost, 112–114 Pentheus, 119 peregrinus, 28n78 periodization, 2–3, 223 persecutions, 63–65 personification allegory, 193–199; and history, 193–195 peruersus, 23 Peter, St. 115–117 Peutinger Table, 81 Phaethon, 144, 146; as political allegory, 79–80, 85, 214 phoenix, 135, 140–149, 168; figure of Christ, 144; (meta)poetic symbol, 141; symbol of aeternitas of Rome, 140; symbol of imperial apotheosis, 141; symbol of succession, 141–142 pietas, 7, 9, 10; and ira, 10, 11n17; of brothers of Catina, 176; of phoenix, 141, 146 Platt, P. G., 164n4 Pliny the Younger: Panegyricus, 77, 210 Poliziano, Angelo, 232; use of Claudian, 233 Pollentia, battle of, 58 Pollio, 137 Pompey, death of, 65 Priam, death of, 65 Proba, Cento, 90, 93, 99–100, 237 Prometheus, 42 propemptikon (speech of farewell), 38, 39 prosphonetikon (speech of welcome), 28 protrepticon, 40–41 Prudentius: symbolism of light, 216–222; use of Horace, 220–222; use of Lucretius, 195–196 —Against Symmachus, 54–59; on concord and discord, 58–59, 107–109; on renovation and return, 55–58 —Psychomachia: allegory of, 189–208; as universal Christian history, 206; concord and discord, 49–50, 193–194; didactic elements, 191; Praefatio, 205–207; renouatio as subject and poetics, 159–161; Temple of Wisdom, 49–50, 54, 159, 192, 201–202; title, meaning of, 192; Virgilianism of, 49–50, 189–205, 207–208, 238–239 puer senex, 155 Quint, D., 104 Quintilian, 232

278

General Index

Rapp, C., 209n64 rebirth, 65–66, 71, 140–141 recusatio, 18, 35, 39 Red Sea, crossing of, 50, 89, 174, 204–205, 219–220; figure of baptism, 204 Reed Doob, P., 229n19 reform(ation), reformatio, 20, 135, 139–140, 146 reformo, 139–140 Reichstheologie, 58, 103 rejuvenation, 150–153; and metamorphosis, 152–153; of eagles, 156; of Iolaus, 139 relics, “theology” of, 182–183 renaissance, history of idea, 136n5 renovation (renouatio), ch. 5 passim; 18, 20, 45–46, 56–58, 167–168, 193; Christian, 138–139; Pauline, 130, 139, 154, 159; poetic, 142; renouatio imperii, 138 resurrection, analogies from natural world, 143n27, 154 return, 17–19, 35, 116, 155 Richter, W., 143 riddles, 16, 183–187 Riemschneider, M., 224n1 Rimell, V., 166, 181 Roberts, M., 3, 86n35, 113n33, 121n53, 124, 163, 225 Roche, P., 151n48 Rome, 14–15; amor and Roma, 245–246; cosmic city, 83–86; ekphrasis of, 83–86, 247n77; panegyric of, 70–71, 73–74; personification of, 50n21, 52, 151n50; rejuvenation of, 15, 56–57, 70, 140, 150–153, 168; sack of, 59, 86; urbs aeterna, 45 Romulus and Remus, 52, 54, 105–106; discord of, 116, 213 Roston, M., 209 Rufinus, 46–48, 82; sparagmos of, 119 Rutilius Namatianus, probably pagan, 70, 110 —On his return, 70–74; as exile, 71–73; as homecoming, 71; engagement with Prudentius, 74; landscape of ruins, 71–72 salus “greeting”/”salvation”, 11–13 Salvatore, A., 220 Satan, 98, 114, 239–240; as Pharaoh, 220 Schierl, P. & Schiedegger Lämmle, C., 158n69 Schlegel, A. W., 230 Schmitzer, U., 236n41 Sedulius, Carmen paschale, 10–11, 170 segmenta, 248n80 Seneca, Phaedra, 120 Servius, 44

Shackleton Bailey, D. R., 236 Shanzer, D., 202nn38–39 Shepherd of Hermas, 151 Shield of Achilles, 83 Sibyl, 27 Simons, R., 128n79 Smith, M., 238 Smolak, K., 195n26, 203, 221 Sodom, 197–198 solar imagery, 221–222 Solomon, Temple of, 201 soul, analogy with state, 203; flight of, 27 sparagmos, 106, 117–121, 126, 127 spoils of Egypt, image of, 43 spolia, 210, 236–237 Squire, M., 127–128, 158, 181, 237 Stilicho, 47, 82, 107; phoenix image of, 147–149 storm imagery, 48, 49–50, 61–62, 101–102, 202–205, 220 Stutzinger, D., 86n36 sublimity, Christian, 27, 42 Suetonius, 6 Sulpicius Severus, 155 —Life of St. Martin, 63, 171 sun-king, ancient tradition of, 79–80, 84, 221 supersessionism, 238n50 superstition, 55, 58, 195–196 Symmachus: third Relatio, 54, 57, 152 Symphosius, Aenigmata, 183–187; and Christianity, 186–187; debt to Martial, 183 synkrisis (“comparison”), 67, 209–215 Tabulae Iliacae, 181 Taegert, W., 247n77 Talbert, R. J. A., 80–81 Tarrant, R., 138n9 temple, image of body, 201 Tetrarchs, porphyry group in Venice, 213 Theodosian renaissance, 1, 3, 45, 136, 189 Theodosius, 47, 52–53, 56–58, 81–82; apotheosis, 82 Thomas, R. F., 37n111 three, symbolism of, 16, 187 Tiber, 53, 116–117 Tiberianus, 225–226 Tiberius, 114 time, cyclical and eschatological, 25–26; pagan and Christian, 57 Tissol, G., 72n75 tortoise, mute given voice, 133, 185 Trajan, 76

General Index transformation, poetics of, 23 trees, imagery of, 145–146 Trinity, unity of, 117–118, 133, 191 Trout, D. E., 62 Turnus, as embodiment of anger, 198–199; death of, 48 typology, 156, 192, 206, 219; and exemplum, 200, 206; and synkrisis, 209–215 uarietas, ch. 4 passim, 224 uermiculatus, 231n27 ueternus, 55 unity in variety, 104–110, 125n69, 128–134 unus homo, 63, 115, 118, 169, 176 Victorius, Claudius Marius, Alethia, 96, 98–99, 112, 170 view from above, 78–80 villa, late antique, as microcosm, 86–87 Virgil: theme of renewal, 45–46, 136–138; Virgilian plots, ch. 2 passim, 26 —Aeneid: Allecto (Aeneid 7), 46–47, 49, 53, 64, 106, 118, 194, 197–198; and allegory, 189–199; and paradox, 168; as epic of renewal and rebirth, 137–138, 141; as epic of transition, 45;

279

city-foundation, 201–202; Dido and Aeneas, 91–92; Evander’s history of Latium (Aeneid 8), 55–56, 58; Hercules and Cacus (Aeneid 8), 194–197; Parade of Heroes (Aeneid 6), 67–69, 210; “rejuvenation” of Neoptolemus (Aeneid 2), 141, 150; sack of Troy (Aeneid 2), 63–66; Shield of Aeneas (Aeneid 8), 47, 52–53, 62, 79, 83–86, 104–110, 153; speech of Anchises (Aeneid 6), 26, 27, 32, 43, 90, 244–246; speech of Jupiter (Aeneid 1), 47, 57, 93; structural repetition, 47; typology, 196–197, 209n63, 222 —Eclogues: and exile, 27–8, 30, 70–71; fourth (“Messianic”) Eclogue, 44, 46, 51–2, 136–137, 148, 241–242 —Georgics: bugonia (Geo. 4), 137, 160; ‘theodicy’ (Geo. 1), 99 virginity, 69 Walsh, P. G., 39n118, 241n60 Ware, C. 46n7, 81, 83, 88n39, 148, 158–159, 223n1 water imagery, 157 Wheeler, S. M., 51, 54n28, 81, 243n69 Whitman, J., 206n56, 208n61 Williams, Gordon, 166 Witke, C., 18n37, 20, 29n84

Index L o c orum

Adam of St. Victor Assumption sequence

164

Aeschylus Persians 406

111

Aetna (pseudo-Virgilian) 603 631–32 Alberti, Leon Battista Della tranquillità dell’ animo 3 preface Albinovanus Pedo 228.18–19 Hollis Ambrose De Isaac uel anima 7.59 Enarrationes in Psalmos I

Arator Historia apostolica 1.119–38 1.383–88 2.1219–22 2.1246–50 Augustine Confessions 1.3.3 De ciuitate Dei 3.25–26 5.26 7.33 17.14 22.30 De ordine 1.1.2 Enarrationes in Psalmos 6.5 32.2.15 44.10 Epistles 16–17 Sermones 184

176n47 176n47

233–34 25

104n4 113n34

Anthologia Palatina 9.753 (Claudian)

180

Aquinas, Thomas Adoro te deuote Pangue lingua

182 164

Ausonius Cento nuptialis Letter to Paulus

281

112 104 117 117

241 110–11 88n41 15n29 122–23 111 228–29 15n29 126n70 113 109–10 164

127

282

index Locorum

Ephemeris 3.37–38 Epigrams 95 Epistles 20.1 21.3 21.4 21.7–8 21.9–10 21.12 21.17 21.48–49 21.50 21.56 21.60–61 21.62–63 21.67–68 21.73–74 22.2 22.3–35 22.6–7 23.16–18 24.1 24.3 24.8 24.11–12 24.96–97 24.106–13 24.123–24 Epitaphia 17 Griphus ternarii numeri 88–90 Avitus De spiritalis historiae gestis 1.44–50 1.59–68 1.133–37 1.172–79 1.188–92 2.79–80 2.145–56 3.155–94 3.323–32 5.311–13 Balde, Jakob Dissertatio de studio poetico 9

37 169 31n93 9 11 11 12 21 31 20 15, 30n91 14, 34 14 9 12n22 17 15 13 13 30n91 22 28n78 39 9n12 25, 28n77 27–28 28 36–37 16, 187

80n24 94 96 94–95 95 98 98 99 100 88n41

248

Beaumont, Joseph Psyche 6.254

91n46

Calpurnius Siculus 1.42

242n63

Catullus 66.64 68.41–44 109.6 Cicero De amicitia 22 23 80 De re publica 2.69 6.22 Philipppics 7.1 Pro Archia 19 Claudian Carmina minora (Platnauer) 17.4 17.21–26 17.27–28 17.35 17.43–44 17.47 26.3 26.13 26.17 26.27 26.46 26.48 26.67–78 26.83–86 26.85 27.11–12 27.27–35 27.40–41 27.54 27.67–78 27.81–82 27.108 29.10 29.13

82n28 21 33

171n30 29n86 171n30 122 122 151n47 12n22

176 176 177 176n47 176n46 177 174 173 173 173 173 172 173 174n39 174 145 145 146 146 146 147 146 179 177

index Locorum 29.18–19 180 29.35 178 29.51–53 179 29.57 179 39.3–4 180 51.1–2 180 51.7–8 180 De bello Gildonico 17–27 152 31–32 153 208–12 152 De consulatu Stilichonis 1.51–88 148 1.84–88 82 1.152–54 107 1.160–64 107 2.414–20 147–48 2.428–29 149 2.467–70 149 2.475–76 159 De raptu Proserpinae 1 praefatio 4 175n42 1.42–43 101n68 1.166–70 175 1.248–70 83 Epithalamium de nuptiis Honorii Augusti 202–3 179n59 In Rufinum 1.104–5 53n27 1.368 47n9 2.9–10 47 2.22–23 48 2.235–39 119 Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli praefatio 17–20 84n32 Panegyricus dictus Probino et Olybrio consulibus 6–8 51, 159 15–17 57 67–68 54 94–99 52, 54 103–4 54 115–16 81–82 147–49 67 160–63 53 226–29 53n27, 54, 117 231 53 233 53n27, 117 Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti 62–69 80

283

170–83 82 615–18 169 Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti praefatio 23 83 38 85 40–41 84n32 51–52 84 53–55 85 69–71 85, 107n18 77–80 243–48 127–40 214 165–92 80 186–87 214 374–76 86 Panegyricus de tertio consulatu Honorii Augusti 89–92 87 96–98 87 106–9 88n42 152–53 115 162–84 82 Clement of Rome Epistle to the Corinthians 24–25

143n27

Commodian Carmen apologeticum 139–40

143n27

Constantine Epistula ad Optatianum 9 Corippus In laudem Iustini 2.148–51 Damasus Epigrammata 18 Dracontius De laudibus Dei 1.387–89 2.809–10 Satisfactio 57–58 Ennius Epigrams Goldberg-Manuwald 3b

158

79n17

121

170 11n17 128n79

144

284

index Locorum

Ennodius Carmina 1.19 Epistles 5.8.6 Erasmus Ciceronianus Eusebius Life of Constantine 2.69.1 On Christ’s sepulchre 16.6 Florus Epitome 1.8

174n42 173 234–35

128n78 110

140n19, 150–51

Heptateuch-poet Exodus 474–76 480–87

88 89

Homer Iliad 2.803–4 3.1–9 4.436–38

111 111 111

Horace Epistles 1.1.2–3 1.1.4 1.3.10 1.6.67–68 1.7.1–2 1.7.25–28 1.7.95–97 Epodes 4.1–2 Odes 1.6.5–6 2.3.15–16 2.17.3–4 2.17.5 2.17.11–12 2.18.15–16 3.1.5–6 3.6.22–24 3.25.2–3 3.25.7–8

34, 42 24n66, 35, 42 41n130 34 34 35 35 16n33 199 28n79 14, 34 34 34 26n70 96 246–47 19, 24 19n42

3.25.18 3.30.1 3.30.7–8 4.1.2–3 4.1.6–7 4.2.25–32 4.3.19–20 4.5.1–5 4.5.6–8 4.5.9–13 4.5.9–16 4.5.15–16 4.5.33–36 4.5.37–38 4.5.40 4.7.13 4.7.14–16 4.11.17–18 4.15.25–32 222n103 Satires 1.6.62–63 2.4.84–85

168 31 142 19, 35 35n105 230 174n40 220 221 28n79 222n103 221 222 222n103 221 71n73 36 14n25 123n61, 36 231n26

John Chrysostom Homiliae in Joannem 79

104

Juvencus Evangelorum libri IV 1.192–93

37n112

Lactantius De aue phoenice 10 25 93 164–66 170 Institutiones diuinae 1.18.11 4.10.7

144, 149 143 143 144 143 144 89

Leo I Sermons 82.1

115–16

Livy 22.43.2 26.20.9 28.35.7 30.34.1

111 111 151n47 112

index Locorum Lucan Bellum ciuile 1.24–29 1.186–89 1.647 3.284–97 5.111–23 8.761–62 9.779

72 151 101n68 107 18n36 65 37n112

Lucilius 84–85 Marx

231–32

Lucretius De rerum natura 1.21 1.54–55 1.65–79 1.104–5 1.670–71 1.716–33 1.790–91 3.5 4.462–63 5.1056–90 6.96 6.910 6.1001 6.1016 6.1056

42 191n13 196 29n84 144n30 176n46 144n30 33 101n68 32 32 179n56 178n54 178n54 179n56

Macrobius Saturnalia 1.17.7 5.1.18–20

191n12 125n68

Marlowe Dr Faustus 5.4 Martial Liber spectaculorum 3.11–12 Epigrams 5.7.1–4 9.43.2 Maximian Elegies 1.5 5.113–14

183

105 140, 214n76 181

24n64 128n79

Milton On the morning of Christ’s nativity 173–80 Paradise Lost 1.3 1.4–5 4.427–35 8.329–30 8.338–41 9.14–32 9.532–70 9.602–12 9.762–63 9.780–84 9.997–1004 9.1029–31 9.1121–26 10.651–718 12.3 12.43–55 12.469–76 Paradise Regained 4.410–15 Nemesianus Cynegetica 46–47 New Testament Acts 2:1–6 4.31–32 Colossians 3:10 1Corinthians 1:27 10:1–2 10:4 12:27 13:12 2Corinthians 3:18 5:17 Ephesians 4:22–24 Galatians 3:9 John 10.38 11:25 Luke 23:34

285

18n36 92 169 96n58 92n49 92–93 11 97 97 92n49 91 91 92n49 102n72 101–2 169 238n49 169–70 101n70

158n69

112 104 139 65 204n51 219 69 187 216 139, 154 139 206n55 170 22n55 11

286

index Locorum

23:46 24:16–18 Mark 1:3 7:37 Matthew 11:30 1Peter 2:9 Revelation 25 Romans 12:2 Old Testament 1Chronicles 29:15 Exodus 3:22 14.22 Genesis 1:26–28 3:17–19 3:19 Isaiah 6:3 40:31 65:17 Numbers 12:8 Psalms 101:12–13 102:5 132:1 143:4 146:2 148:11–12 Wisdom 2:5 5:9 7:27 Optatian Poems 16.1–2 25 Ovid Amores 2.19.39–40 Ars amatoria 1.181

143n29 66n61 59 174n40 16, 38–39 68n66 139 139

37n110 43 89 93n51 99 37 77n10 156n63 138 187n79 37n110 138–39, 156n63 104 37n110 241n58 123n61 37n110 37n110 154

127 127

28n82 85n33

Ex Ponto 1.3.33–34 1.9.7–8 2.11.3–4 4.3.21 Fasti 1.81–82 1.223–26 1.523–24 4.787–88 5.11–12 5.239–42 Heroides 2.21–22 3.1–2 4.1–2 17.49–50 Metamorphoses 1.1 1.7 1.82–86 1.107–8 1.179–80 1.433 1.486–87 1.546 1.565 2.98–99 2.298–99 2.407–8 3.406 5.365–70 5.587–89 6.145 7.19–20 9.266–68 9.399 10.143–44 10.145–47 10.277 10.339 11.50–51 11.64–66 11.183–85 11.254 13.384–85 13.604–9 15.62–63 15.67–68 15.373–74 15.406–7 15.622

74 73 29n87 15n28 148n40 156n65 168 173n37 159n71 171–72 73n76 12 13 168n23 142 180 42n132 101n69 98n63 124 142n23 146n36 142n23, 144 10n16 102n71 85 37–38 179n60 225n10 65 20 141n20 139 126 113n32, 125 178 24 126 126 21n49 139 199 146–47 30n90, 38n114 42n131, 90 146n36 141 18

index Locorum 15.749 15.875–76 Tristia 1.5.11–13 2.3 19 3.4b.73–74 3.12.23–24 4.7.3–20

30n90 73 9n13

Panegyrici Latini 3.10.1 3.28.5 7.12.3 7.14.1–3 8.6.2 10.1.3–5 10.2.1 10.2.5 10.3.3 10.4.2–3 10.5.3 10.8–14 10.9.3 10.11.1 10.13.1–2 11.13.5 11.14.2–4 12.26.1

79n15 78 79 79 78 211 212 212 79, 212 212 213 212–13 114 115 54n28 78 77 77n10

Paulinus of Nola Epistles 16.2 24.9 25.5 Poems 6.14 6.70–71 6.264–66 6.275 10.1–2 10.3–5 10.7–8 10.15 10.17–18 10.19–32 10.23–24 10.28 10.41 10.51–54 10.85–88 10.96

82n28 31 30n88

43 27n75 15n29 153 153 153 154 26 12 16 16n15 12 17–20 16n33, 39n119 19n42 13 22 10 13

10.97–98 10.101–2 10.103–6 10.104 10.106–8 10.109–10 10.111 10.120–1 10.123–24 10.130–38 10.135 10.138–43 10.193–96 10.197–99 10.239–59 10.272–75 10.281–82 10.288–89 10.304–305 10.308–9 10.318 10.330–31 11.2–3 11.6 11.20 11.30–48 11.46–48 11.53 11.59–60 11.67–68 12.15–17 12.31 12.32–33 13.10–14 13.24–25 13.24–30 13.32–36 14.1–3 14.107–9 15.2–3 15.30–36 15.78–79 15.126–27 15.134–42 15.329–30 16.1–2 16.5–7 16.39–41 16.52–59 16.64–65 16.65–66 16.100

287

10 34n102 35 25 11n17 35 18 32 32n98 23 22n57 24 13 10n15 14 36 26n71 36, 37 26 27 26 33–34 24 19 19 32 29 30n90 30n90 30 38 60 38 61 109 59n42, 60 61 38n113 174n42 14n25 18n36 63 63n55 63 64 26n70 155n60 64 64 65 66n61 65

288

index Locorum

16.129–30 16.145–46 16.219–20 16.221–26 16.284 16.287–88 17.93–95 20.28–62 20.43–53 20.43–61 21.56–61 21.84–89 21.97–100 21.191–95 21.198–99 21.211–15 21.272–79 21.340–43 21.685–86 21.731 21.749–50 21.754–56 22.1–2 22.6–8 22.6–11 22.13–16 22.20–28 22.29–30 22.33–34 22.35 22.45–47 22.85–86 22.147 22.148–49 22.149–53 22.157–60 23.18–20 23.20–26 23.158–59 23.332 24.669–72 24.857–66 25.161–62 25.181–82 25.203–12 25.233 25.237 26.395–412 27.62–65 27.85–88 27.95–102

65 65 65, 155 66 67n62 67n62 37n112 130–33 55n32 154 16n31 16n31 162 155 162 155 133 134 157 157 157 11n17 40 161 40 39n119, 41 19n38 40n122 42 42, 90 42 154 42 40n122 91 41 162n79 182 168 168 155–56 156 158 68 69 69 68 177n51 113 154 161–62

27.97–102 27.179–91 27.313–14 27.607–9 28.1–2 28.21 28.115–17 28.124–37 28.130–1 28.160–63 28.174–79 28.193–99 28.206–7 28.218–19 28.261–65 30.ii.5–8 31.177 31.181 31.191–92 31.233–40 31.321–22 31.401 31.429–30 Paulinus of Perigueux Vita sancti Martini 1.231–35 5.556–78 6.487–88

113 29n84 20n46, 24n65 154n58 130 129 182 177n51 174n42 129 129 157 130 157 130 157n66 167 167 167 154 154 26n72 132n84

171 88n41 177

Persius Satires 5.27

240n54

Pliny the Elder Natural History 3.39 4.31

110n24 225n9

Pliny the Younger Epistles 1.3.1 3.13.2 5.6.11 Panegyricus 14.1 Poliziano, Angelo Miscellanies Stanze per la giostra 1.96

226n11 158n69 226n11 76n6 232 233

index Locorum Proba Cento 56–59 113 136–38 142–45 145–46

90 93 93n53 93 93n54

Propertius 1.12.1–2 1.12.11

23–24 24

Prudentius Apotheosis 438–43 571–75 654–55 779–81 921–23 Cathemerinon 1.99–100 5.1 5.2 5.4 5.4–8 5.5–6 5.12–14 5.27 5.45–46 5.55–56 5.77–79 5.105–8 5.109–12 5.126 5.127–32 5.132 5.137–40 5.145–48 5.153–58 9 9.68 11.14–15 11.53–76 contra Symmachum 1.5–7 1.39 1.45–48 1.59 1.124 1.420–22 1.533–37

18n36 171 50n19 37n112 55n32 157n67 220 218 221 217 218 216 218, 222n103 220 220 204n48 219 204–5, 220, 222n103 222n103 218, 221 157n67 222n103 218 216 123–24 55n32 171 242–43 55 195n27 56 56 55 74 56

1.541–43 2.191–211 2.249 2.512–14 2.528–29 2.583–84 2.586–90 2.600–1 2.609 2.610–12 2.619–33 2.620–21 2.623–36 2.656–60 2.731–32 2.869–72 Hamartigenia 132–33 191–94 195–205 201–2 236–50 Peristephanon 2.548–60 3.191–200 5.213–16 11.29–32 11.87–88 11.95–96 11.191–92 11.195–96 11.205–6 12.3–6 12.21–22 12.29–30 12.57–58 Praefatio 43–45 Psychomachia, praefatio 1 6–10 10 50–52 Psychomachia 1 1–4 2–4 5–6 5–11 7–11 10

289 57 154n59 54n30 108 108 58 107–8 58n40 58n40 108 203n46 59 108–9 57 58 108 220 98n62 239 114 100 84n31 226n11 201 120 119 119 121 155n60 121 116 116 116 117 217 206 191n13 199 206

61n48, 190 118 191 191n13, 202n38 203 49 197n31

290

index Locorum

35 42 43–45 46–47 58–65 66–69 96 100–1 103–4 128 130 143–44 150 163–64 169–70 182 466 638–39 640–43 650–55 667–68 685 685–86 697 709–10 724–27 734–36 753–54 805–7 818 878–87 888–89 pseudo-Claudian Epithalamium Laurentii 85–87 pseudo-Hilary Metrum in Genesim 111–90 Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.45 Rutilius Namatianus De reditu suo 1.3–4 1.17–18 1.63–66 1.113–14 1.129 1.139–40

193 197, 198 198 197 199–200 200 197 202n38 204n51 201 197n31 199 199 200 200 199 197n31 204n49 196, 205 204 50 50n20 118 197n31 118, 193 118 118–19 201 201 201 159–61 191n13

95n56

93n54 151n47

71n74 74n79 110 73–74 71n73 70–71, 168

1.189 1.189–90 1.191–92 1.193 1.197–200 1.201–4 Sedulius Carmen paschale 1.85–102 1.139–41 1.204–5 1.220–21 1.310–11 1.316–18 1.321 2.40 2.56–62 4.5–8 4.13–17 5.182–86

72 74 73 74 73 73

174n42 174 177 174n42 170 170 170 171 182 174n42 174n42 10

Seneca the Elder Suasoriae 25n68 Seneca the Younger Apocolocyntosis 2 De beata uita 19.1 Epistulae morales 84 84.9–10

249 125n69

Shakespeare Pericles I.i.64–71

185n77

Sidonius Apollinaris Epistles 9.16.3

126n70

26n70 62n50

Silius Italicus Punica 6.406 14.64–69

85n33 175

Sophocles Electra 1158–59

37n111

index Locorum Statius Siluae 1.3.2 1.3.24–25 1.4.7–8 4.1.11–14 4.6.36–38 Thebaid 1.33–34 10.827–30 10.829 Sulpicius Severus Vita sancti Martini 1.4 Symmachus Relatio 3 3.5 Symphosius Aenigmata praefatio 15–16 4 5 7 16 46 62 82 83 84 100

53n27 117n43 140n19 148 181 40n126 42 40n128

Valerius Maximus 6.5.2 ext.

139n16

Venantius Fortunatus Poems 2.6.35–36 3.10.10 6.2.7–8 7.8.61–70 10.6.48

167 175n42 124n63 124n63 175n42

59n41

Victorius, Claudius Marius Alethia 1.332–37 1.378–80 1.471–74 3.257–61

201

Terence Andria 189–90

19

Tiberianus Amnis ibat 1 8

73n76

Versus Romae

Tacitus Annals 4.38.2

Tertullian De resurrectione 13.2

Tibullus 2.6.51

30n92

184 186 184–85 185 185 186 185–86 187 186 187 186

143n27

225 226

291

Vida, Girolamo De arte poetica 3.231–34 Virgil Aeneid 1.3 1.5 1.8–11 1.10 1.52 1.57 1.58–59 1.84 1.105–7 1.148–49 1.150 1.206 1.224 1.236 1.278–79 1.292–93 1.333 1.382 1.565 1.589–91 1.628–29 1.664–65

136n6

96 170 99 112

246n74

220 169, 201 58 220 203n42 203 101–2 50n19 50n19, 204 49 202 71, 150 79 93 57, 67n63, 71, 93 105–6 61n49 85n33 51 153 220n98 179n60

292

index Locorum

2.282–83 2.299–301 2.324–26 2.471–73 2.556–57 2.682–84 2.707 3.98 3.310–12 4.4 4.166–70 4.209–10 4.441 5.439 5.870 6.6–8 6.56 6.59 6.77–79 6.129 6.206 6.726–27 6.735–39 6.745–46 6.745–47 6.757 6.789–90 6.791–92 6.798–800 6.808–10 6.824–25 6.827 6.842–43 6.847–48 6.853 6.870 7.44–45 7.46 7.284–85 7.335 7.338 7.347 7.376–77 7.456–57 7.460–62 7.545–46 7.598–99 8.185–89 8.270 8.301 8.313

66 63n55 17n35 66, 141n20, 150 65 175–76 64 95n56 66 30n88 91–92 32 145 63n57 64 217n89 61n48, 190 61 20 27 161n77 32n98, 43, 77n10, 180 244 57 244–45 170n26 68 69 26, 59 69 67 68 67 178n55 45 68 40n129 194n22 194n22 53, 194 40n127 49n16, 203n44 197n31 198 198 106n14, 194 60 194–95 211 195 211n71

8.326 8.337 8.445–46 8.549 8.628–29 8.642–43 8.645 8.675–77 8.681 8.685 8.702–3 8.721 8.722–23 8.723 8.728 9.71–72 9.110–11 9.276 9.436–37 10.102 10.260 10.271 11.782 12.67–69 12.206–11 12.424–25 12.429 12.583 12.672–73 12.806 12.834 12.892–93 12.938 Eclogues 1.24–25 1.53–55 1.59–63 1.67–69 1.69 1.71–72 3.86 4.4–7 4.6 4.7 5.45–47 8.108 8.109 9.4 10.17 10.53–54 10.73–74

56 85n33 247n77 28n83 170n26 106 120 86 205 105, 106 50n20, 106, 118 85 85, 105, 106 62 153 198 40n124, 161 85n33 161 98n63 28n83 84 200n34 161 160 138 20 106n15 172n34 47n9 56n33 27 47n9 30n88, 33n99 21 29–30 71 28 106n15 137 136 46 51, 170n26 41 28, 73 29n84 28 41n130 245 245

index Locorum Georgics 1.1–5 1.41 1.60–61 1.124 1.127–28 1.135 2.30–31 2.39–41 2.74 2.76–77 2.167–70 2.176 2.294–95

191n13 191 94n55 242n64 101n68 217n89 161n77 28n79 161n77 245 67n64 53n26 95n56, 145n34

2.317–18 2.401–2 2.477 2.490 3.442–43 3.480–82 4.49–50 4.127–28 4.132 4.208–9 4.281–82 4.360–62 4.554

293

244 51 94n55 42n131 26n70 240n54 12n22 67n62 67n62 93, 170n26 137 89 160

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