The Ordered Day: Quotidian Time and Forms of Life in Ancient Rome 1421445174, 9781421445175

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The Ordered Day

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cultur al histories of the ancient world James Ker, Series Editor This series pre­sents innovative case studies in accounts of ancient society, from specific spheres such as religion, economics, law, and lit­er­a­ture, to dynamics such as space, time, power, and subjecthood. It offers pathbreaking research in an approachable form, suitable for use by gradu­ate students, faculty, and enthusiastic general readers. Books in the Series Pindar, Song, and Space: ­Towards a Lyric Archaeology Richard Neer and Leslie Kurke Control of the Laws in the Ancient Democracy at Athens Edwin Carawan The Ordered Day: Quotidian Time and Forms of Life in Ancient Rome James Ker

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The Ordered Day Quotidian Time and Forms of Life in Ancient Rome

JA MES K ER

Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore

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 © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2023 Printed in the United States of Amer­i­c a on acid-­free paper 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Mary­land 21218 www​.­press​.­jhu​.­edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ker, James, 1970– author. Title: The ordered day : quotidian time and forms of life in Ancient Rome / James Ker. Other titles: Quotidian time and forms of life in Ancient Rome Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2023] | Series: Cultural histories of the ancient world | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022046828 | ISBN 9781421445175 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781421445182 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Time—Social aspects—Rome. | Time—Political aspects—Rome. | Time perception—Rome. | Chronology, Roman. | Rome—Social life and customs. | BISAC: HISTORY / Ancient / Rome | SCIENCE / History Classification: LCC QB209 .K4 2023 | DDC 115—dc23/eng/20221104 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046828 A cata­log rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at specialsales@jh​.­edu.

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 For Antonia

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c on t e n t s

List of Illustrations   xi Acknowl­ edgments  xiii Note on Translations and Abbreviations   xv

I n t roduc t ion  1 Spurinna’s Rule  1 Order, Timing, Day   2 The Day in Roman Time   9 Quotidian Time  14 The Shape of This Book   19

pa r t i  or de r i ng h is t or y 1 ​In Search of Palamedes   25 A Parasite’s Lament   25 Disentangling Diachronies  27 Pride of Theoderic   50

2 ​The Long-­Legged Fly?  

54

The Tent on the Shore   54 The Path to Precision   56 From Livy to Cicero   57 Caesar the Strategist   66 Caesar the Reformer   73

3 ​Telling Roman Time   79 Discerning Varro  79 A Long Final Page in Natu­ral History (Pliny the Elder)   88 Primordial Partition in On Your Birthday (Censorinus)  104

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viii  Contents

pa r t i i  or de r i ng l i v e s 4 ​Days in the Life   115 Pliny the Elder’s Writing Routine   115 Day Patterns and Forms of Life   117 Recent Theorizing and Roman Daily Time   120 “Synchrony” and the Dawn of Quotidian Time   124 Always Already an Oeconomic Day?  127

5 ​Three Patterns to Live By   132 The Ordered Farm   133 The Ordered Body   141 The Ordered Princeps   151

6 ​Epicurean Days? Cicero and Horace   162 Writing the Quotidian Self   162 “I Read or Write Something”   166 Retooling the Statesman’s Day (Cicero, Letters to His Friends 9.20)  168 Day of a Somebody (Horace, Satires 1.6)  179

7 ​Literary Days: Martial and Pliny the Younger   193 The Day as Factory of Lit­er­a­ture   193 Hacking the City Schedule (Martial, Epigrams 4.8)  202 Salvo et Composito Die (Pliny, Letters 9.36, 9.40)   213

8 ​­Today in Retrospect: Seneca and Marcus Aurelius   230 A Review of the Day Just Completed   230 Examining Day, Self, Life (Seneca, Moral Letters 83)  231 Retelling the Day as Rhetorical Exercise (Marcus Aurelius, Letter 4.6)   246

pa r t i i i  or de r i ng k now l e d g e 9 ​Christian Roman Days   267 Roman Daily Life from the Outside   267 Clocks at Vivarium   270 Monastic Rule . . . ​   271 . . . ​a nd Liturgical Day   276 Hymnic and Ascetic Days   280 Ausonius’s Day of Poems (Ephemeris)  283 Days with Sidonius Apollinaris (Letters 2.9)  287 Rabelais Looks Back   290

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Contents  ix

10 ​ La vie quotidienne à Rome  293 Carcopino’s Modern Curiosity   293 Five Centuries of Reassembling Roman Daily Life   297 Before Carcopino  299 Carcopino’s Moment (1939)   308 Beyond Carcopino?  316

11 ​Reading Roman Days in Modern Times   324 Early Rising and Daylight Saving   324 Roman Time as a Component of Modern Times  328 Six Revealing Tendencies of “Daily Life in Ancient Rome”  331

E pi l o gu e   349 Notes  351 Bibliography  407 Index of Passages   437 General Index  449

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i l lus t r at ions

Fig. 1. Conical sundial, marble, Theater of Dionysus, date unknown, Athens 33 Fig. 2. Quarter s­ pherical sundial, third c­ entury CE, Aphrodisias 34 Fig. 3. Clepsydra (original and restored), c. 400 BCE, Athens 35 Fig. 4. Portable suspension sundial with rings, bronze, third to fourth ­century CE, Philippi, Greece 40 Fig. 5. Mosaic with three panels, third ­century CE, Antioch 44 Fig. 6. Funeral stele of Theodotus and wife, second ­century BCE 46 Fig. 7. Conical sundial, date unknown, Megara 60 Fig. 8. Comitium reconstruction showing sun-­tracking sightlines of the accensus from the Curia steps 93 Fig. 9. Sundial, T ­ emple of Apollo, first c­ entury CE, Pompeii 96 Fig. 10. Lund School time map 121 Fig. 11. Sundial and reader / parasite, House of the Sundial, late-­third ­ century CE, Antioch 207 Fig. 12. Preface to Colloquium Celtis 260 Fig. 13. Front cover of Jérôme Carcopino’s La vie quotidienne à Rome à l’apogée de l’empire (1939) 309 Fig. 14. T ­ able of contents for part 2 of Jérôme Carcopino’s La vie quotidienne à Rome à l’apogée de l’empire (1939) 332 Fig. 15. Chapter outline for chapter 1 of Jean-­Rodolphe D’Arnay’s De la vie privée des romains (1760) 333 Fig. 16. Roman-­modern hour correlations 336 Fig. 17. Roman-­modern hour correlations 337 Fig. 18. Parts of the Roman day and night 338

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ac k now l ­e d g m e n t s

I have been fascinated by the topic of the Roman day ever since I opened a copy of Jérôme Carcopino’s Daily Life in Ancient Rome some twenty-­five years ago. My explorations have been sustained by teachers, friends, students, and f­ amily members. Tony Long, Leslie Kurke, Timothy Hampton, and William Fitzgerald, my advisors at Berkeley, w ­ ere all patient and encouraging as I explored time initially in connection with Seneca. Thomas Rosenmeyer gave same-­day responses to overlong chapters. Seminars with Maurizio Bettini and Liu Xin introduced me to approaches in anthropology and sociology. My gradu­ate cohort made all my work feel like a team effort, and for this I thank especially Yelena Baraz, Laura Gibbs, Celina Gray, David Larsen, Melissa Mueller, Josephine Quinn, Dylan Sailor, Enrica Sciarrino, Patricia Slatin, and Sarah Stroup. I dedicate this book to the memory of Antonia Syson, our classmate and friend, who was a creative-­thinking scholar, teacher, reader, and critic. Antonia’s early death remains a ­great sadness to all who ­were lucky enough to have known her, while the memory of her perspicacity and generosity continues to inspire. My work gained much from two mentors, Thomas Habinek and Natalie Kampen, both also now sorely missed. Page duBois shared her “Everyday Life” syllabus with me. Denis Feeney was always encouraging. My colleagues and students in Penn’s Classical Studies Department have been unflagging in their support and lavish with their insights over many years. For crucial suggestions or sharing of work at vari­ous moments, additional thanks go to Ann Agee, Ronnie Ancona, John Bodel, Susanna Braund, Ginna Closs, Kathleen Coleman, Roland Färber, Joseph Farrell, Siyen Fei, Emma Gee, the late Robert Germany, Kate Gilhuly, Caitlin Gillespie, Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Erik Gunderson, Wesley Hanson, Christian Kaesser, Ann Kuttner, the late Mary LeBlanc, Heather Love, Jay Lucci, Christina Lupton, Kassandra Miller, Kathryn Morgan, John Oksanish, Timothy O’­Sullivan, Molly Pasco-­Pranger, Christoph Pieper,

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xiv  Acknowl­ edgments

­ rsula Poole, Dot Porter, Alex Purves, Brendon Reay, Sofie Remijsen, Gretchen U Reydams-­Schils, Andrew Riggsby, Matthew Roller, John Schafer, Kristina Sessa, Wilson Shearin, Steven Smith, Sacha Stern, Sam Storey, Sarah Symons, William Tortorelli, Christopher Trinacty, Jeffrey Ulrich, Ann Vasaly, Timothy Warnock, Antje Wessels, and Gareth Williams. In my field-­testing of vari­ous portions of the book, I was fortunate to receive feedback from audiences at the University of Amsterdam (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft CHRONOS), Columbia University, City University of New York Gradu­ate Center, the Delaware Valley Medieval Association, Fordham University (Early Modern Workshop), Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel Institute for Advanced Studies), Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, Prince­ton University, Rutgers University, Stanford University, University of Toronto, Trinity University, UCLA, and Wellesley College. I thank the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences and the American Council of Learned Socie­ties (2010) for sabbatical fellowships at impor­ tant stages. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to Matt McAdam and Emily Mackil, who helped to launch the series in which this book appears, to editor Catherine Goldstead, and to MJ Devaney, who copyedited the book and substantially improved my prose. Two anonymous reviewers provided prompt and productive comments. Lastly, I owe special gratitude to Jo, Jinsu, and my extended f­amily of Kers and Parks, whose patience and good cheer have been never ending.

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no t e on t r a ns l at ions a n d a bbr e v i at ions

I have supplied my own translations (except in a few cases as indicated), using standard Oxford or Teubner texts. Abbreviations throughout are standardized to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford Latin Dictionary, L’année philologique, and Eleanor Dickey’s The Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana (for individual titles among the colloquia).

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The Ordered Day

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Introduction

Spurinna’s Rule This book concerns the face of time most manifest to Romans—­t heir days.1 True, much of their daily time would have been forgettable to them themselves, especially in its ordinary details. But ordinary details have reached us, and not by accident. The t­ hing is, a fair number of the Romans whose voices are still preserved in writing found daily time indispensable for telling their story of Rome or for talking about their lives. Many modern authors have shared in this interest and have sought to lead us back into the temporal cabinet of curiosities that is the Roman day. Daily time, almost by its very nature, fades from memory quickly. Pliny the Younger, writing to a friend at the end of the first ­century CE, reels off a list of his social duties during days in Rome, such as attending a marriage betrothal ceremony and signing a w ­ ill. He then complains that “on the day you did t­ hese ­things they seem necessary. Yet the same ­things seem empty, once you realize that you did them e­ very day [cotidie]” (Ep. 1.9.3).2 His remark alludes, by contrast, to the higher levels of time and narrative from which this quotidian sameness has distracted him.3 But the same Pliny makes the opposite argument a­ fter he visits the former consul Vestricius Spurinna at his villa outside the city. Spurinna’s activities span

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2   The Ordered Day

exercise, socializing, and literary pursuits, and they would be “trivial” (parva) “if they w ­ eren’t done e­very day [cotidie]” (3.1.3); that is, b­ ecause they are done ­every day they assume significance.4 The fact of daily repetition h ­ ere allows small actions to define what Pliny refers to as a “rule” and a “life” (hanc regulam . . . ​ hanc . . . ​vitam) (3.1.3, 11).5 In Pliny’s hands, furthermore, the el­derly Spurinna’s rule becomes a pattern for broader knowledge of ancient Roman life-­forms. How does this work? We can discern the signifying possibilities of Roman daily time by attending to three main questions. First, how did the day as a unit of sociocultural time emerge and evolve in the Roman world, and how did Romans themselves tell and interpret the story of its development? Spurinna’s routine includes some awareness of clock time, such as when the “hour for bathing” is announced, “in winter the ninth, in summer the eighth” (3.1.8). Such details need to be referred to a history of how Roman diurnal time was or­ga­nized, signaled, and kept.6 Second, how could someone’s routine define a specific form of life? ­A fter observing Spurinna, Pliny says that “the carefully arranged life of h ­ uman beings” (vita hominum disposita) gives him, Pliny, the same plea­sure as “the fixed course of the planets,” but he adds that it is older men’s lifestyles that he means—­ certainly not t­ hose of younger men like himself whose schedules o­ ught to be messy (3.1.2). We need to examine whose time was considered worth accounting for and how such time portraits w ­ ere composed and understood.7 Third, how was Roman daily time received in subsequent periods? Pliny’s description of Spurinna’s routine finds echoes in monastic rules such as the Rule of St. Benedict. L ­ ater still, Spurinna’s routine would become available, alongside other surviving textual and material data, for modern reconstructions of “daily life in ancient Rome.” We need to examine how such examples w ­ ere reused and to what end.8 I seek not simply to explicate the daily routine of a Spurinna but to trace the significance of an “ordered day” in the Roman sociocultural imagination. In this introduction I address the relationship between daily time and order and then situate the day in relation to other Roman time schemes, explain my focus on quotidian time, and map out the book’s three parts.

Order, Timing, Day Spurinna has recently been called “a personification of order” and Pliny’s letter a veritable “hymn to ordering.”9 Spurinna, says Pliny, “corrals” his activities “in a sequence of sorts and in a kind of cycle” (ordine quodam et velut orbe circumagit) (3.1.3). The term “ordo” connotes more than sequence ­here: it resonates with

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Introduction  3

the circular meta­phor of orbis and evokes systematicity and elegance. Cicero uses “ordo,” for example, when discussing ideals within Greek ethical discourse such as ideal arrangement (“eutaxia”; Lat. “opportunitas”) and ideal timing (“eukairia”; Lat. “occasio”) (Off. 1.142).10 In ancient rhetorical theory, “ordo” (Gk. “taxis”) “referred to the discernible results of an act of rhetorical structuring,” for which the technical term was “dispositio” (Gk. “oikonomia”).11 Spurinna’s dispositio belongs within Pliny’s broader “rhetoricization of everyday life” and engagement with “the ordering concepts” that are central to “social, literary, rhetorical, po­liti­c al, and philosophical discourse.”12 In her article “Otium as Luxuria,” Eleanor Leach observes that one of Pliny’s techniques in consoling statesmen like Spurinna was “to make the dominant class appear dominant by constructing its empire within a framework of significant time.”13 Indeed, Pliny draws multiple correlations between the ordering of Spurinna’s routine and his broader social power. When he writes that “nothing is more distinct [distinctius] than [Spurinna’s] way of life” (3.1.1), he means both that nothing is “more methodical” than his highly refined combination of activities and in turn that nothing is “more distinguished” in social prestige.14 In his subsequent description of Spurinna’s activities as “ordinata” (“or­ga­nized”) rather than “confusa” (“muddled”) (3.1.2), Pliny recognizes the quasicosmic orderliness of the old man’s routine as well as its place in a normative elite Roman life course.15 The plea­sure of watching “the fixed course of the planets” (certus siderum cursus) that is likewise experienced in watching Spurinna’s “or­ga­nized life” (vita disposita) (3.1.2) depends on an all-­powerful or­ga­nizer, as Pliny the Elder notes, namely, “the sun, the ruler [rector] of planets and sky” (HN 2.12).16 Spurinna’s day unfolds as the product of his control over the agency of ­others, the unmentioned slaves by whom “a book is read” (liber legitur) (3.1.4), “the hour for bathing is announced” (hora balinei nuntiata est) (3.1.8), and “dinner is served” (adponitur cena) (3.1.9)—­the “choreography of slave movement” facilitating the enslaver’s routine and social standing, in which a critical role is played by the enslaved time teller who mediates knowledge from the clock and by the “control of timing,” as Sandra Joshel and Lauren Petersen have argued.17 The pre­sent domestic schedule of Spurinna’s retirement is also the age-­appropriate sequel to his ­career as a military commander and three-­time consul. Pliny conveys this connection in the clearest terms when he uses “cursus” to refer directly to Spurinna’s course of magistracies (cursus honorum) (3.1.12), having already used the same word to evoke his daily routine (3.1.2).18 So Spurinna rules. In his 1984 essay “L’ordre du jour” (The order of the day), Jean Starobinski traces, from Horace forward into the industrial age and the Paris protests of

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4   The Ordered Day

May 1968, the Western forms of the “lit­er­a­ture of the day” and “everyday discipline” that he suggests ­were responding to a steadily increasing social pressure on ­people to “economize, control, and or­ga­nize” their time.19 Starobinski offers insights into a number of the primary texts that are impor­tant to my study, but for now it is enough to note the doubleness of his title, which refers to the ordering of activities in the day and the day’s role in the ordering of society. The codepen­dency between day organ­izing and the day as social or­ga­nizer is central to Spurinna’s routine—­t he order of his day—­a nd it is central to my proj­ect throughout.20 Let us consider order itself. Romans applied ordo variously to the position or sequence of positions that persons or ­t hings inhabited in relation to ­others, ­whether in space, time, society, or the cosmos. But they also readily applied it to the princi­ple or the pro­cess, explicit or implicit, by which such positioning is effected, through logics that are variously moral, economic, aesthetic, ideological, cosmic, and so forth.21 In Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire (2007), Jason König and Tim Whitmarsh devote attention not only to the local rationales that inform a given textual repre­sen­ta­tion of knowledge but also to “the ‘Imperialness’ or other­wise of t­hese knowledge-­ordering strategies.”22 Although they do not quite describe this as a m ­ atter of how specific configurations of knowledge relate to a social order or world order, this is precisely how we may understand the macro-­features of the Roman world they invoke as relevant to knowledge ordering—­features such as imperialism, monarchy, and cosmopolitanism. Foucault’s focus on historically specific forms of knowledge in The Order of ­Things (1970) helps elucidate in part how such an order functions. The relationship between a given local ordering and a bigger order, however, varies greatly from case to case and depends on the kind of discourse being analyzed. Thus, a recent article examines how aristocrats’ walking in ordine translates to a public per­for­mance of ordines in the sense of social strata.23 I frequently make reference to Anja Wolkenhauer’s Sonne und Mond, Kalender und Uhr (2011), which focuses on Roman temporal order in an examination of Roman literary repre­sen­ta­tions of horological and calendrical timekeeping.24 Daniel Gargola, in The Shape of the Roman Order: The Republic and its Spaces (2017), homes in on Rome itself as “a spatial and temporal order,” though in his account the prominent time unit is the consular year.25 He evokes an array of social functions for order: “distribute,” “represent,” “rank,” “conceptualize,” “or­ga­nize,” “depict,” “regulate.”26 The order of the day has a similar variety of functions. Although my core focus is the time unit of the day and its internal order, let me briefly signal three large-­scale projections of the Roman “ordered day” that

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Introduction  5

feature in the three parts of this book, each connected with daily time’s macro-­ ordering functions. In part 1 I take up the history of day-­ordering technologies as perceived both by the ancients and by modern scholars. Configurations of Roman “clock time” viewed through a diachronic lens w ­ ere (and often still are) consequential in the ordering of Roman history itself. Part 2 focuses on discourses of social differentiation in which the order of the day functions in the portrayal of ethos—­imagined routines, presented in a relatively synchronic light, that ­were instrumental in the ordering and reordering of Roman lives defined by social hierarchies. Part 3 traces how the Roman ordered day was refigured in subsequent accounts, when Roman daily life was constructed as an object of knowledge through a diurnally ordered heuristic matrix. By recognizing ­these broader modalities of ordering, I hope to demonstrate the extensive cultural work that the notion of the ordered day was able—­and in certain re­spects is still able— to perform. The ways a given temporal arrangement relates to the social order are defined through the operation of sociocultural time.27 This is the time that, at least since Durkheim, has been recognized as foundational for a culture or society’s existence. In functionalist terms, sociocultural time is a “coordinator.”28 Through its basic par­ameters of synchronicity, sequence, and frequency (as well as duration; time location, that is, the time at which something happens; and change), sociocultural time allows for (or rather coordinates) controlled interaction between two or more persons (or entities) in a culture.29 In his Man, Time, and Society (1963), Wilbert E. Moore maintains that the very possibility of a “social order” depends on “the temporal order,” as it allows subjects to interact through vari­ous exercises in “timing,” timing encompassing all choices regarding synchronizing, sequencing, repetition, and so on.30 In Moore’s account, the fundamental constraint on the temporal order is the “temporal scarcity” that derives from h ­ uman mortality, and this produces certain tendencies in the organ­ization of activities, such as their “concentration” in time or their “segregation” into dif­fer­ent times.31 To this we may add the feature of time’s irreversible direction (another way of construing the notion of sequence), which among other t­hings facilitates what Pierre Bourdieu calls the “work of time”—­really, the production of symbolic capital through waiting—in strategies of social exchange.32 Sociocultural time is also a superordinate concept that allows for dif­fer­ent times or temporalities to be coordinated with one another despite differences in their source, scale, dynamics, or focus.33 The goals we may envisage for this coordinative function, however, are also likely to vary depending on which sociocultural phenomenon we are analyzing or what we understand to be the relevant features of the social order.

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6   The Ordered Day

So let us refine our analy­sis to take account of (and exploit) the distinctive nature of the time unit we are concerned with: the day. ­There is no other time unit like it, even if many of the day’s dynamics belong to sociocultural time more broadly. Across cultures time tends to be most manifest in the day. Of all the units of time that assume a central role in social ordering (the most obvious comparands being the cycles of the lunar month and solar year as well as the span of a ­human life), the day is the most pervasive and certainly the shortest unit, whose internal pro­cess and serial repetition are so easily perceptible. The day’s progression is obvious to the senses due to regular events in the physiotemporal sphere—­the earth’s rotation and its corollaries in the realms of light, heat, and so forth—as well as consequent events (consequent, that is, from an evolutionary point of view) in the entrenched circadian rhythms of the biotemporal and sociotemporal spheres, above all the sleep-­wake cycle in mature ­humans.34 For the same reasons, the day has a “natu­ral” dimension lacking in other purely conventional rhythms such as the hour or the week or market cycles, which are prominent and widespread temporal units yet lack any direct basis in nature.35 For our purposes, however, it is the day’s function as an interface between nature and culture that is most relevant—­that is, how this nature-­derived unit becomes significant through the social practices of temporal ordering. Moore draws attention to two distinct foundational conceptions of diurnal time: first, “as a cycle of sequential activities” that builds on the day’s recurrence and second, “as the fixed boundary within which the demands of the body, the mind, and the social system must be satisfied by activities” that builds on the day’s finitude.36 To this we may add the day’s relative vividness and coherency as a unit of consciousness, action, and interaction, which derives to an extent from the psychological continuity of wakefulness (a continuity that is only qualified to a degree in cultures where p ­ eople take a siesta or where nocturnal sleep is segmented). This vividness is foregrounded in a phenomenological analy­sis where everyday life is presented as “the real­ity par excellence” and “a zone of lucidity ­behind which ­there is a background of darkness.”37 Such conceptions may allow the day to be i­magined as a building block for social selfhood or for biographic or historical narrative. Yet for all the day’s salience, it is also potentially not just the briefest but also the least substantial of time units, and ­human life itself may be dragged into its orbit and marked as (figuratively, if not literally) “ephemeral.”38 This scarcely exhausts the day’s pos­si­ble social-­ordering functions. We also need to acknowledge a distinct tier of conceptions concerning multiple days—­the dynamic of the “daily” or “everyday.”

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Introduction  7

Along with ­these relatively universal features, however, we need to take into consideration the variation of diurnal forms across cultures, locations, and historical periods. T ­ here are aspects of the modern Western day (and night) that are easy to take for granted. Martin Nilsson’s Primitive Time Reckoning (1920) illustrates, albeit within a teleological framework, extensive variation in how the day is known and named, how multiple days are counted, how the day is divided, and how times within the day are observed and marked, revealing an ocean of cultural diversity.39 Ethnographic data needs to be handled carefully, of course, and in full awareness of the role played by the interpreter in shaping it or in eliciting it. For example, Edward Evans-­Pritchard, in his classic study of the Nilotic culture of the Nuer, describes the physical gestures and linguistic impressions that Nuer subjects used for distinguishing times of day and observes that “­there are almost as many points of reference between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. as ­there are for the rest of the day,” putting this down to the density of morning tasks within the Nuer’s cattle-­clock-­oriented “oecological” routine.40 Janet Hoskins notes a similar concentration of early morning activities among the Kodi in Indonesia and explic­itly cites Evans-­Pritchard’s explanation but suggests that, at least for her subjects, it is to be explained by the ritual density of this part of the day, as “the time of symbolically significant transitions” in nature and by extension in the super­natural realm.41 Each such interpretation belongs to a larger story about the culture concerned and to still larger stories in which the interpreter figures. Such stories tend to be grounded in broader presuppositions about “us” and “them.” To regard differences in timekeeping as steps on a progression from primitive to modern or rational or even just to see them as symptoms of larger, epochal and qualitative, gaps between cultures, is a special case of the “denial of coevalness” critiqued by Johannes Fabian in Time and the Other (1983).42 Benjamin Lee Whorf famously illustrated his thesis of linguistically encoded cultural ontologies through an example from daily timekeeping, the Hopi’s supposed belief in the eternal recurrence of a single identical day as reflected in their use of ordinal rather than cardinal modifiers when enumerating days.43 At the other extreme is a denial or suppression of difference, the converse of Fabian’s “allochronism.” 44 This may include notions of intercultural compatibility based on similarity of timekeeping practices (Fabian’s “typological” time).45 Along this methodological spectrum, then, ­there are at least two danger zones. At one end lies the extreme cultural relativism that would credit the existence of a metaphysically dif­fer­ent time, in one culture or another, that moves now faster now slower or backward or in circles—­a hyper-­Durkheimian approach

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8   The Ordered Day

of the kind critiqued by Alfred Gell in The Anthropology of Time (1992).46 At the other end is a belief in a straightforward translatability that is reflected in Evans-­Pritchard’s “between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m.”; such time conversions as t­hese are criticized by Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift for casually equating times that are better treated as “incommensurate,” at least for the purposes of cultural comparison and “differential history.” 47 In the case of the Romans, ­there are equal risks in exaggerating or in downplaying culturally distinctive details in relation to “our” “modern” timekeeping practices. Thus we need to be vigilant as we walk the line between Rome as other and Rome as familiar.48 To the extent that the relatively homogeneous daily culture of the modern Western city frames the way we view the Roman day, it may be useful to sketch ­here a definition of “clock time.” I use “clock time” as shorthand for a cluster of overlapping but separable phenomena: (1) the division of the day into subparts such as hours; (2) precision in scheduling and its implications for h ­ uman activity; (3) devices allowing for timekeeping within the day; and (4) a migration of time authority from the sun’s apparent course to other loci—­whether to devices or to other social “sources” of time.49 ­These components of clock time, whose variations result in dif­fer­ent daily “timescapes,” have evolved in conjunction with one another over several millennia, in a so-­c alled civilizing pro­cess that tends to invite ­grand historical narratives, usually triumphalist though sometimes pessimistic.50 Seeming watersheds along the way include the adoption and ongoing refinement of the mechanical clock and the “order” it symbolizes, in both public and private settings; the adoption of hours of equal and unvarying extent; and the scheduling and coordination of social time in cities.51 A favorite though much-­contested premodern point of reference is the cenobitic monastery, whose theologically anchored “order” of daily routine regulated by the clock has sometimes been seen as the prototype of the modern urban factory and its working day.52 Yet genealogies of modern clock time also often reach back into the Roman world (and less often to Greece); in t­ hese accounts early limitations of or advances in day division, precise scheduling, devices, and time authorities serve as foils or prototypes for the modern sociotemporal order, depending on the historian’s emphasis. In the final chapter of this book I argue that innovations in clock time beginning around five centuries ago steered the curiosity of modern neoantiquarians as they set about reconstructing Romans’ hour-­by-­hour time experience. In embarking on this study, however, and pursuing a culturally specific account of Roman conceptions of clock time, I freely acknowledge that the focus on clock time itself is limiting and teleological. Research has already revealed

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Introduction  9

other significant features of Roman daily time that do not fit u ­ nder even the broadest umbrella of clock time or that diverge from it, such as in the idea of time as space or flow or in the gendering of cyclic and linear time in Roman love elegy.53 In Time Blind: Prob­lems in Perceiving Other Temporalities (2017), Kevin Birth observes how, within world anthropology “the clock and Gregorian calendar” are “exotic and unusual ways of representing time.”54 I do not entirely disavow the modern aspiration that I document in the final two chapters, namely, to excavate from Rome an early version of “our” clock time (­whether rudimentary or protomodern). Yet while we can discover much in the pro­cess, much of importance w ­ ill also be missed.

The Day in Roman Time In the Roman day we encounter a day that shapes and is s­ haped by the social order of Rome’s culture, city, empire, p ­ eoples. Its distinctiveness can be traced across the par­ameters of clock time in details that I elaborate on in my study.55 Divisions of day and night included, in overlapping historical stages, parts distinguished by linguistic expressions (e.g., conticinium, the silence between cockcrow and dawn), four nocturnal “watches” (vigiliae), halves or quarters of the daylight span, twelve daylight hours and twelve nocturnal hours expanding and contracting throughout the year in inverse proportion to one another (“seasonal” or “unequal” hours), and twenty-­four hours of unvarying extent (“equinoctial” or “equal” hours). The prevalent use of the seasonal hour meant that the time of day could be determined without any specific focus on duration.56 The term “hora” was etymologized not always through its connection to Greek “hôra” / “hôrê” (“season,” “time,” “youth”) but also, for example, via the Egyptian solar god Horus (Macrob. Sat. 1.21.13) or the “margin” (ora) of time (see Isid. Orig. 5.29.2). According to astrology, each individual hour of the night and day exercised rulership over a person’s life and activities—­hence the focus on birth hour in Roman horoscopes.57 Day (dies, lux) could be conceived of in more than one way: the official Roman civil day extended from midnight to midnight alongside a more popu­lar identification of the day with the natu­ral span of daylight.58 Daily time was scheduled within a framework of broad qualitative categorizations, such as morning officia or negotia versus after­noon otium. We see dif­ fer­ent emphases in Juvenal’s statement that “the day itself is differentiated by a splendid ordering” (ipse dies pulchro distinguitur ordine rerum) (1.127) and an observation in a ­legal text that “the greater part of each day [cuiusque diei maior pars] is the first seven hours, not the last ones” (Dig. 50.16.2).59 ­There are also

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more specific accounts such as Martial’s Epigrams 4.8—­one of our case studies in chapter 7—­which gives an hour-­specific list comprising salutatio (first to second hours of daylight), lawcourts (third), vari­ous labores (fourth to fifth), siesta (sixth to seventh), physical exercise (eighth to ninth), dinner (ninth), and convivium (tenth). ­There are also special schedules for the amphitheater, lawcourts, senate, and public baths, as well as for religious rituals, w ­ ater access, wheeled traffic, and specific occupations. Modern-­style precision is elusive or, more likely, was not sought a­ fter by the Romans, although historians continue to debate ­whether hour indications concern a point in time (arrival or completion of the specified hour) or a span of time (the duration of that hour’s passage).60 Timekeeping devices ranged from sun-­tracking cityscapes and monuments to sundials and ­water clocks, located both in public places such as forums, ­temples, or bath­houses and in elite domestic spaces; portable sundials ­were also in use. Task-­specific timers such as clepsydrae ­were employed in specialized contexts: the army, the lawcourts, and so forth. The sources of time-­telling authority varied in accordance with the range of devices: sundials and sun-­tracking complexes allowed for a putatively natu­ral time authority in the sun’s position, though this was usually mediated through observers. Auditory signaling was available both in regular forms (e.g., each quarter marked with a bugle blast in the city, as well as more local signaling such as bathing hour indicated by bell or gong) and in more ad hoc forms (e.g., enslaved persons sent to find out the hour). Conflicting time authorities are foregrounded in the much-­quoted quip from Seneca that “you w ­ ill sooner find agreement between phi­los­o­phers [inter philosophos] than between clocks [inter horologia]” (Apocol. 2.2). The Roman day is multiply distinctive. During daylight, for example, the sky is overdetermined by Jupiter’s traditional identification as Diespiter (sky f­ ather; see Varr. Ling. 5.66.2) and equally by the ­limited light resources for night work and suspicions about nocturnal activity as being beyond day’s order.61 ­There are the rhythms of Rome’s daily social traffic as well as the Roman empire’s extension not only from sunrise in the east to sunset in the west (ab ortu ad occasum) but also into northern and southern regions of dif­fer­ent latitude and thus of distinct physiotemporal character.62 Anecdotes about Rome’s day w ­ ere sometimes investigated by antiquarian observers of Rome such as Plutarch, who asked (among his multiple questions concerning time), “Why do they make the beginning of the day from the ­middle of the night?” (Quaest. Rom. 84). Aulus Gellius informs us that a person could not be physically punished on the same day as he had supplicated the flamen dialis (priest of Jupiter) and describes other

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Introduction  11

restrictions on what this priest could do “­under the open sky as if ­under the eyes of Jove” (NA 10.15.10; 21). Macrobius, delving into the Aeneid, uses the Sibyl’s urgent words that “night is coming fast, Aeneas” (nox ruit, Aenea) (6.539) as evidence that Virgil has night begin in the after­noon b­ ecause he treats the Roman day as beginning at midnight (Sat. 1.3.11). In Latin lit­er­a­ture in its own right, diurnal time indications such as poetic sunrise and sunset formulas are never just that but also function as complex signifiers. Virgil’s narration of the morning on which Vulcan made the armor for Aeneas extends from the simile of the old w ­ oman who rises ­after midnight to Evander’s discovery that “Aeneas too was already up and about with the morning” (nec minus Aeneas se matutinus agebat) (8.407–15, 454–66).63 Seneca’s comment about disagreeing clocks turns out to be also about irreconcilable indications of time in prosaic and poetic modes.64 ­These and other anecdotal phenomena have offered starting points for both ancient and modern observers exploring Roman cultural subjectivity.65 In the pre­sent study I touch on only a few of t­ hese areas of interest. Four pervasive features can be anticipated h ­ ere, however. The first is that while in the surviving evidence we find a Hellenized lingua franca of hour observation using sundials and ­water clocks ­there is also a distinctive Roman shaping of clock time. The most frequently cited example of this is the common usage of “hora” in Latin to refer to “hour,” a use that contrasts with the predominant senses of Greek “hôra” and “hôrê,” “time” and “season,” but it features in all the par­ameters of clock time.66 The second is that the seasonal hours—­expanding and contracting, in contrast with the equinoctial hours that ­were widely known yet reserved for scientific and technical contexts—­made for a less homogeneous and more dynamic conception of the day, connected to visibly “natu­ral” rhythms.67 The third is that throughout Latin lit­er­a­ture we encounter writing that serves as an orientation into daily time for both author and audience, the text itself thus serving as a time technology. The fourth is that ancient Rome is the earliest Western culture for which we are able to undertake a detailed exploration not only of the day as a time structure but of an “everyday,” a rubric that occupies a privileged spot in my analy­sis. In the Roman day we encounter a “short time” that is always also coordinated with longer time schemes.68 In the Roman civic calendar, each day’s distinctive official status was s­ haped by categorial combinations of what Ovid calls the “rules of the vari­ous days” (variorum iura dierum) (Fast. 1.45).69 ­These encompassed the monthly recurrence of Kalends, Nones, and Ides, together with the intervening days, whose relationships to t­ hese marked days are themselves often impor­tant, and the demarcation of each day in the year as F, N, EN, C, and

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so forth, indicating po­liti­cal and juridical constraints and allowances; the eight-­ day nundinal cycle, marked A–­H, that had implications for social traffic between countryside and city; specific festivals through the year (fixed and movable; public, domestic, and personal; w ­ hole day or half day); and the larger traditional rhythms of season or year.70 Beyond the civic calendar we encounter birthdays of persons and places, astrological patterns (seven-­day cycle, lunar month, zodiac sign, e­ tc.), and days marked “meliore lapillo” (“with a superior pebble”) as if to signify a personal anniversary (Persius 2.1).71 Exploring annual public commemorations of an impor­tant day in Rome’s collective history offered ancient thinkers an opportunity to learn something about Rome and about being Roman. Propertius sets out to “sing the festivals, gods, and ancient names of places” (sacra deosque canam et cognomina prisca locorum) (4.1a.69), while Ovid promises in his Fasti to show “the festivals excavated from the ancient annals, and why each day came to be marked as it is” (sacra . . . ​annalibus eruta priscis / et quo sit merito quaeque notata dies) (1.7–8). Scholars have given us some useful ways to think about t­ hese discourses, including as a pageant of Roman history experienced in the day’s mythic time and as an experience of the “same” day again, a “wormhole” in history.72 Ovid’s newly appreciated calendar poem, Fasti, provides an unmatchable opportunity to trace the interplay of t­ hese time dynamics in a precise Augustan literary and cultural moment.73 Calendrical discourse provided Romans with “a way of thinking historically about religion” at a time when deities and rituals ­were being added to the year.74 The corpus of surviving calendars, from the inscribed fasti of the late republican and early imperial periods to the pagan-­Christian codex calendar of Filocalus in 354 CE, exhibit the cultural poetics of time as a medium of personal and collective identity formation.75 While the multiple calendrical designations of the Roman day had major implications for the day’s temporal, social, and religious ordering, the day was also caught up in secular and less calendrically oriented time schemes. The noncalendrical day’s potential as a unit for narrative is actualized in dif­fer­ent ways across cultural domains. In ancient proverbs, the passage of days brings with it light, truth, healing, deterioration, death.76 In literary genres ranging from epic to tragedy, satire, historiography, and epistolography, vari­ous “chronotopes” centering on the day serve as a crucible for biographic or historical narrative.77 Among myriad examples, the seventh book of Lucan’s Civil War is an especially intense fusion of tragic, epic, and historiographic modalities: from the sun’s reluctant rise (7.1–6) to the “night huge with evils” (nox ingens scelerum) (571), the poet describes the day (diem) of the ­battle of Pharsalus as one “that would

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Introduction  13

seal the fate of ­human affairs forever” (qui fatum rebus in aevum / conderet humanis) and would determine “what Rome would be” or “what Rome was” (Roma quid esset) (131–32).78 When we shift our attention to Rome’s cityscape, at ­every turn we see dynamics of daily time being leveraged for formation of memory and identity. The republican-­era round t­ emple on the Campus Martius dedicated to “Fortune of This Very Day” (fortuna huiusce diei) commemorated July 30, on which (as indicated on some surviving Roman calendars) Q. Lutatius Catulus had defeated the Cimbrians in 101 BCE.79 One of the two obelisks that Augustus had plundered from Egypt, also erected on the Campus Martius, evidently functioned as a meridian (not a sundial as such) whose noontime shadow could track the time of year; the monument was equally implicated in the time schemes of imperial history and of Augustus’s own biography and dynastic succession.80 Comparable correlations between the day and bigger time units have been brought to light in Christine Kondoleon’s survey of “temporal images” in domestic spaces across the imperial Roman world: ­t hese mosaics and paintings, which depict every­thing from sundials to months, festivals, and eternity (aiôn), “help elucidate a pro­cess whereby Romans, wherever they might reside, ­were synchronized to a central clock, one set in the mythic and historic time of Rome.”81 We cannot confidently treat the day in primarily evolutionary terms. Denis Feeney, in the epilogue to his Caesar’s Calendar (2007), tentatively suggests that “a chronologically or­ga­nized study of Roman time would perhaps begin with the layout of the comitium area in the Forum, with its line of sight used for determining and announcing sunrise, noon, and sunset; it might then continue to investigate the use of buildings and of sundials to or­ga­nize the timely routines of law, politics, and commerce.” 82 But it is questionable w ­ hether t­ hings would have developed or could have developed in quite that order in the city of Rome. The registering of diurnal time presupposes that the day concerned has already been deemed significant within a quasicalendrical structure. Fortunately, however, as chapters 1–3 suggest, we do not need to take a stand on the exact chronology of diurnal timekeeping to be able to observe the ordered day at work in accounts of early Rome. Horace is a good example of a Roman writer attuned to the day’s implication in broader time schemes. In his epilogue, Feeney quotes from Odes 4.7 (ll. 7–16) to show how the poet alludes to “time frames” that “capture the recurrent cyclical rhythms of hourly, daily, monthly, seasonal, and annual time, all of them squeezing on the individual’s forward movement t­ oward death.”83 As we

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embark on this study, it is worth noting how daily time and hourly time function in Horace’s poem. For instance, the poet’s reference to “the hora that snatches the nurturing day” (almum / quae rapit hora diem) (4.7.8–9), which like the year (annus) “warns” (monet) you “not to hope for immortal ­things,” likely has a complex sense that exploits the implications of Greek hôra (season) and also treats Latin hora (hour) as a seasonally variable daylight hour.84 For in the verses that follow, the poet evokes the seasonal sequence that contracts the day u ­ ntil the arrival of the winter solstice, or bruma (l. 12), which, as Feeney notes, is an abbreviated form of brevissima (that is, dies; shortest day).85 So, not only does the hour chip away at the day but the season ravages both day and hour—­the hour thereby becoming what other ancient authors refer to as a hora hiberna (winter hour).86 Horace appears to go one step further in dramatizing diurnal time’s passage in the poem’s concluding words “we are dust and shadow” (pulvis et umbra sumus) (4.7.12). For beyond the evident wordplay of “umbra” and “bruma,” the final two words may well evoke the shadow of the gnomon on a sundial.87 The day certainly serves h ­ ere as a primary interface between the Roman reader’s most immediate sense of time at the level of the seasonally varying hour and the larger times that are at issue in Horace’s lyric with its heightened attention to a historical moment in which, as Feeney puts it, “­things ­were changing fast” especially in the “merging” of “Roman time and natu­ral time.”88 During the Augustan age, as Hunter Gardner has argued, experiences such as coming of age w ­ ere constrained by new time pressures for the young men and w ­ omen of the Roman elite.89 We encounter other facets of Horace’s Augustan time consciousness across his oeuvre in connection with his more personalized sketch of his own daily routine in Satires 1.6, which is one of my case studies in chapter 6. For now it is enough to observe that the Roman day and its parts frequently function as the temporal location where the movement, intersection, or “meshing” of vari­ous broader time schemes can most visibly be accessed, dramatized, and coordinated.90

Quotidian Time While the Roman day’s relationship to bigger time schemes is relevant to my study, my goal is to strip away the overlays whenever this can ­free us to explore quotidian time, the time scheme produced by iteration of the day qua day. Pliny, as I observed at the beginning, uses “cotidie” (“­every day”) in the Letters with varying implications, devaluing iterated activities at one moment and touting their value at the next (1.9.3 vs. 3.1.3, 1.10.10). The larger phenomenon to which

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Introduction  15

this varying assessment belongs is Pliny’s ongoing se­lection between vari­ous context-­specific “­mental models” of time and space.91 Spurinna’s own ­career trajectory illustrates this: in book 1 Pliny describes how he ran into Spurinna in the city, in the portico of Livia, when they ­were each en route to the other’s ­house first ­thing amid the morning bustle of salutatio (1.5.8–9). This memory is displaced by book 3’s snapshot of Spurinna in retirement: each morning, during the exact same time, Spurinna “keeps to his couch” (mane lectulo continetur) (3.1.4).92 The range of pos­si­ble time-­use models grows exponentially when we consider the polysemic complexity of the everyday. Spurinna, once again, is a case in point. Although the everyday rule of his rural villa would seem to define the bliss in which he ­will live out his final years, comments made by Pliny in a ­later letter reveal that this was a time when Spurinna and his wife ­were mourning the recent death of their adult son Cottius (3.10.1).93 Was the daily routine Pliny observed on his visit (3.1) perhaps a state of exception—an intensive exercise in self-­consolation, or perhaps a symptom of melancholy, rather than an ordinary form of retirement? Pliny also lets slip that his visit to Spurinna’s ­house had taken place at a time when ­there was a public festival in the city ( festis diebus) (3.10.2)—­a suspension of the daily duties he would ordinarily have had to attend to. Although we have seen that Pliny mocks normal daily duties as seeming “necessary, on the day you did them,” but “empty, once you realize that you did them e­ very day [cotidie]” (1.9.3), my consideration of his letters as a case study in chapter 7 suggests that this deprecation of his own everyday life is not to be taken at face value. We need, then, to theorize everyday or quotidian time and to consider its implications in a Roman context. “Everyday time” designates diurnal time in an iterative aspect, but ­there are multiple descriptive terms we could apply to it, each spotlighting its own set of structural, psychosocial, or ideological concerns, often to the point of contradicting ­others. Everyday time is open to seemingly endless reconceptualization.94 Its iterative dimension may be uncontroversial, but the choice, say, of ­whether to figure this in linear or circular terms is highly consequential. Certainly the analy­sis of everyday time by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann as “irreversible” in the sense that it imposes socially determined sequences within our mortal life course takes us in a dif­fer­ent direction than does Anthony Giddens’s notion of everyday time as “reversible,” even timeless.95 Reacting against the Lund School’s time-­geographic analy­sis of a person’s everyday spatiotemporal paths using lines rather than loops, Giddens observes that “the very adjective ‘day-­to-­day’ and its synonyms indicate that time

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­ ere is constituted only in repetition.”96 Yet what do we mean by daily repetih tion? Eviatar Zerubavel, for example, points out that something “occurring precisely e­ very twenty-­four hours,” “anchored” in a specific time location and thus “tak[ing] place routinely at fixed times of the day,” is dif­fer­ent from something “occurring e­ very day,” where the exact time location of an activity within the day may vary considerably.97 An approach to everyday time as “ordinary,” in turn, may focus our attention on ­humans’ psychological need for most day-­to-­day events to be predictable and inconspicuous, for certain t­hings to be classified as aesthetically or narratologically plain, or for events that are repeated to be perceived as the default thrumming of the “sociotemporal order”—­contrasting, perhaps, with any one of the multiple ways in which a given time could count as singular, extraordinary.98 An emphasis on everyday time’s “disciplinary” aspect may elicit questions about the source and the goal of the disciplining authority or about how time discipline w ­ ill be exhibited in a given person’s schedule. Perhaps time discipline concerns the schedule’s internal “regularity,” as in the case of Spurinna, but perhaps instead (or as well) it concerns “standardization” in relation to other schedules or “coordination” with o­ thers, none of t­ hese being exactly the same t­ hing.99 Glennie and Thrift concede the profound “ordinariness” of clock time—“its power of making ­things mundane”—­even as their study, Shaping the Day (2009), subjects clock time’s components to particularizing historical analy­sis.100 When the informally defined field of “everyday life studies” and the “critique of everyday life” emerged in the twentieth ­century, its explicators focused on a modern condition connected with industrialism and capitalism. But despite shared Marxist premises, analysts in that field in its infancy w ­ ere drawn to diverse topics between the extremes of longue durée and microhistory, constraint and re­sis­tance, structures and agency, and discourses and experiences.101 As Ben Highmore notes in a survey of the field that maps out such theoretical dichotomies, the study of everyday life is “a form of attention that strug­gles to articulate an intractable object (daily life) in the full knowledge that the everyday is always g­ oing to exceed the ability to register it.”102 Equally varied are the forms of the quotidian we glimpse in ancient Rome. An exploration of Roman sermo cotidianus (everyday speech) as a proletarian contrast or a stylistic ideal would lead us into sociolinguistics and rhetorical theory, whereas a study of morning salutatio (greeting) as one of Rome’s most culturally distinctive officia cotidiana (daily duties [Suet. Aug. 60]) would attend to the ritualized reproduction of social identities and hierarchies.103 One articulation of everyday routine as a foil for Roman identity formation comes in a

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Introduction  17

fragment of Varro in which the speaker draws a contrast between the graying effect of quotidianized urban life and the sparsity of an archaic nundinal (that is, eight-­day) cycle when he exclaims or possibly asks “how often did an ancient rustic Roman shave his beard between market days [internundinum]”—­the idea being, seldom, if ever! (Men. 186 = Non. 214m).104 It would be a separate proj­ect again to trace oppositions between quotidian and festive. Horace, for instance, in the Odes, articulates the everyday permanence of the eternal city through a (plausibly) quotidian ritual, “the priest climb[ing] the Capitol along with the ­silent Virgin” (3.30.8–9), and in religion the flamen dialis is classified as “festive, day in and day out” (cotidie feriatus) (Gell. NA 10.15.16).105 Such notions may hearken back to Heraclitus’s critique of Hesiod’s differentiation between days that are fortunate and days that are not: the phi­los­o­pher had claimed that all days are the same—­that “the nature of day is one” (phusin hêmeras mian ousan) (DK 22 B106).106 However, in a double move that first quotidianizes and then reritualizes, Seneca reacts to the Saturnalia by suggesting that in our moral conduct “nothing need be modified from everyday custom [ex cotidiana consuetudine]” (Ep. 18.2) but then introduces a temporary regimen—­“you should insert some days” (interponas aliquot dies)—­that is more intensely ascetic than everyday simplicity (18.5).107 Quotidianization also plays a role in Josephus’s famous portrait of the Roman army: it is always ready for combat ­because “each soldier trains ­every day [hosêmerai] with total commitment, exactly as if he w ­ ere in b­ attle”; not only do the troops’ exercises become “combats without blood” but combat itself becomes a merely quotidian m ­ atter, “exercises with blood” (BJ 3.73, 75). It would thus be too easy to postulate, with Henri Lefebvre, “the total absence of everyday life” in ancient Greece and Rome, where “nothing had as yet become prosaic, not even the quotidian.”108 This may be just the provocation we need to begin historicizing how the everyday was (or is) understood and used in precise Roman contexts. In the penultimate chapter of this book I return to Lefebvre’s critique in connection with my survey of the vari­ous aspects of the everyday at work in modern conceptions of Roman daily life that themselves sometimes connect with specific ancient notions. Even t­ here, however, I do not fully address the profound historiographic questions about the form(s) that a portrait of everyday Rome could or should take. In this book I am concerned with Roman quotidian time in a circumscribed set of discourses about Roman forms of life. Thus, I make only selective use of the vari­ous pos­si­ble approaches I have sketched. My focus is quotidian time as common time, communal time, contrastive time, narrative time. This emphasis is in part my way of filtering out time

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schemes that are foregrounded in most existing studies of Roman time, such as the calendrical and festive, in order to examine the temporal order that all or most days have in common, but it is also the case that many of the repre­sen­ta­ tions I consider seek to sustain an everyday temporal order that was purposely distinguished from other temporal rhythms. Within this common everyday time, however, t­ here is one longer cycle that it would be truly artificial to ignore, and that is the fluctuation of the seasons: the Roman everyday is inseparable from the dynamics of seasonal variation in the length of daylight, night, and the hours. Further, within the overall context of a common everyday time I am concerned with the everyday shared in by every­one in a given community (world, empire, city, institution, ­house­hold, e­ tc.). Most often, exploring this topic involves focusing on how the temporal order of a subgroup or individual (itself a more exclusive form of everyday life) is defined through contrast with that of the majority. In other words, I make figure-­ground comparisons between one form of everyday time and another (one “time orientation” and another).109 One other special emphasis, even as I filter out larger calendrical time schemes, is the ways in which everyday time is a staging area for broader narrative structures. What this emphasis reveals, on the one hand, is the failure of everyday time—or at least the failure of one form of everyday time, as contrasted with another—to provide a foothold for consequential narrative, given its position at the bottom of a hierarchy of time schemes. On the other hand, it also brings to light the dynamics by which everyday repetition sometimes gestates or “dramatizes” a bigger story.110 An area of everyday Roman time that proves particularly elusive concerns ­those whose time is not recognized in any direct or detailed way by the literary texts on which we rely, t­ hese texts being mostly the work of a small subgroup of Roman society. It is certainly worth keeping in mind the observations of Stefan Hanss: “Time talk should prompt historians to think about who actually had the power to talk about time, and to what extent participation in such discourses generated and challenged authority. Whose knowledge about time and practices of timing did history and do historians value, and how did this shape the stories we tell about the past?”111 Even in instances where we are able to glean a partial sketch of, say, the daily routine of Spurinna’s wife or of Marcus Aurelius’s slaves discussed by Galen, we are for the most part reproducing a form of “time talk” that is conditioned by fantasies of elite masculine selfhood. It is true, as Joshel and Petersen observe in The Material Life of Roman Slaves (2014), that

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Introduction  19

when Pliny the Younger devotes a letter to his own daily movements, “refocusing our attention on which slaves are on call when and where Pliny is at any par­tic­u­lar moment” reveals “the gaps of time and the places open for slave occupation in the own­er’s absence” (194–95)—an approach that proves very productive in their proj­ect. It lies beyond the scope of the pre­sent book, however, to trace the alternative schedules—in some cases, alternative notions of time itself—­that would allow us to do justice to other forms of Roman life that are presently less salient. Let me conclude by painting in broad brush strokes the three distinct aspects of the everyday that preside over the three parts of this book, providing a multifaceted illustration of the dif­fer­ent type of ordering work in which the Roman everyday is implicated. Part 1 considers the historical emergence of everyday Roman time in the sense of the time-­ordering structures specific to each and ­every day rather than ­those specific only to some days and not to ­others. Part 2 focuses on the special efficacy of an iterated daily routine as a social and ethical showcase for a given form of life, as well as on the textual technologies by which ­these day patterns w ­ ere perpetuated. Part 3 concerns specific uses of an everyday framework by ­later audiences seeking to relate to Roman life, including early Christians seeking to establish a distinctive form of life while still surrounded by Roman rhythms and modern writers offering their avid readers a way to acclimatize themselves to the Roman life of the deep past.

The Shape of this Book Although I have sketched the book’s structure from several a­ ngles already, let me now preview its main argument and its case studies. Part 1, “Ordering Histories,” considers Roman diurnal timekeeping along a diachronic axis. I do not aim to reconstruct a s­ imple chronological account—­and this not only b­ ecause of major gaps in the evidence but ­because of the teleological fallacy to which such an account is prone. Diachronic perspectives are available to us, but they are inseparable from the contestatory rhe­toric by which one temporal order and its associated social order are elevated or critiqued in comparison with o­ thers. This rhe­toric is deployed by multiple authorities, and we have more to gain from studying their parochial views on the relationship between their past and their pre­sent than if we w ­ ere to winnow out the fiction from the facts that are yet more fragmentary. It is in the fictions themselves that our facts lie—­facts about the role played by daily time in the ordering and reordering of Rome’s cultural history. In chapter 1, “In Search of Palamedes,” we begin with the second-­century

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20   The Ordered Day

BCE fragment from Plautus in which a character laments the invention of the hours and sundials. This tirade against the “first inventor” serves as a springboard for my survey of the multiple starting points of diurnal timekeeping in Greco-­Roman history—­and I conclude by introducing a contrasting and complementary viewpoint from the sixth c­ entury CE, Cassiodorus’s late-­imperial retrospect on the connections between clock time and Rome’s self-­assigned civilizing mission. Chapter 2, “The Long-­Legged Fly?,” interrogates the data available for tracing clock time’s development. For a rich array of time indications in Latin lit­er­a­ture from the late republic allows us to put pressure on the general assumption that precision increased in Rome only ­after the first ­century BCE and offers tantalizing hints about the origins of such precision and about the qualified innovations of specific “Palamedes” figures such as Julius Caesar. Fi­nally, in “Telling Roman Time” (ch. 3), I home in on the most extensive ancient accounts of clock time’s arrival to and evolution in Rome in the Natu­ral History of Pliny the Elder and the short book On Your Birthday by Censorinus. As creative receivers of the antiquarian writings of Varro, t­hese two authors allow us to get a better sense of Varro’s role as the main propagator of a nationalistic narrative about Roman day division and also to observe the dif­fer­ent directions—­literally, forward and backward—in which that narrative could be traced. In Part 2, “Ordering Lives,” I shift perspectives, considering the day in a synchronic light and charting the vari­ous ways in which literary repre­sen­ta­tions of daily routines (I term ­these “day patterns”) could define a person or group’s position within the Roman social order. Once again, our facts include the methods by which both general types and unique instances w ­ ere represented in ancient culture, and so I take up the rhe­toric and the thematic preoccupations through which social distinctions w ­ ere made on the basis of temporal order. Chapter 4, “Days in the Life,” is concerned, first, with registering how daily routines are repeatedly presented as constituting a ­whole way of living and also with the possibilities for theorizing and analyzing this phenomenon as it arises in a range of ancient discourses. Chapter 5, “Three Patterns to Live By,” focuses on a set of prominent and prolific models for defining Roman life-­forms in the quotidian dimension, first in the farm life that is nostalgically ­imagined in agricultural manuals, then in dietetic advice on maintaining bodily health in medical texts, and fi­nally in the daily life of the princeps in imperial biography. Then, in chapters 6–8, I turn to a set of six much-­discussed first-­person repre­ sen­ta­tions of daily habits from Latin lit­er­a­ture, most of them in epistolary form. Each of t­ hese passages deploys the technology of literary day description to fur-

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Introduction  21

ther the author’s literary agenda and to address his historically specific social situation. Cicero and Horace (ch. 6) experiment with the nonchalance of an “Epicurean” day, Cicero in his mission to compensate for the traditional statesman’s life that is no longer available to him, Horace to leverage a way to be both a nobody and a somebody in the Augustan literary scene. Martial and Pliny the Younger (ch. 7) use the day to detail their sequences of textual production and circulation, Martial to reach literary patrons within a hectic urban routine, Pliny to represent, through the fabric of his correspondence, the role rural leisure plays for him as he composes his public identity. In Seneca and Marcus Aurelius (ch. 8) we see two kinds of letter written at day’s end, an exercise informed by philosophical self-­examination and his own advice on time management for the Julio-­Claudian elite in Seneca’s case and an exercise belonging less to philosophical practice than to participation in the pedagogy of Fronto, his teacher in rhe­toric, in Marcus’s case. The third part, “Ordering Knowledge,” considers two separate instances of how the Roman day variously offered a model and a foil in l­ater, more distant perspectives on Roman life. Chapter 9, “Christian Roman Days,” looks at how the Roman day was a point of departure both for the elaboration of monastic and liturgical time and for Roman-­Christian literary repre­sen­ta­tions such as we see in the poetry of Ausonius and the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris. In the final two chapters, I trace the emergence of a modern book form devoted to representing Roman daily life to popu­lar audiences, of which the most famous instance is Jérôme Carcopino’s 1939 La vie quotidienne à Rome à l’apogée de l’empire. Carcopino’s influential book can be located in a longer history of modern antiquarianism beginning in the sixteenth ­century that accelerated with the modernization of clock time in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ­A fter explicating this history in chapter 10, “La vie quotidienne à Rome,” I map out several of the main narrative tendencies of t­ hese “daily life” books in chapter 11, “Reading Roman Days in Modern Times.” This book form has sought to equip modern readers with knowledge about Roman private life by using the concise and orderly frameworks of diurnal and quotidian time, frameworks that have appealed to readers as a same-­and-­different interface between modern times and ancient.

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pa r t i

or de r i ng h is t ory

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ch a pter 1

In Search of Palamedes

A Parasite’s Lament Who divided the Roman day and therewith Roman history? Most of the questions we have about the development of clock time in ancient Rome can only be answered through tentative comparison of scattered anecdotes, and a total narrative remains elusive, even in the face of the detailed accounts deriving from Varro that chapter 3 takes up. Yet exploring the data can help us to understand how the Roman “temporal order” was intimately bound up with “the critical discourse on the evolution of culture.”1 Our best starting point is a piece of fiction. In a fragment which Aulus Gellius quotes from Plautus, a “starving parasite” complains about being forced to wait before he can show up at his host’s ­house: May the gods destroy the one who first discovered hours and who also first set up a sundial ­here! He has reduced my day to pieces. For when I was a boy my belly was my sundial, by far the best and more truthful than all ­those ones. You would eat when it told you, except when ­there was nothing. Now even what t­ here is, is not eaten, except with solar approval.

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26  Ordering History And thus the town is now so stuffed with sundials, most of the ­people are on their knees, parched with hunger. (NA 3.3.5, ll. 1–9)2

The way the parasite sees it, this new device and its division of time have displaced the rhythms of the ­human body, leaving ­people hungry and introducing a division between the pre­sent and an idealized past. This comedic speech pre­sents us with an opportunity to locate the invention of hours and sundials in an approximate historical period.3 The Roman playwright adapted a lost play of Menander and thus it has been argued that the fragment evokes a perspective from late fourth-­or early third-­century BCE Greece, but it also reflects an outlook from the age of Plautus in Rome, the late third to early second ­century BCE. ­These two perspectives are congruous with external evidence that sundials began to be used in Greece in the fourth ­century and at Rome in the third.4 But the speech also invokes the familiar figure of the “first inventor” whose technology is a “historical splitter” that plays a pivotal role in “denaturisation,” that is, taking humankind from a state of nature into a state of civilization—­a shift variously inflected in terms of pro­gress or, as ­here, decline.5 As Denis Feeney has shown, the ancient versions of narratives describing timekeeping technologies typically imply that time itself differs before and a­ fter (or even suggest that such technologies bring time into existence), and this can be aligned with the origins of ­human history as the inferior sequel to a mythic period of communion between h ­ umans and gods.6 Feeney himself clusters the parasite’s speech with other texts on the “pivotal importance of time marking” such as the contributions to civilization that Prometheus boasts of in Prometheus Bound (454–58).7 While Feeney refers to a Promethean pivot, we may see a Palamedean one. Palamedes is the one individual named in antiquity as the inventor of hours (hôrai [Philostr. Her. 33.1]), and while we cannot assume that the myth attributing this invention to him was widely known, the invention itself resonates with the ­others typically credited to him.8 ­These include the three mealtimes (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), numbers, weights, mea­sure­ments, alphabetic letters, fire signals, coinage, ­music, nocturnal star observation, a name for time itself, military watches, checkers, dice, and other everyday pastimes.9 Palamedes’s overall contribution, as he himself boasts in Palamedes by the sophist Gorgias, is that he “turned ­human life from disordered to ordered” (kekosmêmenon ex akosmou) (DK 76 B11a, 30). “I or­ga­nized life” (bion diôikês’), he says in a fragment from Aeschylus, having found it “formerly confused and like that of animals”

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In Search of Palamedes   27

(fr. 182). This is suggestive for the importance that might have been ascribed to the hours, too, as well as to his other time-­specific innovations such as scheduled mealtimes. A ­whole new “temporal order,” as Anja Wolkenhauer puts it, is being lamented by the parasite when he curses his unnamed Palamedes.10 In deference to the belly, he seemingly champions a primitive, bestial disorder—­a ­thing that was to be forcefully repudiated in ­later, triumphalist narratives of Roman timekeeping, as we w ­ ill see. But perhaps he simply has a dif­fer­ent understanding of order. We catch some glimpses of this, too, along the way. To get a better sense of the Palamedes whom he curses, as well as of how innovations in clock time ­were received in the Roman world, we need to tease apart the multiple cultural developments that are telescoped in the fragment and sift the evidence for each. In this chapter the Plautine parasite fragment serves as a leaping-­off point for a consideration of some fundamental diachronic questions about clock time in both Greece and Rome, but the chapter concludes with a sixth-­century CE retrospect in the letters of Cassiodorus, who pre­sents clock technology as a showcase for two ­grand narratives: Rome’s appropriation of Greek culture and Rome’s civilizing of the world. In looking for the first inventors of vari­ous timekeeping practices and then marveling at the innovations of the erudite Boethius, I am in a loose sense searching for Palamedes, a search that continues in chapter 2, as I home in on the late Roman republican period to test existing modern accounts of the state of diurnal timekeeping practices in and around the age of Julius Caesar, and in chapter 3, as I comb forward and backward through Roman history in the excurses sketched by Pliny the Elder and Censorinus. My overall purpose is to interrogate and to relativize the notion of a single historical agent and a coherent historical development, not simply ­because our evidence is fragmentary but also b­ ecause historical pro­cesses are what Homi Bhabha calls “differential” and nonteleological.11 Each distinct viewpoint on the division of the day pre­sents historical time in new ways, and I hope to maximize our knowledge about t­ hese views without promoting one definitive account.

Disentangling Diachronies The Plautine parasite complains that t­ hings have changed utterly between the time of his childhood (me puero) and “now” (nunc). Such a dramatic change being alleged to have occurred in a short period of time conveys a sense of causal acceleration: in blaming the first inventor of the hours for his pre­sent state of hunger the parasite sounds a ­little like the nurse at the beginning of Euripides’s Medea who sees a direct connection between the primordial felling of a tree in

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28  Ordering History

a forest on Mt. Pelion and the unhappy domestic situation that is unfolding around her at the pre­sent time in the palace in Corinth (1–11). The short time frame also syncs several theoretically separable diachronic movements, including the division of the day into hours, the adoption of time-­telling devices, the body’s subjection to a social schedule, the evolution of diurnal timekeeping in Athens, and the arrival of diurnal timekeeping in Rome. This list of diachronies is not exhaustive, but it is sufficient for launching our inquiry into Roman clock time. By considering each of them in turn we can both refine our reading of the parasite’s comedic complaint and survey the evidentiary reference points that any totalizing historical narrative would need to incorporate.

The Division of the Day into Hours By cursing “the one who first discovered hours” (primus qui horas repperit) and who “has reduced my day to pieces” (qui mihi comminuit articulatim diem), the parasite draws attention to the adoption of a twelve-­part day in urban life. That adoption, however, was not a s­ imple or singular pro­cess, and it is useful for us to sample the surviving evidence.12 The discoverer referred to by the parasite is the person who in­ven­ted hours ex nihilo. The tradition on Palamedes holds that before him “the hôrai ­were not yet in existence” (hôrai men oupô êsan ousai), “nor yet was the cycle of months,” and “ ‘year’ was not the designation of ‘time’ ” (Philostr. Her. 33.1). It is pos­si­ble that the reference in Philostratus is to seasons, though I follow A. S. Gratwick in taking it to be hours.13 Other ancient sources making mention of the hours early on tend not to refer to their origin but to how they w ­ ere borrowed and 14 ­adopted. The most satisfying retrospective account of this history is provided much ­later by Pliny the Elder, who refers to Anaximenes (prob­ably meaning Anaximander, c. 610–546 BCE) as the first to demonstrate a gnomon (HN 2.187) and ­later mentions universal “observation of the hours” (observatio horarum) in the Mediterranean world, to which Rome was a latecomer, only embracing the practice in the early third c­ entury BCE (7.212).15 Herodotus, writing in the m ­ iddle of the fifth c­ entury BCE, mentions that “the Greeks learned the polos [concave sundial?] and the gnômôn and the twelve parts of the day [ta duôdeka merea tês hêmerês] from the Babylonians” and explic­ itly denies that they learned ­these from the Egyptians as they did so many other t­ hings (2.109.3).16 From a modern perspective, both Babylonians and Egyptians are plausible sources, though the evidence from Egypt is much more abundant. The Babylonians divided the unit of day and night into twelve unvarying bêru, the “double hours,” though t­ here is also some sparse evidence for

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In Search of Palamedes   29

their division of day and night each into twelve seasonally varying hours; the Egyptians initially divided night then subsequently day into twelve seasonal hours and ­were also familiar with equinoctial hours.17 We cannot be sure the Greeks used such day divisions at the time of Herodotus. And while Mark Munn has argued that Anaximander was intimately familiar with the Babylonian court of Croesus, Herodotus himself makes no mention of Anaximander or of the term “hour.”18 A separate testimony about Anaximander as the inventor of the gnomon mentions that he set up hôroskopeia, without explaining exactly what t­ hese ­were (Diog. Laert. 2.1).19 The existing Greek word “hora” / “hôrê” did not yet necessarily refer to “hour” but instead just to “season” or “time of day” or “time of life,” and ­there is scant evidence of knowledge let alone usage of ­either a twelve-­part day or hours in the fifth or even fourth c­ entury BCE.20 The parasite’s before-­a nd-­a fter contrast prompts us to ask what we know both about the prehorological day and about the nature of the hour. In surviving early Greek and early Roman traditions as we know them, day and night are always already subdivided through reference to natu­ral phenomena or social traffic.21 Homer, beyond offering detailed descriptions of dawn, differentiates three parts of the day—­“It may be dawn [êôs], eve­ning [deilê], or the ­middle of the day [meson êmar]” (Il. 21.111)—­and also of night. One Homeric simile for eve­ning compares the time when a city-­dwelling man goes home for supper ­after spending the day judging cases in the agora (Od. 12.440).22 Ancient antiquarians rehearse linguistic anatomies of day and night that include a dozen or more expressions delimiting times such as “when the god inclines t­ oward midday” (klinantos es ta mesêmbrina tou theou) (Poll. Onom. 1.68) and “when the lights have been lit” (luminibus accensis) (Censorinus, DN 24.6). In the Roman tradition, however, sometimes only a rudimentary three-­or four-­part day-­structure is recalled, with noon serving as the divider (mane, meridies, suprema; mane, ad meridiem, de meridie, suprema).23 Night is divided typically by a “four-­part” military watch (Eurip. Rhes. 5) that is pervasive in ancient historiography.24 Nocturnal quartering, ­whether labeled numerically or more descriptively—­“first torch, bedded night, midnight, cockcrow” (prima fax, nox concubia, media nox, gallicinium)—is treated by some Roman antiquarians as a tradition older than the quartering of the day (e.g., Censorinus, DN 24.1). Daytime quartering, in turn, remained common even a­ fter hours w ­ ere observed, in the signaling of third, sixth, and ninth hours.25 Telling for our purposes is that Herodotus, despite his passing reference to “the twelve parts of the day,” in practice employs a seven-­part, prehorological day. His use of “when the market is full” (agorês . . . ​plêthousês) (4.181.3) to indicate

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30  Ordering History

the time of day when the ­water from the circadian spring of Zeus at Ammon begins to grow cooler shows how such expressions, which are also frequent among the Hippocratic writers, had become a portable frame of reference even for events remote from the social traffic of the polis.26 Evidence from both Greece and Rome attesting to fairly precise time telling from shadow spotting and sun tracking makes it unlikely that an urgent need was felt for a system such as numbered hours per se.27 Moreover, the Greeks had already devised other means of telling time. E ­ arlier than any definitive use of numbered hours in Greece, we find institutional systems such as the ­water clock units of the “pour” (choê) and the “measured-­out day” (hêmera diamemetrêmenê) employed in the Athenian lawcourts, the latter made up of three equal parts allotted to the prosecution, the defense, and deliberators.28 What the observation of hours itself amounts to is unfixed and depends on how the hour is defined.29 Xenophon, in the early fourth c­ entury, has Socrates refer to how the sun and stars “make vis­i­ble” (emphanizei) to us the hôrai of both day and night, but it is uncertain ­whether the term yet refers to anything more than “times” (Mem. 4.3.4).30 When one of the Hippocratic authors describes the time of a medical event as being, say, “at the same hôrê” as on the previous day (Epid. 7.25), it is not certain the sense is “hour” rather than “time,” though references to the “third hour” (tritên hôrên) and to “four hours” (tessaras hôras) are found in two Hippocratic passages dating from the same period.31 The case has been made that Plato, writing in the m ­ iddle of the fourth c­ entury in his last work the Laws, uses “hôra” in the sense of “hour” when describing a daily assembly of ­women at the shrine of Eileithuia that is to last up to “one third of an hour” (tritou merous hôras) (784a).32 But only when the Constitution of the Athenians (c. 330–322 BCE) stipulates a fine for council members who fail to come into the council h ­ ouse “at the prescribed hôra” (30.vi) do most scholars detect references to the hour as a specific time within the day. A seemingly unambiguous early instance comes in a fragment preserved by Geminus from the geographer Pytheas of Massilia (late fourth ­century BCE) noting how in northern climes in summer “the short night is, for some, two hours, for o­ thers, three [hôrôn hois men duo, hois de triôn]” (fr. 9)—­though this usage, clearly referring to equinoctial hours, may be categorized as technical.33 And while Pytheas enumerates hours as an indicator of duration, ordinal numbers specifying a given numbered hour of the day are rare in Greek lit­er­a­ture overall and are in any case first found only in third-­century BCE Ptolemaic Egypt, in the circumscribed contexts of the postal archives and historiography.34

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In Search of Palamedes   31

The first “literary” reference to hours as such appears in fragments of Menander—­“ hôra” for “hour” and “hêmiôrion” for “hourlet” (fr. 1015 = Pollux 1.71). The plural “hours” in Callimachus’s phrase “the hours ­were midday” (mesêmbrinai d’ esan hôrai) (Hymn 5.73) suggests an enumeration of the hours in the day so far. Evidence of a per­sis­tent flexibility in Greek usage between the senses of “season” and “hour” can be found in a (now lost) undated sundial inscription from Samothrace referring to “the hôrai of both year and day” (tas hôras tou eniautou kai tês hêmeras).35 Only in Latin prose is “hour” the standard sense of “hora,” and only in the context of the late Roman republic do we find regular reference to numbered horae or to the public signaling of the third, sixth, and ninth—­what Tertullian would ­later call “the universal hours [horarum . . . ​ communium] that mark the intervals of the day” (De orat. 20 [25]).36 A crucial consideration for this tracing of hours is the coexistence of seasonal hours (Gk. “kairikai,” Lat. “aequales”) and equinoctial hours (Gk. “isêmerinai,” Lat. “aequinoctiales”). Seasonal hours are determined through direct observation of the natu­ral phenomena of daybreak, noon, and nightfall and subdivision of day and night into “set proportions, indicated by angular shifts in shadows or stellar alignments”; they are natu­ral in the sense of being “directly observable from the cosmos.”37 Equinoctial hours are putatively derived in the same way as the seasonal hours, except on the occasion of the equinox, when one-­t welfth of the daylight span would be equivalent to one-­t welfth of the nighttime. In ancient and medieval times the observation of equinoctial hours at other times of the year “rested on attempts to construct devices that operated at an exactly constant rate, principally water-­clocks,” and their naturalness consisted primarily in their “proceeding at a constant rate in the cosmos.”38 ­There is no rigid correspondence between hour types and device types. Two of the earliest surviving Greek sundials, for example, show equinoctial hours, though they seem representative of an approach that was soon superseded by seasonal-­hour sundials.39 Moreover, w ­ ater clocks typically marked seasonal hours, even though this required that the devices be adjusted throughout the year. The sundial and ­water clock often complemented one another in the same seasonal-­hour system.40 The oldest surviving Egyptian ­water clocks marked seasonal hours; the ones that survive sometimes bear an inscription that explains how the device’s purpose was supplementary b­ ecause they marked “the hours when it is cloudy, and therefore neither the Sun nor the stars are vis­i­ble.” 41 If the “twelve parts of the day” mentioned by Herodotus refers to what would ­later be termed “hours,” it is quite pos­si­ble that equinoctial hours are meant.42

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32  Ordering History

But it is safe to assume that the system of hours lamented by the Plautine parasite is the popu­lar standard of the seasonal hours associated with the vast majority of ancient devices. It would perhaps not be surprising if, l­ater in the lost play, the parasite complained, say, that summer hours further protracted his waiting. Certainly, the seasonal status of a given hour is also marked in Plautus’s Pseudolus, where Pseudolus boasts that he can drink four ­whole harvests of Massic wine not just “in a single hour” (in hora una) but “a winter hour, at that!” (hiberna addito) (1304).43 In a variety of situations, however, even as the status of equinoctial hours remained relatively technical and seasonal hours served as the popu­lar standard, hour users frequently needed to be conscious of the equinoctial metric.44

The Adoption of Time-­Telling Devices The parasite refers to the inventor of the hours as “the one who also first set up a sundial ­here” (quique adeo primus statuit hic solarium), putting repeated rhyming emphasis on “solarium,” the device itself.45 His words indicate a device pre­ sent “­here” (hic)—­perhaps a sundial in the immediate dramatic setting, even if it was not vis­i­ble to the audience in the theater.46 In the pro­cess the parasite combines hours and sundials, devices with overlapping yet separable histories; he also treats the pre­sent sundial as symbolizing the first sundial ever. Although sundials are connected with hours in some of the earliest sources, the relationship between division and device cannot be narrativized in a ­simple way. The tracking of hours of night or day appears to have been the major function of the vari­ous devices that survive from Egypt such as sundials, shadow clocks, w ­ ater 47 clocks, and star clocks. Yet Anaximander’s hôroskopeia may only have traced the year’s seasons, and Herodotus does not explic­itly state that the “twelve parts of the day” (2.109.3) ­were themselves tracked using the polos (concave sundial?) and the gnomon or indeed that t­hese three technologies w ­ ere used in close conjunction.48 Even if we are right in understanding polos as a “concave sundial,” which is by no means certain, a shadow can be cast in a polos without a gnomon, while a gnomon can be used on its own as a “meridian,” a mea­sure­ment of the noontime shadow that provides information about calendrical time or simply about latitude.49 It is plausible that sundials themselves ­were used only secondarily as timekeepers.50 In the data from surviving ancient Greek and Roman sundials, the calendrical (seasonal) dimension is prominent (fig. 1).51 The full inscription on the sundial from Samothrace reads as follows: “The shadow of the gnomon proceeding over the lines indicates the hôrai of the year and of the day. The first [line] is that of the summer solstice, the m ­ iddle that of the equinox, the last that of the winter sol-

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In Search of Palamedes   33

Figure 1. Conical sundial, marble, Theater of Dionysus, date unknown, Athens. National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Berlin Sundial Collaboration, Dialface ID 100, Athens, Inventory Nr. 3158, 2015, Ancient Sundials, Edition Topoi, DOI: 10.17171/1-1-1033. Creative Commons BY-­NC-­SA 3.0 DE. See also Gibbs 1976, 220, no. 3001G.

stice.”52 In a number of surviving instances t­ hese three “day curves” are individually labeled, as are some finer calibrations on a few dials indicating such events as the rising of the Pleiades (beginning of summer) or calendrical stages such as the zodiac or the Roman months.53 Such labels have at least proven more durable than any hour-­number labels, which w ­ ere sometimes painted on. Some early sundials appear to have been made without any hour curves at all. Soon enough, though, sundials came to serve as diurnal markers: this is the primary function of sundials mentioned by Greek and Roman authors. The numbering of hours on sundials using Greek letter symbols—­Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ϛ Ζ Η Θ Ι ΙΑ ΙΒ—(fig. 2) was familiar enough to serve as the basis of a joke in the popu­lar Greek epigram that hinges on the letters denoting the seventh to tenth hours: “Six hours [hex hôrai] are ample for l­abors. The ones a­ fter ­these, / marked by the letters ΖΗΘΙ, tell mortals: LIVE!” (Anth. Pal. 10.43).54 Even on surviving sundials without hour numbers t­here is often a visual emphasis on day quarters conveyed by

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34  Ordering History

Figure 2. Quarter ­spherical sundial, third c­ entury CE, Aphrodisias, currently located in the Ephesus Museum, Selçuk, Turkey. Dedication inscription to Emperor Caracalla and ­mother Julia Domna. Zdeněk Kratochvíl. Creative Commons Attribution-­ ShareAlike 4.0. See also Gibbs 1976, 169, no. 1055G.

extended lines for the third, sixth, and ninth hours, and ­these lines are often marked with color and/or ornamental flourishes that make them stand out.55 Yet the comprehension of seasonal hours was bound up with an awareness of the time of year. H ­ ere is how Vitruvius explains the lines subdividing the day into seasonal hours in his discussion of sundial technology: “The day of the equinox, of the winter solstice, and of the summer solstice is divided equally into twelve parts” (De arch. 9.7.7).56 It is true that the sundial was more closely associated with the hour than w ­ ere other season-­sensitive “clocks.” Greek and Roman systems for differentiating times of night through the observation of the skies make no reference to hours.57 In the technique of using changes in the body’s shadow length during the day, the metric is the number of feet (that is derived from the use one’s own foot length as a unit), even if almanacs w ­ ere eventually compiled for approximate hour correlations through the year.58 Greek and Roman clepsydrae (“­water stealers”) of vari­ous size and purpose ­were mostly not clocks as such but timers.59

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Such devices illustrate, for Kevin Birth, how “the cognitive task of mea­sur­ing duration was separated from the determination of the time of day.” 60 A timer function is obvious for devices such as the small outflow vessel found in the Athenian Agora and dating from the fifth c­ entury BCE that takes approximately six minutes to empty out and is labeled ΧΧ (i.e., two choai), possibly used in the council or assembly (fig. 3), and devices of similar capacity and function are attested in Roman forensic practice.61 In the fourth-­century BCE military tactician

Figure 3. Clepsydra (original and restored), c. 400 BCE, Athens. Inscription: “Belonging to the [tribe] Antiochis. 2 choai.” CPA Media Pte Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo. See also Young 1939, 282, fig. 4.

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Aeneas’s explanation of how to adjust the interior of a clepsydra using wax so that it can keep step with the expansion and contraction of the nights, the unit of time is not the hour but the nocturnal phulakê (watch) (Aen. Tact. 22.1–29).62 Some of the terminology that became standard for water-­flow devices (e.g., Gk. “hôrologion hudraulikon,” Lat. “horologium ex aqua”) shows that they did in the end mark hours. ­There are even early examples of ­water clocks whose purpose we can speculate was to track hours, such as the two massive outflow clocks of the fourth ­century BCE, one excavated in the SW corner of the Athenian Agora near the Heliaia, the other at the Amphiareion (the dream oracle sanctuary sacred to Amphiaraos) near Oropos, and the “night clock like a very large clepsydra” (nukterinon . . . ​hôrologion . . . ​hoion klepsudran megalên lian) that Plato is said to have constructed, which resembled a w ­ ater organ (Ath. 4.174).63 A w ­ ater clock proper would have offered the easiest option, in general, for tracking equinoctial rather than seasonal hours, such as must have been essential in some settings—­though, as I have noted, the sundial’s regime of seasonal hours remained the central point of reference. In his late first-­century BCE description of the technology of both the simplest ­water clocks and the most complex, “anaphoric” ­water clock in­ven­ted by Ctesibius of Alexandria, Vitruvius notes that the device can be adjusted to accommodate fluctuating hour lengths (De arch. 9.8.6).  Seasonal hours are the unit mea­sured by the ­simple (and not especially precise) outflow w ­ ater clocks found in vari­ous locations of the Roman world (possibly including the remains of a device from Vindolanda) that feature a long-­standing design already evidenced in second-­ millennium BCE Egypt.64  The w ­ ater clock as a full-­fledged hour marker is often paired with a sundial, as in the “twin revealers of the hours” (hôrôn . . . ​ dittas dêlôseis) that Lucian describes in a luxurious imperial-­era bath complex (Hipp. 8).65 The Plautine parasite’s conflation of the sundial “­here” with the first sundial in­ven­ted makes some sense. For ­there is not one surviving sundial whose making does not also partake of that primordial moment of invention. As Alexander Jones remarks, “Ancient time-­telling devices ­were individual, local illustrations of the cosmology in which their designers believed.” 66 The architect Andronicus of Cyrrhus (in Macedonia) is most famous for the unique and wondrous octagonal Tower of Winds, which still stands in Athens, that features a vertical sundial on each exterior wall (prob­ably dating to the late second ­century BCE), but he is also mentioned in the inscription on a smaller yet equally remarkable four-­faced sundial that survives on the island of Tenos from the ­temple

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of Poseidon: “Your fatherland Cyrrhus reared you, Andronicus,” reads the inscription, “to be a second Eudoxus among the living. . . . ​A nd you took all the reward for giving form, with your skill, to the pathways of the hôrai that run through the sky.” 67 Vitruvius’s history of sundials in On Architecture features a chronicle of such inventors who each tracked the sun’s motion across a new shape: “Berosus the Chaldaean is said to have in­ven­ted [dicitur invenisse] the semicircle hollowed from a square block and cut obliquely to suit the latitude; Aristarchus of Samos, the scaphê, or hemi­sphere, and also the disc on a flat surface” (9.8.1). The reader can, Vitruvius says, “find” (invenire) the plans for ­these and countless o­ thers in the inventors’ books, so long as we know how to derive the analemma (9.8.1)—­the rule that takes account of the ratio between shadow length and gnomon height when a shadow is observed at noon on the equinox in the geographic location where the sundial is to be used (8/9 in Rome, 3/4 in Athens, 3/5 in Alexandria) (9.1.1). As this geographic consideration indicates, the energy of invention is directed in each new instance ­toward the making of a highly specific local nexus, a collaboration that is already in evidence in early anecdotes in which vari­ous parties are expected to interact with one another and with the sundial itself in its unique social environment. Anaximander set up his hôroskopeia “on the shadow chasers” (epi tôn skiothêrôn) in Sparta (Diog. Laert. 2.1), and this complex may have functioned as a place for po­liti­c al deliberation as well as helped situate Sparta symbolically within a much broader geography of sovereignty.68 In the early fourth ­century BCE Dionysius I of Syracuse erected a “con­spic­u­ous, elevated sun-­turner” (hêliotropion kataphanes kai hupsêlon) in Achradina in Syracuse that quickly became a landmark in local history.69 Its associations with the tyrant gave his would-be successor Dion the opportunity to perform the symbolic act of delivering his speech of liberation (in 357 BCE) from atop the monument, though Plutarch also notes that some then viewed the sundial as symbolizing a risk of sudden misfortune for Dion himself (Dion 29), as indeed proved to be the case. The same device was represented in the interior ceiling of a luxury ship built by Hieron II in the following c­ entury (Dion 29). Dif­fer­ ent again is the network of relationships established by an epitaphic epigram of Posidippus (AB 52) in which the passerby is informed that the deceased, Timon, “set up this shadow chaser” (skio kato touth’ ), a sundial that stands next to his tomb, as well as the statue of a maiden who ­will continue observing the sundial “for as long as it might be expected for a maiden to tell the time [hôrologein].” Kathryn Gutzwiller sees h ­ ere a play on Greek “hôrai” in the sense

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of hours (of the day), seasons (of the year), and the conceit of the statue maiden’s finite youth (i.e., time of life).70 Timon’s agency as clock dedicator thus ­becomes inseparable from his projection of a biographic time that extends beyond the passerby’s ephemeral experience of the pre­sent moment and beyond death. Each of the 550–600 Greek and Roman sundials that survive in some shape or form—­many of them cata­logued first in Sharon Gibbs’s pathbreaking Greek and Roman Sundials (1976) and now presented in greater number and detail in the Ancient Sundials digital collection, clearly explicated in recent scholarly volumes, such as Jérôme Bonnin’s La mesure du temps dans l’antiquité (2015), and modeled digitally for the Time and Cosmos exhibition at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in 2016–17—is distinguished by numerous variables.71 Some spots where the sundials w ­ ere found are private (in h ­ ouse interiors, gardens, tombs, e­ tc.), o­ thers public (in civic agoras, markets, t­ emples, sanctuaries, bath­houses, gymnasiums, theaters, e­ tc.).72 The forty-­odd sundials found in Pompeii, our biggest local corpus, are found in mostly private locations, in an overall “density” matched only around “2000 years l­ater.”73 Karlheinz Schaldach documents how in the ancient Mediterranean world, “the public erection of sundials . . . ​was mainly a phenomenon of Roman culture”; in the Roman world, votive inscriptions from the end of the first c­ entury BCE indicate that vari­ous publicly located sundials w ­ ere dedicated “by communal authorities, by private benefactors, or even by emperors.”74 Sundials along with schools (scholae) in several locations in Roman Italy (Nola, Nogare, and Pompeii) bear dedications, and one inscription in Talloires thanks a slave for maintaining the clock” (ad id horologium administrandum serum [i.e., servum]).75 Geographic distribution varies: the most frequent type, the conical sundial (around 108 specimens), is found mostly in the eastern Mediterranean and northwest Africa, while the next most frequent, the ­spherical sundial (around 98 specimens), is found mostly in the towns of Roman Italy and Rome itself; in Pompeii, as Gibbs notes, the “cut s­ pherical dial face” was a local favorite.76 Sundials’ iconography occasionally includes other time-­related figures such as Helios or a mythic reference such as Orpheus or a sphinx, which has the effect of incorporating the device and its time signal into a complex visual display.77 Sundial dedication inscriptions, in turn, are written not only in Greek and Latin but also in local vernaculars (e.g., the earliest dial from Pompeii has an inscription in Oscan).78 As in the Posidippus poem, they actively forge relationships between dedicator, dedicatee, and the spatiotemporal context. For example, a late second-­century CE Latin inscription from Apuli in Dacia evidently dedicates a “clock ­temple” (horologiar. templum) as follows:

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In Search of Palamedes   39 To Jupiter, greatest and best, and to queen Juno, for the well-­being of the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius Augustus and of Julia Augusta, m ­ other of Augustus, Marcus Ulpius Mucianus, soldier of the 13th legion, the Gemina, made a clock t­ emple from the ground up at his own expense in fulfillment of a vow when Falco and Clarus w ­ ere consuls [193 CE].79

This dedication of a clock t­ emple, if that is what it is, resonates with the sacral aspect of many sundials as devices that offer cosmic mediation between the celestial and the terrestrial.80 “Thaleia, priestess [hiropolos] of the goddess Hera, dedicated me” reads another sundial’s inscription giving a voice to the device itself “as a messenger of the sun’s hours to ephemeral [creatures]” (hêliakôn hôrôn angelon hêmeriois).81 As other site-­specific devices I discuss l­ater in this book show, each always offers its own parochial perspectives on the history of time telling and the ordering of history itself.82 Then t­ here are the portable sundials, whose location is entirely contingent on the movements of the user. Vitruvius, in his survey of the dif­fer­ent sundial designs, mentions that t­ here are instructions for making versions of the dif­fer­ ent types that are able to be “taken on the road and suspended” (viatoria pensilia) (9.8.1).83 Some twenty-­five specimens survive from the late first ­century CE and beyond (fig. 4). The user sets up the sundial and facilitates the discovery of the hour, no ­matter the location, by first dangling the device from a chain, manipulating it in accordance with the month of the year and the pre­sent latitude, and observing the hour line on which the shadow falls or where a small spot of sunlight appears (as in the ring sundial seen in fig. 4).84 The ingenious and innovative designs (disc, cylinder, “ham,” rings) and their varying materials (including bronze, bone, and brass) w ­ ere clearly s­ haped by the personal tastes of elite consumers. In his study focusing on the dozen such devices that are adjustable “for any latitude” (pros pan klima), Richard Talbert suggests that their usage speaks to the “rich variety of involvements—­administrative, agricultural, artistic, commercial, intellectual, medical, military, religious, and more—­that may have prompted individuals to travel.” 85 He also posits a common core of geo­graph­i­cal knowledge that is reflected in the lists of cities and provinces inscribed on the devices. The subtitle of his book, The Empire in Your Hand, invites us to imagine an elite “community of dialers” both in Rome and in the provinces, including the east, who had an acute awareness of latitude that allowed them to navigate the empire’s imaginary geography.86 Recognizing the implications of portable sundials contributes to our understanding of daily time as a sociotemporal order. On the one hand, the portable

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Figure 4. Portable bronze suspension sundial with rings, third to fourth c­ entury CE, Philippi, Greece, currently located in the Archaeological Museum of Philippi. © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports—­Organ­ization for the Management and Development of Cultural Resources (ODAP) / Courtesy of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Kavala / Orestis Kourakis, photographer

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device could empower the user to discover the hour and navigate the day quite literally, offering a freedom of timed movement not available when depending on a public device. On the other hand, much as with the first mass-­produced pocket watches in the modern era, which at the time were “the only example of a clearly industrial machine carried close to the body,” the portable device might entangle the user in imposed social schedules.87 And this brings us back to our Plautine parasite. For the invention of the portable sundial, had he lived long enough to witness it, would no doubt have intensified his anxiety and his lament. As it happens, precisely such a scenario is ­imagined by David Landes in the opening pages of his Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (2000). ­A fter quoting the Plautine parasite, he writes: “Since our unhappy Roman thought sundials a plague, what would he have said about mechanical clocks, ­going night and day, sky cloudy or clear, keeping an equal beat and beating equal hours in all seasons?”88

The Body’s Subjection to a Social Schedule When the parasite notes that “my belly was my sundial, by far the best and more truthful than all ­those ones” (venter erat solarium / multo omnium istorum optimum et verissimum), he suggests that the sundial has displaced his bodily authority. The fear of loss of control over one’s own body figures most immediately in a comedic tradition of parasites maneuvering to get food and more broadly in a world of proliferating institutional schedules over which the clock presides as enforcer. The parasite’s fantasy of his childhood is in part a hearkening to a mythic golden age when he could eat whenever he wished and in part a suggestion that he was reduced to hard primitivism, when t­here was often no food available.89 His devious pun, “even what t­ here is, is not—­eaten” (etiam quod est, non estur), registers how the ontological status of food changes when its availability is restricted by the sundial’s grid. The sundial’s slicing of the day into pieces (comminuit . . . ​ articulatim) may evoke a “loaf of bread,” and at the same time, the parasite seems jealous of a city that is “stuffed full of sundials” (oppletum . . . ​solariis).90 And whereas the sun is frequently revered in ancient sundial inscriptions, the parasite ­here punningly portrays sol (and by implication the patron host) as a capricious “sole” authority, as nothing is eaten “except with solar approval” (nisi soli libet). ­These observations are both the reworking of an old joke and the distillation of the cultural history of schedules. Time often goes off the rails in comedy, as when a chamber pot is used as a mock-­courtroom clepsydra in Aristophanes’s Wasps and yet is peed into anyway

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(thereby extending the trial?) and in Plautus’s Amphtitruo, where Night is bribed to take twice as long so as to protract Jupiter’s time for lovemaking, leaving ­human observers confused: “I believe to­night Nocturnus [god of night] has gone to sleep drunk,” remarks the enslaved Sosia (273–75).91 A specific prequel to the Plautine parasite’s situation may be found in early ­Middle Comedy, where parasites bristle against the body-­shadow clock. In a fragment from Eubulus (early fourth c­ entury BCE), we learn that a guest was instructed to arrive for dinner “when he mea­sured his shadow [stoikheion] at twenty feet [eikosi podôn]”—­ meaning clearly t­ oward the late after­noon—­but since he mea­sured his shadow at the crack of dawn, he saw his shadow was two feet longer than that and showed up, as he thought, “rather late” (mikron opsaiteron), when in fact he was arriving extremely early, “at daybreak” (ham’ hêmerai) (fr. 119).92 One question prompted by the Eubulus fragment is ­whether the parasite in the lost part of Plautus’s play also found a way to short-­circuit the clock and arrive for dinner early.93 Evidence suggesting this is pos­si­ble is found in the parasite letter by Alciphron (second to fourth ­century CE) that Gratwick argues was adapted from the same (Menandrian?) model as Plautus’s play.94 In this letter, the writer, named noonchaser (hektodiôktês), observes that “the gnomon is not yet casting its shadow on the sixth [hour]” (ho gnômôn oupô skiazei tên hektên), yet he is already wracked by hunger (3.1.1). So he comes up with the idea of e­ ither toppling the sundial from its column or bending the gnomon so that “it ­will be able to indicate the hours [for eating] more quickly” (takhion dunêsetai tas hôras aposêmainein) (3.1.2). “The plan,” he says, “­will be Palamedean” (estai to bouleuma Palamêdeion) (3.1.2). ­Either this, or some other “brainwave” (skemma) is needed to outwit the “orderliness” (eutaxia) of the host, who is a stickler for time (3.2.3). Although Gratwick treats this parasite’s speech as an exercise in aporia, the possibility of manipulating the clock resonates with the kind of solution that the parasite in Eubulus inadvertently arrives at, and it points us to a potential recourse for the Plautine parasite. Within parasitism as a sociocultural formation in Rome—­Cynthia Damon has termed it “the pathology of Roman patronage”—­timing was strongly overdetermined in specific scenarios such as the regular morning salutatio.95 It is uncertain precisely when the etiquette of salutatio became established, but in the Roman tradition ­there would ultimately be a convergence between dinnertime-­ related parasite jokes that referred to seeking to show up ­earlier than expected and salutatio-­related client satire that referred to seeking to show up l­ater than required or not at all. Martial, complaining that one Caecilianus had arrived as a guest at his h ­ ouse too early, given that the fourth hour had scarcely concluded,

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sarcastically remarks that “better you should come first ­thing in the morning. For why do you delay till the fifth [nam cur te quinta moretur]? That’s too late [sero . . . ​venis] if you want to breakfast with me, Caecilianus!” (Epigr. 8.67.9– 10). Within this single poem Martial transitions from parasite humor (mocking early arrival) to salutatio humor (mocking late arrival), and Caecilianus is the butt of both jokes at once. Certainly the Plautine parasite’s lament seems akin to Martial’s widespread laments about the salutatio, which he frequently represents as dispossessing him of his day, and also about the hour-­by-­hour schedule that imposes numerous social obligations on him on a daily basis (Epigr. 4.8).96 The Plautine parasite’s complaint about the clock, then, is linked to this broader Roman satirization of time protocols. The parasite also anticipates and in some instances directly influences the broader discourse on schedules in social life.97 The Palamedean inventions of hours, mealtimes, and night watches w ­ ere, on one reading, valuable technologies for everyday life, for coping with famine, for succeeding in war—­such was the boast of Palamedes himself (Aesch. fr. 182). The sundial could even have been the parasite’s friend, as suggested by the anecdote that Diogenes the Cynic, when shown a sundial (hôroskopeion) for the first time, called it “something useful for not being late to dinner” (Diog. Laert. 6.104). A parasite confronted with a sundial showing the ninth hour (Θ) in third-­century CE mosaics from ­houses in Antioch, such as one recently discovered on a floor outside of a dining room (fig. 5), is explic­itly described as “­running for dinner” (trechedeipnos) and is dogged by a possibly apotropaic hanger-on labeled “not punctual” (akairos).98 In the letters of Cassiodorus as well the sundial is represented as a device of reason, civilization, and empire, and some Roman moralizing fantasies are entirely compatible with clockwork be­hav­ior. Josephus, writing about Roman soldiers in the first c­ entury CE, relates how “neither their dinner nor their breakfast was whenever they wished [hopote thelêseian] and up to each to decide [autexousion hekastôi] but together for them all” (BJ 3.86). In fact, he explains, “trumpets first give them the sign for sleeping, for watches, and for getting up—­ there is absolutely nothing that happens without a signal” (86), a sequence that also anticipates that of the cenobitic monasteries I consider in chapter 9. The parasite’s perspective is not the only one when it comes to the social phenomenon of scheduling. Seneca, for example, moralizes against the hour-­based schedule of t­ hose who “are reminded by someone e­ lse [alius admonet] when they need to wash, when to swim, when to dine” and who “cannot even know for themselves w ­ hether they are hungry” (ut per se scire non possint an esuriant), targeting the luxurious master whose subjection to the hours is mediated through

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Figure 5. Mosaic with three panels—­banqueting skeleton (ΕΥΦΡΟΣΥΝΟΣ [“merry”]), sundial (Θ = “ninth” [hour]) with parasite (ΤΡΕΧΕΔΙΠΝΟΣ [“­running for dinner”]) and grotesque figure (ΑΚΑΙΡΟΣ [“not punctual”]), and African figure (only partly intact)—on the floor of an atrium outside a triclinium in a private residence, third ­century CE, Antioch. Dick Osseman, Creative Commons Attribution-­ShareAlike 4.0.

the familiar ancient phenomenon of time-­telling slaves, which prevents him from being “the master of any time” (ullius temporis dominus) (Brev. 12.9). In the fourth c­ entury CE, the words of the Plautine parasite’s primitivist fantasy are directly taken up by the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who uses this fantasy to set the Persians apart in an idealizing ethnography: “Except at the king’s ­tables they have no fixed hour for dining [nec . . . ​hora est praestituta prandendi], but for each man his belly is a kind of sundial [venter uni cuique velut solarium est]: when it instructs, they eat what­ever is available, and no one, once he is full, gorges himself on extra food” (23.6.77).99 As Wolkenhauer notes, the historian adapts the Plautine motif, using it to deliver a moralizing critique of ­those Romans who do not show the same natu­ral restraint as the Persians.100 But it is notable that the king’s ­table evidently remains a sign of the Persians’ ultimate subjection to a ruler’s clock. The freedman Trimalchio in Petronius’s first-­century CE Satyrica differs from our parasite in seeing clocks as a pathway to empowerment. For all his idiosyncrasies, Trimalchio throws light on the broader ancient discourse on clock time, schedules, and social status. “A most cultivated person” (lautissimus

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homo), as his guests are told, Trimalchio “has a clock in his dining room [horologium in triclinio] and a fully equipped bugle player, so that he can know instantly how much he has lost from his life [quantum de vita perdiderit]” (26.9).101 The context makes it clear that this must be a w ­ ater clock and that it is both a luxury item and a mechanism in Trimalchio’s tightly choreographed domestic routine, in which a special role is played by the closely controlled spectacle of enslaved bodies in motion.102 This clock’s informational function is impor­tant for Trimalchio largely b­ ecause according to the horoscope divulged l­ ater in the banquet he has (now) precisely “thirty years, four months, and two days” left to live (77.2), but its role also resonates with the kind of time mastery the host advertises through his civic and astrological calendars (30.3) and the daily review of his “rec­ords like ­those of a city” (tamquam urbis acta) (53.2). A second clock is mentioned in the host’s stipulations regarding his funeral monument, which he says is to include “a clock in the m ­ iddle [horologium in medio], so that whoever looks at the hours [quisquis horas inspiciet], ­whether he wants to or not, w ­ ill read my name” (71.11).103 The proposed sundial w ­ ill not only contribute to the monumentality and permanence of the tomb but also perpetuate the own­er’s fame by remaining useful in quotidian time for passersby whose interest w ­ ill be captured just long enough to read his epitaph: “Gaius Pompeius Trimalchio Maecenatianus rests h ­ ere. . . . ​He never studied with a phi­los­o­pher” (C. Pompeius Trimalchio Maecenatianus hic requiescit. . . . ​nec umquam philosophum audivit) (71.12). The message, however, is directly at odds with the role of the sundial as “a symbol of scholarship.”104 Phi­los­o­phers could pose with sundials as emblems of intellectual culture, as we see in the well-­ known mosaic type representing a group of phi­los­o­phers (possibly the Seven Sages) with a column-­mounted sundial con­spic­u­ous in the background or in the twin miniature sundials supported by sphinxes on the (second-­century BCE) funeral stele from Asia Minor showing the phi­los­o­pher Theodotus and his wife (fig. 6)—­though in the stele ­there are clearly sympotic and existential connotations too.105 Trimalchio’s ­water clock and sundial are the clearest indication of how ancient clocks’ vari­ous symbolic associations could be selected from and manipulated to serve as a source of social power. Talbert may well be correct in suggesting that Trimalchio would have been keen to get his hands on a portable sundial, too—at least for ­those rare occasions when he would venture out of his h ­ ouse to attend dinners elsewhere (30.3).106 When the Plautine parasite lambasts the sundial and upholds the authority of his own body, he is at the same pointing to all the status implications the sundial possessed already in Plautus’s day. Further instantiations of Roman clock

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Figure 6. Funeral stele of Theodotus and wife, with miniature sundial in upper left corner, supported by sphinx (prob­ably matched by similar sundial in upper right corner, now lost), second ­century BCE, currently h ­ oused in the Istanbul Archaeological Museums. Gibbs 1976, 164, no. 1051G. © Vanni Archive / Art Resource, N.Y. ART405433.

time demonstrate an expansion in the range of such claims to authority that embrace or reject the schedules maintained by the clock.

The Evolution of Diurnal Timekeeping at Athens Given that Plautus allegedly based his play on a putative play written by Menander in Athens in the late fourth or early third c­ entury BCE, it is useful to cross-­check the parasite’s reference to his “town” (oppidum) as being “stuffed with sundials” (oppletum . . . ​solariis) with the history of Athenian diurnal timekeeping.107 The chronology lines up quite well between a putative Menandrian original and our best estimate for when sundials and hours entered public use in Athens or would still have been relatively novel.108 Although we are told that the astronomer Meton erected a hêliotropion (sun turner) on the Pnyx in 433 BCE, its function is uncertain and it may have been used to validate the Metonic nineteen-­year cycle rather than to track hours.109 Francis Dunn notes revolutions in time sense in his Pre­sent Shock in Late Fifth-­Century Greece (2007) but points to a con­spic­u­ous “failure of the polis to impose regulated diurnal time.”110 ­There is clear evidence for fifth-­century use of clepsydrae as timers, including more

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than one outflow clepsydra and mentions of clepsydrae or of w ­ ater (hudôr) in 111 connection with time. Scholars have convincingly correlated t­ hese with specific Athenian ideologies: for example, the “schedule of bound­aries” in the Athenian ­legal pro­cess; princi­ples of equality enshrined in homogenous time structures for all lawsuits of a certain kind; and manipulations of time that demonstrated the authority of the demo­cratic polis.112 Yet ­there is no clear sign that hour clocks ­were in use in Athens nearly as early as the clepsydra timer. ­A fter the fragmentary and poorly understood mention of polos, which, as I have noted, might refer to a concave sundial, in Aristophanes (Gerytades fr. 5), our next testimonies are that of Plato’s night clock, the Athenian Constitution’s mention of “hour,” and so forth.113 All of which suggests that any “pre­sent shock” Athenians may have experienced a­ fter the adoption of hours could have occurred up to a c­ entury l­ater than the other time revolutions in Athens traced by Dunn.114 It is true that over a dozen ancient sundials have been found in Athens, in spots such as the Agora and the Theater of Dionysus.115 None of ­these, however, has been definitively dated to e­ arlier than the third c­ entury BCE, and by far the majority of sundials surviving in Athens date from the Roman period.116 It is also true that in a first-­century CE papyrus preserving an anonymous topographical description of Piraeus in Athens, which may derive from a Hellenistic-­era source, special pride of place is given to a sundial located t­ here (FGrH 369 F1).117 On the basis of this text Katherine Clarke has argued that Athens was con­spic­u­ous as “the city of the sundial” and was even thought to be “the inventor of the sundial.”118 This reputation and self-­perception, Clarke observes, jibes with other Athenocentric notions, for example, that the landscape of Athens was more naturally equipped to register time—­witness “Clepsydra” as the toponym for a local spring whose flow varied with the seasons.119 She might also have mentioned the Tower of the Winds (late second ­century BCE), given that, in addition to its nine sundials, its w ­ ater feature, w ­ hether or not it was an anaphoric w ­ ater clock, was fed 120 by this spring. None of t­ hese ideas, however, emerged especially early. If Athenians ­adopted clock time ­earlier than other evidence suggests, then the Plautine play’s title Boeotia might be taken to indicate that the Menandrian original portrayed events in Boeotia, a famously backward region; in this dramatic setting, a first encounter with pre­sent shock could be replayed for laughs, though it was now ancient history in Athens itself. It is more likely, however, that in the age of Menander hour usage had only recently taken off in Athens and was fresh enough to warrant a reaction from a comedic parasite that would resonate with the audience quite directly. Certainly ­there is ­little compelling

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evidence for fourth-­century Athens being ahead of the times in sundial technology or for Athenian dominance at any stage. Two of the earliest surviving Greek sundials, dating from the fourth c­ entury, are from areas outside of Athens (Olympia and Oropos), and other sundials from the third c­ entury have been found in such places as Delos and Istropolis on the Black Sea.121 The anecdotes about early sundials in Sparta and Sicily also point away from Athens ­toward a broader, panhellenic phenomenon that would soon extend across Magna Graecia and the Mediterranean world.122

Timekeeping’s Arrival in Rome The Plautine play is, in any case, Roman. So we also need to consider how the parasite’s repre­sen­ta­tion of a town newly “stuffed with sundials” might relate to the history of Rome’s first observation of hours.123 Even if “stuffed” is meant to be ironic or an exaggeration, we can still experiment with applying it to Rome.124 A Roman audience of Plautus’s era could of course have understood the “­here” and “now” of the parasite’s lament as pertaining to the Greek city of the dramatic setting, perhaps a city of an ­earlier era, that has recently been catapulted out of an archaic past. But the audience was in its own Roman pre­sent, and if “the one who first discovered hours” was responsible for introducing hours and sundials “­here,” the invention notionally centers on the importation of Greek technologies into a Roman context. As it happens, Rome’s first adoption of hours and sundials is roughly compatible with this transposition, beginning (as far as we can tell) early in the third ­century BCE and thus preceding Plautus’s play by about the same amount of time as hours and sundials appear to have preceded Menander’s play in Athens a c­ entury before. The sundial that Pliny the Elder mentions as having been set up in Rome early in the first Punic war (263 BCE) would have been a familiar landmark.125 Gratwick points out that Plautus’s mention of the “winter hour” (Pseud. 1304) shows that such concepts ­were already standard in Rome, and the parasite passage, he suggests, “would make good sense in Plautinopolis.”126 In Rome, however, the adoption is not simply an invention but also an instance of Hellenization, translating the Greek discourse into Roman practice. This is partly enacted in the Plautine parasite’s language: “hora” is a relatively recent loanword, and the repeated term “solarium,” perhaps derived from “hêliotropion,” picks out the sundial as a luxury item of foreign origin.127 As we consider how the parasite’s lament might relate to the adoption of hours in Rome, two more specific points of contact may be noted. The first comes in a line of verse quoted by Varro from the Boeotia he says is ascribed to Aquilius,

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though it is prob­ably from the same (Plautine) play as the parasite fragment: “when first the official had cried midday” (ubi primum accensus clamarat meridiem) (Ling. 6.89).128 Varro explicates this by relating that Cosconius “writes in his Actions” that “at that time the praetor was accustomed to commanding the official, when it seemed to him that it was the third hour, to announce that it was the third hour, and likewise noon and the ninth hour” ( praetorem accensum solitum tum esse iubere ubi ei videbatur horam esse tertiam inclamare horam tertiam esse, itemque meridiem et horam nonam). Uncertainties aside, the words of Cosconius make it clear that Romans of the m ­ iddle or late republican period ­were able to invoke distinctive practices of diurnal timekeeping in their civic culture.129 Specifically, the fragment seems to involve a Roman official with access to a sundial.130 The second point of contact is in Roman historical narratives about time technology that can be related to the Plautine parasite’s moment. The parasite’s description of a day cut up into pieces (articulatim) can be mapped quite neatly onto the elder Pliny’s ­later account of how the Roman “daylight” (lux) eventually ceased to be “undifferentiated” (indiscreta) (HN 7.215). The questions implied by the parasite regarding “the one who first discovered hours” (primus qui horas repperit) and “the one who also first set up a sundial ­here” (quique adeo primus statuit hic solarium) ­were to be repeated by Roman antiquarians and provided with answers in strikingly similar terms. The same Pliny details how L. Papirius Cursor was said by some to be “the first to have first established a sundial clock” (princeps solarium horologium statuisse) (7.213), and both Censorinus and Pliny (likely following Varro) cata­logue what happened “­after sundials ­were discovered in Rome” (Romae post reperta solaria) (DN 23.6), chronicling the vari­ous public sundials that ­were claimed to be the “first established” (primum statutum) (7.214).131 The antiquarians’ phrasing, in fact, is so evocative of Plautus that it seems plausible that their source, Varro, consciously or unconsciously recycled the parasite’s language. He knew Plautus’s play (Gell. NA 3.3.4). The more impor­tant point, however, is that the parasite’s lament challenges us to situate the world that he and his audience inhabit within the overall history of the emergence of clock time in Rome. Even if we did not possess literary accounts, we have archaeological and epigraphic evidence for the existence of sundials in Rome and Italy in the second and possibly even the late third ­century BCE that would make their appearance roughly compatible with the timing of the parasite’s lament.132 The details of the antiquarians’ accounts are the subject of chapter 3, but if we take the gist of ­those accounts as our guide and put this together with

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50  Ordering History

Cosconius’s testimony, we can surmise that the world inhabited by the Plautine parasite was one in which t­here was at least one prominent public sundial in Rome and quarter days w ­ ere publicly signaled by an official. In this world, hour schedules used for timekeeping had not necessarily migrated beyond discrete social discourses connected with law, the po­liti­cal pro­cess, and dining, and no public ­water clock was yet in existence. This picture of relatively rudimentary and isolated applications of hour technology in the age of Plautus certainly coheres with modern historians’ suggestions as to when precision and numbered hour usage arrived in Rome. They see it burgeoning only in the first c­ entury CE. That claim deserves some scrutiny and some adjusting. But if we wish to trace increasing precision more closely and to identify ­later “Palamedean” moments in the ongoing invention of diurnal timekeeping, we need to move on from the parasite to the time of the late republic—­the focus of chapter 2.

Pride of Theoderic We began this chapter by exploring the ­middle republican vantage point of the Plautine parasite, using this as a point of entry to the larger question of how divisions of the day through clock time might be correlated with divisions in Greco-­Roman history—­with diachronic trajectories from “then” to “now,” from “before” to “­after.” Let us conclude, however, in a moment of the ­later empire, from which one author retrojects a civilizing history for clock time in the Roman world that includes its own highly positive “Palamedes” figure and that offers both a complement and a contrast to the Plautine parasite’s lament. Our focus is a pair of letters by Cassiodorus written in the early sixth c­ entury CE included in his Variae (1.45–46), a collection of documents from his time serving in the Gothic administration in Italy (c. 507–40 CE).133 Scholars frequently cite passages from this diptych in order to showcase an ancient perspective on clocks that contrasts with that of the Plautine parasite: “Life’s order is confused [ordo vitae confusus agitur] if such a discernment confirmed by truth is unknown [si talis discretio sub veritate nescitur]. For it is the habit of beasts [beluarum . . . ​ritus est] to sense the hours from the hunger of the belly [ex ventris esurie horas sentire] and to lack certainty [non habere certum] in a t­ hing that all agree was provided for h ­ uman use” (1.46.2).134 This general progressivist and providentialist view centering on temporal “order” is accompanied by many more specific points about the place of clocks and hours in Roman imperial history. His two letters are written in the person of Theoderic, the king of the German Ostrogoths and effectively the head of the western Roman empire (he ruled 493–526 CE). The first of the letters is addressed to none other than Boethius,

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commissioning him to meet a request that Theoderic has received from Gundobad, king of Burgundy (d. 516): “The king of the Burgundians, then, has insisted that I must send to him one clock [horologium] that is regulated by ­water in a mea­sured flow [quod aquis sub modulo fluentibus temperatur] and another that is articulated [distinguitur] by capturing the illumination of the vast sun, together with their operators [cum magistris rerum]” (1.45.2). The second letter, addressed to Gundobad himself, accompanies the two timepieces and their operators and announces to the king that he ­will now possess something he had “once seen in the city of Rome” (aliquando vidistis in civitate Romana) (1.46.2).135 The first letter is effectively a captatio benevolentiae, explicating exactly why Boethius would be the right person to provide the requested devices. The writer rehearses Boethius’s cultural accomplishments, laying special emphasis on his role as a translator and appropriator of Greek knowledge.136 He also characterizes the overall nature of the arts and sciences that Boethius has done so much to elucidate, giving the example of the sphere of Archimedes and its capacity to replicate nature as a mirror of nature (speculum naturae), including its power to make “a second sun” (secundum solem) and “a replica zodiac circle” (alterum zodiacum circulum) (1.45.6).137 This praise of Boethius may seem ironic given that he was imprisoned and executed in 524 and that Cassiodorus’s collection was published ­after 540. But James O’Donnell has suggested that ­these two letters, coming as they do as a florid conclusion to book 1 of the Variae, may be intended to reconcile t­ hose who mourned Boethius’s fate to Gothic rule.138 The two timepieces themselves are characterized as being an “everyday” ­thing (cottidianum) and familiar to Romans—­cottidianum also suggesting their integration into the tracking of the hours of each and ­every day—­but “a miracle” (miraculum) for t­ hose who encounter them for the first time (1.45.2). They are also “objects of plea­sure” (voluptuosa) through which “serious t­ hings” (seria) can be learned or understood, and they can also help to accomplish the serious goal of conquest, even more effectively than “arms” (arma) (1.45.1). As scientific achievements, both are touted less as explications of nature than as conquests of nature that mock the sun with a superior h ­ uman feat. But the writer describes the devices on their own terms, as each complements the other’s gaps but one also surpasses the other in terms of what it achieves. The sundial is a device that reduces the sun’s motion to a vis­i­ble show: Let the first [clock] be where a gnomon, indicator of the day, is accustomed to show the hours through a mere shadow [ubi stilus diei index per umbram exiguam horas consuevit ostendere]. T ­ here a small unmoving circle completes the same path

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52  Ordering History that the vast and amazing sun traverses and keeps pace with the sun’s flight without knowing any motion of its own. If the stars ­were aware, they would resent such t­ hings and would perhaps bend their course so as not to be subject to such mockery. Where is the singular miracle of hours coming from the light, if even a shadow can show them [ubi est illud horarum de lumine venientium singulare miraculum, si has et umbra demonstrat]? Where is the regular and unceasing rotation, if even pieces of metal can accomplish it, contained as they are in a single unchanging location? The power of artifice is beyond estimation if, even as it claims to be playing, it has the capacity to divulge the secrets of nature! (1.45.8)

As Stephen McCluskey has noted, the circular pattern traced on this sundial evokes “the classic Greco-­Roman conical or ­spherical sundials.”139 A partial parallel for this wonderstruck description of the sundial as time theater may be found in Pliny the Elder’s florid exclamations about the artifice of nature, who gave us flowers (heliotrope and lupine) to serve as “indicators of the hours” (horarum indices) such that “not even the sun need call your eyes away from the earth” (HN 18.252). H ­ ere, though, h ­ uman artifice surpasses nature in miracles. The w ­ ater clock in Cassiodorus’s account completely emulates the movement of time in a dif­fer­ent elementary domain altogether. This is how it can indicate time even in poor weather or at night: Let the second [clock] be where the hour is discovered without the rays of the sun, dividing the night into parts [ubi praeter solis radios hora dinoscitur, noctes in partes dividens]. To escape a debt to the stars, it converts the workings of the heavens to streams of ­water instead. Through their motion it shows what is revolving in the sky, and an artifice founded in daring and self-­assurance confers upon the ele­ments what the nature of their origin denied them. (1.45.10)140

In the following letter (1.46), now addressed to Gundobad himself, Cassiodorus, still writing as Theoderic, further describes the devices that are being supplied but also expands on the imperial dimensions of the clock as cultural accomplishment. The Burgundians may now share in the benefits of Roman civilization—­though more in the spirit of admitting their own inferiority than in aspiring to be equal to the Romans. This entire transaction, as Jonathan Arnold has shown, is representative of Theoderic’s ambition for the Goths to be the “ ‘new Romans’ and guardians of Romanitas” and may be compared with other civilizing gifts that he sent to other barbarian monarchs.141 More specifically, in her detailed reading of the two letters in her essay “Two Clocks and a Wedding,” Danuta Shanzer argues that Theoderic displays both subtle and ag-

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gressive diplomacy ­toward Gundobad.142 For our purposes, it is enough to recognize, with Wolkenhauer, that the letters establish a close alignment—in an innovative and influential way—­between temporal order and a carefully constructed po­liti­cal hegemony.143 Cassiodorus characterizes ordering as discretio (discernment), a key term that deserves special attention. The “discernment” of the hours of the day that clocks make pos­si­ble is what also ensures that the “order of life” (ordo vitae) ­will not be “confused” (confusus) and that we w ­ ill not live like animals who learn the time from their hungry bellies and “do not have certainty [certum]” (1.46.2). In the course of the two letters, we glimpse vari­ous correlative moments of ordering, such as the articulation of the sun’s course in the shadow-­receiving surface of the sundial (“is articulated” [distinguitur] [1.45.2]; “traverses” [discurrit] [1.45.8]) and the maintenance and operation of the clocks by “orderlies” (dispositoribus) (1.46.1). Ultimately, too, as we have seen, the clock differentiates the civilized from the uncivilized, Romans from barbarians. Yet this symbolism is not latent in the clock itself: it is, of course, Cassiodorus’s epistolary explication that makes it so, and we may even understand that what Cassidorus says of Boe­ thius applies equally to Cassiodorus’s own cultural feats in the appropriation of Greek and Roman antiquarian knowledge.144 The term “discretio” invites us to recognize an awareness in Cassiodorus of the accounts of diurnal timekeeping in Roman culture given by antiquarians such as Varro, who is the focus of chapter 3. In chapter 9, moreover, I explore a further crucial dimension of Cassiodorus’s interest in diurnal timekeeping: his own use of sundials and w ­ ater clocks in his monastery at Vivarium. For pre­sent purposes, however, the Cassiodorus letters serve as a useful bookend and foil to the Plautine parasite’s lament about the intrusion of a Greek cultural technology into the city of Rome. Clocks and hours had become a high point in Rome’s appropriation of Greek wisdom and equally in Rome’s sharing of this wisdom around the empire. The varying responses to the ordering of the day that we have considered in this chapter—­whether this is the ordering of the day by the first inventor, by subsequent adopters and adapters, or by the tyrannical or miraculous devices themselves—­are each in their own way also instances of order being conferred upon some major relationships in Rome’s sociocultural and imperial history. This conferral of order on history ­will be equally manifest, though in differing ways, in the diachronically inflected studies of the next two chapters.

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ch a pter 2

The Long-­Legged Fly?

The Tent on the Shore The anonymous account of Julius Caesar’s campaign in Africa begins with the commander himself setting up camp on the shore at Lilybaeum in Sicily in December  47 BCE, prepared to sail as soon as the weather improves. Caesar “pitched his tent right on the shore [tabernaculum secundum litus ipsum constituit], so close that the waves almost crashed upon it. He did this so that no one could hope for a pause, and all would be in a state of readiness at ­every hour of ­every day [in dies horasque parati]” (BAfr 1.3). The phrase “in horas” gives Caesar’s beach-­front encampment a sharp temporal edge. Yeats’s poem “The Long-­Legged Fly” (1939) offers a picture of Caesar at just such a moment: Our master Caesar is in the tent Where the maps are spread, His eyes fixed upon nothing, A hand u ­ nder his head. Like a long-­legged fly upon the stream His mind moves upon silence.1

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The poetic image of personal genius enabling “civilization” eludes any easy explication. But in The Anthropology of Time (1992), Alfred Gell offers a productive insight on the strategic brilliance Yeats ascribes to Caesar. He “has his map inside his head; moreover, it is a much better map than any cartographer could provide, being in four dimensions rather than two, and showing not just one world, but a modal array of pos­si­ble worlds.”2 When we think about Caesar as a time strategist, we think inevitably about his famous reform of the Roman calendar in 46 BCE. “Turning next to the task of organ­izing the state of the republic [ad ordinandum rei publicae statum],” writes Suetonius of Caesar, he corrected the calendar that through the fault of the priests and their abuse of their freedom to intercalate, had for a long time been disordered [ fastos correxit iam pridem vitio pontificum per intercalandi licentiam adeo turbatos]—so disordered that the festivals of the harvest did not coincide with summer nor did the festivals of the grape gathering coincide with fall. And he reconciled the year with the course of the sun [annumque ad cursum solis accommodavit]. (Iul. 40.1)

A beautiful example of the drifting of the calendar is ready to hand for us, b­ ecause the December of 47 BCE referred to in The African War was more than two months out of sync with the seasons: when Caesar pitched his tent next to the waves, in seasonal terms it was only fall.3 A year l­ater, as he prepared to impose his new 365-­day calendar, two ­whole months had to be added first in addition to the recently neglected intercalary month, “so that the calculation of times would tally” (quo . . . ​temporum ratio congrueret) (40.2). The result, as Jörg Rüpke points out, was a calendar in which “for the first time [in Rome], astronomical events, and meteorological events in association, could be described on the basis of civil dates,” and it required intercalation only ­every fourth year (before this time, intercalation had been more frequent and ad hoc)—­a system that may seem rational in retrospect but for Caesar’s contemporaries involved “a long-­term cognitive re­orientation.” 4 One of my purposes in this chapter is to show that Caesar’s interest in time management extended from the calendrical to the diurnal level, both during his campaigns and in Roman public life. I am pressing a tentative case for Caesar as a late republican “Palamedes,” one whom Cicero had mocked as a second “Meton,” as if constellations ­were now to rise punctually “by order” (ek diatagmatos) of Caesar.5 But I am ultimately less concerned with ascribing agency to a ­great man than with spotlighting the late republic as a period for which we

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have rich evidence concerning Roman clock time, especially in the use of numbered hours. By this period hour usage was already well established in a variety of functions both in specific institutional settings and in the Roman community more generally—to a greater extent than has been acknowledged. Caesar’s contributions to this discourse, significant as they w ­ ere, represent one salient surviving moment in a longer shift that had been underway since before the first c­ entury BCE.

The Path to Precision “Sundials before the first centuries BC/AD had no hour numerals and sometimes not even hour lines, but did bear inscriptions identifying the placement of the solstices, equinoxes and zodiacal signs.” 6 This account rehearsed by Robert Hannah, based on observation of the archaeological rec­ord, has informed recent conclusions about when hours came into common use. In his 1975 essay “Clock-­Work before the Clock and Timekeepers before Timekeeping,” Derek de Solla Price argues that sundials and other such devices first functioned only as models of celestial motion: “The gradual familiarity of t­ hese ‘ritual objects’ led shortly a­ fter the time of Christ to their a­ ctual use as indicators of the time of day.”7 While Hannah points out Callimachus’s use of “hôra” in the sense of “hour” (Hymn 5.73) and numbered hours in postal-­system rec­ords from mid-­ third-­century BCE Egypt as indicating that already in the Hellenistic period “some ­people ­were ‘telling the time’ in terms not very dif­fer­ent from ours,” in the end, he argues that “in the literary rec­ords . . . ​it is from the first c­ entury AD that we find, in both Roman and Greek contexts, that the hours are numbered.”8 Hannah treats the specification of the numbered hour of Spurinna’s bathtime by Pliny the Younger (Ep. 3.1.8), writing in the reign of Trajan, as characteristic of increasing diurnal precision in the early empire.9 Other evidence would seem to confirm this picture. The princeps Augustus, writes Suetonius, “added to all his letters even the hour times at which they ­were sealed and handed over, not only of the day but also of the night” (ad epistulas omnis horarum quoque momenta nec diei modo sed et noctis, quibus data significarentur, addebat) (Aug. 50.1). Although it is uncertain exactly how many features of this epistolographic practice ­were novel, it was clearly distinctive and was no doubt influential within the imperial court and beyond.10 Such a trajectory would seem to align with the rationalization of numerous institutional practices during the Augustan era.11 ­There are further social applications of numbered hours in Rome and in the empire for which our earliest testimony comes ­either in the Augustan period or in the next few generations. Numbered hours are

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specified in inscriptions concerning ­water access (with precision down to the half hour), in per­for­mance times during the festival of the Ludi Saeculares, in time restrictions placed on undertakers who have to dispose of the corpse of a crucified slave within one hour, “same-­day ser­vice” being provided for requests received “before the tenth hour of the day,” and who may only use the public baths “beginning from the first hour of night,” and in gender-­specific schedules in the public baths.12 Augustus himself enforces an ad hoc restriction on w ­ omen attending the theater before the fifth hour (Suet. Aug. 44.3). A greater number of sundials and sundial dedication inscriptions survive from the imperial period than from e­ arlier. The same general chronology would seem to be confirmed by the references to numbered hours or to numbers of hours in texts of specific literary genres, such as in the agricultural works by the ­middle republican Cato (twice), the late republican Varro (once), and the Julio-­Claudian Columella (twenty-­one times).13 Such evidence suggests that in the imperial period numbered hours ­were increasingly a common point of reference. Other scholars, however, have seen precision emerging in Rome by the early first ­century BCE.14 ­There are several authors from this period who refer to numbered hours quite frequently—­and not the pivotal hours associated with the quartering of the day (third, sixth, and ninth) but hours throughout day and night.15 The most prominent of t­ hese are Cicero, Julius Caesar, Caesar’s continuators, and Livy.16 While the nature of their usage calls for closer analy­sis, it is already obvious that we need to reassess ­whether hour-­based precision increased steeply only a­ fter Augustus. In what follows I work my way in reverse chronological order from Livy to Cicero before focusing on Caesar’s continuators and on Caesar himself.

From Livy to Cicero Livy, the Augustan-­era historian, frequently mentions numbered hours (twenty-­ seven times). Such mentions are rare in his early books, whereas numbered vigiliae (nocturnal watches) are frequent (e.g., tertia fere vigilia, “approximately at the third watch” [2.64.9]). But in relating an event from 446 BCE, Livy describes how several cohorts of troops set forth from the city of Rome relatively early, “at the fourth hour of the day” (quarta diei hora) (3.69.8). A ­ fter mentions of a few numbered hours in books concerned with the late fourth and early third centuries, the frequency picks up in the second Punic war (book 21 and following). In one episode Livy relates Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus’s strategic timing for an ambush on the town of Hamae that took advantage of a nocturnal sacrifice ­t here: “Having required the soldiers to see to their bodies and attend to sleep from the tenth hour of the day [ab decima diei hora] so that they could assem­ble

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in response to a signal at dusk [ primis tenebris], around the first watch [vigilia ferme prima] he commanded the standards to be taken up” (23.35.16). Livy evidently had access to precise rec­ords in at least some instances: he gives information about an all-­night rainstorm that lasted “­until the third hour of the following day” (usque ad horam tertiam diei insequentis) (23.44.6), and he sometimes gives date and time in combination, as when he writes that on “the sixth day before the Kalends of October [168 BCE], at approximately the second hour, the ambassadors entered the city” (ante diem sextum kal. Octobres hora fere secunda legati urbem ingressi sunt) (45.2.3). The historian also frequently mentions the pivot of a single hour, as when he warns not to “entrust your good fortune of so many years to the determination of a single hour [in unius horae . . . ​ discrimen]” (30.30.19)—­where “hour” endows the narrative time with a more precise metric than the traditional notion of a decisive day common in epic and tragedy.17 Yet ­there is more than one way to frame Livy’s practice diachronically. Pre­ ce­dents for his usage can be found in historiography of the second and even third centuries BCE. The anonymous eyewitness account of the third Syrian war (246–241), preserved on papyrus, recounts a sea journey that began “at the beginning of the first watch” (prôtês phulakês archomenês) and concluded “around the eighth hour” (peri ogdoên hôran) (BNJ 160 F1).18 It is pos­si­ble, then, that comparable time information was already to be found in early Roman commentarii that recorded “­things worthy of memory . . . ​as they happened each day, at home and on campaign, on land and on sea” (digna memoratu . . . ​domi militiaeque terra marique gesta per singulos dies) (Serv. auct. Aen. 1.373).19 Some of Livy’s references to hours, however, prob­ably include anachronistic back projections.20 In Polybius, for example, we find many references to numbered watches but only one to a numbered hour, when he describes how Scipio Africanus began an attack on Nova Carthago “around the third hour” (peri tritên hôran) (10.12). This makes it plausible that Livy, who for the same period specifies the hour more frequently than Polybius, smuggles a new precision into his source material, colonizing the past with an anachronistic temporal schema, or, to adapt a phrase of Claudia Moatti, “subsum[ing] history to reason”—in line with the suggestion that Livy’s history makes the Roman past more responsive to other con­temporary sensitivities such as the aesthetics of spectacle.21 A more extreme instance of this practice that relied on dif­fer­ent methods was the astrologer Lucius Tarutius Firmanus’s calculation (for Varro) of the exact date and hour of Romulus’s conception and birth as well as of the foundation of Rome—­a nd thereby also Rome’s horoscope.22

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We also need to take into account Livy’s idiosyncratic shaping of historical narrative. Sallust’s archaizing historical monographs, written not long before Livy’s history, contain only one numbered-­hour reference (BJ 68.2). More surprisingly, perhaps, hours are also infrequent in ­later works such as the histories of Tacitus and Appian and the biographies of Suetonius and Plutarch.23 Livy, then, gave his audience access to a carefully curated republican past in which days appear subdivided into hours from a relatively early date, but we cannot draw easy conclusions about when such precision became impor­tant—in the Augustan period? already during the republic?—­nor can we be sure who Livy’s models w ­ ere or what his impact was. An e­ arlier and more instructive case from the previous generation is Cicero, who mentions numbered hours some forty-­nine times in his surviving works throughout his c­ areer, though principally in the letters and orations. T ­ hese hour indications are sometimes approximate, marked with “fere” or “circiter” (“approximately,” “around”) but in some instances they are remarkably precise. The frequent occurrence of an ordinal numeral on its own to indicate the hour shows that readers could already be relied on to supply the familiar word “hora,” and the same may be said of abbreviations.24 In a letter to Atticus from July of 44, Cicero explains that his letter carrier had arrived at Brutus’s ­house too late to give him Cicero’s letter. Brutus had set out from home H. II S, that is, “at the second and a half hour” (Att. 15.24.1).25 It seems no accident, I suggest, that this half-­hour indication comes in a letter written in summertime, since on some surviving sundials the longer hours—­t hat is, t­ hose between the equinox and the summer solstice—­are bisected with an additional line, allowing for a more precise indication (fig. 7).26 Such precision is fairly exceptional. A reliance on the sort of temporal precision familiar to us in the modern area to, for example, determine a person’s punctuality is generally absent in Roman contexts, as Anja Wolkenhauer has found.27 Alexander Jones has pointed out that both Greeks and Romans as a rule do not appear to have taken advantage of the precise time indications that their devices w ­ ere in fact technologically capable of.28 But if the Brutus letter is unusually precise, it is also quite representative in its use of an hour indication to mark a letter delivery gone wrong. Cicero frequently indicates hours in connection with travel and communications as well as in a broader array of actions and events in which something singular or anomalous has happened rather than simply to keep a neutral rec­ord or describe a norm. His rhetorical stress in ­these time indications ranges across several distinct (if overlapping) par­ameters of sociocultural timing—­most of all sequence, synchronicity, and duration.29 Although my application of t­ hese par­ameters is

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Figure 7. Conical sundial, date unknown, Megara. Hour lines in lower portion (summer) are bisected to indicate half hours. For more information about the sundial, see Berlin Sundial Collaboration, Ancient Sundials, Dialface ID 120, Megara, Inv. Nr. 42, 2014, Edition Topoi, DOI: 10.17171/1-1-1235. Gibbs 1976, 241, no. 3020G.

somewhat anachronistic, they can serve h ­ ere to help us identify overall emphases. Within the pa­ram­e­ter of sequence, Cicero sometimes indicates a numbered hour to highlight something happening in a time location that is relatively early or late in relation to a putative norm: Antony began his drinking “from the third hour” (ab hora tertia) (Phil. 2.104.10), a time ­earlier than was acceptable. Relative sequence is socially encoded in an instance where Cicero observes that being required to attend on a distinguished man in the Campus Martius “at the third hour” (hora tertia) is an honor—­compared with the humiliations of escorting a less-­distinguished man, from the edge of town, much e­ arlier, “starting virtually at night” (prope de nocte) (Mur. 69.4). Even seemingly neutral mentions of time location can have major implications for the sequence of events: Cicero states that Milo, on the day of Clodius’s death, arrived outside Clodius’s estate “at around the eleventh hour or not much other­wise” (hora fere undecima aut non multo secus) (Mil. 29.2), a time indication much l­ater than the ninth hour we find

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mentioned in Asconius (circa horam nonam) (Mil. 27.18) and in one of the prosecutors’ speeches quoted by Quintilian (Inst. 6.3.49). B. A. Marshall comments that Asconius may have been drawing his time information “from the acta,” the transcript of the trial, and points out vari­ous logistical reasons why the ninth hour is prob­ably correct as well as the rhetorical reasons why Cicero sought to bend the truth.30 The ­later time allows Cicero to portray Milo as having completed a normative day of public ser­vice in the city; he attends the senate ­until its dismissal and then relaxes at home with his wife before setting out on his journey and falling into what he portrays as an ambush by Clodius—­who by contrast had left the city suspiciously early and was lingering in the countryside suspiciously late (Mil. 28.1). Obviously the examples already considered also involve assumptions about when a given activity or event should or should not normally take place—­the hour with which the event or activity should coincide. Within the pa­ram­e­ter of synchronicity more strictly construed, however, Cicero may specify an expected coordination, such as when “it was two hours” (horae duae fuerunt), the second hour of the day, and someone did not arrive “to meet the terms of a pledge” (ad vadimonium) as required by law (Quinct. 53.8–9) but failed to appear. Or he may point to an exceptional coincidence or time location, such as when he reports to Atticus that armed men appeared outside with shields, swords, and torches “openly at the fifth hour” (palam hora quinta) (Att. 4.3.3)—­a shocking sight in broad daylight. A seemingly neutral case is Cicero’s mentioning to Tiro that he concluded his return from Cilicia to Brundisium in 50 BCE “seven days before the Kalends of December . . . ​at the fourth hour” (a.d. VII Kal. Dec. . . . ​hora IIII) and then that “at the same time Terentia entered the town si­mul­ta­neously with us” (eodem . . . ​tempore simul nobiscum in oppidum introiit Terentia) (Fam. 16.9.2). But the coincidence marks a climactic morning per­for­mance of marital reunion. Within the third pa­ram­e­ter, duration, we sometimes find Cicero mentioning numbered hours to emphasize relative brevity or speed. Very l­ittle time elapsed between, first, a messenger’s arrival with news of Marcellus’s stabbing “around the tenth hour of the night” (circiter hora decima noctis), second, Cicero’s “starting from that very instant . . . ​at first light” (e vestigio eo . . . ​prima luce) from his villa, and, third, the time at which Marcellus was ­later reported to have died, “a l­ittle before daylight” (paulo ante lucem); in this account, both duration and relative sequence draw attention to the emergency as well as the hopelessness of Marcellus’s situation (Fam. 4.12.2). At the other extreme, Cicero often uses hour indications to detail long durations. Although someone died at

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the third hour of the day, scandalously it took ­until “the tenth hour on the following day” (postridie hora decima) for the death to be reported (Mil. 48.10). He variously draws attention to a salutatio that continues u ­ ntil “­a fter the fourth hour” (post horam quartam) (Att. 2.14.2), an all-­night carousal concluding “at around the fifth hour” (quinta fere hora) (Pis. 13.2), a trial that lasts “right up till the eighth hour” (usque ad horam octavam) (Ad Quint. fr. 2.3.3), and, on another occasion, a protracted interview between himself and Pompey that runs “from the eighth hour till eve­ning” (ab hora octava ad vesperum) (Att. 7.8.4). As I have noted, ­these indications are almost entirely restricted to Cicero’s letters and speeches. In t­hese genres the numbering or counting of hours is of special concern. Ancient postal stations, at least as seen in the evidence from Egypt, ­were relatively early adopters of numbered hours, recording arrival times during both day and night, and Cicero clearly keeps track of the times when letters are or could be transferred: “From the Forum of Appius at the fourth hour [hora quarta]” is the time stamp on one letter (Att. 2.10.1), “at around the eighth hour [H. VIII fere] the mail-­carrier came” (Att. 15.4.1) is another, and “I had [already] reclined at the ninth hour [accubueram hora nona] when I wrote out the draft of this letter on tablets” (Fam. 9.26.1) is yet one more.31 In orations also, precise reference to events by the hour goes hand in hand with the meta-­ oratorical role of hours as the unit with which speaking time was regulated already in the late republic. Asconius, discussing Cicero’s In Defense of Milo, takes equal account of hour references within the speech and the hours allowed to the speakers during the trial: the archives clearly provided him with detailed information about both. Cicero’s frequent time indications in the speeches against Verres draw attention at one moment to Verres’s anomalous time be­hav­ iors and at another to how Cicero chooses to use the time allotted to him for speaking.32 Reference to clepsydrae or w ­ ater is common to Cicero and the Athenian orators in their comments reflecting their self-­consciousness about time allotments, but Cicero also uses the hour and at times the half hour as units of reference.33 When Cicero in Brutus mentions a courtroom situation that involves a bored judge “yawning . . . ​sending [someone] to find out the hour [mittentem ad horas]” (200.5), the source of the time signal is evidently external to the courtroom but is clearly also an authority for mea­sur­ing the length of the judicial proceedings.34 The hours, in any case, served for Cicero and his contemporaries as a common frame of reference both for social actions themselves and for the communicative mediums (epistolography, oratory) in which such actions ­were discussed. By contrast, the relative absence of numbered hours in Cicero’s dialogues shows

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that ­there w ­ ere areas of social life where hour-­based precision had not permeated or was actively kept at arm’s length. As Wolkenhauer puts it, numbered hour usage “varies greatly in dif­fer­ent chronotopes (as, e.g., the forum, where it gains ­great importance).”35 The near total absence of hour references in discussions of otium is perhaps not so surprising, and that would remain the case, for some time, as the imperial-­era epistolography of Seneca and Pliny the Younger demonstrates. In a rare example that tests the rule, Cicero in On the Orator remarks that a new day of discussion got underway fairly late b­ ecause Crassus was still in bed “at around the second hour” (hora fere secunda) (2.12.1). The setting is a Tusculan villa, where the interlocutors have withdrawn during the Ludi Magni, and h ­ ere the second hour likely serves as a contrastive reminder that the day of salutatio followed by officia would have been well advanced in everyday urban life—­this protocol amounts to a foil for the friends’ leisured repose, walks, and disputation.36 Overall Cicero’s hour usage demonstrates that precise, hour-­specific time signals ­were fairly widely available. It is not only in Rome that he is aware of the hour but also in such places as Formiae, Ameria, Brundisium, and Syracuse.37 In one notable letter from 47 BCE Cicero actively adds to the number of time signals within his own domestic network when he promises his secretary Tiro that he ­will send him “the clock [horologium] and the books, if the weather is fine” (Fam. 16.18.3).38 In the several instances where he indicates a nocturnal hour, we must assume a ­water clock signal, ­whether in his ­house or in nearby public space. Cicero was clearly familiar enough with both the sundial and the ­water clock, and in On the Nature of the Gods he invokes both (solarium vel descriptum vel ex aqua), describing them as means by which the hours are indicated through h ­ uman artifice and as examples of a teleological rather than random mechanism (2.87).39 The unnumbered hour, also, is a standard unit for Cicero when he refers to vari­ous dynamics of short time. The hour calibrates frequency when Cicero jokes to a friend that if he had enough messengers he “would be sending perhaps three letters per hour” (vel ternas in hora darem) (Fam. 15.16.1). He conveys an acceleration in frequency through a rhetorical intensification from daily to hourly (“for a day or indeed rather an hour [dies . . . ​vel hora] often brings ­great catastrophes” [Phil. 3.2.4]) and equally when he points out swift completion— as when the adoption of Clodius into the plebeian order was completed within “three hours” (trium . . . ​horarum; viz. from the sixth to the ninth), which was very quick b­ ecause the conventional waiting period was typically “three weeks” (trinum nundinum) (Dom. 41). The hour is the bleeding edge of time’s passage:

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“Indeed the hours give way, and the days and months and years” (horae quidem cedunt et dies et menses et anni) (Sen. 69.9). Brevity is a standard focus: current affairs “change from hour to hour” (in horas commutari) (Att. 14.20.4), and men who act against their longer-­term interest are “living for the hour” (in horam viverent) (Phil. 5.25.6). But Cicero also describes the opposite effect in a case where “the hours [he] spent waiting seemed long” (horae quibus exspectabam longae videbantur) (Att. 12.5c.1). Hours can be the pixels of time and action from which a picture of someone’s life is assembled, as when Cicero says to Atticus that “not one hour of your work is unknown to me” (neque enim ulla hora tui mihi est operis ignota) (Att. 12.5a.1) and of Verres’s life that “not one hour w ­ ill be found to be empty [hora nulla vacua] of theft, crime, cruelty, wickedness” (Ver.2.1.35). The “use of a single hour” (unius usuram horae) is something a gladiator might receive, perhaps to enjoy one last morsel of life-­defining autonomy; Cicero ostentatiously denies such leniency to Catiline (Cat. 1.29.9). Given Cicero’s fluid horological rhe­toric, it might seem to some like poetic justice that in 44 BCE the arrival of assassins at his villa in Gaeta was presaged by an omen involving a sundial: “A crow used its beak to tear so violently the iron pointer by which the hours ­were distinguished that it broke it off entirely [corvus virgulam ferream, qua distinguebantur horae, sic conscidit rostro, ut eam excuteret], and then caught Tullius’s toga and tugged on it” (Nepot. Epit. Val. Max. 1.4.6).40 The saturation of Cicero’s temporal world with references to hours coheres with other traces from his own era and ­earlier. Catullus in one poem describes being impaled by Iuventius (emotionally, sexually) “for greater than an hour” (amplius horam) (99.3). In another, he appears to exploit the seasonally long daytime hours of summer to mea­sure out the de­cadent siesta of the fellator Gellius: “Even when the day is long” (and, implicitly, the seasonal hours are long), it is only the “eighth hour” that “raises [him] from soft rest” (te octava quiete / e molli longo suscitat hora die) (80.3–4). But if t­hese moments show Catullus using the day’s hours as a ground against which he can figure a transgressive social ethos, in Cassius Dio’s history of the era we find the hour mea­sur­ing forensic and po­ liti­cal speech. Dio reports how in 52 BCE Pompey imposed a law that would apply to all the courts, ordering that “the time allotted to the plaintiff should be only two hours and to the defendant three” (40.52.2), the rationale for this ostensibly being to make t­rials more rational and orderly, though in real­ity it likely increased Pompey’s ability to influence convictions to the advantage of his senatorial faction.41 Against the same backdrop of the First Triumvirate, Dio describes a popu­lar assembly during the early 50s devoted to the question of ex-

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tending Caesar’s command in Gaul, the opposing speakers for which ­were ­limited to one or two hours by the tribune (39.34.2–3). This cluster of evidence from both private and public life in the late republic cannot necessarily be taken as proof of a sudden leap forward in hour discourse. A fragment of a speech delivered by Gaius Titius in support of a sumptuary law in 161 BCE recorded by Macrobius satirizes the citizens who are required to assem­ble in the Comitium to serve as judges following a tribal assembly. They have spent the day carousing: They play dice intently, smeared in ointments and crowded by whores. When the hours are ten [ubi horae decem sunt], they order a slave to be summoned to go to the Comitium to find out what has happened in the Forum, who spoke in ­favor, who spoke against, how many tribes voted for it, how many opposed [quid in foro gestum sit, qui suaserint, qui dissuaserint, quot tribus iusserint, quot vetuerint]. Then they march to the Comitium to avoid being liable for dereliction [ne litem suam faciant]. (fr. 2 Malcovati = Macrob. Sat. 3.16.14)

­ ere we not only glimpse the background normalcy of a public pro­cess that w H ­ ill have taken place by the tenth hour but also witness the use of a numbered hour to add specificity to an orator’s portrait of transgressive time navigation—­and this a full ­century before the other evidence we have been considering. If any doubt remains that hour usage at Rome was already well established in the late republic and likely much e­ arlier, the decisive witness is Varro. The devices and practices we encounter in Varro’s surviving works and his lost contribution to the history of Roman timekeeping in the third and second centuries BCE are the subjects of chapter 3. The gist of that lost contribution lives on in the accounts of Pliny the Elder and Censorinus, who, to be sure, characterize the Romans as relatively late adopters of hour observation and of clocks. Yet the year in which they report that a w ­ ater clock dedicated by the censor Scipio Nasica facilitated total hour tracking, both day and night, in the Basilica Aemilia-­Fulvia (Plin. HN 7.215; Censorinus, DN 23.7), 159 BCE, is still early for our purposes. That chronology coheres with the evidence from Cicero, in whose writings, as we have observed, precise numbered hour indications, including nocturnal hours, ­were already well established as a social and rhetorical resource. Among modern scholars, Wolkenhauer has argued that numbered hours likely came into use at Rome soon ­a fter “the 24 hours of the day ­were fixed upon” thanks to Scipio’s clock.42 Even apart from Scipio’s clock, t­ here is so much evidence from the second ­century BCE in surviving sundials and inscriptions

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making mention of sundials that Jérôme Bonnin maintains that sundials in that period w ­ ere “already everyday objects that had become necessities.” 43 To suppose that such a development belongs to the second c­ entury—or indeed ­earlier—is not to discount the significance of subsequent adjustments and refinements, such as we noted in the epistolary hour stamps regularized by Augustus. It is also likely that some of what we see in Cicero is novel, though as with many other historical questions, the idiosyncrasies of the Ciceronian archive make it impossible for us to be sure. Overall, however, it is plausible that the pro­cess began far ­earlier.

Caesar the Strategist Within this uncertain chronology, t­ here may still be grounds for identifying Julius Caesar as a unique and “Palamedean” figure, given the mix of timekeeping concerns that are salient in his ­career. Let us return, first, to Caesar in his “tent right upon the shore” and consider the temporal dimensions of his agency as a military general. The narrator of The African War explains that the reason Caesar wanted his troops to be ready “at ­every hour of ­every day” (in dies horasque) was “to miss no opportunity for departure” (1.3). When the crossing to Africa fi­nally got underway, we are told, Caesar adapted to the uncertainties of their destination by “looking out for a chance-­given opportunity for disembarking”—­contrary to his usual practice of circulating a written plan to all the ships in advance (3.5). The work reports a number of decisive episodes characterized by Caesar’s savvy use of time, mentioning numbered hours (five times) and numbered watches (nine times). To an extent the narrator simply seems concerned with accuracy of date and time, as when he mentions how “on the Nones of January [Non. Ian.], the sixth day ­after [ post diem VI quam] [Caesar] had reached Africa, on very flat and clear plains, ­battle took place from the fifth hour of the day right up till sunset [ab hora diei quinta usque ad solis occasum est decertatum]” (19.4). ­Here the reworking of a time formula already used in Caesar’s Gallic War suggests fidelity to the style of Caesarean commentarii.44 But the author’s time indications also promote the idea that Caesar’s attention to temporal specificity is a key to his success, as when he notes that Caesar, “waiting for the tenth hour (in horam X commoratus), just as he had prepared to do, withdrew to his own camp with every­one safe and sound” (78.9). A recurring emphasis in this text is Caesar’s early departure from camp followed by swift completion, as in the mission on “the sixth day before the Kalends of February” (VI Kal. Febr.) when Caesar readied his scouts “around the first watch” (circiter vigilia prima) and

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then the rest of his troops “at the third watch” (vigilia tertia); ­after setting out for the town of Ruspina they set up fortifications in “less than half an hour” (minus semihora), with Caesar exhorting them “as they worked” (in opere), and they defeated the Nu­mid­i­ans “swiftly” (celeriter) (37.1–39.3).45 Hours (and dates) are mentioned more often in the episodes of The African War than in the other three commentaries by Caesar’s continuators, though a few tendencies are worth noting in all of ­these, such as the mention of numbered nocturnal hours (absent from Caesar’s own writings) in The African War (once) and in Hirtius’s Gallic War 8 (once) and frequent mention of missions in the anonymous The Spanish War begun in the second watch (four times) or third watch (five times), a tactic that usually allows Caesar to complete a mission swiftly and effectively.46 The time precision, especially in The African War, is no doubt due in part to the generic stamp of commentarii as dealing with the details of specific military episodes as they unfolded—­they tend to provide more “raw data” than other forms of historical writing. Once again, a useful contrast is Sallust, who seldom provides time details. Nevertheless, the continuators’ precise time references frequently enhance their portrait of Caesar’s time-­sensitive strategies. In Caesar’s own commentarii (The Gallic War 1–7 and The Civil War), we get frequent glimpses of the commander’s savvy time use, with the effect often augmented by his written language.47 For example, Caesar describes how during his siege of the Gallic town of Avaricum in the winter of 52 BCE the Gauls ­there had made “frequent daytime and nighttime sorties” (crebris diurnis nocturnisque eruptionibus) and had also per­sis­tently sought to surpass the Romans’ “mound constructed by daily work” (cotidianus agger); this mound was now almost as high as the fortifications, having reached eighty feet in height ­after twenty-­five days, thanks especially to Caesar’s vigilance and persistence—­“since Caesar was regularly awake to oversee the work [ad opus consuetudine excubaret] and encouraged his soldiers not to lapse from the work for any time at all [ne quod omnino tempus ab opere intermitteretur]” (BGall. 7.24.2). However, “a ­little before the third watch a sortie was made” (paulo ante tertiam vigiliam . . . ​eruptio fiebat), an attack so sudden and so multipronged that for the Romans “scarcely any determination could be made [vix ratio iniri posset] as to where first to intercept them or whose aid to come to” and that threatened to compromise their pro­gress (7.24.4). Caesar himself employs the nocturnal sortie (eruptio) with g­ reat success elsewhere, but in the pre­sent instance the narrative momentum seems to have shifted, anomalously, ­toward victory for the attackers.48 Yet Caesar turns out to have preempted this by a careful allotment of time:

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68  Ordering History But ­because by Caesar’s established convention [instituto Caesaris] ­there ­were always two legions before the camp keeping vigil [excubabant] and more still w ­ ere working away in distributed work shifts [ partitis temporibus erant in opere], it quickly came about that some resisted the sorties, o­ thers restored the towers and cut up the earthworks, and the w ­ hole crowd from within the camp rushed together to put out the fire [celeriter factum est, ut alii eruptionibus resisterent, alii turres reducerent aggeremque interscinderent, omnis vero ex castris multitudo ad restinguendum concurreret]. (BGall. 7.24.5)

Caesar’s prose has a narrative momentum that conveys the success of his time management, from the mea­sures he had taken in maintaining the army’s readiness throughout the diurnal cycle to the culminating celeritas (swiftness) and the successful multipronged response, stylistically reinforced by the climactic tricolon. Caesar’s usage of numbered hours and watches makes for an in­ter­est­ing comparison with Cicero’s. Although it is obviously dif­fer­ent due to its mostly military context, Caesar’s time indications are in their own way as rich and diverse. It is no surprise to find that Caesar mentions numbered nocturnal vigiliae with ­great frequency (twenty-­six times) in contrast with Cicero, who almost never refers to them. More surprising is that while he never mentions the first and second hours of the day, no doubt ­because ­these hours are less relevant outside of an urban setting, and his early morning missions tend to have begun already during the night, he does specify most of the other numbered hours at least once (for a total of seventeen times), which suggests that hour awareness may have been facilitated by auditory signaling (­whether hour by hour or in day quarters) and was as entrenched as his awareness of nocturnal watches.49 Caesar’s time indications function across the same range of par­ameters as in Cicero and also arise in connection with singular or anomalous instances rather than iterative time. The primary emphasis, however, is on strategic initiatives or challenges—­and particularly on the timing’s socioethical significance for Caesar, his soldiers, and their enemies. Within the pa­ram­e­ter of sequence, we find Caesar frequently indicating at precisely what time a given subevent occurs within a longer, multipart event that unfolds over one or more days. Within such chains, the relative importance of a time location usually relates to a strategic advantage it offers, as in the numerous cases where a journey or an attack begins at a given watch, most often the third (ten times) or fourth (five times); h ­ ere the third watch is not just a number but a time distinguished by surprise and by silence, as in, for example, “ven-

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turing forth from the camp in silence at the third watch” (silentio e castris tertia vigilia egressus) (BGall. 7.58.2).50 In one case during an early morning intensification of a siege against Caesar’s camp, Gallic heralds offered an amnesty to any Gaul or Roman who surrendered “before the third hour” (ante horam tertiam), but it turns out that Caesar had got in first and set a trap: “Then Caesar, making a sudden sortie from all the gates and sending out the cavalry, quickly [celeriter] put the ­enemy to rout “ (BGall. 5.51.4). References to lateness within the day are typical in Caesar’s accounts of an exceptional challenge that he nevertheless overcomes, such as when “at around the eleventh hour” (hora circiter undecima) he receives letters containing urgent intelligence and rises to the challenge of passing on the information “immediately” (statim) (BGall. 5.46.1). Within the pa­ram­e­ter of time location or synchronicity, in turn, Caesar may highlight strategic timing, as when the e­nemy attacks “at around the sixth hour” (hora circiter sexta) to take advantage of the fact that Caesar’s cavalry are out foraging—­though by “the tenth hour” (hora X) Caesar recovers and “the calvary quickly resumes its assigned daily travel” (celeriter equitatus ad cotidianum itineris officium revertitur) (BCiv. 1.80.4). Caesar himself, however, evidently regarded the siesta as an unfair time to begin an attack on o­ thers.51 Within the pa­ram­e­ter of duration, likewise, an event’s relative brevity can convey speed and efficiency, as when Caesar attacks a town “­after the ninth hour on the same day on which he had arrived” (eodem quo venerat die post horam nonam) and yet conquers it “before sunset” (ante solis occasum) and then departs “immediately” (statim) and moves on to the next town (BCiv. 3.80.7). In his speech in Vesontio in 58 BCE, in which he exhorts his diffident troops to have courage against Ariovistus and the Germans, a seasonal dynamic seems to enter his discourse when he announces that “he would expedite what he had been ­going to defer ­until a more distant day” (or alternatively “a longer day”) (quod in longiorem diem conlaturus fuisset, repraesentaturum) and that “the next night from the fourth watch [ proxima nocte de quarta vigilia] he would move camp, so that he could determine as soon as pos­si­ble which had greater power over them: a sense of shame and duty or fear” (BGall. 1.40.14).52 ­Here Caesar not only challenges the troops with an e­ arlier date and an e­ arlier time of day but also asks them to do in a spring day what he had been deferring to a summer day, since longiorem implies a “longer” day even as it likely denotes “more distant.”53 References to an event’s relative lengthiness usually have the effect of conveying the toil involved and the endurance required, as when one b­ attle lasts “from first light to the eighth hour” (a prima luce ad horam octavam) (BGall. 5.35.5) and another “from around the fourth hour right up till sunset”

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(ab hora fere quarta usque ad solis occasum) (BGall. 3.15.5). But a drawn-­out event can also have therapeutic value, such as when some advisors argue for a nocturnal withdrawal “beginning from the third watch [de tertia vigilia] . . . ​so that through the greater interval of time the soldiers’ minds could recover [ut maiore spatio temporis interiecto militum mentes sanarentur]”—­t hough ­others accuse them of using night to veil their shame (BCiv. 2.30.3). Hours feature in another domain of Caesarean strategy: his expansion of geographic frontiers and with this the frontiers of knowledge—­a proj­ect that emerges most distinctly, as Christopher Krebs has shown, in his accounts of Britain.54 The narrator mentions that the tides on the Gallic coast rise and fall “twice in e­ very span of twelve hours” (bis . . . ​semper horarum duodenarum spatio) (BGall. 3.12.1) and that the voyage from Gaul to Britain began when the weather was favorable “at around the third watch” (tertia fere vigilia) and concluded “at around the fourth hour of the day” (hora diei circiter quarta) (BGall. 4.23.2). He further reports that “we discovered nothing from our inquiries” on the topic of summer nights in northern climes “except that we observed, through precise water-­based mea­sure­ments [certis ex aqua mensuris], that the nights are shorter than on the mainland [breviores esse quam in continenti noctes videbamus]” (BGall. 5.13.4).55 ­These scientific observations are intertwined with ethnology, since northern geography closely informs Caesar’s “borealism.”56 Caesar certainly shows a general interest in connecting timekeeping practices to cultural identity, as when he notes that the Gauls reckon time by calculating the number of nights, not days, and regard each day as following night, not vice versa (BGall. 6.18).57 Even if we usually cannot be certain what kind of timekeeping devices or practices Caesar used, it is evident that precision played a critical role for him, perhaps even beyond what was the norm for ancient military organ­ization.58 Admittedly, Caesar’s exactitude is variable: although he sometimes indicates a specific stage in a vigilia (“completed” [exacta]; “begun” [inita], ­etc.), like Cicero he often qualifies a specific time indication with “approximately” or “around” (fere, circiter). It is clear, however, that in addition to scientific w ­ ater clocks and clepsydrae for mea­sur­ing the vigiliae he employed sundials and had access to reliable hour signals. Military camps may also have had an assigned “clock minder.”59 We also need to remember that our most informative account of ancient clock technology was written by Vitruvius, who may have been involved in Julius Caesar’s campaigns, and Vitruvius explains every­thing that would be needed for “inventing” a sundial when traveling, first defining the analemma and setting up the gnomon and then marking out the shadow-­receiving surface; the portable

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sundials he mentions (De arch. 9.8.1) would obviously have been useful for the military traveler.60 If Vitruvius’s account is representative of what some of Caesar’s experts knew, not to mention Caesar himself, the strategic navigation of diurnal time that we find in the commentarii likely reflects his careful use of such technologies. Caesar’s strategic use of diurnal time may be usefully compared with his use of space. “Dif­fer­ent kinds of space” recur in The Gallic War, observes Andrew Riggsby, such as the marsh (palus), forest (silva), or defile (angustiae), each of which lends its own dynamic qualities to a given narrative episode.61 Much the same could be said of specific diurnally configured times, in which a numbered hour or watch may possess not only a quantitative dimension (through numbering) but also, or more emphatically, a qualitative one, such as the association of the third watch with silence or surprise and of the tenth hour with lateness or urgency. At the level of military movements, we might define some of t­ hese as instances of “tactical time,” on an analogy with the notion of “tactical space” coined by Michel Rambaud and elaborated on by Riggsby.62 More generally, however, some narrative features allude to the overall diurnal structure as a framework for tracing actions or for ordering knowledge according to a geometrically precise spatiotemporal grid. For example, one of the typological spaces that Riggsby identifies in Caesar is centuriated space, and we know from ancient discussions of centuriation and of spatial orientation more generally that the “hour” (i.e., the position of the sun in the sky corresponding to a given seasonal hour) could be used as a direction, such as “­toward the south but, if someone should make a more precise specification, between the sixth hour and the first winter hour” (ad meridiem quidem, sed, si quis id diligenti subtilitate exigat, inter sextam horam primamque brumalem) (Plin. HN 3.45).63 Certainly, Caesar’s virtuoso spatial navigation in combination with his tactical navigation of the diurnal grid is suggestive of the kind of four-­dimensional, spatiotemporal map that Gell suggests Caesar sees in his mind as he gets ready in his tent.64 Caesar’s time strategies, however, occupy just one point in the longer history of ancient military strategy, and it is useful to briefly compare one ­earlier and one l­ater stage in the same history. Polybius famously pronounces that “it is timing [ho kairos], indeed, which rules all ­human actions, and especially in war,” which emphasizes the importance of acting neither too early nor too late (9.15.1).65 The basis of such strategizing includes specific astronomical and geometric knowledge about diurnal time: “For how could one correctly determine the distance covered in a journey by day or a journey by night if he did not know the differing extents of day and night?” (9.14.8–9). And it is not simply the

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overall changes in length of day and night that the commander needs to know: “He must also know the successive times in both day and night [tous kata meros kairous . . . ​kai tous tês hêmeras kai tous tês nuktos] so as to know when to signal the times for getting up and for breaking camp” (9.15.4–5). The historian also differentiates the technologies by which diurnal and nocturnal subdivisions can be tracked, explaining how, “as regards the times of day, ­there is nothing to prevent us from observing them ­either by the shadow [têi skiai theôrein] or by the sun’s path or by its own intervals across the heavens [têi kata ton hêlion poreiai kai tois epi tou kosmou ginomenois autou toutou diastêmasi]” (9.15.6–7), and he provides equally specific guidance on tracking the time of night using the zodiac or (on cloudy nights) the moon. Although Polybius does not mention devices h ­ ere, or even hours as such, his interest in the seasonal dynamics of diurnal time is clear, and he immediately goes on to give examples that include references to both numbered hours and numbered watches. He mentions how Aratus, the Achaean commander (271–213 BCE), failed in an attack on the city of Cynaetha by jumping the gun: expecting his collaborators to emerge from the city “about midday,” he misinterpreted the movements of a shepherd “around the fifth hour” (peri . . . ​pemptên hôran [9.17]). Likewise, Cleomenes of Sparta (in 229 BCE) missed his rendezvous with collaborators at Megalopolis who w ­ ere to be on duty “around the third watch” (kata tritên phulakên), forgetting that “­toward the rising of the Pleiades the nights are already quite short,” so his departure from Sparta at sunset was too late to get him t­ here in time (9.18). In the Epitome of Military Science by Vegetius, likely written in the late fourth ­century CE, the hour features much more prominently than in Polybius’s history and is represented as a standard unit of military order and rec­ord keeping.66 Hours are part of Vegetius’s precise account of “how the camp should be ordered” (quemadmodum castra debeant ordinari), where “watches ­were divided into four by the clepsydra, so that no one is forced to stand watch for more than three nocturnal hours” (in quattuor partes ad clepsydram sunt divisae vigiliae, ut non amplius quam tribus horis nocturnis necesse sit vigilare) (3.8).67 They also feature in his account of how to discover the best time for an ambush: An opportunity for surprise attack [opportunitas . . . ​insidiarum] can only be discovered [inveniri] if you know at what hours [quibus horis] the opponent ceases to attend to work, at what hours he becomes less cautious—­sometimes in the ­middle of the day [medio die], sometimes t­ oward eve­ning [ad vesperum], often at night [nocte], in some cases at the time when [eo tempore quo] food is consumed, when soldiers of both kinds [viz. infantry and cavalry] are scattered for resting or to attend to their bodies. (4.27)

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The seasonal dimension of hours is central to Vegetius’s advice on how to preserve “order in marching” (incedendi ordo): “And so at ‘soldier pace’ twenty miles should be covered in five hours—at least, five summer hours [horis quinque dumtaxat aestivis]. But at ‘full pace,’ which is quicker, in the same number of hours [totidem horis] twenty-­four miles should be completed” (1.9).68 Beyond the obvious fact that at some point between Polybius and Vegetius the hour became a more familiar unit of reference, their accounts taken together remind us that Caesar’s strategic concern with time is nothing new—­that navigating and exploiting the structure of the day was a pervasive tactic in ancient military history. To the extent that it was a common tactical practice, it may simply be Caesar’s literary survival, particularly in the form of his detail-­rich commentarii, that accounts for his image as time strategist par excellence. At the same time, however, the commentarii show us what Caesar wrote for his Roman audience in the 50s and 40s BCE in a form of literary prose that made his strategies both comprehensible and impressive, and this was part of his unique historical ­career. And daily time was also a crucial concern for Caesar in areas well beyond his military campaigns.

Caesar the Reformer Caesar’s strategic use of daily time in a military context is strikingly “Palamedean” in the purest sense, given the mythical Palamedes’s invention of both hours and military watches in the crucible of the Trojan War. But Caesar is also Palamedean in the broader sense that he introduced a new order to a previously disordered world. Krebs has argued that Caesar’s “ethno-­geographical” exploration of Britain documented in the Gallic War was connected with a larger proj­ect of mapping the known world and that this in combination with Caesar’s calendar reforms and his work on language in De analogia “would have set the Roman Empire on a sound foundation with regard to its spatial, temporal, and linguistic complexity”—to which, I suggest, Caesar’s strategic usage of diurnal time could have made its own further contribution.69 Let us proceed, though, to consider how Caesar’s tent on the beach is emblematic of his more general historical-­political profile in Rome as a reformer of timekeeping. For when we read the opening page of The African War, it is natu­ral for us to look ahead to Caesar’s victory in the civil war and his subsequent po­ liti­ c al dominance. As I have noted, one of Caesar’s most prominent administrative mea­sures in “organ­izing the state” was that he “corrected the calendar.”70 Macrobius describes the reform as follows:

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74  Ordering History Gaius Caesar took all this inconsistency of times, up till now fluctuating and uncertain, and set it in order through stable definition [omnem hanc inconstantiam temporum vagam adhuc et incertam in ordinem statae definitionis coegit], with the assistance of the scribe Marcus Flavius, who presented written rec­ords of individual days to the dictator [scriptos dies singulos ita ad dictatorem rettulit] such that their order could very easily be discovered and once discovered it could retain a stable certainty [ut et ordo eorum inveniri facillime posset et invento certus status perseveraret]. (Sat. 1.2)

This act of discovery (inventio) in ser­vice of order (ordo) primarily applies to the clarification of the calendar, but the plural expression “times” (temporum) is also quite evocative, inviting us to think about other contributions Caesar may have made to bolstering temporal certainty and order. Above all, Caesar’s calendrical reform would itself have been inseparable not simply from his “larger proj­ect of reforms aimed at improving public finances and administration on a g­ rand scale” and from his systemizing approach to social and intellectual domains, but also from the question of how Romans perceived daily time.71 When Suetonius explains the civil calendar’s drift away from the solar year, he does so by noting the noncoincidence of specific calendrical festivals with the seasons they corresponded to. Plutarch’s version of the same point necessarily refers to seasons with the Greek term “hôras” (Caes. 59.2–3), which serves to remind us that the most obvious mechanism for tracking the sun’s day-­by-­day progression from summer solstice to equinox to winter solstice and back again was the series of day curves on any horologium. In other words, any calendrical incongruity would have been stark to Romans observing sundials. Suetonius relates how several de­cades ­later, the emperor Augustus “once again restored to its original rationality the year that had been ordered by the deified Julius but afterward had become disordered and confused through neglect” (annum a divo Iulio ordinatum, sed postea neglegentia conturbatum atque confusum, rursus ad pristinam rationem redegit) (Aug. 31.2).72 The most con­spic­u­ous device that Augustus employed to demonstrate the pre­sent seasonal date was undoubtedly the obelisk brought from Heliopolis in Egypt that served as a gnomon for the meridian on the Campus Martius, where the gnomon’s midday shadow was mea­sured along a line calibrated and labeled with the seasons and stages of the year.73 That obelisk, which Augustus dedicated ­after his conquest of Egypt and “gave as a gift to the sun” (soli donum dedit), had its own symbolic stories to tell, not least in its expropriation of a time marker from a culture that had arguably

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provided the paradigms not only for sundials and the twelve seasonal hours of the day but also for Caesar’s solar calendar.74 But a more widespread and familiar demonstration of the same information was also available to Romans on any sundial. The largest surviving sundial from antiquity, dating from sometime ­a fter Augustus’s reform, incorporates not only the seasons but also the new month names “July” and “August” that Augustus had introduced in 9 BCE.75 We may be confident that Julius Caesar’s original calendrical reform, to the extent that it brought civil and seasonal calendars into alignment, would in the pro­cess also have brought the civil year into alignment with Romans’ basic visual awareness of the daylight’s expansion and contraction and, with this, of changes in the extent of the hour itself. Beyond this calendrical reform that also served as a rationalization of diurnal timekeeping, Caesar undertook several other mea­sures for ordering social life in which hour-­based regulation was integral. One such mea­sure is attested in Caesar’s law from his colony in Urso in Spain, dating from 44 BCE, which allots hours to the accuser and defendant in duumviral ­trials in a one-­to-­two ratio and also stipulates that neither investigation nor trial be conducted before the first hour of the day or beyond the eleventh, at least in cases where it is required by law that the trial be concluded in a single day.76 Another mea­sure apparently of Caesarean date is the Lex Iulia Municipalis inscribed on the Tabula Heracleensis (from Heracleae in southern Italy), which famously prohibits four-­ wheeled carts (plostra) from residential streets in the city “during the day, a­ fter sunrise and before the tenth hour of the day” (interdiu post solem ortum neve ante horam decimam diei).77 Although the precise motivation and scope of this law have been debated, it shows clearly that numbered hours ­were a common point of reference in everyday urban scheduling. Such laws do not prove that Caesar instigated hour-­based regulation to begin with—­Pompey’s law in Rome in 52 was prob­ably more of a watershed than Caesar’s in Urso. Yet they show that during Caesar’s rule such laws w ­ ere propagated around the empire. Even before the civil war, Caesar had taken initiatives in another specific area relating to everyday time. Suetonius describes the first mea­sure of Caesar’s consulship with Bibulus in 59 BCE: “­A fter taking office, he was the first of all to institute that daily transactions of both the senate and the ­people be compiled and made public” (inito honore primus omnium instituit, ut tam senatus quam populi diurna acta confierent et publicarentur) (Iul. 20.1).78 It is not entirely clear what Suetonius sees as a “first”—­the practice of making public the transactions as such, a broadening in the scope of what was made public, or a formalization of how the transactions ­were made public. But ­these diurna acta evidently served

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as a rec­ord of day-­to-­day public events and administration, giving potentially ephemeral facts a point of entry into official collective memory.79 Most of what we know about the acta comes in oblique references. For example, they often are mentioned in historiography at the bottom of a hierarchy that proceeds from the lowest, least selective, and least explanatory of forms, variously referred to with the Greek word “ephêmeris” and Latin “diarium” or “diurnum,” to monthly reports (kalendaria), to yearly commentarii (annales)—­ which could all in turn be trivialized in contrast with forms representing “history” (res gestae [Isid. De gen. hist. 44.1–3]).80 Notwithstanding historians’ contempt for acta, though, it seems plausible that they featured in established practices for semipermanent rec­ord keeping. It is pos­si­ble that the emperor Augustus is referring to the acta diurna or to some more specific rec­ord of the imperial h ­ ouse­hold when he forbade his ­daughter and other female descendants “to say or do anything except out in the open [ propalam] and what could be entered in the daily commentaries [in di[ut]urnos commentarios referretur]” (Suet. Aug. 64.2). The institution is clearly parodied in Trimalchio’s h ­ ouse­hold when the secretary “read out rec­ords like ­those of the city” (tamquam urbis acta recitavit), cata­loguing all the events on Trimalchio’s estates on a given day (Petron. Sat. 53.2).81 Local forms of rec­ord keeping are found in the army (“the order of the w ­ hole legion is daily entered in the rec­ords” [totius . . . ​legionis ratio . . . ​cotidie adscribitur actis] [Veg. Mil. 2.19]), the private ­house­hold (“it was the custom for each man to write a h ­ ouse­hold account for himself of his ­whole life through individual days [domesticam rationem sibi totius vitae suae per dies singulos scribere]” [Ps. Ascon. In Verr 175 Baiter]), and, further back in Roman history, in the pontifical rec­ords written on the tabula dealbata and the commentarii derived from ­these that document “­things worthy of memory . . . ​as they happened each day, at home and on campaign, on land and on sea” (digna memoratu . . . ​domi militiaeque terra marique gesta per singulos dies) (Serv. auct. Aen. 1.373).82 The published diurna acta may have functioned closer to how the domestic tabulae (tablets) are described as operating in a speech of Cicero: tabulae, he observes, “are preserved as sacred” (servantur sancte) and are “composed in order” (in ordinem confectae) and are “everlasting” (aeternae), whereas erasable daybooks (adversaria) or notebooks (codices) preserve “memory of a brief period of time” (or alternatively “lasting a brief period of time”) (parvi temporis memoriam) (QRosc. 2.5–7).83 The acta likely contributed to Roman life in other ways as well. They appear to have given Romans a unified pre­sen­ta­tion of regular official news that pertained to the city as a whole—as suggested by the term “daily transactions

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of the city” (diurna urbis acta) by which they w ­ ere subsequently known. They may have divulged information not previously accessible to the public. Indeed, when scholars analyze Caesar’s reform of the calendar, they sometimes invoke as a prototype the much ­earlier publication of the Roman calendar by the scribe Cn. Flavius, “who by learning individual days set forth the fasti for the ­people” (qui . . . ​singulis diebus ediscendis fastos populo proposuerit), which angered the pontifices b­ ecause “the account of days was divulged and known” (dierum ratione pervolgata et cognita) (Mur. 25.14).84 We might invoke Flavius’s act as a model for understanding the impact of the diurna acta, especially if they subjected the aristocracy to greater accountability. Suetonius’s narrative certainly allows Caesar’s mea­sure to resonate with the dynamic of rapidly accelerated public pro­cess that characterized Caesar’s ­career. The biographer mentions how in the same year, “when [Cicero’s] e­ nemy Publius Clodius had been unsuccessful in his prior attempts to pass from the patricians to the plebeians, [Caesar, against Cicero’s protests,] transferred Clodius on one and the same day and at the ninth hour [eodem die horaque nona transduxit]” (Iul. 20.5). The introduction of the diurna acta also immediately preceded Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul, which invites us to compare them with his military commentarii, in which he offers meticulous documentary rec­ords of his annual campaigns, often down to hour-­by-­hour details, as we have seen. Fi­nally, Caesar’s reputation as a time regulator figures in two well-­k nown anecdotes from the last months of his life. The first of ­these is Cicero’s letter to Atticus from December 45 describing the one-­night visit by Caesar and his entourage to Cicero’s villa at Puteoli. The letter pre­sents an hour-­by-­hour account of Caesar’s day, culminating in his arrival at Cicero’s h ­ ouse: He [arrived] on the third day of the Saturnalia at the ­house of Philippus ­toward the seventh hour [tertiis Saturnalibus apud Philippum ad H. VII] and admitted no one. He [managed] his accounts, I believe, with Balbus. Then he walked on the shore. A ­ fter the eighth hour [ post H. VIII ], to the bath. Then he heard about Mamurra, not batting an eyelid [vultum non mutavit]. He was oiled, he reclined [unctus est, accubuit]. He was taking an emetic, and so he ate and drank without fear and with plea­sure, lavishly, magnificently, and not just this but “well cooked and spiced, with good conversation and, if you must know, with all good ­will” [bene cocto et / condito, sermone bono et, si quaeris, libenter (Lucilius 1122)]. (Att. 13.52)

Cicero uses the details of Caesar’s time management to provide a snapshot of his character, exploiting the ethical dimension of daily routines that I consider more closely in part II of this book. Caesar apparently goes without a siesta

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(perhaps due to the winter season) and embarks on a varied but tightly sequenced after­noon that includes seclusion and deliberation, solitary exercise, bathing and anointing, and sophisticated dining. E ­ very gesture exudes power and control—­ even his use of the emetic that evidently allows him to eat copiously without fear of being poisoned. Cicero pre­sents the episode through more than one allusive framework: in addition to having comic, satirical, and Saturnalian dimensions, it may also parody the commentarii, as suggested by Cicero’s references to a “siege” outside his ­house (castra in agro, villa defensa est) (13.52.1). The other anecdote is from the Ides of March in 44 BCE, the day of Caesar’s undoing, which was the result of a notorious lapse in time awareness. Suetonius describes how Caesar made the calendrical (and linguistic) ­mistake of thinking the Ides had turned out to bring no harm to him, whereas they had “come” (venisse) but not yet “passed” (praeterisse) (Iul. 82.1). The ­mistake is played out still more precisely through Caesar’s navigation of the hours on that day, since he wrongly assumes that by delaying his journey to the Forum ­until “around the fifth hour” (quinta fere hora) (81.4) he has avoided the threat the day pre­sents. The rare but fatal fumble that would cut short Caesar’s life and rule is thus projected on the screen of time strategy gone wrong. I have suggested that Julius Caesar was a historical actor who contributed to putting the diurnal grid more front and center in the coordination of Roman social and cultural life. Even if this impression owes something to the accidents of survival, Caesar’s world remains for us a vis­i­ble point of intersection between dif­fer­ent strands of diurnal precision in the late republic—­a pro­cess, however, that had clearly been underway for much longer.

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ch a pter 3

Telling Roman Time

Discerning Varro In the Natu­ral History of Pliny the Elder and On Your Birthday by Censorinus we encounter two dedicated accounts of how diurnal timekeeping developed in Rome.1 ­These two narratives, brief as they are, offer us a wealth of detail about the history of timekeeping and associated institutions and spaces, from forum to empire.2 Both authors draw extensively on Varro’s massive lost Antiquities, but each shapes this shared material into a distinct account of how clock time figured in relationships between Rome’s past and pre­sent. Before we turn to ­these authors, however, I survey Varro’s own writings on the topic, both in fragments from the Antiquities and in the surviving books of On the Latin Language and On Agriculture. Varro’s approach to daily time across ­these works is multifaceted. From Lexicon to Aviary When Gellius quotes the parasite fragment considered in chapter 1, he points out that the Boeotia play is ascribed to Aquilius but that “Varro did not doubt that it was by Plautus” (NA 3.3.4), a view likely expressed in Varro’s lost work on the comedies of Plautus (3.3.9). As I noted in chapter 1, Varro is our source for the line “when first the official had cried midday” (ubi primum accensus clamarat meridiem) from the Boeotia play that he says is commonly ascribed to

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Aquilius, in connection with which he provides background information from Cosconius’s Actions about the Roman official known as the accensus (Ling. 6.89). As it happens, that anecdote comes up at an unexpected moment in book 6 of Varro’s On the Latin Language (c. 47–45 BCE) in which he argues for the etymology of “accensus” (“crier”) from “acciere” (“summon”), a topic not directly connected with timekeeping but mentioned ­under the rubric of “actions,” which happen “in” time. Doubtless Cosconius, given that his work itself is titled Actions, mentioned it ­under a similar category. At the beginning of the same book of On the Latin Language, however, Varro explic­itly shifts from the etymology of words referring to place and places (5) to the vocabulary for time and times (6).3 The latter begins with a section that describes time as “a natu­ral division” (naturale discrimen) (6.3–11) before moving on to “civic terms for days” (civilia vocabula dierum) such as the names of Roman festivals, months, and pivotal days within each month (Kalends, Nones, Ides) (6.12–35) and the notion of the dies intercisus, the day in which the judicial pro­cess is largely allowed (fas) to take place but prohibited (nefas) in both morning and eve­ning, e­ ither b­ ecause fas “intervenes” (intercedit, from intercedere) or b­ ecause the nefas is “divided” (intercisum, from intercidere) (6.31). Varro begins his discussion of time’s natu­ral division by explaining that tempus (time) gets its name from the tenor temperatus (balanced course) of the sun and moon whose movements allow time to be “divided into several parts” (divisum in partes aliquot) and that “dies” (“day,” “time”) is another term for time taken from the name of the god (presumably Jupiter as Diespiter, though t­ here is a lacuna in the text h ­ ere [6.3–4; see 5.66]). He then lists parts of the day and night: meridies (midday), mane (morning), suprema (final time), crepusculum (twilight), nox (night), vesper (eve­ning), iubar (dawn), nox intempesta (timeless night), concubium (bedded time), silentium noctis (silence of night), conticinium (quiet time) (6.4–7). As Diana Spencer notes, “day” in this section is “a mea­sur­ able product of h ­ uman calibration and a positive instance of technocracy.” 4 Varro’s etymologies not only highlight some specific Roman cultural conceptions of the nature of time across the totality of day and night but also showcase the breadth of his research methods and materials in tracing time’s cultural history. “Mane” (“morning”) is so called e­ ither b­ ecause “at that time day flows [manat] from the east” or ­because “the ancients called good ‘ma­nus’; and the Greeks also, when referring light to that kind of belief, regularly say ‘good light’ [ phôs agathon]” (6.4). Day’s end is called “suprema” “from being ‘most final’ ” (a superrimo), but Varro again adds specific information about Roman antiquity: “The Twelve ­Tables define this time as the setting of the sun [occasum . . . ​solis],

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but l­ater the Lex Plaetoria commands that that time also be ‘final’ [supremum] when the praetor in the Comitium has announced suprema to the p ­ eople” (6.5). In his account of crepusculum (twilight) he not only includes a connection with “creper,” glossed as “dubius,” “uncertain,” and applied to twilight b­ ecause of its marginality between day and night, but also provides some ethnographic information: in Amiternum Crepuscus is the name given to ­children born during twilight, just as in Reate (Varro’s hometown) ­those named Lucius ­were born “at first light” (prima luce) (6.5). Varro supplements his account of nox (night), derived from ­either “nocere” (“harm”) or Greek “nux” (“night”), with a discussion of the idiom “nox intempesta” (“timeless night”), which refers to a stage between eve­ning and dawn.5 He illustrates its use in Roman drama: “As Lucretia says in Cassius’s Brutus, ‘He came into our home at timeless night’ [‘nocte intempesta nostram devenit domum’]” (6.7), and his discussion is thick with history and culture. Varro touches on the topic of clock time, specifically the sundial (solarium), in the pro­cess of justifying his derivation of the word “midday” (meridies) from “medidies.” In f­ avor of this derivation, he mentions having seen at first hand a sundial (solarium) at Praeneste on which he saw written “medidies” as “the ancients” (antiqui) spelled it (6.4).6 The anecdote helps us to see how a specific sundial might offer—­both to Varro and to us—­a win­dow onto an ­earlier, archaic or archaizing history for Roman timekeeping. Although Praeneste’s status as both Roman hinterland and in­de­pen­dent town with its own history as a locus of Italian Hellenizing makes the provenance of this specific sundial hard to determine, “medidies” provides a striking contrast to the predominantly Greek inscriptions on surviving Roman sundials.7 But Spencer has argued persuasively that this archaic sundial in Praeneste, “the home of uncouth speech,” is outshone by the modernizing device in Rome that is mentioned next.8 For Varro now digresses to etymologize the word “solarium” itself: “ ‘Solarium’ was the name used for a t­ hing on which the hours w ­ ere seen in the sun [solarium dictum id, in quo horae in sole inspiciebantur], which Cornelius, in the Basilica Aemilia-­Fulvia, set up in shade [quod Cornelius in basilica Aemilia et Fulvia inumbravit]” (6.4). The wording of the last clause has puzzled scholars. The reference is almost certainly to the ­water clock set up by Cornelius Scipio Nasica in the Basilica Aemilia-­Fulvia that is ­later mentioned by Pliny and Censorinus (NH 7.215; Censorinus, DN 23.7). But while Censorinus makes clear that Scipio’s device “itself began to be called ‘solarium’ from the habit of recognizing hours from the sun,” a lacuna has been suspected in Varro’s account, leading some scholars (but not all) to insert the transitional phrase “or w ­ ater

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clock” (vel horologium ex aqua) immediately preceding “which Cornelius . . . ,” that is, right before “quod.”9 No such addition is required, however, if two considerations are kept in mind. First, “solarium” was well established as referring to both sundials and w ­ ater clocks.10 Second, Varro’s “inumbravit,” which most plausibly means “set up in the shade,” would seem to mark the feat of indicating solar hours on a nonsolar device.11 On Spencer’s reading of Cornelius’s ­water clock ­here, “a memorable and famous f­ amily name makes sun and ­water . . . ​tell civic time for a sophisticated polity,” while “inumbro” is an “unusual verb of foundation” that “adumbrates how the once radically novel ­water clock puts the old-­fashioned but still practical low-­tech gnomon and (sun)dial in the shade.”12 I return to the historical significance of Scipio’s device and offer further evidence from Pliny and Censorinus that is compatible with the interpretation offered h ­ ere. What we gain from this passage for now is a glimpse of Varro relating his etymologies to the material traces of Roman timekeeping practices that surround him. A separate clock device, this one belonging to Varro himself, receives mention in the final book of On Agriculture (37–36 BCE). ­There Varro, a character in his own dialogue, describes to his interlocutors the elaborate aviary on his rural estate near Casinum.13 As Spencer observes, Varro’s i­ magined aviary complex is a “fake, impossible ‘landscape’ ” that is also “a zone for performing and contesting citizenship.”14 It is described in a level of detail that “encourages and thwarts attempts to map it”: it has nets to enclose the birds, a surrounding forest, and a luxurious dining area from which the guests can observe the scene at close quarters.15 Its highlights include a round building (tholus) that includes in its interior dome a time-­telling technology: “By day the morning star, and by night the eve­ning star, rotate and move at the base of the dome in such a way as to indicate how many hours it is” (stella lucifer interdiu, noctu hesperus, ita circumeunt ad infimum hemisphaerium ac moventur, ut indicent, quot sint horae) (3.17).16 Other details in the passage suggest that t­ here is hydraulic technology at work. On the same dome ­there is “a wind ­rose with the eight winds” (orbis ventorum octo) that operates in such a way as to indicate on the interior of the dome what­ever wind is presently blowing outside. Varro says that this is ”just as in” or alternatively “just as on” “the clock in Athens that the Cyrrhestian [i.e., Andronicus] made” (ut Athenis in horologio, quod fecit Cyrrestes) (3.17)—­a significant reference to the Tower of Winds. ­These references offer a tantalizing glimpse of Varro’s interest in diurnal timekeeping in connection with his broader antiquarian proj­ect. “Tholus,” for example, does not simply evoke the Greek building type instantiated in the tho-

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los of the Athenian Agora; Varro describes it as “round, columniated, just as in the ­temple of Catulus, if you substitute columns for the walls” (rutundus columnatus, ut est in aede Catuli, si pro parietibus feceris columnas), clearly alluding to the ­temple of Fortuna huiusce diei (Fortune of This Very Day) that Q. Lutatius Catulus built to commemorate the Roman defeat of the Cimbrians on July 30, 101 BCE.17 No sundials are mentioned on Varro’s building, and the comparison with the Tower of the Winds may only apply to the wind ­rose and not to the clock.18 Varro does refer to the w ­ hole of Andronicus’s complex as a “clock” (horologium), but we cannot necessarily infer that Varro’s rotating lucifer (morning star) and hesperus (eve­ning star) correspond to markers in Andronicus’s monument. Varro’s description suggests that t­ hese two celestial bodies are used more as pointers for a circular repre­sen­ta­tion of diurnal and nocturnal hours than for directly modeling the movements of specific celestial bodies. Perhaps more significant than the Andronicus comparison is the unstated parallel between Varro’s aviary clock and the w ­ ater clock set up by Scipio in the Basilica Aemilia-­Fulvia that Varro, as we have seen, mentions in On the Latin Language. The aviary clock’s seamless pre­sen­ta­tion of all the hours, day and night, would certainly seem to rival Scipio’s. Like many manifestations of Roman Hellenism, Varro’s monument differs from the “original” not only in its creative selectivity and eclecticism but in its dizzying overlay of framing contexts. The literary work On Agriculture arguably situates Varro’s private complex within a public Roman context: book 3’s dialogue about aviaries takes place in the physical space of the Villa Publica that includes the Roman public aviary, and one of the main interlocutors is Appius Claudius, the augur, while other vari­ous interlocutors are all bird-­named Romans, as Carin Green points out (e.g., “merula” in Cornelius Merula, which means “blackbird”).19 The work is also concerned with the rustic estate as a win­ dow onto the archaic past of the Roman republic. Book 2, for example, famously begins with Varro’s recollection of how “­those ­great men, our ancestors” privileged country life so much that “they divided the year such that they only undertook urban m ­ atters e­ very eighth day [nonis modo diebus urbanas res usurparent] and on the remaining seven cultivated their farms [reliquis septem ut rura colerent]” (2.1).20 Certainly the aviary clock indicates the presence of a modern technology for precise timekeeping in the most unlikely of places. We witness h ­ ere a Roman literary appropriation of a Greek-­derived technology and of the temporalities associated with it for the purpose of meditating on Roman questions of rusticity and urbanism, past and pre­sent, ritual rhythms and quotidian time. Given that

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Varro constructed the authoritative account of how and when successive sundials and w ­ ater clocks arrived in Rome, it is impossible not to think of Varro’s aviary clock in its own right as a self-­conscious intervention in Roman time’s architectural and literary landscape. Varro’s two surviving works, then, throw useful light on his systematic approach to certain fundamental time distinctions in Rome’s language and culture as well as on his creative and nationalistic approach to diurnal timekeeping. They also add impor­tant, if idiosyncratic, details to the bigger picture of late republican hour-­based time that I sketched in chapter 2.

“You Revealed the Distinctions of Times . . .” The work from which we would undoubtedly have learned most in this regard is Varro’s celebrated lost work Antiquities, specifically the twenty-­five book portion entitled ­Human Antiquities, which appeared in the 50s BCE, before both On the Latin Language and On Agriculture. We are told by Augustine that the work had one introductory book and then was or­ga­nized into four groups of six books each that dealt in turn with “who acts, where they act, when they act, what action they carry out” (qui agant, ubi agant, quando agant, quid agant) (De civ. D. 6.3). Of the books on time (books 14–19), scholars have been able to identify book 15 as being concerned with time distinctions (de temporum descriptionibus) and book 16 as being about days (de diebus), and we may assume that Pliny and Censorinus draw especially on ­these.21 Notably, we are concerned with a set of time distinctions that is entirely secular: Varro’s treatment of festivals and his comparison of Roman calendrical time with that of other cultures came in his separate set of books entitled Divine Antiquities.22 The tenor of Varro’s books on time distinctions and days can be surmised from the frequently cited section of book 16 that concerns his analy­sis of the Roman definition of the “civil day” (dies civilis). “Marcus Varro,” writes Aulus Gellius, “in the book of his ­Human Antiquities that he wrote on days, says: ‘­People who are born in the twenty-­four hours between one midnight and the following midnight are said to have been born on one and the same day [uno die nati dicuntur]” (NA 3.2.2). Gellius cites this as evidence that Varro “distinguished the Roman observation of days” (dierum observationem divisisse) and, in par­tic­u­lar, as indicating that “the Roman ­people, as Varro says, reckon individual days [dies singulos adnumerare] from midnight to the next midnight” (3.2.7). Gellius devotes an entire chapter to demonstrating this practice from Roman traditional usages, some likely gleaned from Varro but o­ thers derived by Gellius himself from his reading of jurists and lit­er­a­ture. He notes that, for example, among

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other Roman religious ceremonies, the taking of the auspices ­after midnight is held to be relevant to the day that is about to dawn, that tribunes prohibited from being absent from the city on consecutive days may be absent with impunity for any length of time between two midnights, and that a w ­ oman seeking divorce by usurpatio, which stipulates a three-­night separation within one calendar year, must ensure that she does not plan to count the hours between midnight and dawn on the Kalends of January as part of the third night. Gellius also points out that even Virgil signals his awareness of the Roman definition of the civil day when he has Anchises treat dusk as if it ­were midnight (Aen. 5.738; NA 3.2.15–16). As Gustav Bilfinger noted long ago in his study Der bürgerliche Tag (1888), the definition of the civil day was not consistent: Roman authors and institutions can be found treating a given day, including its date, as beginning at one sunrise and ending at the next.23 Bilfinger also shows that some Roman authors ­were clearly conscious of the midnight definition as a pedantic and archaic notion.24 Pliny the Elder would l­ater refer to the midnight definition not as that of the Roman ­people (populus Romanus) but of “the Roman priests and ­those who defined the civil day” (sacerdotes Romani et qui diem diffiniere civilem), pointing out that “all common p ­ eople” (vulgus omne, that is, both in Rome and everywhere e­ lse) treat the day as equivalent to the natu­ral day, “from daylight to darkness” (a luce ad tenebras) (HN 2.188). It is clear, however, from Varro’s and Gellius’s juristic sources that the midnight definition was used for resolving specific interpretive prob­lems in law, culture, and lit­er­a­ture. Varro’s fixation on such a topic clearly belongs to a more general proj­ect in the Antiquities of grounding Roman identity in clear distinctions. Cicero in his famous praise of this work says to Varro, “You . . . ​uncovered . . . ​[our] time distinctions” (tu descriptiones temporum . . . ​aperuisti) (Acad. 1.9), applauding his friend for introducing clarity where before ­there had been none.25 Varro’s books, Cicero explains, “brought us home, as it w ­ ere, so that we could at last recognize who we w ­ ere and where [qui et ubi essemus agnoscere]” (Acad. 1.9). We can be more specific, however, about how Varro uses the notion of the civil day to ascribe to Romans a newfound awareness of their location. For Gellius indicates that Varro compared Roman usage favorably with that of other nations: But Varro also wrote in that same book that the Athenians reckon differently and that they regard all the intervening time from one sunset to the next as one single day; that the Babylonians counted still differently, for they called by the

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86  Ordering History name of one day the w ­ hole space of time between sunrise and the beginning of the next sunrise; but that in the land of Umbria many said that from midday to the following midday was one and the same day. “This indeed,” [Varro] said, “is utterly absurd. For the birthday of one who is born among the Umbrians at the sixth hour on the Kalends w ­ ill have to be considered as consisting of both half of the Kalends and the day a­ fter the Kalends up to that day’s sixth hour.” (NA 3.2.4–6)

Varro, then, provides a kind of ethnographic survey, but he does so from an entirely Roman perspective—as is most evident in his use of the Roman Kalends as a point of reference for registering his criticism of the Umbrian practice. Augustine offers a useful reminder of Varro’s Roman exceptionalism in the ­Human Antiquities when he observes that “indeed he wrote the books of ­Human ­Matters not with re­spect to the world [ad orbem terrarum] but with re­spect to Rome alone [ad solam Romam]” (De civ. D. 6.4). As Claudia Moatti notes in connection with Varro’s comparison of civil-­day definitions, “Curiosity about ­others leads to comparativism,” but for Varro “comparativism and an inquiry into plurality usually lead to the idea of one single truth and to a reconciliation of apparent differences.”26 In Varro’s account, Romans’ language, devices, and systems of temporal organ­ization are grounded in a nationalistic ideology of Rome’s archaic history, even as diurnal timekeeping systems and devices are in evidence around the ­whole Mediterranean.27 Varro’s Rome-­centric approach to the observation of the civil day, which invokes a kind of indigenous rationalism and identifies no other culture as using the same practice, helps to prepare us for the parochialism in Varronian accounts of how the Romans came to observe hours. The topos of the civil day can prepare us for the flexibility and adaptability of Varronian antiquarian material in the hands of subsequent authors.28 Each time it is taken up by subsequent authors, the definition of the civil day is exemplified in slightly dif­fer­ent ways, conveying subtly dif­fer­ent impressions of the overall ethnographic picture and of where Rome fits in. In each case also the topos is invoked for quite dif­fer­ent purposes. Macrobius virtually imports Gellius’s entire account but introduces it to assist his speakers in resolving the Saturnalia’s opening prob­lem of precisely at what time the Saturnalia festival may be understood to begin (1.2.19). Plutarch, by contrast, in his Roman Questions speculates on a variety of pos­si­ble explanations for the Roman usage without cata­loguing the usage in other nations; he considers every­thing from the particularities of Roman culture (for example, the fact that military cam-

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paigns, Romans’ main concern, generally begin before dawn) to scientific elegance (the fact that sunrise, sunset, and noon are all harder to locate with precision and harder to imagine as beginnings) (84). For Bede, in turn, the cata­logue of cultural definitions as a ­whole becomes simply a comparandum for how the Christian civil day centers on the momentum from darkness to light following the change of times ushered in by Christ’s resurrection (De temporum ratione 5). One more specific feature of Varronian discourse worth drawing attention to given its subsequent inflections in Pliny and Censorinus is the critical term “discernere” (“separate,” “differentiate,” “distinguish between”), which Varro privileges in his surviving works when he is making vari­ous kinds of analytic distinctions, ­whether about language or agriculture.29 As Katharina Volk observes, Varro is “famous (or infamous) for his attempts to impose order on his vast material, employing multiple partitions and numeric schemes, many of which recur across his works on dif­fer­ent topics,” and “discernere,” I argue, helps us to track this leitmotif.30 He uses the term no less than three times, for example, in the preface of On Agriculture 3, where he points out that the country life and the city life “are not only distinct in location [loco discretae] but they each have an origin dif­fer­ent in time [tempore diversam originem]” (1.1); then, in turn, he notes that poor early country dwellers who “sowed and herded in the same field” conducted “an utterly undifferentiated agriculture” (agri culturam . . . ​ maxime indiscretam) (1.7) and that the twofold nature of herding has up till now been “satisfactorily distinguished by no one” (ab nullo satis discreta)—an omission that Varro seeks to remedy by devoting his third book entirely to “husbandry in the context of the villa,” itself a topic “not entirely explicated [explicata] on its own by anyone” (1.8). It is no accident that we h ­ ere see Varro combining synchronic analytical distinctions (i.e., between terms or between ­t hings) with both the historical pro­cesses and the literary endeavors through which ­these distinctions can become established, as archaic Romans modernized or as the author teaches his audience. This is the complex sense in which Varro “discerns.” If Varro’s Antiquities are some day rediscovered, it ­will be no surprise if it turns out that “discernere” was equally prominent t­ here in his time books. The phrase “descriptiones temporum” (“time distinctions”) that Cicero uses in his description of the Antiquities is similar; like “discernere,” it focuses on the importance of separation and may allude to a wide range of chronological questions, though it may also resonate more specifically with the term for a sundial’s hour lines: “descriptiones” (see Vitr. De arch. 9.1.1). Pliny and Censorinus

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both use the term “discernere” frequently enough that it suggests a common, Varronian origin—­though even as they use “discernere” to draw analytical distinctions, each does so in ways that serve their two divergent narratives of clock time.

A Long Final Page in Natu­ral History (Pliny the Elder) Pliny the Elder’s account of how Romans came to publicly observe the hours is not a textually long one—it only takes up one page, coming at the end of book 7 in Natu­ral History. In another sense, though, it is exceedingly long: Pliny’s culminating statement—­“For such a long time was daylight undifferentiated for the Roman p ­ eople” (tam diu populo Romano indiscreta lux fuit) (215)—­draws attention to the slowness with which the Romans, very gradually, over almost two centuries, acquired the technology for differentiating the hours, and in all conditions of weather and light. The statement contains buried significance, not least in its echo of the Varronian keyword “discernere.” But to take the full mea­ sure of Pliny’s long page, we had best start from the beginning.31 “Unspoken Global Agreements” The seventh book of Natu­ral History (c. 77–78 CE) recounts the development of h ­ uman culture. Pliny first discusses the ­human life course, drawing on anecdotes from a Roman world that already enjoyed sundial technology.32 But he then goes on to cata­logue the inventors of specific technologies—as if to offer “a reminder,” observes Mary Beagon, that “every­thing was once new.”33 The inventions include such ­things as writing itself: Pliny relates the accepted account that Cadmus brought fourteen letters to Greece that w ­ ere then supplemented by four more letters added by Palamedes (192). Pliny then devotes the final pages of the book to three inventions, the use of an Ionian-­derived alphabet, daily shaving, and observation of the hours, each of which was the result of a gentium consensus tacitus (an unspoken global agreement) involving universal adoption of a technology in­ven­ted long before (210–215).34 Although Pliny pre­ sents them as universal adoptions, his focus is primarily on the adoption of each by the Romans. With reference to the first item, alphabets derived from the Ionian alphabet, Pliny quotes an inscription in the Greek Ionic dialect, which he says is on a bronze object that was brought from Delphi to the Palatine “by gift of the emperors” (dono principum), and he observes that the old Greek lettering is almost identical to t­ oday’s Roman lettering (210). The anecdote is conspicuously similar, we may note, to Herodotus’s account of the prior origins of the Ionian alpha-

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bet in the Phoenician alphabet that was first brought to Greece by Cadmus.35 In this account, Herodotus quotes three archaic inscriptions in an early script that he saw in Thebes (5.58).36 Herodotus, however, focuses on a technology that migrated to Greece but remained known by the foreign term “phoinikêia” (that is, “grammata phoinikêia”), and the account he offers is part of the backstory on the Athenian tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogiton, whom he traces back to Thebes and Phoenicia. In Pliny’s telling, Roman imperialism and the monarchic principate are the forces that drive the migration of evidentiary tokens from Delphi to the Palatine, and ­these forces more fully efface the objects’ cultural origin. Pliny even translates the inscription teleologically into Roman terms, paraphrasing ΤΑΙ ΔΙΟΣ ΚΟΡΑΙ (to the maiden of Zeus) as “dedicated to Minerva” (Minervae dicata) (210). Pliny’s systematic reworking of the Ionian Herodotus’s anecdote itself also blatantly enacts Roman appropriation at the level of historiographic research. With re­spect to the second item, daily shaving, Pliny says that barbers w ­ ere brought to Rome from Sicily only in 300 BCE by P. Titinius Mena, ­here citing Varro as his source (211), and Varro says as much in On Agriculture (2.11.10).37 Pliny then states that it was Scipio Africanus the Younger (185–129 BCE) who “first made a daily habit [cotidie] of shaving” and that “the deified Augustus used razors always [semper]” (211). This rather ­simple picture is contested by Gellius, who points to the existence of e­ arlier statues showing already clean-­shaven Romans (NA 3.4).38 Pliny, however, states concisely that “previously they w ­ ere unshaven” (antea intonsi fuere) (211), in a paraphrase of another Varronian observation in On Agriculture: “Statues of the ancients show that at one time [olim] ­t here w ­ ere no barbers, since most of them have long hair and a g­ reat beard” (2.11.10).39 By mentioning Scipio the Younger at the start, Pliny asks us to imagine that the Romans only abandoned their archaic shaggy-­faced appearance in the last few generations of the republic—­a chronology that replicates a tendency ­toward long-­lasting primitivism in Roman antiquarianism overall and also aligns with when diurnal timekeeping was perfected by Scipio’s relative and near-­contemporary Cornelius Scipio Nasica.40 In Pliny’s account, further, the perfection of the daily habit in the clean-­shaven face of Augustus lends Rome’s adoption of this convention a teleological momentum, once again, ­toward the principate. Before we proceed to the third item, it ­will be useful to note the multifaceted aspect of the consensus seen in ­these developments. Each is a gentium consensus tacitus that evidently arose without any formal discussion or any identified agency. This agreement resembles in part what phi­los­o­phers characterize as

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the agreement of all nations about specific concepts such as the existence of god or gods. Cicero, for example, propounds that “in ­every m ­ atter the agreement of all nations [consensio omnium gentium] should be considered a law of nature [lex naturae]” (Tusc. 1.30).41 Pliny pre­sents the adoption of hour observation as “now in this instance advancing by reason” (iam hic ratione accedens) (212), and each of the three developments has a rationalizing or civilizing dimension, even if the pro­cess is somewhat haphazard.42 The momentum t­ oward consensus accords with ancient notions of homogeneity both within individual nations and within universal history. At the same time, however, consensus has a privileged ideological function in the unifying of the Roman empire, as Clifford Ando has shown.43 And Pliny’s cata­logue of consensus includes, as we have seen in connection with the alphabet and daily shaving, a salient teleological strain that represents the Roman empire as a monarchic geopo­liti­cal system. Furthermore, both the first invention, writing, and the third, timekeeping, w ­ ere ultimately to be of central importance in the administration of Rome’s empire.44 Even as he portrays Rome as a late arriver, Pliny si­mul­ta­neously points to Rome’s culminating role as imperial monopolizer. On the third development, observation of the hours, which like daily shaving “arrived in Rome rather late” (serius . . . ​Romae contigit) (212), Pliny gives a painstakingly gradualist narration of Rome’s slow but supreme entry into the consensus. The account proceeds through a series of steps from primitive to advanced, and it offers some of the most detailed clues we have concerning the sociopo­liti­cal dimensions of Rome’s early timekeeping. Regarding the existing practice of hour observation around the Mediterranean, Pliny has ­little to say beyond reminding the reader that he has already noted in book 2 of the Natu­ ral History where and by whom it was first made pos­si­ble. ­There, in a longer discussion of gnomonics (181–88), he adds: “This science of shadows that they call ‘gnomonice’ was in­ven­ted [invenit] by Anaximenes of Miletus, the pupil of the Anaximander about whom we have spoken, and he was the first to show [ primus . . . ​ostendit] at Lacedaemon the horologium that they call ‘sciothericon’ ” (187).45 By contrast, the account ­here in book 7 is concerned exclusively with Rome. It proceeds through five distinct chronological stages, which we ­will consider in sequence.46

Comitium Clock Pliny first mentions a prior stage in which hours ­were not publicly observed in Rome, evidently during the late fourth and early third ­century BCE:

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Telling Roman Time   91 In the Twelve T ­ ables, only sunrises and sunsets are mentioned [ortus tantum et occasus nominantur]. A ­ fter some years midday was added, too, the official of the consuls announcing it when from the Curia [i.e., senate-­house] he had observed the sun between the Rostra and the Graecostasis; when the star [sidere] had sloped from the Maenian column t­ oward the prison [carcer] he announced suprema—­ but this only on clear days, up u ­ ntil the first Punic war. (212)

Before we go any further, it is impor­tant to recognize that Pliny says nothing h ­ ere about timekeeping in private contexts or even in public spaces beyond the center of Rome: his focus is the public space most relevant to “the Roman ­people” (populo Romano) (215). Anja Wolkenhauer rightly draws attention to Pliny’s focus on the Forum, “the heart of the state,” through which he aims to show that “the place in which Roman time was fixed remained stable across all historical changes and ways of mea­sur­ing time,” as the arrival of new and more precise technologies enacted a “heightened structuring” of diurnal time in this location.47 To begin with, we encounter an ancient Rome in which t­ here are few distinctions in and no designated timepieces for the marking of time. This primitivizing is enhanced by the notion that the Twelve T ­ ables originally did not mention even midday. Some scholars think this is flat-­out wrong, since some of the most basic received laws of the Twelve ­Tables would have had ­little point without midday, e.g., “­Unless they come to an agreement, let them contend their case in the Comitium or Forum before midday [ante meridiem]” (1.7).48 But the seeming suggestion that they d ­ idn’t simply highlights Pliny’s strong investment in the sense of a prior, “plupast” stage in the formation of the old world of the Twelve ­Tables.49 In any case, Pliny’s mention of the Twelve T ­ ables fits with his focus on time distinctions with a public and ­legal relevance. The calling of suprema (final time), like that of meridies (midday), coheres with one of the Twelve ­Tables laws, where that time of day is officially defined: “If both [parties] are pre­ sent, let sunset be final time [sol occasus suprema tempestas esto]” (1.9).50 Furthermore, the Twelve T ­ ables themselves w ­ ere posted in the space of the Comitium that is ­under discussion ­here—­specifically, next to the Rostra—­and laws such as 1.7 required the parties to appear precisely “in the Comitium or the Forum.” Pliny’s mention of the official (accensus) as a time caller agrees to some extent with the testimony from Cosconius that we first considered in chapter 1 (Varr. Ling. 6.89). Cosconius, however, makes the accensus a functionary of the praetor, whereas h ­ ere he works for the consuls. Pliny also makes no mention of the third, sixth, and ninth hours signaled by Cosconius’s official, only meridies and

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suprema. This may be another symptom of Pliny’s investment in a plupast, though it is quite plausible that the accensus was a figure whose role was established before sundials appeared in Rome and subsequently adjusted and refined. Pliny supplies significant and precise information about the archaic Comitium—­about the monuments ­there, about their spatial relationships to one another, and about their function as markers for the accensus in tracking the movements of the sun.51 Filippo Coarelli, in par­tic­u­lar, has used the passage to reconstruct the Comitium area as having been circular and as having had a north-­south orientation, with the Curia at the north edge, the Rostra at the south-­southeast edge, the Graecostasis at the south-­southwest edge, the Maenian column at the west-­northwest edge, and the carcer (prison) at the northwest edge (fig. 8). When the accensus stood on the steps of the Curia, the Comitium functioned, in Coarelli’s phrase, “like a veritable enormous solar clock”—­though this formulation has been criticized as anachronistic.52 He also suggests that the thirty-­two-­degree difference between the Maenian column and the carcer would have accommodated the seasonal variations in the sun’s setting place—­a fact that should also remind us of the crucial role of the accensus as the arbiter who calibrated the sun’s varying course. This was scarcely the only instance of sun tracking in Greek and Roman built environments.53 Several further features in this phase of Roman prehorological timekeeping are worth remarking on. First, it remains uncertain ­whether the signaling of time from the Comitium clock was site l­ imited or was reproduced across Rome. A. S. Gratwick and ­others have ­imagined a relaying of the accensus’s call; while ­there is certainly l­ater evidence for the use of a trumpet (bucina) announcing the divisions between day quarters, Pliny makes no mention of this, and thus it is plausible to assume that at this early stage the vocal signal was itself as site specific as the visual observation certainly was.54 Second, the time tracked around the Comitium’s monuments was itself a mechanism for coordinating and/or constraining the vari­ous kinds of po­liti­cal and judicial encounters that took place t­ here, such as we have seen already in connection with suprema. The same time signal was equally impor­tant for terminating senate meetings in the Curia, since senatorial transactions ­were only valid if undertaken during daylight hours.55 Physical components of the Comitium that ­were points of reference for the Comitium clock also played a critical role in certain specialized public interactions; the Rostra, for example, was a podium for magistrates, while the Graecostasis served the same function for ambassadors.56 In On the Latin Language, Varro etymologizes “comitium” from the

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Figure 8. Comitium reconstruction showing sun-­tracking sightlines of the accensus from the Curia steps. Coarelli 1983, 1:139, fig. 39.

fact that “they congregated [coibant] t­ here for popu­lar assemblies [comitia curiata] and for lawsuits” (5.155) and that the dies comitialis (assembly day) was a marked component of public time in the Roman calendar. The dies fastus (permitted day), as a day on which the praetor could adjudicate, would likely have given its own inflection to gatherings in the Comitium, since that is where the praetor was located. Third, diurnal timekeeping in the Comitium was likely caught up with the other timekeeping functions of the “complex time machine” in the northwest area of the Forum and on the Capitolium, the phrase Denis Feeney uses to

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describe a constellation of monuments that included the Capitoline t­emple of Jupiter, whose foundation served as a reference point for historical dating, along with the Comitium clock itself.57 And Eva Winter juxtaposes the accensus’s signaling of diurnal time with the availability of the fasti, which w ­ ere posted in the same area of the Forum by Cn. Flavius in 304 BCE (Livy 9.46.5), making this “the site of normative time ordering.”58 To this picture, however, we may add the specific monuments associated with the Comitium clock that w ­ ere implicated in the Comitium’s functioning as a “site of memory,” especially from the second half of the fourth ­century BCE.59 The Rostra and Maenian column, for example, w ­ ere both set up in 338 BCE as reminders of the recent Roman victories in Italy. So their use as markers within the Comitium clock amounted to a further mutual entanglement of historical time and daily time. Fi­nally, it bears emphasizing that when Pliny says this primitive time reckoning was usable “only on clear days” (serenis tantum diebus), he means that the sun needed to be entirely vis­i­ble.60 In other words, timekeeping by means of the Comitium clock was irregular, making this stage in Roman time all the more rudimentary.

First Sundial? Pliny has already indicated that the procedure for an official to call “midday” and “final time” continued “up u ­ ntil the first Punic war,” which began in 264 BCE. He next mentions an intervening anecdote that he has chosen to discount: It is reported by Fabius Vestalis that Lucius Papirius Cursor first established a sundial clock [ princeps solarium horologium statuisse] twelve years before the war with Pyrrhus, at the ­temple of Quirinus vowed by his ­father, when he was dedicating it. But he fails to indicate the method by which the clock was made or its maker [neque facti horologii rationem vel artificem significat], as well as where it was brought from or by whom he found this written [nec unde translatum sit aut apud quem scriptum id invenerit]. (213)

Pliny only nominally grants Papirius’s “sundial clock” device, in 293 BCE, the status of being Rome’s first publicly erected sundial. He undermines the device’s relevance by highlighting the deficiencies in the information provided by Fabius Vestalis—­a source other­wise unknown to us, prob­ably from the late republican period.61 Technological developments evidently need to be documented more thoroughly in order to be counted significant—at least for Pliny.62 He laments the absence of the “method” and “maker” and also information

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regarding the sundial’s geographic provenance—­this last point drawing attention to his expectation that at this stage in its history Rome’s diurnal timekeeping devices could only be imports from elsewhere. Pliny’s reluctance to ascribe significance to Papirius’s sundial may be due most of all, however, to its specific location. Being erected at the same time and place as the t­ emple of Quirinus, which we know in­de­pen­dently dated from 293 BCE and was on the Quirinal, it does not directly relate to Pliny’s concern with the public marking of time in connection with the juridical and po­liti­cal pro­ cesses of the Comitium area.63 Ando has remarked that Pliny’s account as a ­whole is concerned with how “time as social fact” (as well as “social real­ity in its totality”) is “created through the epistemic and po­liti­cal work of the community”—“a consensus not simply about norms (how many hours s­ hall ­there be and what s­ hall be their length) but about the means for deriving and authorizing norms (what sort of clock ­shall we use, and who has the right to install it, and where).” 64 As we have noted, Pliny’s drama of the Romans’ building a local consensus about hour observation (by way of also joining the universal consensus) unfolds in a relatively circumscribed area—­a reminder that we cannot infer very much from Pliny about other public timepieces, let alone domestic ones. Censorinus, however, pays slightly more attention to Papirius’s sundial and to some ­others outside of the Forum.

Time From Sicily As if to begin afresh, Pliny now mentions a sundial erected “in public” whose location he knows as well as its method of construction and origin, citing Varro explic­itly as his authority: Marcus Varro relates that the first [sundial] in public was set up on a column, alongside the Rostra [ primum statutum in publico secundum Rostra in columna], in the first Punic war, by the consul Manius Valerius Messala, ­a fter the capture of Catania in Sicily [Catina capta in Sicilia], being brought from t­ here thirty years ­later than is related concerning Papirius’s clock, in the 490th year of the city [263 BCE]. And its lines did not correspond to the horae [nec congruebant ad horas eius lineae], yet still they obeyed it for ninety-­nine years [ paruerunt tamen ei annis undecentum]. (214)

The sundial of Manius Valerius Messala, who earned his cognomen by defeating the Cartha­ginians and their Sicilian allies at Messina, was an imported object transferred from conquered city to victorious city. But as with some other plundered artifacts imported into Rome during this period, Rome showed itself,

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as Jean-­Paul Morel has noted, “not yet capable of assimilating” such objects with full understanding of the science.65 It is also impor­tant to note that it was not imported from mainland Greece and that Sicily ­here (not for the first or last time) served as a conduit for Roman Hellenism. The likely reason why Pliny and Varro before him see Messala’s sundial as the next step a­ fter the Comitium clock is that the fact that it was located next to the Rostra at the southern edge of the Comitium and elevated on a column where it would have been both vis­i­ble and prominent (fig. 9) would have transformed the existing time-­signaling practices ­t here.66 Although it is uncertain ­whether the accensus could have seen the sundial from the steps of the Curia, it is clear that he could have begun using it to supplement his existing practices while continuing with minimal changes to his overall routine. But the main contribution of Messala’s device was, at least in theory, that it made hours available to the official and to anyone e­ lse pre­sent in the Comitium, where previously only midday and suprema had been announced. It would make sense, then, if this was the period in which the official began to call the third, sixth, and ninth hours—­the convention referred to by Cosconius (Varr. Ling. 6.89). The

Figure 9. Sundial, ­Temple of Apollo, first c­ entury CE, Pompeii. Dedication inscription: “Lucius Sepunius, son of Lucius, Sandilianus [and] Marcus Herennius, son of Aulus, Epidianus, duovirs with judicial authority had [this] constructed from their own funds” (= CIL 10.802; see also Gibbs 1976, 394, no. 8007). For more information about the sundial, see Berlin Sundial Collaboration, Dialface ID 167, Pompei, 2015, Ancient Sundials, Edition Topoi, DOI: 10.17171/1-1-2028. Mr. Ajedrez. Creative Commons Attribution-­Share Alike 4.0.

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sundial may well have had quarters marked prominently on it, as on some surviving devices.67 Pliny may not mean to suggest that Messala’s sundial was the first in Rome: the impor­tant t­ hing is that it appears to have been the first sundial in public space.68 His sundial was also part of a broader transformation of the Comitium’s visual culture and time associations. For as Pliny himself tells us elsewhere, Messala was also the first to erect a triumphal mural, which depicted his defeat of Hiero and the Cartha­ginians, and he erected it nearby, on the side of the Curia Hostilia—­this in 263 BCE, the same year he brought back the sundial (35.22).69 Messala, then, si­mul­ta­neously introduced two novelties from the same place, and it is easy to see how the two objects together—­the sundial and the narrative painting—­could have amounted to something greater than the sum of their parts. Once again, a sundial was intertwined with diachronic time marking. The complication, clearly, is the sundial’s discrepancy: being configured for the latitude of Catania, its lines did not correspond exactly “to the horae” (ad horas). Latitude specificity is fundamental to the construction of a sundial that ­will be used in a given place, as is explained by Vitruvius and by Pliny himself in book 2 of the Natu­ral History.70 Quite a few surviving ancient sundials are not congruous with the latitude of the location they w ­ ere found in, which could be ­because the sundial was transported, ­because it was copied from an inappropriate model, or ­because it was poorly made.71 Yet the Catania sundial was not useless in Rome. The difference in latitude between Catania and Rome is not so ­great, and as Alexander Jones has demonstrated, the minor incongruency would have affected the calendrical function more than the clock function: “Errors in time of day . . . ​could only have been detected empirically if the displaced sundial was confronted with a more trusted sundial or w ­ ater clock.”72 Messala’s sundial was to be confronted in just this way, but only a ­century ­later. As for the term “horas,” some scholars have questioned the traditional translation ­here of “hours”: Robert Hannah leaves the word untranslated and then suggests that “seasons” is the sense, while Gratwick renders it with “Roman time.”73 As Jones rightly argues, however, Pliny’s remark “only makes sense as stating that the Romans trusted the sundial for marking the hours—­they are unlikely to have a­ dopted it as a calendar regulator.”74 Pliny, then, is ­either exaggerating the extent of hour-­keeping discrepancies on Messala’s sundial or is at least reporting the exaggerated sense of ­these discrepancies that developed in the minds of Romans. Jones asks, “Did p ­ eople come to suspect that the sundial showed false times ­because it manifestly showed false seasons?”75 ­Whether for this or another reason, Messala’s device ultimately lost its

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authority as a precise timepiece, though Pliny’s emphasis on the ninety-­nine year span during which the flawed sundial was relied on adds to his picture of very slow pro­gress in Rome. Gratwick may be right to point out that far more significant discrepancies between the Roman calendar and the seasons had developed during the same period of the m ­ iddle republic and that any prob­lems with Messala’s sundial would not have been so unique.76 Pliny’s characterization, in fact, arguably treats Messala’s sundial in terms that are comparable to ­those used by ancient historians when describing the chaotic years of the republican calendar prior to the Julian reform, when the almighty Romans “for a long time” (diu) ­were “floundering in the darkness of error,” lacking precise knowledge themselves and having conferred intercalation power on priests (Amm. Marc. 26.12). But if we take seriously the possibility that the Romans obeyed the flawed sundial for nearly a c­ entury, t­ here is more than one conclusion we may draw. In his Objects of Time (2012), Kevin Birth maintains that Messala’s sundial illustrates how a “cognitive artifact” (the timekeeping device) can induce error in the society that places too much reliance on it.77 But w ­ ere the Romans misguidedly giving credence to a flawed device they had plundered from elsewhere? Or, assuming a discrepancy was noticed and perhaps even painfully con­spic­u­ous, could this not have helped to highlight Messala’s (and the Romans’) feat in conquering a far-­away and “other” place? Each of t­ hese options is in its own way plausible, and they are not exhaustive.78

One Censor’s Correction The rule of Messala’s sundial, Pliny says, continued for the ninety-­nine years from 263 to 164 BCE, “­until Quintus Marcius Philippus, who was censor with Lucius Paulus, placed beside it one more carefully constructed [diligentius ordinatum iuxta posuit], and that public ser­vice was received among the most welcome works of the censors” (214). Philippus was not the first censor to contribute to timekeeping in Rome: already in 179 the censor Fulvius Nobilior had set up an annotated calendar (fasti) in his newly dedicated t­ emple of Hercules Musarum on the Campus Martius (Macrob. 1.12.16).79 But what, precisely, was Philippus’s feat? “More carefully constructed” (diligentius ordinatum) is Wolkenhauer’s translation, with which she seeks to convey the idea that the new device “has been both commissioned and set up by the Romans in a way that fits better for Rome.” 80 Jones, however, translates with “more carefully designed,” understanding the phrase to “attribute the inaccuracies [of Messala’s sundial] to sloppy execution rather

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than to geo­graph­i­cal displacement.”81 In any case, the new sundial appears to have perfected the tracking of the hours and the seasons, to the extent that a sundial could. Retaining Messala’s sundial in the same location, however, presumably allowed the older device to continue as a monument of the consul’s triumph and also to throw into relief the new device’s congruence with the seasonal calendar.82 As Wolkenhauer notes, keeping the old sundial vis­i­ble allows the new one next to it to serve as “an intangible meta­phor of pro­gress.”83 It is tempting to speculate that both devices ­were accompanied by dedicatory inscriptions or at least that an inscription accompanying Philippus’s sundial would have sought to explain their discrepancy. Not only was the new device more precise but the two devices viewed side by side ­were also clearly products of distinct episodes in Rome’s overall pro­gress. Messala’s sundial, having been acquired by a triumphant consul, demonstrated Rome’s ability to incorporate a foreign device into its administrative center—it served to showcase Rome as imperial capital. Philippus, by contrast, was evidently able to commission a customized device from a local or visiting specialist, and this was an exercise in rationalized urban organ­ization.84 This second episode is part of the broader pattern of “systematization” that Laura Ramosino sees as characterizing Pliny’s account of Roman administration in the years a­ fter the second Punic war.85

A Second Censor’s Culminating Act The fifth and final stage of Pliny’s account shows that t­ here was still room for improvement, and h ­ ere Pliny lays still greater emphasis on censorial accomplishment: Even then, however, the hours [i.e., the time of day] ­were uncertain whenever it was overcast [nubilo incertae fuere horae], right up till the next lustrum [i.e., five years ­later]. Then Scipio Nasica, colleague of Laenatus, was the first to use ­water to distinguish the hours equally of nights and of days [ primus aqua divisit horas aeque noctium ac dierum], and he dedicated that clock ­under cover [id . . . ​horologium sub tecto dicavit] in the 590th year of the city. (215)

For a second time Pliny draws attention to the act of a censor, this time Scipio Nasica, and he dates Scipio’s feat to the next lustrum (159 BCE) ­a fter that of Philippus. Some of the sociocultural impact of Scipio’s innovation may have been owed to its association with the lustrum as an occasion for purification and for clarification connected with the census. Pliny’s mention of the occasion is possibly made more con­spic­u­ous by the fact that in 74 CE, when Pliny himself

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was at work on his Natu­ral History, the emperor Vespasian had completed Rome’s final lustrum. In the lustrum of 159 BCE, Scipio the censor “was the first to use w ­ ater to distinguish the hours”—­a foundational moment that is also the capstone on Rome’s pro­gress in time technology. The phrasing “primus aqua” (“first [to use] ­water”) is clearly meant to echo Pliny’s ­earlier descriptions of the first sundials established by Papirius (princeps solarium horologium statuisse) and Messala (primum statutum), proceeding sequentially from sundial to ­water clock. The culminating impact of Scipio’s clock comes from the fact that he now breaks through the two remaining frontiers of Romans’ knowledge about hours, making the time knowable even on cloudy days and at night. The clock contributes to the longer-­term proj­ect of “colonizing” the night: though artificial lighting was of course to remain a scarce resource, the city now presumably had less use for the traditional notion of intempesta nox (timeless night), which Wolkenhauer neatly identifies as the opposite of temporal orderliness.86 Or we may note, again with Wolkenhauer, that thanks to Scipio’s clock “the entire calendar day” was now accounted for, making this an “end point” in the acculturation pro­cess traced by Pliny’s account.87 Pliny’s narrative, then, follows the same basic arc seen in the letters of Cassiodorus discussed in chapter  1, a progression by which the ­water clock surpasses the sundial by reaching into the hidden hours (Var. 1.45.10), though in Pliny this supplementation is mapped out incrementally over a long time. The exact nature of Scipio’s w ­ ater clock has been debated. Jérôme Bonnin invites us to imagine a sophisticated monumental structure; Klaus Stefan Freyberger and colleagues may actually have located its basin.88 As for Pliny’s description, Gratwick takes “aeque” (“equally”) to modify “divisit horas” (“distinguish the hours”) and argues that the reference was to equinoctical hours.89 That is not impossible, but the clause “primus aqua divisit horas aeque noctium ac dierum” works better syntactically and makes better sense if we understand the adverb “aeque” in connection with “ac” in “noctium ac dierum”—­literally, “equally of nights as of days.” This yields the more straightforward meaning “the hours of nights as much as of days,” hence indicating that nocturnal hours no less than daylight hours ­were indicated by the clock. That is certainly the improvement Pliny seems to be drawing attention to at this point in his account, and most scholars have taken it this way.90 As already noted in chapter 1, equinoctial hours must have been relied on for a variety of purposes, but ­water clocks ­were regularly adapted to register seasonal hours. Comparison with Cassiodorus may

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once again be helpful, since his ­water clock clearly indicates the same hours as the sundial, albeit by dif­fer­ent means (Var. 1.45.10). The location of Scipio’s clock is clearly significant. In saying, “he dedicated that clock u ­ nder cover”, Pliny registers that the ­water clock was not out of doors like the sundials. The interior location may have protected the w ­ ater from rapidly evaporating during summer and freezing during winter—­atmospheric conditions that would have interfered with its precision. But Scipio’s main feat is simply that the w ­ ater clock did not need to be outside: it could match the work of the sundial, without the sun. As I have noted, Varro in On the Latin Language appears to refer to the precise location of Scipio’s clock, the Basilica Aemilia-­ Fulvia. That court­house was erected in 179 BCE—­a date that is compatible with Scipio’s outfitting it with a clock in 159. And if Varro’s noting that this clock had been “set up in shade” touts, as I have suggested, the feat of indicating solar hours on a nonsolar device, Pliny’s paraphrase “dedicated u ­ nder cover” is likely intended to convey a similar idea.91 The ­water clock’s precise location inside the Basilica Aemilia-­Fulvia is also significant. First, it was located near the existing sundials, in the north part of the Forum and extremely close to the Rostra at the edge of the Comitium, and could thus have been conceived of as adding to the “complex time machine” rather than establishing a separate focus. Second, it was close to Rome’s lawcourts, where access to a time signal would have been impor­tant. The w ­ ater clock’s colonization of all the hours would have helped satisfy the increasing need for official time signals across Rome’s public spaces. It is worth noting that an idiomatic expression found in republican prose, “at the sundial” (ad solarium), appears to have referred metonymically to the Forum as a hub of civic activities.92 This phrase may refer to Messala’s sundial, as Wolkenhauer has speculated, though it would perhaps make more sense if it referred to Scipio’s w ­ ater clock, as Bonnin argues, especially given that we know from Varro’s On the Latin Language that “solarium” was the term used conspicuously for Scipio’s ­water clock (6.4).93

Lux Romana We are now in a position to gauge the impact of Pliny’s culminating statement, “For such a long time was daylight undifferentiated for the Roman p ­ eople.”94 Strictly speaking, indiscreta lux (undifferentiated daylight) might characterize only the earliest period in Pliny’s account, prior to the signaling of midday and suprema. But given Pliny’s emphasis on the imperfections of the first sundial

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and the slow progression to Scipio’s clock and also given the fact that this sentence directly follows the account of the clock, it may be taken to refer in a broader sense to the Romans’ situation right up u ­ ntil Scipio’s comprehensive feat of divisio in 159 BCE—­before which time, as Pliny says, “the hours [i.e., the time of day] ­were uncertain whenever it was overcast.” Wolkenhauer may also be right to suggest that with indiscreta lux, Pliny does not so much intend to suggest that Romans did not make time differentiations at all but rather that it was a period in which “clocks did not (yet) dominate everyday life.”95 In choosing to emphasize the imperfections in Romans’ timekeeping up to that moment, Pliny once again portrays Roman civilization’s arrested development. The upshot of Natu­ral History 7’s closing page is that up u ­ ntil the m ­ iddle of the second c­ entury the Romans w ­ ere r­ unning around with shaggy beards and without much sense of the exact time of day; their level of literacy is also perhaps called into question by the discussion of Ionian letters. To the extent, then, that the word “indiscreta” refers to the day’s lack of division into parts, Pliny portrays the division as arriving a­ fter a long historical gestation.96 We can clarify Pliny’s point by juxtaposing it to two texts we already considered in chapter 1. The Plautine parasite’s complaint that the inventor of hours “has reduced my day to pieces” (qui mihi comminuit articulatim diem) (Gell. NA 3.3.5, l. 3) idealizes the preceding period, Pliny’s indiscreta lux. Conversely, Cassiodorus laments a world before clocks, in which one deferred to one’s belly, as a state of “lacking certainty” (non habere certum), which diurnal time telling, “provided for ­human use” (Var. 1.46.2), rectified. ­These texts, one likely known to Varro and the other subject to Varro’s influence, remind us of the dif­fer­ent meanings that could be attached to the watershed moment of day articulation. Pliny’s version is distinctive in making this moment pivotal for the populus Romanus and for the public spaces and national history of the Roman republic. Pliny’s account is teleological and Rome-­centric despite its primitivizing aspects. If we consider, first, how Pliny himself mea­sures out the long span of historical time denoted by tam diu, we observe a vivid pageant of significant events and historical time markers that leave us in ­little doubt about the march of Roman history. Pliny meticulously enumerates the years since Rome’s foundation; he chronicles ­legal codes, wars, conquests, monuments, magistracies, and five-­yearly rituals. Viewed along this increasingly busy historical axis, the Romans’ inability to determine the time of day seems ironic or beside the point—­ certainly not damning. A second ­thing to consider is the notion of Roman lux. In a famous passage of Natu­ral History 27 Pliny describes Rome’s ability to exhaustively appropriate

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all that is good in the world, such as its flora, asserting that the gods have given Rome as an altera lux (“second daylight” or alternatively “second sun”) (3).97 This evokes the established notion of the Roman empire’s geographic expanse ab ortu ad occasum (from sunrise to sunset or from east to west) and thus of Rome’s domination of the world’s spatial and temporal (diurnal) extremes. Pliny’s account of diurnal timekeeping, as Wolkenhauer notes, resonates with his account in book 18 of Natu­ral History of Augustus putting the finishing touches on the Julian calendar (211) as “the last g­ reat stride in the institutionalization of a time order” for Rome’s imperial world.98 In Pliny’s own era more specifically, the idea of Roman lux would be registered in Flavian panegyric poetics—­for example, in a poem of Martial asserting that so long as Rome’s calendrical, historical, and ritual times continue, “the lofty splendor of the Flavian dynasty ­will endure, along with the sun, the stars, and Roman daylight [cum sole et astris cumque luce Romana]” (Epigr. 9.1.8–9). Certainly t­ here is good reason to think that Pliny was familiar with how the Flavians w ­ ere aspiring to portray the pre­sent age as a culmination in the technological appropriation of timekeeping technology or alignment with natu­ral time markers. Pliny himself is our main source for the discrepant “meridian” of Augustus on the Campus Martius (36.71–73), but he may additionally have been aware of the plan to renovate it and put it back into alignment, which Domitian in fact accomplished just a few years a­ fter Pliny’s death.99 Given t­ hese associations of lux, we must recognize the further implication of indiscreta: that Scipio’s culminating act of division was part of a pro­cess in which Roman power itself went from being undistinguished to world famous. Pliny the encyclopedist, then, deploys Varronian “discernment” for his own purposes, locating the pro­cess of differentiating specific diurnal times within a teleological movement ­toward the present-­day Roman principate—­the culmination of ­human civilization—­before moving on to discuss the “other animals” (reliqua animalia) in book 8 of the Natu­ral History (215). Pliny very likely takes the term “indiscreta” directly from Varro. We have seen that in On Agriculture Varro uses the term to describe how archaic country dwellers, for example, practiced an “indiscriminate” blend of agricultural and pastoral farming in one and the same space (3.1.7). Certainly Pliny makes good use of the term in configuring the account that he received from Varro, crafting a forward-­looking narrative of successive differentiation and overall pro­gress. ­There is, however, one additional question that we may ask regarding Pliny’s perspective on the Roman day: how does it relate to Pliny’s own well-­known eccentric temporal habits, especially his lucubrations that famously enabled the

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writing of Natu­ral History itself? I turn to this question in chapter 4 a­ fter comparing Pliny’s clock-­time narrative with the account in Censorinus.

Primordial Partition in On Your Birthday (Censorinus) Diurnal timekeeping comes up in the last surviving pages of On Your Birthday, Censorinus’s compact volume from 238 CE celebrating the birthday of his friend Caerellius.100 Censorinus encapsulates the book’s goal by quoting a line of poetry: “As Persius says, ‘Count this day with a better pebble [hunc diem . . . ​ numera meliore lapillo]’ ” (2.1).101 “I ­will indicate to you,” Censorinus announces to Caerellius, “with the most lucid markers I am able to, this day’s time [tempus hodiernum] in which you are at your greatest flourishing” (16.1). He devotes the book to a discussion of the scientific, philosophical, and societal aspects of ­human conception and gestation and then the parts of time, both the ­human life course and vari­ous time units, beginning with the largest and proceeding to the smallest. When he arrives at the topic of hours and sundials, he makes use of Varro’s Antiquities just as Pliny had done almost two centuries ­earlier. However, Censorinus’s approach differs both in its overall framing of the topic and in its accounts of diurnal timekeeping. The Roman Birthday Boy The topic of On Your Birthday is ­shaped by the social profiles of both author and addressee: Censorinus, himself descended (as his name proudly indicates) from a famous censor of 149 BCE (17.11), celebrates Caerellius for being on excellent terms with Romans of e­ very order (15.4–5). The broader time frames he mentions at the beginning of the work include ones significant to Romans; he passes over the times of myth and starts instead with the founding of Rome and articulates such culturally specific units as lustrum and saeculum and distinguishes between “natu­ral” and “civil” time units. The proj­ect is very much one of situating Caerellius’s birthday within an occasion (tempus) that is cosmically deep and vast but consummately Roman. It is uncertain exactly how the work ended or would have ended—­some have suggested a final casting of Caerellius’s horoscope.102 When the book breaks off, Censorinus has just completed his discussion of the Roman day and its parts in chapters 23–24. In ­these final surviving chapters Censorinus does not mention Varro by name, but Varro has come up in ­earlier chapters of the book, such as when Censorinus mentions how “Varro scattered all darkness” (hoc quodcumque caliginis Varro discussit) from disputed questions about the end of the mythic period and the beginning of the historic (21.1, 21.4). Scholars have entertained the pos-

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sibility that the structure of On Your Birthday itself follows the order of books 15 and/or 16 of Varro’s ­Human Antiquities, ­whether in the same order or in reverse.103 Regardless of what order Varro used, Censorinus clearly has his own reasons for wanting to save the unit of the day till last, namely, that it can define Caerellius’s birthday most exactly. H ­ ere Censorinus arguably compiles sections from dif­fer­ent parts of Varro, since he brings together two topics that in Pliny’s encyclopedia are presented far apart from one another—­the topic of the civil versus the natu­ral day (23.1–5; Plin. HN 2.188) and the history of the hours and sundials in Rome (23.6–9; Plin. HN 7.212–15)—­before proceeding to a topic that Pliny does not mention: the phrases designating the individual parts of the Roman day in­de­pen­dent of the hours (24.1–6), which Varro does discuss in On the Latin Language (6.4–7).104 A good indication of how Censorinus intends to proceed in ­these chapters is provided by his first section, the discussion of the civil versus the natu­ral day, which is a leitmotif of On Your Birthday, having been mentioned already with re­spect to generation (saeculum [17.1]), year (19.4), and month (22.1). Now, however, the distinction is of more immediate relevance, since it may lead to dif­fer­ent conclusions about the exact date of Caerellius’s birth. Sure enough, Censorinus tailors the topos to address just this point. ­A fter cata­loguing how dif­fer­ent nations define the civil day just as Gellius does (Babylonians use sunrise, Umbrians midday, Athenians sunset, Romans midnight [23.2–5]), he excludes most of the examples that Gellius sees fit to mention but retains the pertinent point: “This same fact means t­ hose who are born in the twenty-­four hours from midnight to the following midnight have the same birthday [eundem diem habent natalem]” (23.5). The final phrase ­here allows us to see that Censorinus adapts Varro’s phrasing, which we know from Gellius’s apparently verbatim quotation, “are said to have been born on one and the same day” (uno die nati dicuntur) (NA 3.2.2). The adaptation places a clearer emphasis on the birthday as birthday. In the remainder of chapters 23–24, Censorinus drills down into the history of hours and sundials and then deeper into the structure of the Roman day prior to the hours—­a ll in keeping with his goal of providing a temporal and cultural anchor for the Roman birthday boy.

In Search of the Antiquissimum In his historical sketch of emergent clock time in Rome Censorinus includes a number of details that Pliny excluded and that we can add to our dossier of information about Roman timekeeping.105 More importantly, Censorinus shapes

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the material in keeping with his own concerns. The broader initial framework that Pliny introduces, for example, with his history of h ­ uman inventions and his sketch of the “implicit agreement” (consensus tacitus) by which all nations began to observe the hours, is entirely absent from Censorinus. The story is less about Rome’s relationship to the history of the world and more about the deep history of the day’s structuring in Rome even before the hours. Censorinus begins by acknowledging present-­day timekeeping conventions—­ the use of the hours—­and then ventures to offer his own tentative explanation of the technological conditions that made it pos­si­ble in Rome. He begins by devoting more space than Pliny does to the subject of the first public sundial: It is common knowledge that the day has been divided into twelve hours and the night into the same number [in horas XII diem divisum esse noctemque in totidem]; but this, I think, was observed in Rome a­ fter the discovery of sundials [Romae post reperta solaria observatum]. As to which is the most ancient [antiquissimum] of t­ hese, it is difficult to find out [inventu difficile est], for some say the first established [ primum statutum dicunt] was at the t­ emple of Quirinus, o­ thers on the Capitolium, and some at the t­ emple of Diana on the Aventine. (23.6)

As he enumerates the vari­ous contenders for first sundial in Rome, Censorinus does not name any specific historical source as flawed and does not touch on the question of the sundial’s mechanism or provenance—­a ll of which Pliny holds so impor­tant. Instead, he emphasizes his own goal of figuring out when sundials w ­ ere first known and used in Rome and therefore how early hours w ­ ere observed. The multiplicity of the accounts, however, thwarts him in his goal of determining which sundial was antiquissimum (most ancient). Even the l­imited information about each sundial Censorinus mentions allows us to speculate about historical implications. The sundial at the ­temple of Quirinus is clearly the same one Pliny says that Papirius Cursor erected in 293 BCE, along with the t­ emple itself, in fulfillment of a vow previously made by his f­ ather (HN 7.213). Its provenance tantalizingly remains unmentioned, but given what we know about Messala’s sundial, Papirius’s device was no doubt also imported, though it seems unlikely that it was plunder from the war the Papirii ­were most closely involved in, which was against the relatively local Samnites.106 Noticeable associations of Papirius’s sundial include its coevalness with a t­ emple; the fact (known from elsewhere) that next to the Quirinus ­temple ­t here stood a shrine to the sun (sol indiges); Quirinus’s specific role as god of the citizen body; and the fact that the mythistorical Quirinus’s wife was named Hora (though the o is short in Hora, long in “hora”).107 The sundial on the Capitolium, in turn,

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suggests an association with the “complex time machine” and with Jupiter as the god of sky and dies as well as a fragment from Seneca’s On Superstition that mocks a t­ emple worshipper who “tells the hour to Jove” (horas nuntiat Iovi) (fr. 36). The Diana ­temple on the Aventine evokes the history of that ­temple’s dedication as “shared property of the Latins” (commune Latinorum) (Varr. Ling. 5.43) and possibly also Diana in her identity as Moon (Luna), but the Aventine’s plebeian associations and peripheral location may explain why the sundial did not feature in Pliny’s account of centralized public clocks.108 More decisive than any one of ­these associations, perhaps, is the broader picture Censorinus conveys of the existence of a plurality of public sundials, each with its own claims to antiquity and its own monumental history, appearing in religious spaces that Pliny omits to mention.109 Although Censorinus’s language is ambiguous, t­ here is ­every reason to think that specific sundials remained in ­these vari­ous t­ emples at least during Varro’s time, and so each would have been a subject of local tradition. ­These devices are not just a patchwork of competing sources of information: as a group they likely reflect the dynamic of multiple public time signals across Rome’s several hills (Quirinal, Capitoline, Aventine), along with the l­ater dedications in the Comitium and Forum, which w ­ ere not necessarily in agreement with one another and certainly ­were more tied to local needs than to a coherent overall system. It is also worth noting how each of the contenders mentioned by Censorinus is located in (perhaps in front of) a ­temple—­a tradition we see continued in the sacred dedications of numerous ancient sundials. While each of the urban ­temples mentioned by Censorinus is already ­shaped by the historical time of its foundation history and by the sacred times of festival and ritual, the sundial in turn gives each ­temple a relationship to daily time in the city. Censorinus then pre­sents the sequence from Messala to Scipio Nasica, providing much of the same information that Pliny does but in a smoother sequence and without quantifying so precisely the time delays between each step: This is sufficiently established: that t­ here had been no [sundial] in the Forum prior to the one [nullum in foro prius fuisse quam id] that Marius Valerius [Messala] brought from Sicily and placed on a column at the Rostra. But ­because being configured for the latitude of Sicily it did not agree with the horae in Rome [ad clima Siciliae descriptum ad horas Romae non conveniret], Lucius Philippus as censor placed another one next to it [aliud iuxta constituit]. Then slightly l­ ater Publius Cornelius [Scipio] Nasica as censor made an hour keeper using ­water [ex aqua fecit horarium], which itself began to be called “solarium” from the habit of recognizing hours from the sun [ex consuetudine noscendi a sole horas]. (23.7)

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The climax of the progression in Censorinus is not the portrait of Scipio seen in Pliny as a divider whose actions made time available at all hours of day and night. Censorinus emphasizes instead an etymological point: that the ­water clock came to be known as a “solarium” by analogy with the use of sundials to know the hours. Censorinus’s concerns are clearly more ­those of the antiquarian-­ etymologist in search of origins rather than developments. It also seems likely that Censorinus’s etymology for “solarium” itself comes from Varro’s On the Latin Language (6.4). The term with which Censorinus initially refers to Scipio’s device, “horarium,” “hour keeper,” is unique h ­ ere in surviving Latin lit­er­a­ture, and it may not be far fetched to suspect that Varro simply in­ven­ted the word to serve as a hy­po­thet­i­cal, like-­sounding pre­de­ces­sor to “solarium.” The next sentence in Censorinus’s account highlights his most revealing difference from Pliny. It is pos­si­ble and indeed quite natu­ral to understand tam diu in Pliny’s “For such a long time was daylight undifferentiated for the Roman p ­ eople” as extending right up to the time of Scipio’s w ­ ater clock, thereby drawing attention to Rome’s halting pro­gress t­ oward that culminating moment. But Censorinus writes in the same spot: “It is easy to believe that the word ‘hours’ was unknown at Rome for not less than three hundred years” (horarum nomen non minus annos trecentos Romae ignoratum esse credibile est) (23.8). It seems likely that Pliny and Censorinus have adapted the same sentence in Varro, yet Censorinus’s sentence requires a more specific interpretation (­whether closer to Varro’s original thought than Pliny’s version we cannot be certain). Censorinus focuses on a primarily linguistic-­antiquarian question concerning the absence of the terminology of “hours,” and this question only makes sense in the context of the time prior to the first sundial’s arrival. Three hundred years is inaccurate as a designation of the time before Scipio’s clock: it presumably refers instead to the time between the putative origin of hours in the time of Anaximander in the first half of the sixth ­century BCE and the arrival of Papirius’s sundial in Rome in the early third.110 Censorinus also does not use the term “indiscreta” ­here: he emphatically does not claim that the Romans did not make any distinctions in the day—­just that they lacked the term “hours” and the technology that went with it. And whereas mention of Scipio’s clock was the culminating moment in Pliny’s culture history, for Censorinus it leads into further excavation of the structure of the Roman day.

“Differentiated with Their Own Names” In the lines that follow, Censorinus reveals his greater interest in the distinctions Romans made before the introduction of the hours. Moving backward in time,

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he recites the evidence of the Twelve T ­ ables, where the day has only two parts (23.8): “For in the Twelve ­Tables you ­will not find hours mentioned anywhere [nusquam nominatas horas invenies] as in other, ­later laws, but rather ‘before midday,’ clearly b­ ecause midday separated the parts of what was at that time a day divided in two [ partes diei bifariam tum divisi meridies discernebat]” (23.8). Pliny mentions the Twelve T ­ ables at an early stage of his account, but Censorinus mentions them only now in an effort to offer a more matter-­of-­fact description of the schema that preceded the hours, and he then goes on to discuss other archaic partitions of the day: “­Others divided the day in quarters [alii diem quadripertito . . . ​dividebant] but divided the night too in similar fashion [sed et noctem similiter]. Evidence for this is the similarity of military usage, where ­there is reference to ‘first watch’ [vigilia prima] and likewise ‘second,’ ‘third,’ and ‘fourth’ ” (23.9). In t­ hese lines it is in­ter­est­ing to ask who is d ­ oing the “dividing.” In the bipartite day, it is “midday” itself that “separated” (discernebat) morning from after­noon; in the quartered day and night, “­others divided” (alii . . . ​dividebant) ­these times—­where it is unclear ­whether Censorinus is referring to specific ancient communities other than Rome, to a specific subset of Romans, or indeed to other antiquarians seeking to describe how the archaic day was divided. Regardless, ­here, in parsing the archaic Roman day itself, Censorinus makes clear the sense of the Varronian term “discernere” that is most impor­tant for his account. “Discernere” w ­ ill recur with this same sense in Censorinus’s introductions to the following and final section (ch. 24), where he lists the times of day and night that are “differentiated with their own names [ propriis discreta nominibus], which can be found written [scripta inveniuntur] h ­ ere and t­ here in the ancient poets” (24.1). Whereas Pliny uses “discernere” to evoke the pro­cess by which the hours of the day, and lux overall, had become divided and distinguished, Censorinus uses it to capture the distinctions in the past that predate the hour and that he as an antiquarian is excavating or bringing to light, with an emphasis on etymology:111 ­ here are also additional times of night and day indicated below the level of the T ­others and differentiated with their own names, which can be found written ­here and t­ here in the ancient poets. I w ­ ill set forth all of t­ hese in their order. I ­w ill begin from “midnight,” which is the first and last time of the Roman day. The time that follows this is called “from midnight” [de media nocte]. Next follows “cockcrow” [gallicinium], when the cocks begin to sing, then “­silent time”

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110  Ordering History [conticium], when they have fallen ­silent, then “before daylight” [ante lucem] and so “dawn” [diluculum], when ­there is light but the sun has not yet risen. Following dawn is called “morning” [mane], when light is vis­i­ble a­ fter sunrise; ­a fter this “­toward midday” [ad meridiem], then “midday” [meridies], which is the name for the m ­ iddle of the day, and then “from midday” [de meridie]; ­a fter this “final” [suprema], though most reckon “final” to be ­a fter sunset, since it is written thus in the Twelve ­Tables: “Let sunset be final time” [TT 1.9]. But ­later Marcus Plaetorius as tribune passed a popu­lar resolution in which it was written: “Let the urban praetor, both the pre­sent one and whoever ­shall be henceforth, have two lictors with him, and let him utter judgment among the citizens right up u ­ ntil ‘final’ at sunset” [ “supremam” ad solem occasum]. ­A fter “final” follows “eve­ning” [vespera], evidently before the rising of that star which Plautus calls “vesperugo,” Ennius “vesper,” and Virgil “hesperos.” Then further, “twilight” [crepusculum], likely called this b­ ecause uncertain t­ hings are called “creper,” and it is uncertain w ­ hether that time belongs to night or day. ­A fter that follows the time we call “when the lamps have been lit” [luminibus accensis] but the ancients called “first torch” [ prima face]; next “bedded time” [concubitum], when ­people have gone to bed; a­ fter that, “timeless night” [intempesta nox], that is, “much night” [multa nox], when nothing “timely” [tempestivum] can be done; then is called “­toward midnight” [ad mediam noctem] and so “midnight” [media nox]. (24.1–6)

Although this list of terms derives in part from Varro’s On the Latin Language (6.4–7) and overlaps to a g­ reat extent with versions of it given by other antiquarians such as Macrobius, Servius, and Isidore (who in turn may all have drawn on Varro’s Antiquities), several features of Censorinus’s version are distinctive.112 In announcing that he “­will set forth all of t­ hese in their order” (ea omnia suo ordine exponam) and “­will begin from ‘midnight,’ which is the first and last time of the Roman day” (incipiam a nocte media, quod tempus principium et postremum est diei Romani) (24.1), Censorinus makes it clear that for him the list is not just a list but a performative act of ordering that corresponds to the order of the Roman civil day and also allows for a tracing of Roman origins. In the phrase “I w ­ ill begin from midnight” in par­tic­u­lar, “from midnight” is ambiguous, as it e­ ither could refer to the linguistic expression (“from ‘midnight’ ”) or be functioning as an adverbial expression describing the time of his intellectual ­labor, evoking a scholarly lucubrator or the magistrate “who a­ fter midnight gets up silently from his bed” (qui post mediam noctem . . . ​ex lectulo suo silens surrexit),

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most likely “for the purpose of taking the auspices” (andi causa [Festus 348.29–31]).113 The initial description of midnight as “first and last time” lends a cyclic and a comprehensive dimension to Censorinus’s rehearsal. Certainly this rehearsal is diachronically capacious, ­whether in differentiating strata of Roman history such as “the ancients,” the Twelve T ­ ables, and the Lex Plaetoria, and specific archaic authors such as Ennius and Plautus, or in adding observations from a post-­Varronian author such as Virgil. Yet ­these differences are subordinated to Censorinus’s emphatic pre­sent tenses referring to the ontology of the parts (“­there are” [sunt]) as well as to their progression (“follows” [sequitur]) and to his own usage (“we say” [dicimus]), in a kind of timeless and recurring Roman day that the antiquarian can live and relive. Censorinus, then, parses the primordial Roman day as a cumulative but iterable repository of linguistic and literary tradition, offering a clear contrast to Pliny’s historical diegesis of Rome’s slow but supreme appropriation of the hours observed by the rest of the world and the distinction gained by Rome in the pro­ cess. Censorinus offers to Caerellius and other readers a structured Roman day, prior to the terminology of “hours,” that is anchored in the history of the Latin language and in the order of Roman ritual.114 For Censorinus, however, writing in 238 CE, this act of ordering is not simply a return to archaic Rome but an exercise in marking “this day’s time” (tempus hodiernum) and thus allowing his friend’s birthday to be celebrated with precise knowledge in the pre­sent.

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pa r t i i

or de r i ng l i v e s

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ch a pter 4

Days in the Life

Pliny the Elder’s Writing Routine We now turn to the synchronic dimension, taking up how Roman authors define a ­whole way of life through descriptions of a repeated daily schedule, an everyday routine. This and the following chapters in part 2 explore the power that routine descriptions held for ordering Roman lives, first by introducing the notion of a day pattern (this chapter), then by conducting case studies in three dif­fer­ent areas of Roman social life (chapter 5) and in three distinct literary scenarios (chapters 6–8). Before we shift gears, it is worth pointing out that diachronic concerns remain relevant. I contextualize t­ hese represented routines within their historical moments and in relation to literary pre­de­ces­sors and trace the longer-­term narratives that the routines themselves are often connected to. T ­ here is, indeed, a mutually supporting relationship between the diachronic narratives considered in part 1 and the synchronic descriptions that are the focus of part 2. Nothing demonstrates this better than the case of Pliny the Elder himself. For in the preface to Natu­ral History, addressed to Titus, the Flavian scion, Pliny issues a warning about the imperfections in his own work:

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116  Ordering Lives We are ­human beings, and we are busy with duties. We have been tending to this in our spare time [subsicivis . . . ​temporibus ista curamus]—­that is, nighttime [id est nocturnis]—­lest any of you think we ­were idle during ­t hese hours [ne quis vestrum putet his cessatum horis]. We spend our days on you, and we calculate only the sleep we need to ensure good health, content with the sole reward that while we “musinate” t­ hese ­things, as Marcus Varro puts it, we spend more hours alive [ pluribus horis vivimus]. For to be alive, ultimately, means being awake [ profecto enim vita vigilia est]. (pr.18)

Pliny plays modest, but his repeated utilization of night hours serves an ambitious end. It lets him “live” longer and thereby lets him write a longer Natu­ral History, whose topic he describes as “the nature of ­things, or in other words, life [vita]” (pr.13). Given the role that hours play in this production, Pliny’s scheduling habit itself belongs, in an impor­tant sense, to the story of clock time in Rome—­the story documenting the quantum leap that took place, as he himself reports, when Scipio Nasica became “the first to use ­water to distinguish the hours of nights as much as of days” and thereby ended an era in which “the hours ­were uncertain whenever it was overcast” (7.215). If Pliny’s composition of Natu­ral History represents in general terms a feat of colonizing the day’s unused hours, Pliny the Younger’s letter describing his ­uncle’s writing habits in book 3 of the Letters (5) enumerates revealing details about his “unrivaled wakefulness” (summa vigilantia) (8) and his “extreme economization of time” (tanta . . . ​parsimonia temporis) (13), as he describes how his ­uncle spent his days during the stage of his life when he was carry­ing out public duties and serving the emperor.1 The nephew recounts the mea­sures that allowed Pliny to multiply his time. He commenced morning lucubration especially early in the seasonal calendar (from the time of the Vulcanalia, i.e., in August) and especially early in the morning—­first “from deep night” (a nocte multa) and then, by winter, even e­ arlier: “from the seventh or at latest the eighth hour, often the sixth” (ab hora septima vel cum tardissime octava, saepe sexta) (8). ­A fter returning home from his morning duties, he scraped together “any residual time” (quod reliquum temporis) (9) and then curtailed other activities such as lunch and siesta so as to allow him to study all after­noon, “as if having another day” (quasi alio die) (11). And he overlaid one activity on another—­ continually dependent, we must note, on the agency of slaves as part of the apparatus of “Pliny the Author.”2 ­Uncle Pliny listened to books being read aloud (“quickly” [cursim] and without repetitions), and he continued annotating, excerpting, and dictating even while he lay in the sun, bathed, and traveled (10,

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11, 15). He was interested in economization devices: the secretary who traveled with him “had gloves protecting his hands in the winter, so that not even unfriendly skies could take away any study time [ut ne caeli quidem asperitas ullum studii tempus eriperet]” (15). This mea­sure in par­tic­u­lar, I suggest, is evocative of Scipio’s weather-­impervious w ­ ater clock. Natu­ral History itself, then, benefited from Rome’s adoption of hours and clocks, since ­t hese facilitated the conditions of Pliny’s daily routine through which the work was produced. Pliny himself arguably contributed a new Flavian (or Plinian) chapter to that technological history through his ingenuity in using time. This perhaps makes Pliny in his own way a latter-­day “Palamedes,” an innovator who finds hours where previously none ­were observed.3

Day Patterns and Forms of Life The eternal city may not have been built in a day, but some fundamental Roman forms of life ­were defined using day patterns.4 “Day pattern” is my term for a day-­specific version of what John Bender and David Wellbery call “chronotypes.” Treating time as “the framework within which life forms are embedded and carry on their existence,” they focus on the “models or patterns through which time assumes practical or conceptual significance,” often through repre­ sen­ta­tion in narrative.5 By “day pattern” I mean a repre­sen­ta­tion of how a given person or persons spent their entire day, seen as a kind of cyclic totality and viewed through a socioethical lens.6 Such a repre­sen­ta­tion may be understood as a pattern not simply ­because it has a principled or designed structure, as in one of the time pageants found in Roman domestic art, where, as Christine Kondoleon puts it, time is “contained” and “surveyed,” but also b­ ecause it is usually iterative and so describes a prevalent habit rather than a single instance and additionally b­ ecause it often has an exemplary function for o­ thers, w ­ hether or not this is made explicit.7 Day patterns defined “forms of life,” by which I mean the range of pos­si­ble characterizations of a person’s overall social or ethical existence. A given form of life may itself be permanent or temporary; it may be an idealization rather than an actuality; one form may overlap with o­ thers; one person or group may inhabit more than one form of life si­mul­ta­neously; and we may be conscious, as we read a routine description, that only one person’s activity counts as spending “time,” while ­there is scant mention of the time and the value of ­others, such as enslaved persons. By referring to a form of life I seek to register the frequency with which ancient authors categorize both persons and groups in terms of a specific manner of living (Gk. “bios”; Lat. “vitae genus”), especially when

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ascribing significance to quotidian routines. Consider, for example, how the range of ­things Pliny the Younger can describe as “dispositus” (or­ga­nized) include a day, a life, and a man.8 As Bender and Wellbery ask regarding chronotypes, “How do they contribute to the formation of social, cultural, and individual identity?”9 The relationship between day patterns and forms of life gives rise to the “order of the day,” which in turn speaks to aspects of the social order. J. P. Toner puts it well when he describes how in Roman routine descriptions, “everyday experience is ordered into events less cluttered with the demands of immediate practical purposes, and thus becomes concentrated into a form where meaning can be more powerfully articulated.”10 One salient and power­ful technique for articulating time ordering is, of course, writing. Focusing on written articulations allows us to observe how the quotidian framework can facilitate the articulation of social meanings within the genres of literary communication. In any society, certainly, day patterns continually emerge and morph in seemingly infinite ways. They are in­ven­ted and explicated in a vast array of cultural discourses on “a day in the life.” Yet the range of day patterns and forms of life available to us from ancient Roman culture is fairly finite. While numerous fragmentary or partial glimpses alert us to the lost days whose patterns might have told us more, few totalizing views survive. Fronto tantalizingly alludes to a heterogeneous range of social schedules depending on each person’s social role (qualitas): “One kind of lunch is usual for a driver, another for a boxer. . . . ​Each has a dif­fer­ent time for lunching [aliud prandendi tempus], each a dif­fer­ent bathing, a dif­fer­ent sleep, a dif­fer­ent vigil” (Eloq. 1.4). He skips the details. It is also often difficult to discern what day patterns ­were standard for Romans, as the fraught topic ­whether Romans took a siesta suggests. The challenges to such an inquiry are illustrated in an essay by Thomas Wiedemann, who argues that the answers have ­little to do with sociocultural norms.11 Even if “the mid-­day rest was seen as a legally protected component of the freedom of a Roman citizen,” as the opinion of one republican jurist appears to suggest, the occurrence of a siesta ­will depend, first, on “distinctions of gender, age and state of health” as well as “between city and country, Rome and the provinces, leisure and work (otium / negotium), home and military ser­vice (domi / militiae); and the annual round of the seasons.”12 It w ­ ill also depend on special considerations: for example, one’s giving in to sleep at a time when one would other­wise be awake might seem a failure of temperantia (self-­control).13 And it ­will depend on the repre­sen­ta­tional choices made by a writer: “Each text in its own way mentions napping for reasons internal to its literary purpose, in terms

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of the expectations of rhe­toric and popu­lar philosophy about the morality of sleep.”14 We can always assem­ble anecdotes, sourcebook style, in the hope of composing a mosaic. To get a better picture of Roman mornings, for example, we could try ­going beyond the well-­known testimonia on predawn lucubration, augury, and salutatio and include other glancing references that invite us to extrapolate general rules: •

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

“Unlock the doors of the inn: I want to go [out] before light [antelucio volo ire]” . . . ​“What? ­Don’t you know the roads are swarming with bandits [latronibus infestari vias]?” (Apul. Met. 1.15.1). The public baths at Vipasca in Spain ­were made ready “for ­women from first light [a prima luce] to the seventh hour of the day, for men from the eighth hour to the second hour of the night” (ILS 6891, 20–21). “In such a state of anxiety did I await the morning opening of the [Isis] ­temple [templi matutinas apertiones opperiebar]” (Apul. Met. 11.20). “In the morning: straight to the dream interpreter [mane ad coniectorem]” (Cic. Div. 2.144). “The usage [usus] [of bedrooms and libraries] demands morning light [matutinum postulat lumen]” (Vitr. De arch. 6.4.1). “[The emperor Claudius] was in the habit of ­going down to a spectacle at first light [ prima luce]” (Suet. Claud. 34.2). Schedule for Ludi Saeculares (17 BCE), Nones of June: “Latin plays at the second hour (h. II) in the wooden theater located on the Tiber; Greek shows at the third hour (h. III) in the theater of Pompey; Greek stage plays at the fourth hour (h. I[III]) in the theater which is in the Circus Flaminius” (ILS 5050, 156). Camillus vowed that a­ fter Veii was captured “he would restore and dedicate a ­temple of Mater Matuta [goddess associated with morning]” (Liv. 5.19.6).15 Saturio: “What­ever business you begin to do in the morning proceeds for the ­whole day” (mane quod tu occeperis / negotium agere, id totum procedit diem) (Plaut. Pers. 114–15). “He who seeks goods does well to rise in the first hour” (qui bona sectatur prima bene surgit in hora) (Dicta Catonis 4.48). “At dawn [hupo . . . ​tên eô] the soldiery, each and ­every one, go to the centurions, and the centurions together approach the tribunes to greet them [aspasomenoi], and together with ­these the commanding officers all

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go to the general of the entire army. He gives them the watchword as usual and the other commands to distribute among their subordinates” (Joseph. BJ 3.87). Such material has proven fertile for numerous explorations of Roman cultural subjectivity, not to mention for the modern “daily life in ancient Rome” industry. I, too, have collected it and mined it for some of the discussions in this book. But we have better access to the “ego documents” of elite males in which writers and their audiences are invested in defining and reproducing forms of life through ­whole day patterns within privileged literary settings.16 ­These patterns reach us as premolded and postproduced narratives rather than as the relatively raw data sets compiled from the diaries of time use solicited by modern so­cio­ log­i­cal researchers.17 The day-­pattern author is in a position to craft such narratives thanks to his elevated social status, and the form of life defined in his writing is often an active per­for­mance of one or more aspects of his elite identity, such as his slaveholding or his masculinity. As Bender and Wellbery point out, chronotypes can be “involved in pro­cesses of domination,” and “narrative” may be treated as “a privileged or notably efficacious chronotype.”18 In this and the following chapters, then, I explore a series of literary moments in which day patterning, as a means of imagining a specific form of life, serves as a technique of empowerment. It is worth emphasizing that the realism that is typical of such repre­sen­ta­tions is in virtually e­ very case a product of artifice and stands in a qualified relationship to Roman realities.19 My first case studies, in chapter 5, are thematic (farm, body, emperor). In chapters 6–8 I home in on six author-­specific patterns. The rest of this chapter, however, is devoted to laying the groundwork in both methods and models.

Recent Theorizing and Roman Daily Time The “prob­lem of order” in sociology, argues Anthony Giddens, concerns precisely how the “durée of day-­to-­day experience” relates reciprocally to two temporalities that are qualitatively distinct from the day-­to-­day: the “life span of the individual” and the “longue durée of institutions.”20 In response to this kind of challenge to explicating the quotidian, Thomas Luckmann uses the term “dramatization” to describe how shorter time schemes, through the mediation of specific social categories or repre­sen­ta­tional media, are actively infused with significance in relation to longer ones, such as a “biographic scheme,” a “transcendent social entity” such as “­family, kin, or a larger social w ­ hole such as nation, class, and the like,” and even “transcendent nature” or an individual’s

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cosmically sublimated “eternal life.”21 “Routinization,” in Giddens’s account, is “integral both to the continuity of the personality of the agent, as he or she moves along the paths of daily activities, and to the institutions of society, which are such only through their continued reproduction.”22 If, in turn, we understand specific persons’ uses of time within the day as “time be­hav­iors,” they can come to define an overall set of ­mental attitudes, a “time sense,” “time perspective,” or “time orientation,” such as sociologists have sometimes used to distinguish between, for example, one group that is “present-­ time-­oriented” and another that is “future-­time-­oriented.”23 The field of time geography associated with the Lund School sought to map, or diagram, ­human temporal (and spatial) trajectories (fig. 10) so as to derive typological information about a given community or social space as well as how individuals are distinguished against this background.24 This kind of observation served as a basis for more specialized approaches like time-­allocation economics. In this framework, as Alfred Gell explains, “each individual in the population incurs individual

Figure 10. Lund School time map. Lenntorp 1978, 164.

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opportunity costs in opting for one par­tic­u­lar path through the daily prism, as opposed to other pos­si­ble ones,” and this in turn tells us about the value and meaning of specific time-­uses both for the individual and for society as a ­whole.25 ­These methods have informed several recent studies of Roman diurnal time that can offer us a useful point of departure. Ray Laurence, in a chapter devoted to “temporal logic” in his Roman Pompeii: Space and Society, begins from the Lund School notion that the urban environment is ordered through constraints on the spatial and temporal “availability” of certain activities and by the time-­specific movements and uses of space by individuals as they exercise choices or follow habits within ­these constraints. He proceeds to assem­ble a dossier of information from numerous Roman sources to chart the availability of activities, hour by hour, in the urban Roman day.26 For each activity Laurence spells out what he terms “the temporal logic that structured the use of the city,” such as the sequentiality for members of the elite from salutatio to Forum and the temporal division of domestic space between male users (salutatio, dinner) and female users (the intervening hours).27 He then charts the temporal sequence of the elite in the form of an itinerary, observing that this illuminates elite access to privileged sites of activity, such as the public baths “from the seventh and eighth hours, when the heat was at its most desirable.”28 Laurence offers site-­specific variations on this pattern: the chapter culminates in his speculative reconstruction of a day in the life of a member of the Pompeian elite that takes into consideration the spatial proximity of relevant sites within the city. He contrasts with this the life of an urban hired worker (mercennarius), whose “day . . . ​would have been orientated and punctuated by the arrival of customers and deliveries, rather than the ritualised time sequences or duration of the elite, which ­were orientated ­toward the reception of clients, public business in the forum, bathing and dining at set times each day.”29 Andrew Riggsby likewise addresses the day in connection with space in an article entitled “Pliny in Space (and Time)” that focuses on Pliny the Younger’s villa letters.30 Although he acknowledges the linear sequentiality of Pliny’s accounts of specific daily routines as well as the Lund School’s approach to mapping itineraries, Riggsby’s emphasis is on the primarily qualitative characterization of space and time in Pliny and how specific spaces and times are more often presented as “isolated, interchangeable, timeless environments, . . . ​neither a map nor an itinerary but something more like a stack of (potentially resortable) snapshots.”31 As a Plinian corrective to the kind of framework defined by Laurence, Riggsby offers a chart that suppresses questions of movement and sequence and instead foregrounds qualitative pre­sen­ta­tion.32

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Riggsby’s most relevant observation for our purposes comes as a partial critique of Laurence, or at least a supplement to Laurence’s objectivist model.33 Turning the focus t­ oward “subjective, cognitive pattern(s),” Riggsby ventures beyond the elite/nonelite dichotomy, subcategorizing multiple “repre­sen­ta­tional models” of time and space, the choices among which, he explains, are likely to be influenced by literary context and an author’s specific agenda of “ethical self-­ presentation” in a given sphere.34 He demonstrates that in the Letters, Pliny tends to characterize his use of time in his rural villas in terms of specific numbered hours but always with equivocation, such as “I get up, usually around the first hour, often before, rarely l­ ater” (evigilo . . . ​plerumque circa horam primam, saepe ante, tardius raro) (9.36.1), whereas with reference to his activities in the city Pliny does not mention numbered hours at all but only enumerates the quantity of time spent.35 Riggsby terms the latter “stopwatch time,” as when Pliny writes: “I spoke for almost five hours [dixi horis paene quinque]. For to the twelve very capacious clepsydrae I had received, four more ­were added” (2.11.14). The message conveyed by this variation in the letters, Riggsby proposes, is that “Pliny, at least in his villas, is not controlled by the clock,” while in the city “his commitment to his social obligations is mea­sured by duration.”36 A similar set of distinctions has more recently been described by Anja Wolkenhauer; she differentiates the chronotope of the forum and—­with par­tic­u­lar reference to Pliny the Younger and Martial—­urbs and villa, especially in alternation with one another.37 Only in the forum, she argues, do we see “temporal determinations [by clepsydrae] . . . ​that come in u ­ nder the . . . ​threshold of half an hour”; ­these, however, “are not dependent on the central sundial and are not concerned with keeping continual time.”38 Taken together, t­ hese studies illustrate precisely how day patterns could be intimately tied to specific forms (or subforms) of life within Roman culture and how divergences in temporal order might be correlated with divergences in social order or social identity. Laurence does not always convey the strategy or nuance of the individual sources from which he distils his overall schedule of activities in the Roman city, but he is persuasive in suggesting how the lives of social agents w ­ ere reflected in their degrees of access to the most privileged spatiotemporal paths within the day. And the focus on literary and socioethical ­factors by both Riggsby and Wolkenhauer is foundational for the approach I take ­here.39 When it comes to the bigger data set, the day patterns I consider require recognizing numerous variations in representing daily life. Although virtually all of the surviving day patterns represent idiosyncratic or anomalous habits, the

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source frequently makes it pos­si­ble to glimpse how the individual’s habit compares to the collective rhythm—­the “culturally transmitted structure of temporal regularities and routines”—­that is relevant to the given area of activity.40 Areas of individual variation include all the par­ameters I discussed in the introduction ­under the rubrics of timing, clock time, and the quotidian. Such se­lections, in turn, are creatively configured through genre-­specific types and tendencies and through rhetorical, narratological, and poetic techniques, which combine to help the day pattern reveal a distinctive form of life.

“Synchrony” and the Dawn of Quotidian Time I have described daily routines as synchronic in order to differentiate the relatively l­imited temporal horizon of the day from the narration of longer time schemes. Some of the time dynamics of day patterns center on a sense of occasion, ­whether psychological or social, that makes all the parts of a day seem relatively immediate and simultaneous. Quotidian time may also aspire to a kind of ever-­present real­ity on the basis of its concern with the habitual, much like the longue durée of relatively static cultural institutions or environmental conditions in contrast with the staccato of event history.41 This impression of synchronicity is also sustained in ancient day patterns through such motifs as iterative language, cyclic imagery, and the casual interchangeability of terms denoting “day” and “life(style).” In cases where the pattern is a prescription rather than a description, it envisages an idealized and recurrent state of affairs: ­here is how ­things should be, for always. Yet the day pattern is obviously also diachronic. I am not even referring yet to the grander narratives that a day pattern can be implicated in but to the internal diachrony of the pattern itself. The pattern is inherently sequential and contains internal durations, its defining feature being that it offers a mimetic account of the person’s movement through, or experience of, an articulated day from beginning to end. Ancient authors introducing a daily routine w ­ ill sometimes say that they are about to “tell” or “review” it (e.g., Gk. “diêgeisthai”; Lat. “recognoscere”), and the account itself is punctuated by a mix of precise time indications, markers of sequence, durations, transitions, workflows, itineraries, narrative progressions. To clarify the impact of the day pattern’s distinctive temporal modality, with its blend of synchronic and diachronic features, let us briefly consider an alternative ancient discursive model that is in its own way equally revealing of diurnal detail but has a much tighter temporal horizon and so a more strictly syn-

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chronic emphasis (though it, too, retains its own miniature sequences and internal durations). I am referring to the poetic topos concerned with dawn description in which multiple contrasting forms of everyday ­human l­abor are presented as commencing si­mul­ta­neously in their respective locations. The dawn-­labor topos is no less variable than the day pattern and no less power­ful in its metonymic characterization of w ­ hole forms of life u ­ nder a quotidian aspect. But whereas the day pattern defines a single form of life through a day-­long sequential narrative and is mostly concerned with portraying multiple times of day and the corresponding activities, the dawn-­labor topos structures its account around an ordered survey of multiple dif­fer­ent lives during the one brief event of dawn’s arrival. If the day pattern is concerned with the syntactic articulation of the day’s parts, the dawn-­labor topos explores along a paradigmatic axis all the separate types of l­abor that occupy that same time of day, describing ­these with a roving eye that evokes ekphrasis more than narrative. In its two fullest instantiations, in Ovid and Seneca, this topos exploits the dawn event to showcase contrasting Roman lives in dif­fer­ent locations (country, city, seaside, ­etc.) in one overdetermined pageant of occasion-­specific actions all in sync. In addition, however, b­ ecause dawn is the time at which daily activity begins, the topos facilitates reflection on a ­grand diachronic narrative: the arrival of quotidian time as a founding condition of h ­ uman civic culture, for better or for worse. Ovid famously devotes a poem in his Amores (1.13) to protesting the arrival of Aurora, dawn, since this event w ­ ill necessitate that he get out of bed and be 42 separated from his girl (puella). “Where are you ­going in such a hurry, Aurora? Stay put!” (quo properas, Aurora? manē!) (l. 3). The poet’s “manē” (“wait”) punningly contradicts māne (“morning”). He mocks her haste as motivated by disgust at her lover Tithonus, whom she had absent-­mindedly requested Zeus to grant eternal life instead of eternal youth: “Each morning you rise from your old man and go to your damned wheels [i.e., chariot]” (surgis ad invisas a sene mane rotas) (l. 38). In a central section of the poem, the poet cata­logues all the kinds of p ­ eople whose lives are imposed on by the onset of dawn: sailors, travelers, soldiers, farm workers, oxen, schoolboys, litigants, l­awyers, orators, and in the final couplet, w ­ omen: “You, when w ­ omen’s l­abors could pause, call the wool-­working hand back to its assigned portion” (ll. 11–24). He concludes his priamel by saying that the onset of all ­these morning ­labors for all ­these ­people would be tolerable to him, except that girlfriends are required to get up then too (ll. 25–26). All the ­labors, though, are burdensome: quotidian life

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is a grind. The wheels of Aurora’s chariot (rotas) (l. 38) drive this ineluctable routine that cannot be averted no m ­ atter “how often” the poet has wished it other­wise (quotiens . . . ​quotiens) (ll. 27, 29). ­There are clear indications that Ovid is playing on dawn’s status as the initiator not only of each day but of quotidian life to begin with—­human beings’ loss of their primordial happiness and a senectus mundi that keeps pace with the aging of Tithonus. “Ante tuos ortus” (lit. “Before your risings”) (l. 11) is suggestive not only of the time of night preceding dawn but of a former time in the history of the world when Aurora would not have risen at all. Ovid points to such a mythical prehistorical time of bliss when he reminds Aurora of the “long sleeps” Luna gave Endymion as well as of Jupiter’s doubling of the night spent with Alcmene (ll. 43–46). As J. C. McKeown observes, the repeated “You are the first to see, . . . ​you are the first to call” (ll. 15–16) is suggestive of a first inventor (prôtos heuretês).43 This ­grand narrative is now retraced within the microtemporality of the poem’s sequence, as the poet describes the inevitable reddening of the sky and the day’s arrival “no l­ater than usual” (l. 48). The first choral ode in Seneca’s Hercules furens offers its own microtemporal survey of dawn ­labors but with a distinct perspective on the origins and implications of quotidian time.44 Seneca’s ode immediately follows the menacing prologue by Juno, who has devised that Hercules, following his return from the underworld to bring Cerberus back to the light, ­will embark on a new, delusional l­abor by killing his own c­ hildren. The chorus first describes the dawn in a finely calibrated sequence from the fading of the stars to the reddening of the Theban landscape and a foreboding birdsong, and then it announces that “hard ­labor rises up and stirs all cares and opens up the h ­ ouses” (ll. 137–38). This is followed by depictions of a carefree pastoral scene, a sailor tentatively putting out to sea, and a fisherman whose “line senses the quivering fish” (ll. 139–58). At this point Seneca makes a more explicit transition to the city that contrasts lives and ­labors in moral terms, featuring the figure of personified “hopes” and “fears” that “wander through the cities”; the survey proceeds through the desperate salutator, the demagogue, and the orator for hire, who, “peddling frenetic strife in the clamorous forum, dishonestly rents out his wrath and words” (ll.159–74). Seneca’s cata­logue is a priamel like Ovid’s, and the chorus concludes the urban pageant by remarking that “carefree peace knows few, who mindful of fleeting time [velocis memores aevi], hold onto the moments that ­will never return [tempora numquam reditura tenent]” (ll. 175–77). Whereas Ovid uses the arrival of dawn to stage the arrival of a quotidian grind for p ­ eople in ­every walk of life and to lament its impositions on his own

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sexual desire, Seneca’s dawn scene casts desire in a negative role, juxtaposing morally opposite forms of life. The term in Seneca that corresponds to the “wheel” of Aurora’s chariot is the “wheel of the whirling year” (rota praecipitis . . . ​ anni) (ll. 180–81) that signifies both the fleetingness of time and the irreversible course of fate. The arrival of dawn turns out to be a moral challenge—­one that is met only by ­those who can take the advice that “while the fates allow, live joyfully!” (dum fata sinunt, vivite laeti) (l. 178) and so make good use of the time that they have in the pre­sent. We may also observe in Seneca a contrasting correlate for Ovid’s g­ rand narrative of historical decline into quotidian routine. Where Ovid makes Aurora responsible for the origin of a uniformly burdensome quotidian life, Seneca aligns this origin with the movement he traces in the internal sequence of his cata­logue, from the innocent pastoral scene to the mildly anxious sailor and fisherman, to the raging hopes (spes) and fears (metus) of the city—in other words, with a narrative of civilization. But if this g­ rand narrative suggests an inescapable diachronic movement, Seneca’s focus on moral values makes it clear that the s­ imple life is recoverable. Effecting a striking alignment between existential time and historical time, he notes that t­ hose who “hold onto the moments that ­will never return” (tempora numquam reditura tenent) (l. 177) in their own lives are also the ones most likely to be able to recapture the moral innocence and the natu­ral abundance of the primordial pastoral scene. The dawn-­labor topos, then, offers perspectives on the social and ethical implications of h ­ uman l­abor not only as it commences in the moment of a single dawn but also at its mythistorical point of origin. Its focus on a single time of day, however, as a showcase of multiple coinciding forms of life and its portrait of quotidian life as a postlapsarian h ­ uman condition allow us to recognize what is more operative in the discourse of the day pattern: the internal order of the ­whole day as an embodiment of one person’s life and a specific worldview or order.

Always Already an Oeconomic Day? Chronotypes, observe Bender and Wellbery, “are not produced ex nihilo; they are improvised from an already existing repertoire of cultural forms and natu­ ral phenomena.” 45 Indeed, each of the case studies to be considered in the following chapters of part 2 shows creative adaptation of one or more existing diurnal paradigms in Roman culture and society. One fundamental paradigm that is worth drawing attention to at the outset, however, comes from the sphere of oeconomics, or ­house­hold management, and in a form that is already manifest in fourth-­century BCE Greek lit­er­a­ture.

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My example comes from Xenophon’s Socratic work Oeconomicus, which can be translated as “the ­house­holder.” 46 Not only did this pre-­Roman text influence Roman discourse specifically concerned with rustic h ­ ouse­hold management (one of our case studies in chapter 5), but it also illustrates several thematic and formal preoccupations that recur in virtually all Greco-­ Roman diurnal discourse. The centerpiece of Oeconomicus is the dialogue Socrates reports having had with the Athenian “gentleman” Ischomachus, which appears in book 11.47 Socrates relates how, in light of Ischomachus’s reputation for being “fine and good” (kalos te kagathos), he had solicited from him what he expected would be a series of answers to ­these distinct questions about the activities of his life: “How do you take care of your health? How do you take care [epimelêi] of your bodily strength? How is it granted to you to protect yourself gloriously in war? As for your money making, I ­will be content to hear about it also ­after ­these ­things” (11). But Ischomachus responded by beginning to describe a typical day’s routine: “Well, Socrates,” said Ischomachus, “it is my habit to rise from bed at a time when I can catch someone still indoors, if I happen to be in need of seeing him. And if I need to do anything in the city, I take care of ­these ­things and in the pro­cess use this as my walk. But if ­there is nothing necessary in the city, my slave leads my h ­ orse to the farm, while I use my journey to the farm as a walk—­perhaps better, Socrates, than if I had walked around in the colonnade. But when I arrive on the farm, if my men happen to be planting, clearing, sowing, or harvesting crops, I inspect how each of t­ hese is proceeding and make adjustments, if I can do better than at pre­sent. A ­ fter this, I usually mount my h ­ orse and do h ­ orse maneuvers as similar as pos­si­ble to ­those necessary in war, avoiding neither side movement nor incline nor ditch nor channel, though as much as pos­si­ble I take care not to lame my ­horse as it does ­these ­things. When ­these ­things are done, my slave lets the ­horse have a roll and then leads him homeward, at the same time bringing with him anything from that place that needs to be taken into the city. As for me, now walking t­ oward home and now ­running, I would clean myself off with a strigil. Next, Socrates, I eat lunch, just enough to get through the day neither empty nor too full.” (14–18)

Ischomachus lays emphasis on combination. His typical day proceeds through a sequence of tasks and vari­ous acts of multitasking (including through the agency of slaves and staff) that are geared to his dif­fer­ent spheres of concern. Socrates had expected a series of answers to his questions, but he must now

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respond to the daily routine with (ironizing) amazement: “ ‘By Hera, Ischomachus!’ I said. ‘For at one and the same time [en tôi autôi chronôi] to conduct together preparations for health, and additional preparations for strength, and exercises for war, and mea­sures for wealth—­these ­things all seem remarkable to me’ ” (19–20). Not only this, but as the conversation proceeds, Ischomachus assures Socrates that during his days, in many of his encounters with his slaves, he is always also “practicing public speaking” (legein meletôn) with a view to being successful in lawsuits (23). Ischomachus also emphasizes the flexibility of his routine from one day to the next. Flexibility is in one sense a subcategory of combination, relating more specifically to the combination (or aggregation) of multiple unique days and their contingencies into a single representative pattern. We see this in the “flowchart” effect in which specific typical occasions result in variations in activity or itinerary (e.g., “if I happen to need to see anyone” [14]; “bringing with him anything . . . ​that needs to be taken into the city” [18]). We also see it in modifiers such as “usually” (hôs ta polla) (17) that signal what is typical and yet that serve as a disclaimer against total regularity and may actively repudiate monotony and predictability, maintaining a space for personal discretion. This brings us into the same territory as the “equivocation” Riggsby notes in Pliny the Younger’s time indications.48 In his account of his diurnal routine Ischomachus also mentions at a number of moments other uses of time that define his day by comparison. Ischomachus compares his country walk favorably with one in a colonnade, which supports his overall self-­distancing from the city. The time of the city serves as an overarching foil, too, in the dramatic setting of this ­whole embedded dialogue: Socrates encountered Ischomachus in the portico of Zeus Eleutherios, uncharacteristically appearing to “sit at leisure in the marketplace” (scholazein . . . ​ en têi agorai) (7.1), and Ischomachus ­later gives a specific urban time indication when he says that he does not expect to leave “before the market is completely empty” (prin an pantapasin hê agora luthêi) (12.1). Yet it also turns out that Ischomachus’s time in the city is not a­ fter all irreconcilable with the rest of his daily routine, since despite appearances he is not truly inactive, thanks to the fact that he has an overseer (epitropos) managing his farm at the same time (12.2). One elephant in the room, however, is the lifestyle of philosophy closely associated with “leisure” (scholê) that Socrates perhaps hopes to discover informing the ethos of Ischomachus as he “seeks to traverse life’s course” (peirômai . . . ​diaperan ton bion) (11.7). Philosophy is the (superior) foil implicit in Socrates’ disingenuous praise for Ischomachus’s oeconomic day. Another elephant in the room is how

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Ischomachus’s entirely exterior daily routine stands in contrast to—­though it is also supplemented and enabled by—­the interior domestic routine maintained by his wife.49 Fi­nally, Ischomachus stresses how his day is ultimately a per­for­mance in “house­hold management” (oikonomia) and how his ordering of diurnal time produces oeconomic value. Whereas Socrates had expected that “money making” would be a separate topic, in fact it turns up in the central episode of the day, during which Ischomachus fine-­tunes the operations on his farm, and it is also implicit in his allusion to the days on which he w ­ ill undertake business in the city. Amplification of wealth also serves as the superordinate telos for all the activities combined: “But t­ hese t­ hings, as it seems to me,” Ischomachus explains, “are all closely connected to one another [esti . . . ​akoloutha tauta panta allêlôn]. For so long as someone has enough to eat, it seems to me that if he works it off correctly his health persists, and as he works it off, bodily strength is added more, and when he trains in military ­matters he is preserved more gloriously, and when he takes care correctly and does not grow soft his h ­ ouse­hold is more likely to be increased [mallon eoikos ton oikon auxesthai]” (11.12). The combined day pattern thus serves as the temporal projection of how Ischomachus generates his h ­ ouse­hold wealth, which Socrates finds provocative as a definition of being a “fine and good” citizen.50 As chapter 5 shows, Ischomachus’s daily routine became an impor­tant frame of reference for Roman discourse on what I call “the ordered farm.” But before we proceed to that explicit sequel, it is worth recognizing the broader relevance of the oeconomic paradigm and its preoccupations in Roman contexts not explic­itly concerned with ­house­hold management. Consider a Roman example that is near at hand: Pliny the Younger’s repre­ sen­ta­tion of his ­uncle’s day in letter 3.5. The aspects that Ischomachus emphasizes in his description of his day are relevant to reading both the nephew’s idealization of the encyclopedist’s form of life and also his subtle criticisms of it.51 Pliny’s day, for example, is likewise combinatory, with its navigation between official duties and the vari­ous kinds of literary activities with which his days and nights ­were consumed or overlaid. We might question w ­ hether Pliny’s routine displayed any genuine flexibility or was more rigid and single minded, since we read that in summer he went to bed in daylight “as if a law was compelling him” (tamquam aliqua lege cogente) (3.5.13), apparently attempting to get a consistent number of equinoctial hours of sleep, regardless of the season. Comparisons such as we see in Ischomachus’s description of his day invite us to notice how the younger Pliny, on the one hand, likens his ­uncle’s lucubrations to the ritual

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scene of auspice taking (3.5.8) but, on the other, draws attention to the social distractions and public c­ areer that his u ­ ncle has mostly foregone, except for his early morning attendance on the emperor Vespasian, his fellow lucubrator (3.5.9); the nephew, by contrast, has embraced extensive public obligations along with his private studies (3.5.19). Above all, the Ischomachus paradigm highlights the concern with ­house­hold productivity, with oeconomic value, that is central to Pliny the Elder’s routine. His “extreme economization of time” (tanta . . . ​parsimonia temporis) (3.5.13) allowed him to make two days out of one (3.5.11), and also to produce, among other t­hings, the 160 volumes of double-­sided notes that someone offered to buy for “four hundred thousand sesterces” (3.5.17)—­a sum corresponding to the benchmark required for equestrian social status and thus demonstrating the fungibility of Pliny’s diurnal time expenditures. In speculating on such analy­sis, I do not mean to suggest any direct link between Xenophon and Pliny. The point, rather, is that even in the absence of any direct link, the oeconomic framework remains relevant and revealing. Keeping in mind all of ­these considerations, I turn in the following chapters to a more in-­depth exploration of the most significant surviving discourses on quotidian life in Rome, both in specific Roman social spheres (chapter 5) and in individual authorial programs (chapters 6–8).

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ch a pter 5

Three Patterns to Live By

As Cato, Varro, and then Columella each introduce their manuals on farming, all are increasingly nostalgic for the archaic “manly life” that was lost when Romans migrated to the city.1 Varro prefaces the second book of his On Agriculture by recalling how the Romans of old lived their daily life on the farm, venturing into the city “only e­ very ninth day” (nonis modo diebus) (2.pr.1–3). So long as they maintained this rhythm, Varro says, they kept their farms fertile and they also kept their bodies healthy and so “had no need of gymnasiums in the city, as the Greeks did.” “But now,” he laments, “masters of h ­ ouse­holds have mostly crawled inside the city wall, leaving sickle and plow b­ ehind.” In Varro’s nostalgia and anxiety we see two major day patterns at work, each with its own implications: daily rustic life on the Roman farm and Greek-­derived regimens of the urban body. The same change recalled by Varro seems to be felt more acutely by Columella (d. c. 70 CE), writing ­under the Julio-­Claudian emperors.2 In the preface to his own On Agriculture Columella changes Varro’s “they have crawled” (correpserunt) to “we have crawled” (correpsimus) as if to take owner­ship of the fault, and he describes an everyday iteration of that fault in “our” luxurious and effeminate moral lives: “We stew each day’s indigestion [cotidianam cruditatem] in Spartan steam baths, . . . ​and we use up the nights in sex and boozing,

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the days in play—or, at best, sleeping” (1.pr.15–16). The patterns of daily rustic life and bodily regimen are significant for Columella as they are for Varro, but they now function alongside a third pattern: the daily routine of the imperial court, which was a major f­ actor for Romans living during the principate. Familiar routines associated with farm, body, and emperor all serve as loci for distinct forms of life that are central to broader ancient and modern thinking about the Roman social order. Each of them has a strongly exemplary aspect: w ­ hether they pre­sent a normative lifestyle (in agricultural and medical manuals) or describe the days of a power­ful and influential person (in imperial biography), they are some of the most distinctive idealized daily patterns that survive. They allow us to explore a question foregrounded by John Bender and David Wellbery in their discussion of chronotypes: “What is the relation between temporal construction and empowerment?”3 In this chapter I consider the paradigms of the ordered farm, the ordered body, and the ordered princeps, focusing on time be­hav­iors and how they encode—­and empower—­each form of life. Let me acknowledge, however, the circumscribed scope of my analy­sis: while t­ hese paradigms sometimes intersect or come into tension with each other, and their influence is most pervasive when they are combined with other discourses, for the most part I do not explore their entanglements with one another but prioritize the essential first step of understanding them on their own terms.

The Ordered Farm The Overseer’s Day In book 11 of his manual, Columella turns to the ideal daily routine of the vilicus, or farm overseer: “Above all,” he prescribes, “let [the overseer] avoid banqueting. . . . ​He should be extremely moderate in sleep and wine. . . . ​Then also let him turn away from sexual affairs” (1.14).4 Abstaining from t­ hese t­ hings ­will give the overseer the diligence he needs for maintaining the daylong routine Columella then goes on to prescribe:5 And so he should be the first awake [ primus omnium vigilet] and even if the slaves are delaying he should always lead them forth swiftly in accordance with the times of the year [ pro temporibus anni] and himself vigorously take the lead. For it is of the utmost importance that farmers attack their work beginning first ­thing in the morning [a primo mane] and not proceed slowly, at leisure [ per otium], lazily. (1.14)

­ fter offering a brief analogy contrasting two travelers, one swift and the other A slow, he resumes:

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134  Ordering Lives And so the overseer should ensure that the slaves, as they set forth at first light [a prima luce], not immediately delay and slack off. But rather, let him head out like a general into some b­ attle, with energy and a keen spirit, and let them follow him vigorously; and during the work itself [in opere ipso] let him encourage them often and cheer them up as they toil. On occasion [interdum] he should suddenly snatch away someone’s tool and himself perform that man’s duty and instruct him, “This is how it should be done,” in such a way that it is accomplished properly by [the overseer] himself. And when twilight advances [ubi crepusculum incesserit] he should leave no one b­ ehind him but should follow ­behind them all like an excellent herdsman who allows no animal from the flock to be left in the field. But then, when he has come indoors [cum tectum subierit], let him do the same ­t hing as that diligent shepherd and not immediately hide away in his quarters but rather take the best care of each of them. (1.17)

The routine concludes with the eve­ning’s tasks. At that time, the overseer should take care of the injured or sick. For the healthy, he should ensure a fair ration of food and drink. He should “habituate the farm folk to dining always around the master’s domestic god and the h ­ ouse­hold hearth and himself dine in the same way fully vis­i­ble to them and be an example of frugality” (1.19). The opening image of the overseer as the first one awake resonates with moments in agricultural lit­er­a­ture as early as Hesiod’s Works and Days, where the poet commands the elite reader to “wake up your slaves, shun sleep-till-dawn [dmôas egeiren, pheugein . . . ​ep’ êoa koiton]. . . . ​For dawn is one third of the work’s share. Dawn gives you a head start on a journey, and dawn gives you a head start in work” (573–74, 578–79). But Columella gives more continuous advice on the day. His acknowledged model in his work is Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, and this includes not only its overall ideological fantasy of elite masculinity founded in rustic morality and domestic order, but also, as the embodiment of this, a detailed day pattern.6 In a section of Xenophon’s work not long ­after the dialogue Socrates has with Ischomachus that I discuss in chapter 4, Ischomachus, dealing with the duties of the “overseer” (epitropos), emphasizes how profit in farming depends crucially on w ­ hether or not a person “takes some care” (echêi tina epimeleian) to ensure that the workers do their work “during the appointed time” (tên hôran autôi) and “on time” (en hôrai) and that they do not quit “before time” (pro tês hôrês) or take it easy “throughout the day” (di’ holês tês hêmeras) (20.16–17). Columella, however, accounts for the overseer’s day more clearly from beginning to end through his sequence of time markers. His image of speedy spatial pro­cession and a corresponding temporal flow may

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have been inspired by the analogy of the two travelers, which he found in the same passage of Xenophon (20.18) but h ­ ere expands on, portraying the contrasting tendencies of the overseer and the workers throughout the span of the day and keying each to loaded Roman time concepts such as vigilia (wakefulness) and otium (leisure). Columella also concludes his agricultural routine by invoking the model of the pastoral—­that is, preagricultural—­day of the “excellent herdsman,” which he follows by transitioning into interior space and the eve­ ning rituals centering around commensality and the domestic god (lar) as the manifestation of the absent master.

“The Entire Order of Work” As Sandra Joshel and Lauren Petersen have noted, Columella’s schedule at his villa rustica “includes l­ittle time for anything but work,” and they suggest that Columella’s heightened attention to the timed movements of enslaved workers of the overseer and his wife (vilica) is reflective of a newly circumscribed “field of excellence” for the Roman elite during the Claudian-­Neronian era.7 In book 11, Columella specifies this agenda by tying his day pattern to two distinct areas of knowledge that he says the ideal overseer should have: “knowledge [scientiam] not only of farm work [rusticationis] but also of commanding [imperandi]” (1.6). The first of ­these, farm work, informs his basic awareness of what needs to be done and when, “in accordance with the times of the year” (1.14). ­Here Columella is also preparing for the calendar of tasks he gives in chapter 2 of book 11. Alluding to Virgil’s Georgics (3.284) in describing “the irrecoverable flight of time as it passes away” (1.29), Columella emphasizes the need for the overseer to be “mindful of time so as not to be caught unawares by a task” and then explains the more specific importance of each day and each moment: The overseer . . . ​must make it his belief that if he has not accomplished each pre­ sent task on its own day [sua quaque die], it is not just twelve hours that have been passed over but a w ­ hole year that has perished [ praetermissas non duodecim horas, sed annum perisse]. Given that each t­ hing needs to be done virtually at its own specific moment [ propriis paene momentis], if one work is completed ­later than it should have been, the other farming tasks that follow also get attention ­later than their proper times [ post iusta tempora serius] and the disturbance of the entire order of work undermines the ­whole year’s prospects [omnisque turbatus operis ordo spem totius anni frustratur]. (1.29–30)

This serves as a transition to an outline of the celestial and agricultural calendar in which like other agricultural writers from Hesiod onward, Columella

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provides month-­by-­month and day-­by-­day notes on seasonal changes and the corresponding tasks on the farm, many of them tied to specific hours. In his observations for “January following the Ides, the time that is regarded as being between the winter solstice and the arrival of Favonius [the spring wind],” he points out that any vine pruning left over from the fall can be completed, but that this should not be attempted “in the mornings” (matutinis temporibus), since the vines may still be thawing from the night frosts and so may be damaged by the knife. Instead, he urges that one should spend one’s time trimming briar hedges “up to the second or third hour” (usque in horam secundam vel tertiam) (2.7). The reference is almost certainly to seasonal rather than equinoctial hours, though Columella does not state this explic­itly or make reference to any specific timekeeping device. In his calendar of tasks, the fourth-­century CE agricultural writer Palladius gives the body shadow lengths corresponding to individual seasonal hours, showing that for farmers this older method of timekeeping had been rendered compatible with seasonal-­hour indications.8 Then, for late November, Columella insists on lucubration: “As the nights grow long, something must be added [from them] to [supplement] day time” (longis noctibus ad diurnum tempus aliquid adiciendum est) (2.90).9 Such time can be devoted to preparing posts and stakes—or if not t­ hese, “­every region offers at least something that can be completed by lucubration [ad lucubrationem confici]” (2.91). He calls for lucubration in both eve­ning and morning (lucubratio vespertina / antilucana) (2.12).10 He chastises the “lazy farmer” who would look forward to winter and excitedly “await the shortening of the day” (expectare diei brevitatem) and with this a diminution of toils, “especially in t­ hose regions where the days at winter solstice are [a mere] nine hours long and the nights are fifteen hours [brumales dies horarum novem sunt noctesque horarum quindecim]” (2.91). In this reference to the more discernible impact of seasonal changes in relatively northern climes such as Rome, the unit of mea­sure­ment is equinoctial hours. Precisely this sort of calibration of daylight and night is indicated on the so-­ called menologia rustica (rustic month calendars), of which the surviving examples are two polygonal inscribed blocks dating from the mid-­to late first ­century CE, likely from northern Italy.11 ­These provide calendrical information relevant to each month such as month-­specific agricultural tasks and the extent of daylight and night calibrated in equinoctial hours down to the quarter-­hour in a more concise but also more vis­i­ble form than in the farmer’s literary almanac. They indicate, for example, that in January the days are 9¾ hours long and the nights 14¼ long and also rec­ord the number of days (thirty-­one), the date

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of the Nones (the fifth), the corresponding Zodiac sign (Capricorn), the tutelary deity (Juno), typical tasks (e.g., the sharpening of stakes), and the recipients of sacrifices (the Di Penates). One of t­ hese devices, the Vallense, included a three-­faced sundial on top; its marking of seasonal hours was no doubt to be read in light of the knowledge provided by the inscription below about the length of the day in equinoctial hours. Alongside such technologies, however, ­were other natu­ral time indicators that might render celestial observation unnecessary for the farmer. Pliny the Elder, for example, points out that the eve­ning appearance of glowworms (Lat. “cicindelae” / “stellantes volatus”; Gk. “lampyrides”) is a nocturnal event associated with the Pleiades and thus with the conditions for successful early sowing of millet. Nature’s message with glowworms is: “Why would you examine the heavens, farmer?” And she adds, “The nights are squeezing you [and leaving you] tired with shorter sleep” (iam te breviore somno fessum premunt noctes) (HN 18.251).12 Yet in Columella’s account the absentee paterfamilias is not able to maintain the daily vigilance required to ensure proper attention to time-­specific tasks. Although he asserts that “even a single appearance by the master” (vel una praesentia domini) on the farm is worth more than all the “ceaseless effort” (adsiduus ­labor) of the overseer (1.18), all of his advice for the overseer is predicated on the idea that the master w ­ ill have someone paying him a “daily tribute” (cotidianum tributum) (1.pr.12)—­like a tenant, only paying in vicarious ­labor rather than cash. Already much e­ arlier, Cato in his On Agriculture offers advice for the paterfamilias on how the overseer can compensate for his prevailing absence: “The paterfamilias, whenever he has come to his villa, when he has greeted his ­house­hold god, should go around and inspect his farm on the same day, if he can, or if not on the same day, on the next day; on the day ­after the inspection has taken place, the paterfamilias should “summon the overseer” (vilicum vocet), and once he has heard from him exactly what work has and has not been done, and “­whether the works ­were completed in a sufficiently timely fashion” (satisne temperi opera siet facta), “he should embark upon an account of works and days” (rationem inire oportet operarum, dierum) (2.1). Columella quotes Xenophon’s Ischomachus describing how the overseer “is substituted in my place while I am absent, and assumes the task of representing my diligence” (1.5).13

“Daily Coercion” at a Distance And so we come to the second area of the overseer’s knowledge, “knowledge of commanding” (scientiam . . . ​imperandi) (1.6), which is far more crucial. “Daily

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coercion of work” (cotidiana operis exactio) is accomplished through the overseer’s ­doing what the master cannot, namely “keeping himself pre­sent continually” (semper se repraesentet) (8.11), and it is the need for the overseer to be always pre­ sent that helps to account for Columella’s saturation of all the day’s moments with multiple acts of command—­not just “imperandi” (“commanding”), he writes, but “imperitandi” (“commanding repeatedly”) (1.6).14 Columella’s day pattern is a collage of mastery in multiple gestures and modes, from quasimilitary exhortation to therapeutic care to the conferral of rewards to moral instruction. At one extreme, the overseer is expected to attend to the workers’ bodies and clothing at the same time he inspects farm equipment, and he is instructed to “ensure each day [cotidie . . . ​explorare] that the shackled slaves are diligently tied up in their bonds, and then too that their cells are secure and correctly fortified” (1.22). This is juxtaposed with a more humanizing and generalized portrait of leadership erring ­toward severitas (sternness) but away from saevitia (cruelty) (1.25). Such leadership, he indicates, prevents wrongdoing, and this is where Columella asserts in moralizing terms that “­t here is no greater guard against the most nefarious person than the daily extraction of work [cotidiana operis exactio]” (1.25). If any doubt should remain about what overall form of life is being defined through the overseer’s day pattern, Columella provides signposts at vari­ous points in his manual that allow us to see how the pattern fits into a bigger temporal order and a bigger social order. We have already seen how the overseer’s day serves as a kind of reversal of, or compensation for, the decline into effeminate immorality that has characterized urban life on a day-­ to-­day basis ever since the Roman paterfamilias abandoned his farm, in which the proxy agency of the overseer allows the archaic past to be maintained through remote control.15 But Columella in his main preface interrogates an  additional diurnal scene in the city, a salutatio that lasts from before dawn till ­a fter dark and puts the salutator in the role of day laborer (mercennarius): Or should I think this more honorable: the predatory lies of the salutator for hire [mercennarii salutatoris mendacissimum aucupium] who hovers around prattling at the doorsteps of the power­f ul and like an augur seeks to divine when his king w ­ ill wake from sleep [circumvolitantis limina potentiorum somnumque regis sui rumoribus augurantis]? . . . ​Or should I think this more fortunate: to have a chained-up doorkeeper kick you out and to lie at an ungrateful door, often late at night [saepe nocte sera], and to purchase the splendid power of the fasces but

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Three Patterns to Live By   139 only through wretched flattery and disgrace and only a­ fter squandering your patrimony? (1.pr.9)

Columella distances himself from this schedule much as he did from the schedule of effeminate luxury, and his terms ­here explic­itly contrast it with the respectable foil of augury and a more substantial elite c­ areer. Yet the “king” (rex) and “fasces” that are solicited by the client remind us of the hierarchies of the principate and thus help us see how imagining one’s own authority as pre­sent and intact on a farm from day to day might serve for the elite as a psychosocial corrective. The more general impositions and expenses of everyday life in the city are prob­lems that the daily procedure of a flourishing farm might help to solve, w ­ hether through providing food, wealth, or symbolic capital. Within Columella’s “entire order of work” (omnis . . . ​operis ordo) every­thing occupies not just the right place but also the “right times” (iusta tempora) (1.30), and this order becomes a legitimizing pageant of the entire social hierarchy.16 When he turns to describe the responsibilities of the overseer’s wife, the vilica, in book 12, Columella waxes lyrical, as Xenophon had done in presenting Ischomachus’s wife (Oec. 8), about the desirability of spatial order inside the ­house: “For who can doubt that t­ here is nothing finer in any sphere of life than arrangement and order?” (quis enim dubitet nihil esse pulchrius in omni ratione vitae dispositione atque ordine?) (2.4). But Columella h ­ ere makes a clear cross-­ reference to his own e­ arlier chapters on the overseer’s duties when he emphasizes how the vilica should “strive to ensure that the overseer w ­ ill expend as ­little effort as pos­si­ble inside the dwelling, since he must both go forth with the slaves first ­thing in the morning [ primo mane] and return, at twilight [crepusculo], worn out from the completion of works” (1.3). The vilica herself is to “see to it that [the slaves in the ­house] do not undermine their daily works [ne diurna . . . ​f rustrentur opera] by idleness” and to ensure that the ­house­hold economy does not implode through a collapse of temporal bound­aries. For she must “guard against the annual bud­get’s becoming a monthly bud­get” (custodire ne sumptus annuus menstruus fiat) (1.5). The vilica, then, serves to enable and sustain the day pattern that is centered around the itinerary of the vilicus, the day pattern that correspondingly enables and sustains the absentee landlord’s form of life. Columella’s account overall might seem comparable to what we find in Moretum, the poem from the Appendix Virgiliana that offers a partial glimpse of the daily routine of the peasant Simulus.17 The poem begins with a predawn

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time indication specifying both the numbered nocturnal hour and the winter season: Now night had completed twice-­five winter hours, and the winged waker had told, with its song, of day’s approach, when Simulus, the rural cultivator of a meager farm, fearing grim hunger in the coming light, gradually lifted his limbs from his miserable bed. (1–6)

Commanding Scybale, an African w ­ oman described as his “only attendant” (unica custos) (31), to get to work, Simulus proceeds to rekindle his fire, light his lamp, bake bread, and gather the herbs from his garden that he w ­ ill com18 bine with cheese to make his lunch concoction (moretum). The poem concludes with the peasant heading off to the fields to plough. Much as Columella’s vilicus ensures a secure daily routine on the farm of the elite owner and the vilicus’s routine in turn is supported by the ­labor of the vilica, the elite reader of the Moretum vicariously experiences the routine of Simulus, who is assisted “the ­whole while” by “assiduous Scybale” (interea Scybale . . . ​sedula) and by the after­noon is made “­free of concern for that day” (in . . . ​diem securus . . . ​illam) (117, 119). As William Fitzgerald notes, Moretum “paints a fairly grim picture of Simulus’ life,” beginning from the opening lines, where the author “allows an epic dawn to shine cruelly on the cramped existence of the ploughman, thereby making plain the difference in perspective between the worker and the reader of epic.”19 This effect is furthered, I suggest, by the time indication in (seasonal) hours, which speaks the city dweller’s language of clock time.20 But as Fitzgerald notes, the Moretum is “not explic­itly framed so as to relate it to some other agenda.”21 In Columella’s advice for the overseer, we encounter a more comprehensive and transparent repre­sen­ta­tion of how the overseer’s day pattern relates to the broader social order and to the routines of ­others of higher and lower status, both in the city and t­ here with him in the country. Columella’s day pattern showcases the elite fantasy of coordinating the coexistence of pre­sent and past, city and country, Greek and Roman, and absence and presence as well as that of coordinating asymmetrical relationships between paterfamilias and overseer, enslaver and enslaved, and husband and wife. Columella’s efforts at coordination are in keeping with other Roman writers on agricultural life such as Cato and Varro, except that Columella makes more frequent use of the diurnal framework for defining rustic life and also, as

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noted, he writes in a context in which the relationship between emperor and subject is a daily concern. Although Columella’s work has given us an opportunity to focus on the agricultural day in a relatively holistic form, we also encounter it in more oblique or concise form in the work of other authors such as Horace, Martial, and Pliny, where it serves e­ ither as a foil or as a complement to their vari­ous repre­sen­ta­tions of urban time. It is impor­tant to emphasize, however, that Columella’s agricultural day is distinct from other elite lifestyles the setting for which is also the countryside or the suburbium but that primarily emphasize otium rather than ­labor.

The Ordered Body Observation of daily time is impor­tant in ancient medicine both for therapeutics, the treatment of disease, and for dietetics, the maintenance of existing health. With regard to disease, for example, the first-­century CE Roman encyclopedist Celsus, in book 3 of his On Medicine, explains the standard typology of fevers in terms of three-­day, four-­day, and “quotidian” cycles (febres tertianae; quartanae; cotidianae) (1–6) and also rehearses all fevers’ typical circadian cycle from mild in the morning to worsening at noon to heightened on the eve­ning. Nourishment is essential for the patient but can often make a fever worse, and so Celsus explains why he administers food in the ­middle of the night: that is “when the most grievous time is now over and is also furthest away, but the predawn hours are still to come—­the hours when virtually every­one sleeps most deeply” (5.6). Attention to the time of day as relevant to tracking a fever had long been a part of ancient medicine, and the method had become more precise over time. Kassandra Miller has shown how Galen, writing in the late second ­century, used the notion of the “critical hour,” updating the notion of “critical days” found in the Hippocratics.22 Grave goods found in the first-­century “tomb of the physician” at Este include, not surprisingly, a portable sundial.23 Our focus, however, is quotidian time over the longer term, when the body is generally healthy, for which the relevant medical paradigm is dietetics. This is part of what Maud Gleason terms “the askêsis culture” of the imperial Roman world: “Exhorted by moralists and phi­los­o­phers to transform his existence into a kind of perpetual training program, a right-­thinking gentleman of this period . . . ​would have carefully assessed each quotidian habit for its effect on his well-­being.”24 A healthy body is an orderly body. And the healthy body’s order, as Galen explains in his Hygiene (Hugieina, or De sanitate tuenda), involves “the

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existence of a certain proportionality of so-­called constituent ele­ments, of warm, cold, moist, and dry” (1.1, Kühn vol. 6, p.  1). A healthy or precautionary regimen seeks to maintain this proportion, but the “care of the body” (hê tou sômatos epimeleia) must be keyed to a person’s bodily form, constitution, age, and environment—­and to “forms of life” (tôn biôn . . . ​eidê) (2.1, p. 82).25 The regimen for individuals, Galen explains, w ­ ill often involve careful combination of applications and practices (1.15, p. 79). “Order” (taxis) and “timing” (kairos) are two of the t­ hings Galen says he is most likely to adjust in the regimen of a patient (5.1, p. 307). One overarching temporal consideration concerns the life course, such as the “daily [hosêmerai] drying out” of ­every animal over the course of its life (1.12, p. 60). Daily time brings with it the potential for repetition and modulation in activities, especially with changes in season. Dietetics also devotes significant attention to the day itself, the physical changes in light, temperature, and moisture that occur across it, and to circadian rhythms in the body, alternations in sleep and waking or work and leisure but above all, digestion, as well as to the ordering of activities. In what follows, I trace dietetics from early Greek medicine to imperial Rome.

Foundational Dietetics (Diocles of Carystus) Instructions on dietetics are preserved in an extensive fragment from the celebrated fourth-­century BCE medical writer Diocles of Carystus (frag. 182).26 Diocles prescribes a normative yet flexible regimen for the course of a summer day and then offers remarks on seasonal adjustment. “The starting point for attending to m ­ atters of health,” writes Diocles, “is the transition from sleep to being awake” (1), and he explains this transition in a way that showcases several of his most basic premises about the daily life of the body. “It is best [kalôs echei] if digestion is complete prior to waking” (1). In winter, a younger person should complete digestion “shortly before sunrise—­about twenty minutes [stadia deka]; in summer, ten [minutes before sunrise] [ pente]” (1).27 It is best if a person then gets up slowly: “­A fter rising, it is fitting [harmottei], as treatment for the stiffness of neck produced by a pillow, to rub one’s neck and head thoroughly” (2). Other timing par­a meters become operative as the day begins. Diocles describes a self-­grooming sequence that includes rubbing the body “for quite a while” (chronon mê oligon) with a mix of oil and ­water (the ratio of which varies by season) as well as stretching “repeatedly” (pleistakis), washing face, eyes, gums, and teeth, and head-­grooming—­with some ­t hings taking place “­every

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day” (kath’ hekastên hêmeran) and o­ thers “from time to time” (dia tinôn chronôn) (2). The sequence is flexible within limits: the body grooming can ­either precede or follow the emptying of the bowels, depending on a person’s habit, but one should do it “immediately [euthus], before ­doing anything ­else” (2). At this point in the morning ­there is a forking path depending on lifestyle: ­ fter the postsleep care that has been mentioned, it is fine [eu echei] for ­those reA quired to do something ­else or ­doing it by choice [tous . . . ​heteron ti prattein anangkazomenous ê proairomenous] to go off and do this, but for ­those at leisure [tous scholazontas] it is fitting [harmozei] for them to go for a preliminary walk proportionate with their stamina. (3)

Diocles’s regimen conspicuously belongs to the time of scholê (leisure) rather than to that of worldly activities that is ­here relegated to the background. At this point, he digresses, taking up the dif­fer­ent effects that w ­ ill ensue for a person’s digestion depending on ­whether walking occurs before or ­after eating. He then narrates a sequence from walking to exercise proper: “It is beneficial [sumpherei] ­after the walk to attend to something of one’s domestic affairs while seated, u ­ ntil the time comes [heôs an hôra genêtai] for turning to the care of the body [tên tou sômatos epimeleian]” (4). “Care” entails exercise rather than simply grooming, but Diocles varies his instructions to allow for young ­people to undertake vigorous exercises in the gymnasium and for “older and weaker ­people” simply to bathe, to use the strigil and oil, and to be massaged (4). Next comes the first mention of eating, with advice on how lunch (and the rest of the regimen) should be adjusted so as to be “neither warming nor drying in summer, but in winter neither cooling nor moistening, and in spring and fall to have something in between” (5). Diocles recommends a prompt siesta that must be protected from the intensity of midday: “­A fter lunch one should not pass too much time [mê polun diatripsanta chronon] before ­going to sleep in a dark or cool place and away from the breeze” (6). The postsiesta sequence moves to the gymnasium (6; see also 2), although Diocles says nothing about the specific exercises to be undertaken. He has much to say, however, about how to wash the body and head and then, in greater detail, about approaching the eve­ning meal: “As regards dinner, one should [dei] take a walk on an empty stomach and f­ ree of undigested food eaten beforehand” (7), and “it is best [kalôs echei] to dine, in the summer [tou therous], a l­ittle before sunset [mikron pro hêliou dusmôn], on bread and vegetables and maza” (7). He provides detail about foods and drinks to consume or avoid

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and then describes the best times and methods for ­going to bed and lying in bed—­such as how to avoid “difficulty breathing” and “nocturnal emissions” (8)—as well as how best to wake up. Having come full circle to morning, Diocles sums up by saying that “for the majority of healthy ­people a regimen [diagôgê] of this sort would be the most fitting [malista an harmoseien]” (9). Or at least in summer. “As has been said above, in winter, walks and other forms of exercise should be undertaken more [frequently] and more intensively [suntonôtera] than in the summer, incrementally, taking care to avoid overdoing it” (9), “and in spring and fall, it is clear that a regimen in the m ­ iddle between ­those said is most fitting [mesê diaita tôn eirêmenôn malista harmottei]” (10). Diocles’s endnotes on the special topics of sex and vomiting are concerned primarily with maintaining order in the body, and excesses in ­either of t­ hese are ill advised, both “for t­ hose living in good order [tois eutaktôs zôsi]” and “for t­ hose still accustomed to toiling with their bodies” (12). “Living in good order” evidently refers to a lifestyle in keeping with the regimen he has been describing, which ideally leaves no elemental residue, maintaining a perfect harmony between what lies inside and outside of the body. As we move ahead to the two best-­known Roman medical writers in the first to third centuries CE, we find that the basic features of Diocles’s approach remain but with revealing additions and changes. T ­ hese often hinge on cultural or historical f­ actors rather than simply on developments in dietetic doctrine or method. In his On Medicine, Celsus, for example, who flourished in the early first ­century CE, addresses the characteristically Roman practice of lucubration: “If you need to lucubrate [sin lucubrandum est)], do not do so a­ fter food, but a­ fter digestion” (1.2.5).28 And he seemingly has a higher tolerance of induced vomiting, though not on a “daily” basis (cottidianum) (1.3.21). Galen, writing over a ­century ­later in Hygiene, describes his own late-­a fternoon visit to the Roman baths on days when “on account of visiting patients or some civil business” he bathes at the relatively late time of the tenth hour, clearly referring to the seasonal hours of the city schedule. He also frames that occasion in more scientifically precise terms as “a day . . . ​of thirteen equinoctial hours,” in other words, a day in early or late summer, and he uses this, in turn, to calculate the time at which one o­ ught to eat lunch in order to ensure full digestion before exercise (in this case, the fourth seasonal hour) (6.7 = Kühn vol. 6, p. 412). The Roman authors, then, detail how regimens support ­imagined forms of life for Roman bodies.

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Regimens for Autonomous Romans (Celsus) Celsus’s account of “regimen for healthy p ­ eople” (pr.75) begins with a kind of antiregimen: “The healthy person [sanus homo] who is both well and autonomous [qui et bene valet et suae spontis est] should not subject himself to any laws [nullis obligare se legibus debet] nor be in need of a doctor or masseur” (1.1.1). Temporal order and consistency are to be abandoned: This person should have a variable form of life [hunc oportet varium habere vitae genus], being now in the countryside, now in the city, and more often in the fields; he should sail, hunt, and rest sometimes, but more often exercise himself; . . . ​it is also beneficial sometimes to use a bath, sometimes cold ­waters; now being rubbed down with oil, now neglecting that very t­ hing. (1.1.1–2)

But while t­ hese instructions take equivocation to a new level, displacing the “laws” of dietetics with f­ ree choice and variation, the preferential markers such as “more often in the fields” (saepius in agro) suggests a Roman who regulates himself by adhering to traditional hierarchies. Celsus reveals other normative expectations when he rules out an intensive routine of athletic exercises: “an order of exercise [ordo exercitationis] interrupted ­because of some civic necessities—­ this ravages the body” (1.1.3). His most explicit intervention in the healthy man’s routine concerns sexual intercourse (concubitus), which he says “is worse during the day, safer by night [interdiu peior est, noctu tutior] but only if it is not immediately followed ­either by food or by waking and work [cum vigilia l­abor]” (1.1.4). This advice is couched partly in terms of how sex affects the body physiologically, since “occasional sex stimulates the body; frequent sex is its undoing” (1.1.4), but his added guidance that “sex is not to be excessively desired or excessively feared” (1.1.4) conveys a moral attitude that is missing in Diocles.29 While Celsus’s antiregimen defines the lifestyle of a healthy and autonomous Roman, he prefaces his entire account of medicine by suggesting, in the manner of a classic decline narrative, that both Greeks and Romans needed medicine in the first place ­because of their “slothfulness” and “luxury” (pr.5). The dietetic regimen is necessary for “restoring” (restituere) what is continually being lost within the world of the Roman city, especially by his audience of readers: But for t­ hose who are weak [inbecillis]—­a nd in this number are a g­ reat portion of city-­dwellers [magna pars urbanorum] and virtually all who love lit­er­a­ture [omnesque paene cupidi litterarum]—­greater observance is needed [observatio maior

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146  Ordering Lives necessaria est], so that care may restore [cura restituat] that which is lost due to the nature of the body, location, or study. (1.2.1)

Many of the princi­ples and par­ameters outlined in Celsus’s subsequent sketch of a daily regimen are familiar from Diocles (e.g., attending to the specific nature of one’s own body and to the season of the year), but Celsus’s predominant framing term “­ought” (debet), which takes a personal subject (e.g., 1.1.1), is not equivalent to Diocles’s preferred expressions “it is best” (kalôs echei) and “it is fitting” (harmottei). Celsus’s language of advising evokes an individual Roman navigating a world of social obligations and moral hierarchies. Let us sample how Celsus engages with the elite Roman subject in his regimen. His opening sentences show an interest in digestion similar to that which Diocles evinces: “He who has digested well ­will arise in the morning safely [mane tuto surget]; he who has not digested sufficiently, o­ ught to rest [quiescere debet]” (1.2.2). In Celsus’s openness to further sleep, Leslie Dossey sees signs of a relatively positive conception of sleep and its benefits (both nocturnal sleep and siesta) that is pervasive in Latin medical writers, contrasting with a greater suspicion of sleep in Greek medicine, where t­here is more insistence on “sleep discipline.”30 At the same time, Celsus’s phrasing turns normative advice into proverbial prognostication. The exhortation that follows seems to be alluding to salutatio or to other urban duties: “And if in the morning it was necessary for him to arise, [he o­ ught now to] go back to bed” (et si mane surgendi necessitas fuit, redormire) (1.2.2). “He should commit himself,” Celsus adds, “neither to work nor to exercise nor to business [neque labori se neque exercitationi neque negotiis credere]” (1.2.2). Celsus also bifurcates the day between morning work and after­noon leisure. Where Diocles focuses on the ideal availability of morning leisure time (scholê) for a round of physical exercise preceding lunch and siesta (182.3), in Celsus the transition to exercise is facilitated through an act of time salvaging that does not appear to involve the morning: “One whom e­ ither domestic or civic duties have detained during the day [quem interdiu vel domestica vel civilia officia tenuerunt] should preserve some time [huic tempus aliquod servandum] for the care of his body” (1.2.5). When Celsus begins explicating “care of one’s own body” (curatio corporis sui), he describes a clear sequence with internal flexibility and more diverse exercise types than Diocles mentions. Exercise, which “should always precede food,” is not explic­itly described as taking place in the gymnasium, and it can comprise “reading out loud, weapons, ball play, ­running, walking” (clara lectio, arma, pila, cursus, ambulatio), so long as it ends in “sweat or at least fatigue

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[lassitudo]” (1.2.6–7). Celsus proceeds to outline additional stages of bodily care: Exercise is correctly followed now [modo] by being rubbed down with oil . . . ​now [modo] by bathing . . . ​of which, however, neither should be done always [neutrum semper fieri oportet], but one or the other more often [saepius alterutrum] in accordance with the nature of the body. ­A fter ­these, we need to rest a ­little [ paulum]. When it comes time for food, it is never useful to get too full. . . . ​W hen someone has gotten full, he digests more easily if he caps off what­ever he has eaten with a drink of w ­ ater, then stays awake for a l­ittle while [ paulisper], then sleeps well. (1.2.7–8)

Celsus concludes by saying that such practices should be “almost constant” (paene perpetua) before transitioning to observations about “abrupt changes” (novae res) as well as about “forms of bodies, and sexes, and ages, and times of the year” (1.3.1)—as Diocles does at least for seasonal fluctuation. Gender, however, ultimately receives no special comment in Celsus. W ­ omen are theoretically included in the all-­encompassing homo of the regimen, though clearly most of the regimen has implicitly addressed a male subject.

Regimens for Diverse Roman Lives (Galen) The first five books of Galen’s Hygiene likewise follow the life course of a putative f­ ree male subject with a perfect constitution from birth to old age.31 He articulates his interest in the variety of ­human circumstances in the preface to the second book, where he observes that “the forms of the lives that we live are numerous” (kai tôn biôn, hous bioumen, eidê pampolla estin) (1, Kühn vol. 6, p. 82). The two main differentiating ­factors, he writes, are poverty and slavery, though he subdivides the latter into a­ ctual slavery (through descent or captivity) and voluntary servitude: “It seems to me also,” he asserts, “that all t­ hose who have chosen a life in the midst of ­things [heilonto bion en peristasei pragmatôn], ­because of ambition or any other sort of desire, are least able to take leisure for the care of the body [hôs oligista dunasthai scholazein têi tou sômatos epimeleiai] and that t­ hese are willingly enslaved to masters who are not good” (1, p. 82). Diocles ­factors in the real­ity that his subject might need to undertake other tasks out of necessity or out of choice, but neither Diocles nor indeed Celsus appears to confront so directly as Galen the “biôn eidê,” “forms of life,” that constrain care of the body.32 And while Galen’s primary audience for his writing was a Greek-­reading elite, his focus in some key examples is on ­people of diverse social status, and in the city of Rome.33

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In book 5 Galen sketches the daily routine of an old man in terms that showcase some of his general ideas of regimen as well as his attention to demographic detail. Just as Celsus focuses on the vulnerability of the urban elite as a class, Galen focuses on old age as a condition in which “even the smallest ­factors can produce a ­great change” (4, p. 331). Thus, as part of their regimen, “weak old men” should receive “sparse amounts [of food] three times a day” (oliga . . . ​tris tês hêmeras) rather than larger portions more often, and as proof of the effectiveness of this approach Galen describes how “Antiochus the doctor took care of himself [heauton diêita]” in his eighties (4, p. 332).34 Though he is concerned primarily with the old man’s diet, Galen pre­sents Antiochus’s routine as thoroughly integrated into his life as a doctor and as a publicly vis­i­ble example. He initially skips documenting the beginning of Antiochus’s day and instead describes his daily journey into the heart of the city—­the Roman Forum, if Vivian Nutton is correct—­together with the morning calls on patients that he makes en route: “He went forth each day [kath’ hekastên hêmeran] into the place where the council of citizens was, and on occasion [esti d’ hote] made an extensive detour for the purpose of visiting the sick” (4, p.  332).35 ­A fter explaining his modes of travel for dif­fer­ent distances (“he went on foot,” “in a litter,” “by wagon”), Galen backtracks, taking up the subject of Antiochus’s morning routine at home: “And he had at his home a room warmed by a fireplace in winter, and in summer having fresh air and no fire. ­Here from dawn [heôthen], obviously a­ fter first relieving himself, he would reliably [ pantôs] be massaged, in both winter and summer [kai cheimônos kai therous]” (4, p. 332).36 William Johnson has rightly noted parallels between this passage and Pliny the Younger’s description of Vestricius Spurinna’s day (Ep. 3.1) in its combining the theme of old age and specific details of exercise and food.37 But while the field of dietetics was familiar to Pliny and his milieu, Antiochus’s day is distinctive in being not just sociable but highly public. Galen resumes his account by noting the late-­morning activities in Antiochus’s place in the Forum, situating ­t hese in relation to the hours of urban time: “And in his place in the Forum [en . . . ​tôi kata tên agoran chôriôi], around the third hour or at the latest around the fourth [ peri tritên hôran ê to makroteron peri tetartên], he ate bread with Attic honey, most often [ pleistakis] toasted, less often [spaniôteron] raw” (4, p. 332). Antiochus’s subsequent abstention from food is congruous with the interval between eating and exercising that Galen recommends in book 6, from the fourth hour to the tenth (7, p. 412): “And ­after this, sometimes in conversation with o­ thers, and sometimes reading alone, he continued ­until the seventh hour

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[eis hebdomên hôran pareteine], ­a fter which he received a massage at the public bath and did the exercises fitting for an old man” (4, p. 332). Galen briefly describes Antiochus’s meals and then concludes: “So, tending to his old age in this way, Antiochus continued to the last, uncompromised in all his senses and with all his limbs intact” (4, p. 333).38 So Galen shows how Antiochus counteracted his age by his expert attention to regimen and by his relative freedom, as an old man, to or­ga­nize his time however he wished. In book 6, in turn, Galen addresses the constraints imposed by a person’s constitution and/or form of life. Whereas Celsus assumes that time can be set aside each day for care of the body simply by an act of ­will, Galen offers the example of the person “who overall has a flawless bodily constitution in an enslaved life [en biôi doulikôi], rendering ser­vice the ­whole day long [di’ holês hêmeras hupêretôn] ­either to some of the most power­ful or to monarchs but departing around the end of the day [chôrizomenos de peri ta perata tês hêmeras]” (5, p. 405). Then, however, he makes a crucial methodological observation: “If . . . ​I say that he departs for the care of his body at the time when the sun sets [hênika ho hêlios dunêi] but do not add on what sort of day I mean [hopoias hêmeras legô], ­whether at the summer or the winter solstice, or at ­either of the equinoxes, or any time in between t­ hese seasons mentioned, it ­will be impossible to make useful hypotheses” (5, p. 405). “At least in the city of the Romans” (kata goun tên Rômaiôn polin), he explains, the longest days and nights “reach a ­little longer than fifteen equinoctical hours [hôrôn isêmerinôn],” whereas the shortest days and nights “are a l­ittle less than nine,” and “in ­great Alexandria” the corresponding lengths are fourteen and ten (5, p. 405). The Alexandria comparison helps to set in relief the more serious challenge posed by seasonal fluctuations in Rome for t­ hose who are not at leisure, and Galen spells out the implications for regimen. Longer daylight paradoxically means less time to care for the self:39 And so one who in the shortest days and longest nights is released from ser­vice at sunset can be massaged at leisure [kata scholên] and bathe and sleep in good measure [summetrôs]. But one in the longest [days] [and shortest nights] is not able to do even one of ­these ­things properly [metriôs]; nor indeed have I known anyone so unfortunate in life [ou mên oud’ egnôn tina toiautêi dustuchiai biou chrêsamenon]. (5, pp. 405–6)

The final sentence is ambiguous. Galen may be saying that he has met slaves in this situation and they are most wretched. Possibly, though, he is saying that in practice he has fortunately never encountered such slaves.

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The second interpretation would follow at least from the striking recollection he proceeds to give from his experience in the Antonine court: Of all the autocrats I have known, [Marcus Aurelius] Antoninus came most readily to the care of the body. He would enter the gymnasium, on the short days at sunset and on the longest [days] at the ninth or at latest the tenth hour, so it was pos­si­ble [that is, in summer] for t­ hose who attended him during his daily activities, a­ fter being dismissed, to care for their body in the remaining part of the day [ pronoêsasthai tou sômatos en tôi loipôi merei tês hêmeras] and right at sunset to retire to sleep. (5, p. 406)40

But was it the emperor’s intention to provide his slaves with sufficient time for care of their bodies, or was it simply an incidental corollary of his own self-­care? Certainly we find Galen himself attentive to the well-­being of all in the emperor’s h ­ ouse­hold. He does not make out that the slaves’ condition is ideal. He explains that “with the shortest night [in summer] being equal to nine equinoctial hours, such time is sufficient for them to get sleep [autarkês ho tosoutos chronos autois hupnou tuchein],” yet it is questionable ­whether it is sufficient, and it is clearly the case that in winter Marcus’s slaves would only be able to exercise properly by lucubrating.41 The day patterns of dietetics, then, stand in varied relations to forms of life. Attending to one’s health was in the most basic sense intended to prevent an untimely death; it was a way of navigating the life course that could ensure that youth did not turn into old age prematurely and that an old age could be long and happy. Daily regimen could also serve as a con­spic­u­ous display, testifying not only to a person’s ability to maintain a healthy life in the face of seasonal fluctuations or other circumstances but sometimes also to his dedication to the proj­ect of restoring a way of life lost through general moral decline or through personal neglect or a poor constitution. So had it been for Galen himself: as he reports in book 5, “I obtained this type of good fortune from no other source than from study of hygiene,” and he cata­logues the aspects of his body and his profession that made health something hard won through regimen (1, pp. 308–9). Virtually all ancient day patterns make some reference to the ordering of the body, and more often than not the presuppositions derive from dietetics both as a method of medical science and as a practice symbolizing personal freedom, masculine privilege, and other forms of social power. Care of the body is a primary shaping force in the routine of Spurinna but is also relevant to the days of Pliny the Elder and Seneca, Pliny the Younger, and Marcus Aurelius, not to

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mention the monks in the Rule of St. Benedict. The medical texts we have considered, however, are not the only paradigm for situating the order of the Roman body in a socially significant temporal order. Distinct patterns, for example, could be distinguished in such areas as the Roman public baths (a frequent location of sundials and/or ­water clocks), in culturally specific practices of walking, or in bodily care and exercise in a military context.42

The Ordered Princeps The last day of the emperor Galba’s life began with Otho giving him the “usual kiss” (ut consueverat osculo) at the morning salutatio (Suet. Otho 6.2). Such quotidian moments in imperial history variously convey drama, realism, intimacy, irony—­and exemplarity. “The ideal emperor’s daily life,” observes Stanley Hoffer, “is a model for the ideal upper-­class citizen and vice versa.” 43 With regard to time more specifically, the emperor’s routine, occasionally glimpsed in moment-­to-­moment detail, might serve as a central “clock” for the social activities of the elite, the city, and to some extent the ­whole empire. In this section I consider some of the marked time dynamics of the imperial court before tracing the evolution of the princeps’s day pattern in Suetonius, Dio Cassius, and beyond. Our authors construct an ethically and po­liti­cally legible form of life both for the princeps as a type and for each princeps in par­tic­u­lar. The Imperial Court in Quotidian Time “You got up too late” (sero . . . ​experrectus es). So replied the emperor Tiberius to Acilius Butas, a former praetor who had squandered his wealth through nocturnal banqueting and was now asking the emperor for a bailout (Sen. Ep. 122.10). Butas’s form of life had evidently put him out of sync—­figuratively and literally—­w ith the cycle of the emperor’s patronage via salutatio. Tiberius’s ­micromanaging of the routine—at one point prohibiting “daily kisses” (cotidiana oscula) with an edict (Suet. Tib. 34.2)—is one among many anecdotes supporting Andrew Wallace-­Hadrill’s observation that the principate had become in essence a court society.44 Observing “what sort of day Tiberius had donned” (qualem diem Tiberius induisset) and then imitating it in “words” and “conduct” (Tac. Ann. 6.20) helps the imperial prince Gaius learn to mask his own monstrous character.45 This striking meta­phorical use of “day” (dies) by Tacitus captures how the mien of the most capricious and dissimulative of emperors determined the daily real­ity of the court as well as the role it played in the transfer of that court to the young Caligula. Seneca’s anecdotes about Gaius Caligula as an emperor in

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his own right emplot his cruelty through motifs of quotidianization, such as his “daily madness” (cotidiana dementia) (Tranq. 14.5), and also of diurnal ordering: “Caligula wished that the Roman ­people could have one neck, so that he could compress all of his crimes, spread out over so many places and times, into a single blow and a single day [in unum ictum et unum diem cogeret]” (Ira 3.19.2). Suetonius builds on popu­lar and historiographic anecdotes about bad and good emperors alike, revealing their ethos in the use of everyday time.46 Clau­ dius’s taste for cruelty is illustrated by the fact that “he also went down to a spectacle at first light [ prima luce] and when the p ­ eople had been let go for lunch at midday [meridie] he stayed t­ here in his seat” (Claud. 34.2)—­that is, he stayed on from the morning beast hunts to the meridianum spectaculum (noontime show) of bloody duels between condemned criminals.47 Claudius would also suddenly wrest “craftsmen,” “attendants,” and “name announcers” from their everyday lives and thrust each into a life-­and-­death duel “just as he was, dressed in a toga” (Claud. 34.2). During the 60s CE, Nero’s self-­fashioning ­a fter the models of Phaethon and Apollo found a spatial manifestation in the Golden House and a temporal one in the Golden Day.48 Such images w ­ ere l­ ater used to vilify Nero, though they had derived from laudes Neronis (praises of Nero) at the beginning of his reign (in 54–55), for example in Seneca’s Pumpkinification (Apocolocyntosis) and in On Clemency, where the young emperor is revered via solar imagery: “Do you think you are stepping forth? You are rising [oriris]!” (1.8.4). Other emperors in the making, by contrast, alter the rhythm of the imperial ­house­hold through their adherence to a more traditionalist or more productive routine. Already in his youth, Galba “very stubbornly [obstinatissime] retained an ancient and outdated custom that persisted in his ­house­hold alone. Twice a day, freedmen and slaves ­were pre­sent in droves and one by one said to him ‘Hello’ in the morning and ‘Be well’ in the eve­ning [bis die frequentes adessent ac mane salvere, vesperi valere sibi singuli dicerent]” (Suet. Galb. 4.4). Titus also stuck “very stubbornly” (obstinatissime) to a goal that characterized him as the direct opposite of Tiberius: “On one occasion as he reflected over dinner that he had given no gift to anyone that ­whole day [nihil cuiquam toto die praestitisset], he uttered t­ hose memorable and rightly praised words: ‘My friends, I have squandered my day [amici, diem perdidi]’ ” (Suet. Tit. 8.1). Against the background of ­these character-­revealing court rhythms, we observe the elite concerned with salient time dynamics such as waiting for the princeps. Martial’s epigram 8.21 seeks to usher in the morning arrival (adventus) of Domitian returning from a journey. Sick of waiting for the sun to “re-

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turn the day” (redde diem) (1), the poet calls directly on Caesar: “Even if the stars stand still, when you come the ­people ­will not lack their day [non deerit populo te veniente dies]” (11–12).49 Another protocol of waiting, as Fergus Millar observes, is apparent in the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius.50 One conversation recounted by Gellius between a phi­los­o­pher and a grammarian occurred “in the waiting area of the Palatine residence,” where “a crowd of virtually ­every rank [omnium fere ordinum multitudo] had arrived waiting for salutatio with Caesar [opperientes salutationem Caesaris]” (4.1.1).51 This and other antechamber discussions referenced by Gellius are public yet informal, taking place at the fringes of the imperial ritual, among a mix of freedmen, equestrians, and aristocrats. When Suetonius relates the more dramatic event of an imperial assassination, quotidian detail is sometimes crucial to surprise and subversion.52 In the plot against Galba following the salutatio kiss, Otho “stood by even as [Galba] sacrificed, and he listened to the predictions of the haruspex” (Otho 6.2). This sketches the emperor’s normal morning routine on the Palatine, and even in the subterfuge that follows t­ here appears to be nothing unusual about the trivial interruption the biographer relates next: “Then, when a freedman reported that ‘the architects had arrived’ (which was the agreed-­upon sign), [Otho] departed as if to inspect a ­house for sale” (6.2). A comparable pattern can be seen in the morning of Domitian’s death: Then, when [Domitian] asked the hour, instead of the fifth (which he feared) “the sixth” was reported by design [tunc horas requirenti pro quinta, quam metuebat, sexta ex industria nuntiata est]. When this made him happy, as if the danger had now passed, and he was hurrying to attend to his body, Parthenius, the one assigned to his bedroom, diverted him, announcing that ­there was someone bringing something impor­tant that could not be put off. (Dom. 16.2)

In ­these episodes the conspiracy emerges from the everyday undergrowth where it lays carefully concealed, ­until such ordinary phrases as “the architects had arrived” and “something impor­tant that could not be put off” suddenly take on a new and momentous meaning. Death comes to the emperor as an unexpected rupture in the seemingly reliable flow of his court life and domestic routine.

Whole Days of Early Emperors Alongside ­t hese sporadic traces of the emperor’s day, something resembling a ­whole day pattern emerges in Suetonius’s Life of Augustus. In the chapters preceding his account of the emperor’s physical appearance (forma), the biographer shows interest in sketching the form of his daily life. While describing Augustus’s

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minimalist and common diet, he quotes from one of his letters to his “dear Tiberius”: “Not even a Jew observes the sabbath fast,” boasts the princeps, “as diligently as I ­today have fasted, since only in the bath, ­after the first hour of night [in balineo demum post horam primam noctis], did I chew two mouthfuls of bread before being rubbed down with oil” (76.2). The quotation implies a background routine of very late-­in-­the-­day grooming while foregrounding what the emperor himself pre­sents as his sabbath-­surpassing diet.53 The discussion of food, however, soon leads the biographer into a more continuous sketch of Augustus’s postlunch and postdinner habits: ­ fter the noontime meal, just as he was, in his clothes and shoes, with his feet A uncovered, he rested for a ­little while [ paulisper conquiescebat] with his hand over his eyes. ­A fter dinner he withdrew to a ­little couch for lucubrating; ­there he remained till late at night [ad multam noctem permanebat] u ­ ntil he completed all or most of what remained of the day’s business [residua diurni actus aut omnia aut ex maxima parte conficeret]. Passing from ­there to his bed he slept no more than seven hours, and even t­hese not continuous [non amplius quam septem horas dormiebat, ac ne eas quidem continuas] but rather in that span of time he would wake three or four times. (78.1)

As Thomas Wiedemann has noted, Augustus’s light daytime sleep introduces a theme that would continue in imperial panegyric and be inverted in the case of bad emperors, offered up as a sign of temperantia (self-­control).54 The nocturnal insomnia in turn reveals a melancholy aspect to the emperor’s routine, which, Suetonius goes on to say, was remedied through the summoning of “readers or storytellers” (78.2). He then describes Augustus’s tendency to sleep “often beyond first light” (ultra primam saepe lucem) as well as his hatred of “being awake in the morning” (matutina vigilia) (78.2). T ­ hese tendencies, however, are subject to being overridden by his general commitment to time control and public ser­vice: “If he had to be awake especially early [si . . . ​maturius vigilandum esset] ­either for a duty or a rite, . . . ​he would stay at what­ ever attic apartment belonged to one of his domestics and was situated near [the location]” (78.2). In his lucubrations, Augustus seems to be authoring Rome’s daily events by night.55 His virtuous night work establishes him as a paradigm against which ­later, bad emperors could be contrasted. Gaius, for example, as Seneca writes, went beyond a “daily habit” (cotidianum) of vio­lence to “burn the midnight oil” (lucubrat) for nefarious reasons, such as a “nocturnal execution” (nocturnum supplicium) (Ira 3.19.2–3).

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An especially stark contrast for the abstemious Augustus comes with Vitellius in 69 CE, one of the four emperors to reign that year. More than one writer dramatizes Vitellius’s brief ascendancy in terms of his abuse of normal everyday patterns. Suetonius observes how he “distributed his banquets always threefold, sometimes fourfold, through the day [epulas trifariam semper, interdum quadrifariam dispertiebat], into breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and revels [in iantacula et prandia et cenas comisationesque], easily making room for them all through a habit of vomiting” (Vit. 13.1). Tacitus describes how Vitellius was “drunk [already] in the m ­ iddle of the day [medio diei] and weighted down by all he had eaten”; if the luxury of this banqueting allowed him to “anticipate the fortune of being princeps” ( fortunam principatus . . . ​praesumebat), the early timing within the day reveals how premature and ill-­starred such presumptions ­were (Hist. 1.62.2).56 In Suetonius’s life of the next emperor, Vespasian, we see the biographer’s most con­spic­u­ous and comprehensive attempt to use the day pattern as a win­ dow on an emperor’s influential form of life.57 He introduces Vespasian’s routine by noting that “the order of his life was generally as follows” (ordinem vitae hunc fere tenuit) (Vesp. 21), and it soon becomes clear that “order” refers not only to sequence but to the priorities and values enshrined in the routine: During his principate he always woke e­ arlier, while it was still night [maturius semper ac de nocte vigilabat]. Then a­ fter reading his correspondence and summaries of all his duties, he admitted his friends, and while he was being greeted [dum salutabatur] he put on his own shoes and also his own clothes. And ­a fter what­ever ­matters ­were pressing had been de­cided, he took time for a drive and then for a rest [quieti vacabat], joined on the bed by one of the numerous concubines he had taken in Caenis’s place a­ fter her death. From his seclusion he passed into the bath and the dining room. Nor is he said to have been more easygoing or lenient at any other time [than in the eve­ning], and his domestics would especially seize upon t­ hose moments to ask for something. But he dealt with many ­things very affably and in jest, both over dinner and always at other times. (21–22)

The qualifying phrase “during his principate” (in principatu) makes clear that this routine reflects not just Vespasian’s general moral character but how he conducted himself for the purpose of being an effective ruler. Although the basis of comparison in “maturius” (lit. “­earlier”) is vague, it invites us to think of Vespasian as having become even more disciplined once he

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ascended to supreme power and, in the pro­cess, as exorcising the reluctance Augustus had felt on occasions when “he had to be awake especially early” (maturius vigilandum esset). The emphasis on Vespasian’s “always” (semper) rising early sets the tone for the entire routine, in which (apart from “generally” [ fere] [21]) ­there is ­little variation and much emphasis on no-­nonsense progression, especially in the rapid movement from siesta to dinner. We are offered glimpses of the mechanisms by which Vespasian conducts official business, though t­ hese are given as background in the form of subordinate clauses. The main clauses instead spotlight the emperor’s social interactions and physical activities, and the scenes evoked most vividly concerned the informal self-­dressing during the salutatio and his l­ater repose with one of his concubines, despite its being conducted in “seclusion” (secreto).58 If the mention of Vespasian’s midday sleep and implied sexual activity diverges from the idealization of sleep control seen in other positive princeps portraits, “it is perhaps a reflection,” suggests Wiedemann, “of [his] anxiety to represent himself as a normal hardworking Italian senator, rather than an idealised king.”59 The passage culminates in a scene that references the virtues of easygoingness (facilitas) and affability (comitas) that are most on display at dinnertime in the dining room, a scene viewed through the eyes of his domestic slaves and freedmen. The notion of an optimal moment for approaching the emperor is promptly diffused by semper alias (always at other times), which extends his joviality to the rest of the day. Vespasian’s ordo vitae dovetails with Pliny the Younger’s mention of the fact that his u ­ ncle “before light would go to the emperor Vespasian [ante lucem ibat ad Vespasianum imperatorem]—­for Vespasian also used the nights [nam ille quoque noctibus utebatur]—­and then on to the duty assigned to him” (Ep. 3.5.9).60 This routine was evidently a prominent feature of Vespasian’s public profile. Apollonius disparages Vespsian’s imperial pre­de­ces­sor Vitellius and praises Vespasian’s early-­bird tendencies: “The man ­will rule” (ho anêr arxei), says Apollonius—no doubt with wordplay on “archein” as “rule” and “begin” (Philostr. VA 5.31).61 Evidently Vitellius was a comparand that made Vespasian’s disciplined ordo vitae particularly welcome. Philostratus has Vespasian himself say to Apollonius that Vitellius “bathes in myrrh more than I do in ­water” (5.29), which points not only to overall depravity but to Vitellius’s notorious daily routines, such as the four-­meal day. The Vespasianic paradigm was soon inverted by Vespasian’s own son, Domitian: Suetonius tells us how “during the early stages of his rule he was in the habit of withdrawing for some hours e­ very day [cotidie secretum sibi horarum sumere solebat] and of ­doing nothing except catching flies and skewering them

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with a sharpened pen” (Dom. 3.1). Domitian’s nihilistic solitude, in turn, was to become a foil for Trajan’s generous salutatio and sociable leisure as described by Pliny the Younger: “How you welcome [excipis] and await [expectas] one and all! How ­great a part of your days you spend as if at leisure, even among so many concerns of rule” (ut magnam partem dierum, inter tot imperi curas, quasi per otium transigis) (Pan. 48.1).

A Mea­sure for ­Later Rulers Although Vespasian is the only emperor to whom Suetonius gives such an explicit ordo vitae rubric, the category was echoed and elaborated by subsequent historians and biographers. In his classic work The Emperor in the Roman World (1977), Millar argues that “in spite of their brief and anecdotal character, ­these descriptions [i.e., of how individual emperors spent their day] are still of fundamental importance in assessing the tone and character of the imperial ­house­hold, and the nature and limits of the functions actually performed by the emperors.” 62 He notes the privacy, informality, and brevity of the governing activities described, as well as the administrative role played by “friends” (amici) and the use of specific document types such as petitions (libelli), letters (epistulae), and briefs (breviaria).63 I would add that in scarcely any of the day patterns of imperial biography do we encounter numbered-­hour time indications: the emperor’s schedule is at once informal and autonomous. Millar compares Suetonius’s portrait of Vespasian with the subsequent day patterns supplied by Cassius Dio for Septimius Severus (emperor 193–211) and his son, coregent, and successor Caracalla (198–211). Dio’s accounts belong within the “bioschemes” that shape his imperial history.64 Dio thus partly couches his account of the emperor’s relationship to his subjects and especially the elite in terms of a quasibiographic day pattern. By way of an obituary on Septimius Severus, Dio introduces the emperor’s routine in terms identical to ­those used by Suetonius: “During peacetime Severus had the following condition of life [echrêto . . . ​katastasei tou biou . . . ​toiaide]” (76.17.1). Then he pre­sents a diurnal sequence that superficially resembles the one Suetonius offers in connection with Vespasian but whose details and emphases are dif­fer­ent: He was certain to be d ­ oing something at night before dawn [nuktos hupo ton orthron], and ­a fter this he would walk, both talking and hearing about ­things relevant to his rule. Then he would preside over t­ rials [eit’ edikaze], except if t­ here was a major festival. And in fact he did that admirably. For he would pour out adequate ­water [hudôr hikanon enechei] for ­t hose speaking in the trial, and to

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158  Ordering Lives t­ hose of us who ­were litigating together with him he gave ample freedom of speech. And he would pass judgment u ­ ntil noon [mechri mesêmbrias], and a­ fter this he would go riding as much as he could. Then he would bathe ­after completing some sort of exercise. He ate lunch, not meager, ­either alone or with his ­children. Then he would usually sleep [eit’ ekatheuden hôs plêthei]. Next, a­ fter waking, he took care of any remaining duties and walked around, participating in conversations in both Greek and Latin. Next, in this way, t­ oward eve­ning [ pros hesperan], he bathed again and dined with ­those around him. For he rarely made anyone ­else his guest, and only on days when it was absolutely necessary did he put on extravagant dinners. (76.17.1–3)

Many points of contrast can be observed with Vespasian: for example, ­there is no mention of salutatio, and Severus walks and talks, rides a ­horse, has no concubines, takes two baths, converses in Greek and Latin, and varies his routine. The greatest contrast is surely the attention given ­here to the ­legal ­trials that occupy a big chunk of the princeps’s days. Dio’s positive evaluation of Severus, who reigned for over seventeen years, is clearest in his comment about the emperor’s generosity with speaking time and f­ ree speech while serving as a judge: just as Pliny the Younger once bragged about the “most capacious w ­ ater clocks” (clepsydrae spatiosissimae) allowed him during a trial being judged by the emperor Trajan (Ep. 2.11.14), Dio celebrates the time itself of Severus’s day as a resource that can be decanted for ­others, including the “us” that refers to Dio and his peers. T ­ here is no such explicit mention of judging in Suetonius’s sketch of Vespasian’s day, and Dio clearly is invested in the courtroom as a drama of emperor-­elite relations.65 Beyond the quiet contrast between Severus and Vespasian, a more obvious, intradynastic contrast emerges when Dio goes on to describe the son’s routine. Focusing on Caracalla’s time in winter quarters in Nicomedia, he criticizes the time he devoted to scholê and explains how judging became a less reliable component of the day and how delay was taken to new and frustrating extremes: “He would send word that he was g­ oing to preside over t­ rials immediately ­after dawn [meta tên eô autika] or conduct some other public business and would then keep us waiting even beyond noon and often even ­until eve­ning [kai huper tên mesêmbrian kai pollakis kai mechri tês hesperas]. . . . ​A nd a­ fter this, on occasion [estin hote], he would preside over ­trials” (77.17.3–5).66 The day pattern now becomes a pageant of the princeps’s impositions on his subjects, making explicit his alienation of their time—­the exact inverse of how Severus granted his subjects the gift of time in connection with speech making.

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Although the day pattern remains only an occasional component of imperial biography, some ­later writers expanded it. One especially detailed sketch comes in Aelius Lampridius’s biography of the last Severan emperor, Alexander Severus (emperor 222–35). The biographer devotes several chapters to describing Alexander’s “everyday and domestic life” (vita cottidiana et domestica) and “lifestyle” (usus vivendi) in a generalized sketch that is, however, more like a flowchart with numerous paths. Even the task of administering public business is qualified with “if the hour allowed” (si hora permitteret) (SHA Alex. Sev. 29.1). Alexander’s day includes the famous description of his morning worship in a lararium (domestic shrine) filled with exemplars that include Apollonius, Christ, Abraham, and Orpheus (29.2), as well as his habitual emulation of his namesake Alexander the G ­ reat (30.3). Other details, such as his use of a medicinal concoction (tetrafarmicum) that was known as Hadrian’s favorite (30.6), show Alexander curating his day by selecting from the day patterns of rulers past.67 Alexander the ­Great recurs, as both model and foil, in the nocturnal pattern described by the historian Ammianus Marcellinus for an equally distinctive emperor of the following ­century, Julian (361–63). “He divided his nights into three sets of duties, namely, rest, public business, and learning [noctes ad officia divideret tripertita, quietis et publicae rei et musarum]—as we read that Alexander the G ­ reat used to do” (16.5.4–9).68 Alexander, the historian recalls, “used to put a bronze basin down, and he extended his arm, grasping a silver ball, beyond the edge of his bed, so that when sleep crept in and relaxed the strength of his grip, the clanging of the dropped ball would break his slumbers.” Julian, however, “stayed awake whenever he wanted [quotiens voluit evigilavit] without the help of any device” (16.5.4–5), and so he emerges as a more natu­ral and more accomplished user of the night. Sure enough, his night’s third part culminates in a sublime per­for­mance of erudition and memory (16.5.5–8).69 Our survey would not be complete without noting how Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 430–85), as a Gallo-­Roman aristocrat serving ­under three Roman emperors, saw potential in the day pattern for portraying the monarchs with whom he had contact. One mode was panegyric poetry: his poem addressed to the emperor Anthemius (c. 467) includes a sketch of a typical day spent at the emperor’s h ­ ouse, from salutatio to convivium (Carm. 2.488–501). Another discursive mode was quasi-­Plinian epistolography, in which Sidonius fused Pliny’s language and forms with new subjects and new stylistic concerns.70 At the beginning of Sidonius’s collection, for example, is a letter addressed to his brother-­in-­law Agricola dating from early in the reign of the Visigothic king Theoderic II (454–66), who had seized power by killing his ­brother but is now

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characterized as a stable ruler living a Christian life with well-­established habits.71 In the letter, which was not published till two or three years a­ fter Theoderic’s death in 466 (he was murdered in turn by another b­ rother), Sidonius describes the king’s “physical proportions” (formae quantitas) and, in especially close detail, his “quality of living” (vitae qualitas)—­specifically, his “daily activity manifested in public” (actionem diurnam, quae est forinsecus exposita) (Epist. 1.2.1, 4). Sidonius witnessed ­these habits in his own visits to the Gothic court early in his ­career.72 Theoderic’s routine was not unlike that described for ­earlier emperors such as Julian, except for a few “Germanic” details such as the mention of a bodyguard clothed in animal skins.73 Its tone, however, is more panegyrical than biographic, and it is distinctive in applying this paradigm to the description of “non-­Roman royalty,” making the Gothic king resemble “a provincial noble rather than a martial anti-­Roman leader.”74 Although Sidonius’s focus is on the public aspect of Theoderic’s routine, in fact he commends the king’s civilitas (1.2.1) through a focus on his private time. He is at pains to highlight his habits “on ordinary days” (profestis diebus), given that readers ­will already know, he says, about his “extravagance on the sabbath” (luxu . . . ​illo sabbatario) (1.2.6). The day begins with “predawn gatherings of his priests” (antelucanos sacerdotum suorum coetus) (1.2.4), a­ fter which governing duties are interspersed with lunch and leisure (1.2.4–9). Sidonius finishes by describing the king at dinner, “persisting in wakefulness up till the time of deep night” (usque ad tempus concubiae noctis excubaturus) (1.2.9), and by noting the vigils of his guards during the “hours of first sleep” (horae primi soporis) (1.2.10). Sidonius’s mention of numbered hours in both the poem and the letter is new and striking within the tradition on the emperor’s day. His striking reference to a “second second hour” when addressing Anthemius (horam . . . ​alteram secundam) (Carm. 2, l. 489), w ­ hether it refers simply to the fourth hour or simply the second, evidently puns on “secunda,” meaning “favorable,” thereby ascribing an auspicious quality in what would other­wise have simply been a quantitative indication.75 Mentions of hours in the Theoderic letter add a sense of regularity to the ruler’s schedule, bookending the leisure of the ­middle of his day with a turning away from work, when “it is the second hour” (hora est secunda) (1.2.4), and a return to work again, “around the ninth” (circa nonam) (1.2.9). Sidonius shows a heightened interest in temporal precision in his letters: more than once he mentions signals from clepsydrae, which h ­ ere refer not simply to timers but to w ­ ater clocks marking the hours of the day.76 The cases of Anthemius and Theoderic II show how the day pattern of an ordered princeps was capable of adapting to changes in the modes of kingship,

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religious practice, and more. But in one other instance in Sidonius, the emperor’s form of life disrupts a preexisting orderliness. Petronius Maximus was emperor of the Western empire for a mere two and a half months in 455, before the sack of Rome by the Vandals. In a letter to his friend Serranus, Sidonius reflects sadly on both the brevity of Maximus’s rule and the damage Maximus himself sustained from being ruler (Epist. 2.13). As a senator, “the moments of his life had been so regulated that they unfolded through the clock’s articulation of the hours” (cuius ipsa sic denique spatia vitae custodiebantur, ut per horarum disposita clepsydras explicarentur) (2.13.4). Then Sidonius laments what happened as soon as Maximus “received the title Augustus”: Before nightfall [Maximus] gave out a groan [ante crepusculum ingemuit], ­because he had attained his desires. And when he was prevented by a mass of cares from maintaining the mea­sured schedule of his prior, restful life [ pristinae quietis tenere dimensum], he immediately bid goodbye to the laws of his old rule [veteris actutum regulae legibus renuntiavit] and saw plainly that the job of a princeps and the leisure of a senator could not go together [ pariter ire non posse negotium principis et otium senatoris]. (2.13.4)

On one level, Maximus seems to have been poorly equipped: habituated to a clockwork life of leisure, a “rule” (regulae) like that of Spurinna (Plin. Ep. 3.1.3), he simply was not up to the obligations of the Palatine. On another level, however, the narrative lays bare the temporal burden of power already evident in repre­sen­ta­tions of Augustus’s routine, with its late-­in-­the-­day relaxation, its late-­ night lucubrations, its insomnia, and its early morning obligations. It is precisely “receiving the title of Augustus” (nuncupatus Augustus) that most explic­itly marks the burdening of Maximus and has him groaning before he has reached the end of his first day on the job. Historical pressures have added to this burden such that the ordered princeps is, in this moment, an impossibility, just as the power of Maximus and of Rome itself is soon upended. The ordered princeps exercises a magnetic sway over multiple aspects of daily life. We have seen how both Columella’s ordered farm and Galen’s ordered body presupposed the princeps’s day as a structuring force in the lives of o­ thers. Many further instances, from Horace at the margins of the Augustan court to Marcus Aurelius, the ­future princeps, describing his daily routine to his teacher Fronto, await us.

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ch a pter 6

Epicurean Days? Cicero and Horace

Writing the Quotidian Self In his influential 1911 commentary on the Satires of Horace, Paul Lejay draws a connection between the closing passage of 1.6, in which the poet describes his typical day—“I lie in till the fourth hour” (122)—­and the end of a letter of Cicero describing his daily routine: “In the morning, at home, I greet many good men” (Fam. 9.20.3).1 Lejay has good reason for connecting the two texts as well as for contrasting them. He also has good reason for viewing Horace’s own separate sketch of his daily routine in 2.6, “Morning f­ather, . . . ​you be the beginning of my poem” (20–22), as a sequel to 1.6 and then for comparing it to a fourth-­century CE text, Ausonius’s poem cycle Ephemeris, which begins “Now bright morning opens up the win­dows” (1.1).2 Not long ­after, in her 1929 study of Pliny the Younger, A. M. Guillemin likewise invokes Cicero’s Letters to Friends 9.20 as a model for the letters of Pliny that describe the routines of Spurinna (Ep. 3.1) and Pliny the Elder (3.5), which we have considered in e­ arlier chapters, as well as the two in which Pliny describes his own routine first in summer (9.36)—­“I wake up whenever I please” (9.36.1)—­and then in winter and the other seasons (9.40).3 In 1982, A.  C. Dionisotti, discussing Ausonius’s Ephemeris, credits Robin Nisbet for pointing out two further comparanda beyond Cicero, Horace, and Pliny: Martial’s Epigrams 4.8, “The first and then the second hour wear

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out the morning greeters” (1), and Seneca’s Moral Letters 83, “­Today’s day is unbroken: no one has snatched it from my grasp” (3).4 It is now standard for all ­these texts to be cited together as parallels for one another.5 One further text that is often omitted but is highlighted in Constant Martha’s Les moralistes sous l’empire romain (1866), which Lejay had read, is a letter of Marcus Aurelius to Fronto that begins “I am well. I slept somewhat early b­ ecause of my slight cold” (Ep. 4.6.1). Marcus’s letter is discussed in detail by Michel Foucault in his 1983 essay “Self-­Writing,” alongside Seneca’s letter 83, with passing reference also to “certain of Pliny’s letters,” including the one on Spurinna (Ep. 3.1).6 The scholars who gathered t­ hese texts had diverse purposes and perspectives. Dionisotti observes that the daily routine theme “occurs, not surprisingly, in biography, satire and letters, usually coloured by a moral or philosophical point . . . ​, taken to idiosyncratic extremes in Sen., ep. 83, but detectable even in a real letter like Cic., ad fam. 9.20.3,” though Dionisotti suggests that Ausonius’s work draws upon another, subliterary model.7 Lejay sees Horace as one of the first “to view his life in the mirror of a day,” evidently not viewing the e­ arlier Cicero letter as a noteworthy chapter in the “pro­gress of individualism.”8 Frances Muecke’s comments on Horace are more concerned with genre: she notes that “depiction of a way of life through a description of a daily routine is a theme that suits satire’s mixture of the personal and the ethical.”9 A. N. Sherwin-­ White, however, pursues the Cicero-­Pliny connection noted by Guillemin and posits a sociocultural practice or “type,” which he calls “an account of ordinatio diurna”—­apparently coining his own Latin label.10 In his more recent Pliny edition, Hubert Zehnacker has revived this as ordinatio dierum, which he describes as “a kind of subgenre of protreptic lit­er­a­ture.”11 Foucault sees in the Seneca and Marcus letters an “account of one’s relation to oneself” that emphasizes an epistolary writing practice concerned with “the body and the days,” which he then contrasts both with prior, action-­oriented epistolography such as Cicero’s and also with l­ ater, Christian discourses of self-­ examination that devalued the body and presupposed observation by a divine authority.12 The afterlife of the daily routine tradition as a w ­ hole receives a more detailed survey from Jean Starobinski, who traces the history of “a lit­er­a­ture of the day and of the comparison of diverse types of days” in which “assiduous regularity” might serve a moral end (“sanctified life”), a material end (“productive life”), or both at the same time.13 Beginning from the “hypercivilized leisure” of Horace and the “new form of everyday discipline” that, following Foucault, he sees in Seneca’s letter 83, Starobinski aims to illustrate how the model was reconfigured in the authoritarian institutions of monasticism, in medieval

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and modern discourses on civic life, and in modern utopian, industrialist, and revolutionary lit­er­a­tures.14 As yet, however, ­these ancient texts have not been studied together—­that is, with a view to ascertaining what they have in common and to bringing to light their differences. In this and the next two chapters I seek to do this, using the analytical toolkit I have assembled in previous chapters to show how each text’s day pattern defines a form of life. Let me note first that the texts are all overdetermined in their relationship to literary culture and to authorial identity, and so literary dynamics are critical. In each of the first-­person accounts, three dif­fer­ent personae—­the man who describes the routine, the man who organizes time, and the man of letters—­are constituted as one and the same person, making each text an exercise in a temporally overdetermined authorial self-­representation, a highly distinctive configuration of the “author function.”15 Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, and Marcus construct authorial personae that inhabit the chronotope of epistolography, while Horace, Martial, and Ausonius construct the same in satirical poetry broadly conceived, and each of the texts aspires to define its own distinctive literary character and to secure a unique position for itself within literary history.16 Although they draw on an extensive repertoire of realist aesthetics in their respective genres, the position they seek to define, I argue, is to be understood primarily through the unique repre­sen­ta­tional features of the day pattern, through which they exploit the singular characterizing potential of quotidian time. I also want to emphasize that ­these texts invite scrutiny as forms of autobiography or as documents in the history of the self—­however we choose to understand this term. Muecke sees in Horace’s Satires 2.6 a “depiction of a way of life” through “satire’s mixture of the personal and ethical,” and indeed each of our ancient authors consistently proj­ects his day pattern onto the larger canvas of a genre-­inflected biographic time, ­whether to define his “life” as a ­whole or some privileged dimension of his life.17 Thus, Cicero prefaces his day description with “this, then, is our life [vita] now” (Fam. 9.20.3), Pliny paraphrases “how I or­ga­nize my day” (Ep. 9.36.1) with “how I spent my leisure [otium]” (9.40.1), Seneca correlates “I w ­ ill review my day” with “looking back at one’s life [vitam]” (Ep. 83.2), and Marcus includes in his “account of the day” a detailed unpacking of his opening statement “We are well” (nos valemus) (Ep. 4.6.1). In Martial the day encapsulates the ethos of his personal muse, “our Thalia” ­(Epigr. 4.8.12), while according to Jean-­Marie André, Horace ascribes to his day a more general symbolism in “a sort of exemplary amplification” when he con-

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cludes with “this is the life [vita] of t­ hose released from unhappy and burdensome ambition” (Serm.1.6.128–29).18 As this sampling already indicates, the “life” concerned may have any number of general or specific senses. When autobiography is at issue, a given repre­sen­ta­tion may stand anywhere along the putative spectrum between truth and fiction and may pursue any number of distinct and not necessarily reconcilable strategic agendas—­self-­representation, self-­scrutiny, self-­care, self-­fashioning, the per­for­mance of self, or some other goal in which self-­reference plays only an accidental role.19 An emphatically quotidian writing of the self has its own specific possibilities, although ­these are equally varied. Of everyday epistolary self-­writing Foucault observes that “to recount one’s day—­not ­because of the importance of the events that may have marked it, but precisely even though t­here was nothing about it apart from its being like all the ­others, testifying in this way not to the importance of an activity but to the quality of a mode of being—­forms part of the epistolary practice.”20 Yet for Foucault, the mode of being that is constituted through self-­writing, including the digestion of language from one’s selected readings, is “one’s own soul”: “One should be able to form an identity through which aw ­ hole spiritual genealogy can be read.”21 Margaret Graver, by contrast, evokes a goal that is as much literary and aesthetic as ethical, and transcendent rather than embodied: “Writing as Seneca describes it becomes a means of externalizing one’s locus of identity, one’s very thoughts, reasonings, and reactions, fixing them for the ­future and making them available to ­others.”22 Starobinski’s response is dif­ fer­ent again, homing in on time use in its own right as a privileged showcase for self-­description: “Now, to say how one passes the time is to say oneself, to construct an identity, to fix ‘me’ in the singularity of one’s actions and gestures.”23 Understanding Horace’s self-­description as “viewing oneself in the mirror of a day,” as Lejay does, is also quite dif­fer­ent from seeing it as a form of “defensive irony,” as Ellen Oliensis does.24 It is impor­tant, then, to be mindful of the range of possibilities for the quotidian both as a time concept in general and as a literary construction. Far less “disciplined,” in turn, than the literary practices described thus far is the notion of everyday life as an infinitely elusive repre­sen­ ta­tional challenge—­what Ben Highmore theorizes as “the daily making and unmaking of culture.”25 Although it is impossible to offer a fully satisfactory account of the way in which our vari­ous texts employ quotidian time to dramatize autobiographic narrative, I hope to register the role that each passage plays within the individual work, life, and milieu to which it most immediately belongs. My goal, then, is

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to trace how each text’s autobiography—­its form of life—is defined through its strategic literary configuration of quotidian time as part of the author’s broader authorial production. In ­these three chapters we consider Cicero, Horace, Seneca, Martial, Pliny, and Marcus Aurelius, saving Ausonius for our focus on Christian days in chapter 9, where Sidonius Apollinaris, too, is added to the pack. I introduce the six ­earlier, pagan authors in three pairs, each pairing being motivated by a shared literary motif. For each, I ponder what the thematic convergence within each pair can tell us and then proceed to explore their divergences. Thus, Cicero and Horace (this chapter) refer loosely to informal acts of writing or reading in the late morning, Martial and Pliny (chapter 7) mention more tightly scheduled forms of literary composition and pre­sen­ta­tion, and Seneca and Marcus (chapter 8) situate the very writing of the pre­sent text within the single day they are describing. We have something to learn from pairing the authors according to ­these thematic overlaps. Yet as soon as we begin considering the specifics of each day pattern and how the form of life defined therein relates to its author’s c­ areer and context, we encounter dif­fer­ent tendencies and outcomes. Each case study makes a distinctive contribution, as each author navigates existing diurnal paradigms and invents new patterns of his own.

“I Read or Write Something” “Whenever the morning greeting has ebbed away, I immerse myself in letters: I ­either write or read [aut scribo aut lego].” This is how Cicero, writing to his friend Papirius Paetus, describes the ­later part of his mornings in his Letters to His Friends (9.20.3), which aligns with Horace’s “I lie in ­until the fourth hour, ­after which I wander or, once I have read or written something that w ­ ill please me in my silence [lecto / aut scripto quod me tacitum iuvet], I have myself rubbed down with olive oil” (1.6.122–23). The shared motif, with forms of “write” and “read” loosely connected by a disjunctive, is not on its own unusual. It is widespread in Latin lit­er­a­ture.26 But in ­these two very dif­fer­ent passages the nonchalant phrase constitutes the first and only reference to literary practice within the day. Both authors conspicuously downplay their activities as men of letters. A similarly casual reference to morning-­time writing or reading is part of the so-­called Epicurean day that is mocked by the imperial Stoic phi­los­o­pher Epictetus in one of his discourses (Arr. Epict. diss. 3.24). Engaging with an imperfect Stoic student who prefers to shirk his social responsibilities and stay at home and avoid anything that might test his endurance, Epictetus imagines the toll this fear of risk ­will take on the student “by day and by night” (meth’ hêmeras, nuktos),

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when he w ­ ill be “startled from [his] dreams, distressed [tarassomenos]” (24). But the student, accused by Epictetus of being a poor Stoic “citizen,” responds: “That’s right. For it is pleasant [to live this way]” (hêdu gar estin) (37). Then Epictetus diagnoses the would-be Stoic’s wasting of time (diatribê): Do you not perceive what sort of persons’ words you have uttered, the words of Epicureans and submissives? . . . ​Or what e­ lse do t­ hose men wish for than to sleep without interruptions or obligations, to get up only to yawn peacefully and wash their ­faces, then write and read what they wish, then chatter about something or other, being praised by their friends for what­ever they say; then ­a fter ­going out for a stroll and walking around a ­little bit, to bathe, then eat, then sleep the kind of sleep you assume such men would sleep? (38–39)

The discussion then turns to ­whether or not a Stoic should “cultivate” (therapeuein) someone and “go to his door” (epi thuras autou poreuesthai) (44)—­a reference to Roman salutatio, which Epictetus ­here defends as a necessary evil in performing one’s social duties.27 Epictetus’s reference to the Epicureans’ slow wake-up followed by “writing and reading what they wish” (grapsai kai anagnônai ha thelousin) (39) is only one of several signs that Cicero and Horace are conjuring with one and the same Epicurean paradigm. Cicero and Horace each situate their “reading or writing” within a routine dominated by attention to certain pleasures of the body, the hedonistic pastimes that Epictetus refers to, and pre­sent this as a lifestyle disengaged from social activity. Both Horace and Cicero indicate explic­itly that this lifestyle is to be understood in Epicurean terms. David Armstrong, building on Lejay’s clustering of Cicero, Horace, and Epictetus, suggests that “all ­these passages have a lost Epicurean source e­ arlier than Cicero, which w ­ ill have praised this sort of day”—­a plausible enough claim, though ­t here was also a longer-­standing and more generic philosophical polemic on hedonistic days, ­going back at least to Plato.28 Armstrong goes so far as to assert that the days of Cicero and Epictetus are, with a few changes, “exactly and in detail the leisure day Horace describes.”29 But Cicero and Horace are obviously ­doing dif­fer­ent ­things when they describe their own daily routines. Lejay emphasizes a basic contrast: “The salutatio and consultations show that Cicero could not entirely strip off his former self. Horace comes closer to the program of the real Epicurean traced by [Epictetus].”30 Examining Cicero and Horace separately gives us an opportunity to determine in precisely what ways each makes use of the Epicurean day for his own agenda. Each author is contending with his own distinct form-­of-­life

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prob­lem. For Cicero, the prob­lem concerns what kind of sociopo­liti­cal life he can have u ­ nder Julius Caesar. For Horace, writing one step further beyond the end of the republic, the prob­lem is how to demonstrate that he is his own person despite being dependent on Maecenas for his social elevation during the ascendancy of Octavian/Augustus. Cicero and Horace engage with ­these prob­lems as they are manifested in quotidian time, each using his own tactics to exploit the literary power of day patterning.

Retooling the Statesman’s Day (Cicero, Letters to His Friends 9.20) To Paetus in Naples Cicero’s description of his daily routine in Letters to His Friends 9.20 belongs to a series of life sketches in nine surviving letters addressed to Papirius Paetus, an Epicurean friend living in Naples, during the second half of 46 BCE.31 This was the year in which Julius Caesar, fresh from victory in Africa, returned to Rome briefly before departing again for Spain, the final theater of the civil war. Cicero, in the wake of the republicans’ defeat and Cato the Younger’s death by suicide in Utica in April of that year, kept a low profile on the po­liti­cal stage, waiting to see what his life would now be like. He broke his “long-­term silence” (diuturnum silentium) only briefly, in the speech For Marcellus that he delivered in September in which he praises Caesar in a bid to have him recall M. Marcellus from exile (1.1). This was also the year in which Cicero began devoting himself to philosophical writing in a more intensive way than before—an activity, however, that he acknowledges only tentatively to begin with, as in the casual formulation “I ­either write or read” (aut scribo aut lego).32 Cicero’s letters to Paetus can almost be read as a self-­contained narrative, albeit refracted through several specific epistolary prisms. Mikhail Bakhtin characterizes the chronotope of the Ciceronian “familiar letter” in general as one in which “a ­whole series of categories involving self-­consciousness and the shaping of a life into a biography—­success, happiness, merit—­began to lose their public and state significance and passed over to the private and personal plane.”33 We may recognize more specific modes h ­ ere, such as tentative deliberation, as the author navigates uncertain times, and moral self-­portraiture, as he defines his own ethos in relation to philosophical frames of reference.34 In attending to Paetus’s defining traits of iucunditas (cheerfulness) and iocationes (jesting), ­these letters are less focused on persuasive (movere) and informational (docere) functions and more on the delivery of plea­sure (delectare), what Armstrong calls “joking painfully.”35 The pain comes from the pre­sent predicament of w ­ hether Cicero and his fellow losers can live u ­ nder Caesar or ­whether instead the model

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of Cato’s Stoic suicide ­will need to be emulated (9.18.2). The joke is that although Paetus is an Epicurean of long standing, Cicero himself has now “gone Epicurean.” Warning Paetus about his “newfound elegance” (9.16.8), Cicero explains that he has been learning how to wallow in plea­sure by banqueting with allies of Caesar. His appetites for indulgence are now so refined and so excessive that he threatens to arrive on Paetus’s doorstep in Naples and eat him out of ­house and home. He may even become Paetus’s “tent companion” (contubernalis) (9.20.1)—­a term that elsewhere in Cicero’s letters entails not only a long-­term stay but also “spending ­whole days on philosophy” (totos dies philosophari) (Att. 2.14.2). Eleanor Leach brilliantly captures the modality of the Paetus letters when she observes how “the real Cicero” takes shape in the correspondence “as a composite figure—­not in his own eyes, but rather in t­ hose of Paetus, who is entrusted with piecing together all ­these fragmentary images and seeing how the devices to which the new Cicero is resorting are actually confirmations of the old.”36 Cicero ­will never quite make it to Naples. The final letter from 46 locates him only in Cumae, tentatively saying he w ­ ill see Paetus “tomorrow” (cras) (9.23.1). The principal dynamic is deferral. Cicero writes from the city to say that “one ­thing a­ fter another [aliud ex alio], day a­ fter day [quotidie], prevents me” (9.19). In a revealing letter to Manius Curius from the same months, Cicero states that “virtually the same t­ hing” as Curius was able to accomplish through his exile, he, Cicero, is “accomplish[ing] . . . ​by another method”: he immediately gives one of the several accounts of his daily routine that date from this time, describing a combination of qualified social contact and dedicated writing (7.28).

“My Life Now” A tentative yet still reversible “Epicureanism.” A retreat into writing. An “exile” accomplished through temporal means rather than spatial. ­These are the themes of our focus letter, 9.20. Writing from his urban residence on the Palatine, Cicero apologizes for not having visited Paetus but explains that when he does fi­nally visit, Paetus better watch out. He is a changed man with a hedonist’s hunger: Now I have cast aside all my concern for the republic, my deliberations about voicing my opinion in the senate, my preparation for ­trials: I have cast myself into the camp of my opponent Epicurus.

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170  Ordering Lives [nunc omnem nostram de re publica curam, cogitationem de dicenda in senatu sententia, commentationem causarum abiecimus, in Epicuri nos, adversarii nostri, castra coniecimus.] (1)37

Few sentences in Cicero’s letters are as carefully structured as this, with its alliterative components, modulated meta­phor (“abiecimus,” then “coniecimus”), and systematic mapping of Cicero’s transformed roles and identity, including the substitution of “de re publica cura” with the desertion to Epicurus. But is this a desertion, as the term “camp” suggests, or might we better understand this to be a reconnaissance mission?38 For Cicero, the question is what this change entails for him: what ­will take the place of his po­liti­cal thinking and public speech, and what w ­ ill it mean to go Epicurean? He offers an immediate clue by relating how he recently entertained Hirtius, the Caesarean, at a refined banquet for which, he says, “­there was nothing my cook could not copy except for the hot sauce” (2). Although it is uncertain to what extent we may categorize the Caesareans overall as Epicureans, it is clear that Cicero’s experiments in Epicureanism ­were inseparable from his tentative overtures t­ oward Caesar, his po­liti­cal adversary.39 And by introducing this development h ­ ere with nunc (now) (1), he signals the overall uncertainty of a year in which, as he writes in a proximate letter, “we [nos] serve him [illi], while he himself [ipse] serves the times [temporibus]” (9.17.3)—­a year that would conclude with the intercalary month that ushered in the Julian calendar. ­A fter his mention of the Hirtius dinner Cicero describes his daily routine in the letter’s final section: So this is my life now. In the morning, at home, I greet many good men, though gloomy, and also ­these happy victors, who indeed visit me with much dutifulness and affection. Whenever the morning greeting has ebbed away, I immerse myself in letters: I e­ ither write or read. ­Those also come who are listening to me like an educated person b­ ecause I am a l­ittle more educated than they themselves [are]. From that point onward all my time is given to the body. I have now mourned the fatherland both more extremely and for a longer time than any ­mother [mourns] her only son. [haec igitur est nunc vita nostra: mane salutamus domi et bonos viros multos, sed tristis, et hos laetos victores, qui me quidem perofficiose et peramanter observant. ubi salutatio defluxit, litteris me involvo; aut scribo aut lego. veniunt etiam qui me audiunt quasi doctum hominem quia paulo sum quam ipsi doctior. inde corpori omne tempus datur. patriam eluxi iam et gravius et diutius quam ulla mater unicum filium.] (3)

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For all that Cicero frames this routine as a portrait of Epicurean life, Lejay is right to draw attention ­here to the per­sis­tence of “his former self”—­Cicero the statesman.40 His day begins early and is propelled by at least two waves of social traffic in which his solitary agency (me involvo; scribo; lego) is a relative blip amid the interactions described by the other verbs (salutamus; observant; veniunt; audiunt), and although he remains “at home” (domi) throughout the day, he is the center of society. It is only when the day’s remainder is given over to the body that the Epicurean habit comes into its own. Yet even now ­there is no specification of corporeal activities such as is given in Epictetus’s parody (or as ­there is in Horace): hedonistic details are instead left to the imagination, except for the inference that each day concludes with an affair like the Hirtius dinner. Our main resource for understanding Cicero’s day in 9.20.3 is the rest of his correspondence to Paetus as well as a few other letters from the same months that describe other moments that ­either complement or revise the quotidian portrait. Thus, the term “life” (vita) in the introductory statement “so this is my life now” refers in a fairly obvious sense to the lifestyle—­the monotonous routine, the depleted form of existence—to which Cicero’s life has been reduced. The “now” (nunc) ­here emphatically links this life to the “now” of the foregoing statement: “Now [nunc] I have cast aside all my concern for the republic.” In a ­later letter to Paetus he rephrases the statement as “this then is how life goes” (sic igitur vivitur) (9.26.4), where what is an impersonal passive verb in Latin, “vivitur,” says it all. In another, he confides to Paetus, “We have been living [vivimus] as a bonus [de lucro] for almost four years now—if it is ­either a bonus [si . . . ​lucrum] or a life [vita] to live as a survivor of the republic [superstitem rei publicae vivere],” and he asserts that “if anyone was unable to endure this, he ­ought to have died [mori debuit],” suggesting that his continued existence at least for now is not indisputably a good t­ hing (9.17.1). Cicero’s chosen option, living, is not necessarily the most principled one, at least from a Stoic perspective, since he remains conscious of what o­ thers would reply: “But Cato [acted] honorably” (at Cato praeclare) (9.18.2). A separate but related sense of “vita” emerges in a description Cicero offers of “[Caesar’s] friends,” who, he says, “live with me on a virtually daily basis” (vivunt mecum fere quotidie) (9.16.4). This adds to the portrait of his morally anguished subsistence while he holds out hope for a path forward through participation in the society of the dictator.

Vestigial Social Traffic The first event of Cicero’s day is substantial and revealing: “In the morning, at home, I greet many good men, though gloomy, and also t­ hese happy victors,

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who indeed visit me with much dutifulness and affection.” His salutatio serves as a pageant of the po­liti­cal situation and of Cicero’s life now, as he and his despondent friends are reminded each day of their defeat. It is plausible that the losers and winners represent two separate ranks of p ­ eople, the “good” ones being met with in a preferred first “admission” (admissio).41 Yet the heterogeneity of the visitors overall is also testimony to Cicero’s potential unifying role as a third party; “gloomy” may contain a hint of Cicero’s distaste for the Stoic, Catonian response of certain friends, just as the terms “with much dutifulness” (perofficiose) and “with much affection” (peramanter) hint at the possibility of reconciliation with the e­ nemy.42 In the Handbook of Electioneering associated with Cicero’s days of po­liti­c al campaigning and usually attributed to his ­brother Quintus, the most successful instances of salutatio, as well as deductio (being escorted into the Forum) and adsectatio (being accompanied throughout the day), are when the candidate can demonstrate support on a daily basis (cottidiana) from ­people of varying birth status, age group, and social rank (genera, aetates, ordines) (34).43 Time of day and timing also reflect rank: as Robert Morstein-­Marx points out, the deduc­ tores are “significant ­people—­evidently senators and equites—­who must not be kept waiting,” whereas lower-­class persons could be made to arrive early and be kept waiting at the salutatio or be put to use for long hours through the day (adsectatio).44 Ordinarily, Ida Östenberg notes, “all ­those groups walking down to the Forum ­every day expressed and reflected” the appearance of “a Republic that is in charge of her movements.” 45 In the pre­sent situation, of course, the republic is no longer orderly, and Cicero is certainly not campaigning as such, but his salutatio is an event of newfound public consequence. As he claims in his letter to Manius Curius, his salutatio “occurs in even greater crowds than it used to, due to the fact that [his friends] seem to view a right-­thinking citizen as like a [rare] white bird” (7.28.2). Regarding the Caesarean greeters in par­tic­u­lar, Cicero tells Paetus in another letter that he is aware that they give him a direct line of communication with Caesar himself. Cicero’s utterances in their conversations “are relayed to [Caesar] along with the other proceedings [ad illum cum reliquis actis perferuntur], since thus he has commanded” (9.16.4)—­perhaps playfully recalling Caesar’s initiative to have the acta diurna compiled and published.46 Cicero supposedly trusts Caesar to sift such reports to determine what is genuinely Ciceronian, but he is also conscious of the messengers. Thus, in his salutatio conversations, he is erring, he says, on the side of “moderation” rather than engaging in the “­free

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speaking” that would be characteristic of a true “wise person” (9.16.3–5): “I have no control over what each man may say or how he may receive it or how much I may trust t­hose who live with me [qua fide mecum vivant], cultivating and visiting me attentively [qui me assidue colunt et observant]” (9.16.5). T ­ hese considerations are prompted by Cicero’s basic concern that he does not know ­whether he is genuinely “loved” (amari) by “­those who are cherished [diliguntur] by Caesar,” even though they visit him daily (9.26.2–3). The sincerity of “with much affection” goes untested. The conclusion of Cicero’s daily salutatio in 9.20.3 brings us into stranger territory. Its slow ebbing away (defluxit) suggests an unwieldy scale and recalls such singular events as his blowout salutatio in Formiae back in 59 BCE that filled a basilica and continued “beyond the fourth hour” (post horam quartam) (Att. 2.14.2).47 More significant, however, is the absence ­here of an escort to the Forum (deductio), the standard sequel to salutatio. Normally, as Andrew Feldherr puts it, “The senator’s daily journey from his home to the Forum can be mapped as a series of spectacles before ever-­widening audiences, each of which affirmed his place in a social hierarchy,” and Cicero alludes to this ideal in a letter to Atticus from 60 BCE, though he is not wholly enthusiastic about it: “Whenever my h ­ ouse has been filled full at morning time, whenever I have gone down to the Forum flocked by crowds of friends, I cannot find anyone among the multitude with whom I can ­either joke freely or sigh together on intimate terms [aut iocari libere aut suspirare familiariter]” (Att. 1.18.1).48 This ­earlier letter, however, even as it alerts us as to what is missing in 9.20.3 also hints at Cicero’s flexibility on the ­matter, for he mentions the social pageantry of the salutatio and deductio only to say that he would much prefer to share with Atticus “the conversation of a single walk” (unius ambulationis sermone) (Att. 1.18.1)—­the “walk,” as Timothy O’­Sullivan notes, serving as its own unit of social time.49 It is noteworthy, in fact, that Cicero’s preference for an interlocutor with whom he can “joke freely” and “sigh together on intimate terms” is to some extent realized all t­ hese years ­later, in his “painful joking” with Paetus.50 But within the more specific context of his daily routine, I suggest, his noting that “I immerse myself in letters” (litteris me involvo) makes manifest the fact that he is not participating in deductio. Cicero represents this turn to “letters”—­a term subsuming lit­er­a­ture as well as epistolography—as the most solitary moment in his day. But while he depicts himself enveloped in a mess of bookrolls precisely at the moment of the expected deductio, elsewhere he refers to his books themselves as “old friends” (veteribus

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amicis) (9.1.2), which suggests that he readily ­imagined his studies as a form of quasisocial engagement.51 In the pre­sent letter, too, we see Cicero taking a plausibly deniable step ­toward what Yelena Baraz calls “full-­time writing” of philosophical works, a proj­ect that he worked on with intensity in 45 and 44 and that she characterizes as “a written republic.”52 Although the phrase “I ­either write or read” (aut scribo aut lego) is, as Baraz notes, “almost absurd in its vagueness,” she cautiously reads ­here a reference to Cicero’s composition of his exhortation to philosophy, the lost Hortensius.53 The deniability of the step—­Cicero’s caution about abandoning the diurnal structures of sociality—is ensured by his seeming nonchalance, which makes t­hese activities of a piece with his experiments in banqueting. They are informal enhancements of his day as a statesman. Yet in another letter from around the same time (c. July 46), Cicero describes his withdrawal to his friend Volumnius Eutrapelus in more direct terms, without any Epicurean self-­fashioning but with clear social implications, as putting aside the “role” (persona) he had played in public, in order “to remove [himself ] entirely into letters [me totum in litteras abdere], and . . . ​to enjoy to the end a most virtuous leisure [honestissimo otio perfrui]” (7.33.2). In the contemporaneous description of his daily routine that he sent to the exile Manius Curius he explains he is writing books that w ­ ill reassure peers of his own resilience: “For whenever I have devoted myself to the morning greeting of friends [cum enim salutationi nos dedimus amicorum] . . . ​I remove myself into the library [abdo me in bibliothecam]” (7.28.2). Taken together, ­these moments convey a tentative but discernible momentum, in the fall of 46, ­toward devoting time each day to writing, both by Cicero and by ­others. As he explains to Sulpicius Rufus in a letter from October: Even if ­e very liberal art and sphere of learning, and especially philosophy, has delighted me from an early age, still, this pursuit grows more serious by the day [hoc studium cottidie ingravescit]—­due, I believe, to the ripening of my age in the direction of wisdom and also ­because the vices of the times [iis temporum vitiis] are such that no other ­thing can lift the mind from distress. I understand from your letters that you are drawn away from this pursuit by public business [te abduci studiis], but still, the nights now w ­ ill give you some help [sed tamen aliquid iam noctes te adiuvabunt]. (4.4)

In the days of fall with their lengthening nights, lucubration offers a new space for a literary otium that may adapt to the daily deterioration of the social fabric yet still without sacrificing negotium.54

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Dining Days In our focus letter, Cicero’s reading or writing is promptly interrupted by a further round of social visits: “­Those also come who are listening to me like an educated person b­ ecause I am a ­little more educated than they themselves [are].” Although it is already clear from the salutatio that Cicero is a draw for visitors and a valued commentator on current events, Leach also reminds us about Cicero’s recent jest to Paetus: “Just as the tyrant Dionysius, when he had been expelled from Syracuse, is said to have opened a school, so too I, now that ­legal ­trials have been removed and I have lost my kingdom of the Forum, have begun to run a kind of school” (9.18.1).55 The jest speaks to Cicero’s ­actual overtures to Caesareans: “I have Hirtius and Dolabella as my students in speaking and my teachers in dining. For I think you have heard—if perchance all news is conveyed to you—­that they are in the habit of declaiming [declamitare] at my ­house, and I in the habit of dining [cenitare] at theirs” (9.16.7). A ­century l­ater, t­ hese lessons are taken up by Quintilian in book 12 of Institutes of Oratory as a paradigm for the ideal final stage of an orator’s c­ areer (11.1– 7).56 Recalling how Cicero “trained Pansa, Hirtius, and Dolabella in the manner of an instructor, speaking and listening e­ very day [cotidie dicens audiensque],” Quintilian extols not only the education that younger men ­will receive from the older orator but also the antiaging effect of delivering such instruction for the orator himself. Quintilian in his own lifetime saw “the most excellent orator Domitius Afer, in advanced old age, each day losing something [cotidie aliquid . . . ​ perdentem] from the authority he had earned” (11.3). If we read Quintilian’s interpretation back onto Cicero’s c­ areer, we see that Cicero’s daily routine may also ensure that “he w ­ ill experience already in his own lifetime [sentiet vivus] the veneration that is more typically bestowed ­after death [ post fata], and he ­will see what he is to be among posterity [quid apud posteros futurus sit]” (11.7). Cicero’s routine concludes abruptly with the statement about what comes next in his day: “From that point onward all my time is given to the body” (inde corpori omne tempus datur). The incongruence between the statement’s concision and the extent of time referred to—­presumably much of the after­noon and evening—­seems to signal a disappearance of Cicero’s time into the void. That is certainly how Epictetus portrays the body-­centered activities of the Epicurean day (Arr. Epict. diss. 3.24.39). But therein lies much of its value, according to Cicero. Another of his letters to Paetus begins, “I had reclined at the ninth hour [accubueram hora nona] when I inscribed the draft of this [letter] to you in my tablets” (9.26.1), and he proceeds to describe with g­ reat vividness the banquet

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that is in pro­gress around him.57 The letter’s main goal is to impress on Paetus the pre­sent necessity of banqueting even, or especially, at a time when Romans are living in servitude to Caesar. Paetus has told him that he “should live in letters” (or alternatively “lit­er­a­ture”), to which he responds, “Do you think I am ­doing anything ­else, or that I could live if I ­were not living in letters [me . . . ​posse vivere nisi in litteris viverem]? But even for letters t­ here is—­not a satiety, but a certain limit. When I have withdrawn from them, even if ­there is very ­little for me in dining, . . . ​still, I cannot find anything better to do before I take myself off to sleep” (9.26.1). Dining fills out life’s time, however much life requires writing. This, at least, is what the letter argues, though the fact that Cicero drafted the letter itself ­after reclining is perhaps an indication of his real preferences.58 In adjacent letters Cicero endorses the value of dining in more detailed terms. Another description of his daily routine to Paetus skips the salutatio but preserves most of the other components, and this time describes the eve­ning: This then is how life goes [sic igitur vivitur]. ­Every day something is read or written [quotidie aliquid legitur aut scribitur]. Then, so that something is conceded to friends, we banquet together, not only without breaking the law (if t­ here is any law now) but even within the law and in fact quite far within it. So t­ here is no reason for you to fear our arrival. You w ­ ill receive a guest whose appetite is not g­ reat and whose joviality is ­great. (9.26.4)59

Cicero’s daily banquets are not only contentious, as his allusions to Caesar’s sumptuary laws implies, but also restrained and equally idealistic about the social bond of amicitia. Elsewhere Cicero describes Paetus himself in terms that do not evoke Epicureanism so much as native Italian communalism: “I’ll be damned [moriar] if I have anyone left, apart from you, in whom I can recognize the image of ancient and home-­born festivity [imaginem antiquae et vernaculae festivitatis]” (9.15.2). He channels Roman nostalgia for a commensal life such as we see projected into daily routine by Ennius in the second c­ entury BCE in the famous “friend” fragment from the Annales, where the statesman, ­after “he had been tired out by deliberating about the government of the highest affairs for a ­great part of the day [magnam . . . ​diei / partem],” summons the trusted companion with whom he can share a joke (iocum) (8.268–74).60

Final Prospects for Life “I have now mourned the fatherland both more extremely and for a longer time than any ­mother [mourns] her only son”: Cicero’s closing comment regarding his grief situates his daily routine within an open-­ended time of mourning.

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Whenever Cicero mentions grief, of course, the discourse of consolation is never far away, along with his own characteristic inconsolability. In his con­temporary letter to Manius Curius, he confesses that not only “reason” (ratio) but even “the passage of time” (dies) has failed to revive his hopes (7.28.3).61 Cicero’s mournful words reverberated following the death of his ­daughter Tullia only months ­later, in February of 45. In a famous short letter in March, Cicero describes to Atticus his more thoroughly depleted routine: In this solitude I talk with no one, and ­a fter I have pushed myself into a thick and rough wood in the morning [mane], I do not emerge from ­there u ­ ntil eve­ ning [non . . . ​ante vesperum]. Apart from you, I have no greater friend than solitude. In solitude all my conversation is with letters [mihi omnis sermo est cum litteris]. That conversation, however, is interrupted by weeping, which I fight back against as far as I can, but up till now I have been no match for it. As you advise, I w ­ ill write back to Brutus. (Att. 12.15)

The day stretching from morning to eve­ning is now emptied of social traffic; Cicero finds himself in total solitude accompanied by waves of grief, expanding on a comment he had made in a letter the previous day, “I write for ­whole days at a time” (totos dies scribo) (12.14.3). Yet ­these days of abandon are still delimited by social engagement: Cicero maintains epistolary communication with Atticus and with Brutus, who had written to console him, and he enjoys a form of conversation with his letters. He works away in the “thick and rough woods” (silvam . . . ​densam et asperam)—­a phrase that may refer meta­phor­ ically to literary material—­and we know that the resulting work, his Consolation to Himself, even if it failed to heal its author, was also envisaged as being “beneficial to o­ thers” (2.3) during a time of collective loss.62 If the Paetus correspondence from 46 offers a dynamic and adaptive portrait of Cicero’s retooling of his day and his life, two letters closer to the time of Cicero’s death in 43 allow us to see moments of further transformation or even closure. One of ­these is the letter from December 45 discussed in chapter 2 that describes how Caesar concluded his day by dining, together with his men, at Cicero’s h ­ ouse (Att. 13.52). That dinner can be read as the telos of the daily overtures to Caesareans that Cicero mentions to Paetus, as Cicero succeeds in being an elegant host to Caesar in person—­a lthough “once is enough” (13.52.2). The other letter is the last surviving piece from the Paetus correspondence, sent prob­ably at the end of February 43 (9.24), by which time Caesar was long dead and Cicero had delivered most of his Philippics and had also recently completed several of his major philosophical works, including On Duties. To indicate

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how conditions had deteriorated, Cicero mentions the recent plots against him, but ­there is news in Paetus’s life to grieve about, too: “I am upset over your having ceased to go regularly to dinners, for you have deprived yourself of much entertainment and plea­sure” (9.24.2). Cicero’s response is to make a concerted defense of convivia and their relevance to an idealized form of life, which eclipses hedonism, adding a new symbolic overlay to the routines of his e­ arlier Paetus letters: But by Hercules, my dear Paetus, joking aside, I advise you to live with men who are good, pleasant, and who love you [cum viris bonis, iucundis, amantibus tui vivas], which I judge to be essential for living happily [ad beate vivendum]. . . . ​I do not connect this with plea­sure, but with a community of life and of sustenance and an expression of minds. This is produced most of all through familiar conversation, which is sweetest in convivia. (9.24.3)

­ fter espousing the convivial ideal with its specifically Roman ideal of livA ing together (convivium) as opposed to the Greek drinking together (sumposion) and dining together (sundeipnein), Cicero then also explic­itly reverses the move described in 9.20.1 by backtracking from Epicureanism to a statesman’s cura once again: But if you love me, make sure you do not reckon that b­ ecause I am writing somewhat jokingly [quod iocosius scribam] I have cast aside my concern for the republic [abiecisse curam rei publicae]. Persuade yourself, my dear Paetus, that by day and by night I am ­doing nothing ­else [me dies et noctes nihil aliud agere], concerning myself with nothing [nihil curare], except that my citizens should be safe and ­free. I overlook no opportunity to advise, to act, to exercise foresight. Ultimately I am of the mind that if, in this concern [cura] and ser­vice, my life needs to be put aside, I should think that my case has been dealt with honorably [ praeclare actum mecum]. Once and again, farewell. (9.24.4)

In the final clauses Cicero reaffirms his willingness to match Cato, who had died “honorably” (praeclare) ([9.18.2]). Cicero’s former daily routine of overtures ­toward the Caesareans is now left far b­ ehind. But what are we to make of the fact that Cicero makes this statesman’s care (cura) the focus of his “days and nights” (dies et noctes)? For even as he seems to renounce Epicureanism by reembracing politics, at the same time he is likely latching onto another Epicurean motif, closing his letter just as Epicurus long ago had closed his letter To Menoeceus by urging his friend to “meditate . . . ​both day and night” (meleta . . . ​hêmeras kai nuktos) on the doctrines that would guar-

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antee both freedom from distress (ataraxia) and a godlike status among ­human beings (135).63 For Cicero, however, the carefree Epicurean ideal is once again a foil. Rather than detaching himself from care, he embraces it, and this is the quite un-­Epicurean route by which he seeks a statesman’s immortality.

Day of a Somebody (Horace, Satires 1.6) The Aversive Diarist Horace’s “diary of a Nobody,” as Emily Gowers terms it, comes at the end of Satires 1.6, published in 35 or 34 BCE. H ­ ere we encounter the fullest and most present-­oriented passage in that poem’s array of autobiographic sketches, which serves to intensify its already “strong temporal dimension.” 64 As a w ­ hole, the poem is concerned with defining and defending Horace’s h ­ umble origins—­being “born of a freedman f­ather”—­and his recent social elevation through his friendship with Maecenas, the poem’s addressee. Against this background the poet contrasts the ambitions and obligations of both aristocrat and social climber.65 Armstrong has suggested that in the passage early in the poem describing Horace’s first encounter with Maecenas we see a scene of salutatio.66 On that occasion, as Horace recalls, “I told [him] what I was” (quod eram narro) (60), ­a fter which Maecenas befriended Horace and took him on as a client and protégé. This was the salutatio to end all salutationes, evidently providing Horace with all he needed. Horace goes on to say that if he had been seeking wealth, which he was not, then “I would have needed to greet more men [salutandi plures] in the morning” (101). What Niall Rudd has called the poem’s main theme of freedom is subcategorized into Horace’s subsequent freedom from constraint and his freedom to follow his desires (respectively, “licet” and “libet” [104–5]).67 ­These manifestations of his security and autonomy, along with other moral dimensions of his vita, are reprised and dramatized in the culminating description of his routine. The “diary” passage is bookended by two parallel sentences that showcase the routine as a form of life defined by clear sociopo­liti­cal foils: “This is why I live [vivo] more comfortably [commodius] than you, distinguished senator, and thousands of ­others” (110–11) and “This is the life [vita] of ­those released from wretched and grievous ambition: I console myself that I ­will live [me . . . ​victurum] more smoothly [suavius] than if my grand­father, ­father, and ­uncle had been quaestors” (128–31). The criteria of evaluation by which Horace asserts superiority (commodius, suavius) have clear Epicurean resonances and serve as a cue for the reader to understand the day description not simply as marking social differentiation but as providing an ethical showcase:

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180  Ordering Lives Wherever I please, I walk on my own. I ask the price of veggies and grain. I wander through the trickster Circus, and often the eve­ning Forum. I stand by fortunetellers. Then I bring myself back home to a pot of leeks, chickpeas, and pasta. Dinner is served up by three slaves and two cups with a ladle stand on a white slab, a cheap bowl nearby, an oil-­flask with its dish—­Campanian ware. Next I go off to bed, not worrying that tomorrow I need to pay a greeting in the morning, I need to go see Marsyas, who shows he cannot bear the younger Novius’s face. I lie in till the fourth hour, ­a fter which I wander or, once I have read or written something that ­will please me in my silence, I have myself rubbed down with olive oil—­a nd not the sort on filthy Natta, filched from lamps. But when I am tired and the growing ferocity of the sun has put me in mind to go off to bathe, I flee the Campus and the triangle game. Lunching ungreedily on as much as can prevent me from g­ oing through the day with an empty stomach, I leisure myself at home. This is the life of ­those released from wretched and grievous ambition: I console myself that I w ­ ill live more smoothly than if my grand­father, f­ ather, and ­uncle had been quaestors. (111–31)68

The positive force of Horace’s “This is the life” (haec est / vita) contrasts dramatically with Cicero’s downcast declaration “This, then, is our life now” (haec igitur est nunc vita nostra).69 Further resemblances to Cicero ­here are equally indicative of the two authors’ opposite agendas. Where Cicero clings to the salutatio, Horace loves being f­ree of such obligation (119–20); where reading and writing for Cicero are a substitute form of public action, for Horace they are a casual act of ­silent self-­pleasuring (122–23); where Cicero wants in at the Caesarean banquet, Horace flees the “triangle game,” possibly a figure for the Second Triumvirate; Cicero’s concise summation of the rest of the day with “from that point onward all my time is given to the body” is bathetic and depressing, a symptom of grief, but for Horace the still more concise summation of his ­whole after­noon with “I leisure myself at home” (domesticus otior) is a boast and a consolation (consolor).70 In Horace there are many more straightforward resemblances to the Epicurean day evoked by Epictetus, such as his free desire (quacumque libido [111]; compare ha thelousin [Arr. Epict. diss. 3.24.38–41]); slow rising (ad quartam iaceo [122]; compare anastantes eph’

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­hêsuchias); walking around (incedo [112], vagor [122]; compare peripatos); and bathing (lavatum [125]; compare lousasthai). The key Greek Epicurean notions scholars have detected behind Horace’s account include freedom from distress (ataraxia; compare non sollicitus [119]), living unnoticed (lathe biôsas; compare domesticus otior, [128]), and pleasure (hêdonê; compare suavius [130]).71 Yet as the case of Cicero shows, ­t here is more than one way to be Epicurean and more than one way in which Epicurean ideas can be manifested in a daily routine. Horace’s day unfolds as a seemingly coherent itinerary, a series of first-­person pre­sent indicatives, virtually all verbs of locomotion, that take him through the city and home again twice over, “the simplicity of the syntax mirror[ing] the simplicity of the lifestyle.”72 This simplicity, however, is the product of what I call a highly “aversive” dynamic, with the satirist’s body moving against the tide both temporally and spatially. His account begins in the eve­ning and proceeds next t­ oward morning, giving the impression of a regular routine thrown into reverse. The spaces of the Forum and Circus that Horace visits are alien, inhabited by a nocturnal personnel such as divini (114), who are “fortune tellers” and not priests, while his wandering (pererro [113]; vagor [122]) “may evoke the pastoral world of Virgil’s Eclogues, where ‘sheep may safely graze,’ ” and his sequence of exercise and bathing before lunch, in keeping with the regimen of ­those enjoying Greek leisure as we know it from Diocles of Carystus (frag. 182.3), are to the Roman eye at least “ignoring protocol.”73 His centripetal homeward journeys are the opposite of a public-­oriented escort into the Forum. This temporal and spatial aversion is equally a social aversion, ­here figured as solitude. The Epicureans mocked by Epictetus speak to groups of flattering friends and do not sleep alone (Arr. Epict. diss. 3.24.39), and in Cicero the Epicurean camp is assembled in a convivium. Horace’s w ­ hole day, by contrast, as Oliensis observes, is “set in the key of the adjective solus (‘solitary,’ 112).”74 Cicero’s solitude is a pose of reluctant otium and public ser­vice conducted by other means, whereas Horace actively cultivates both solitude and otium as signs of a superior life. His opening phrase “I walk on my own” (incedo solus) marks this solitude as a freedom of movement that is also a freedom from schedules, such as the morning obligations to attend the salutatio or the Forum (119–20). As Gowers has noted, the language of clientela (seeking patronage) recurs throughout Horace’s day but is now repurposed to describe casual private actions that simply draw attention to clientela’s absence.75 Walking in Roman culture was, as O’­Sullivan emphasizes, a social activity and “a marker of identity,” such that the anonymous flaneurism of Horace h ­ ere is a stark exception to the rule, and

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his flouting of temporal restrictions is no less flagrant.76 Horace’s reading, writing, and ­silent musing mark a space of interiority from which even his audience and patron are excluded, just as Maecenas, clearly identified as the addressee in the preceding parts of the satire (1, 47, 63, ­etc.), has been set aside during the poem’s closing dumbshow. Oliensis notes the con­spic­u­ous lack of any hint that Horace dines with Maecenas, which plays into the overall strategy of “defensive irony” she sees at play in the poem.77 As he dines at his frugal t­ able alone, more personality is ascribed to the ­table items of the “exquisite still life” than to the three slaves who are pre­sent.78 As recent commentators have noted, the agency of enslaved persons is elided at multiple moments, such as when Horace says, “I have myself rubbed down with olive oil [unguor].”79 This solitude, however, is performative; as the existence of his book itself and its vehement social commentary suggest, Horace is not striving for anonymity or an abrogation of social agency but instead “courts an alternative kind of envy” that ­will enhance the authority of his satiric persona.80 His status as a somebody is predicated, at least in Satires 1.6, precisely on his willingness to be a nobody: the solitary walk concludes with “I bring myself back home” (domum me . . . ​refero), which concretizes the humility of the e­ arlier line “Now I return to myself born of a freedman ­father” (nunc ad me redeo libertino patre natum) (45). The satirist aggressively prefers to live without the ambition of the senator (110), the novus homo or arriviste (121), or the social climber (124), but it is “from this cata­logue of negative types,” Gowers observes, “that the ‘nobody’ H. emerges to define his singular identity.”81

Shifting Schedules That diary fragment does not purport to be the last word on the daily routine of the satirist—­far from it. The iterative mode of the passage itself is clear from terms such as “saepe” (“often”), “aut” (“or”), and “ubi” (“whenever”) that indicate day-­to-­day variation, as if covering all contingencies (114, 122–23, 125). And yet the specificity of some of the details—­especially the food and vessels on his dinner t­ able—­points less to repeated days than to a single emblematic day, a diary entry written in the historic pre­sent tense. Any sense of exact repetition, in any case, is dispelled a few poems ­later in the collection, where we see Horace fighting to retain autonomy over his time. The “pest” satire (1.9) begins with Horace walking in a manner not inconsistent with 1.6, though now details are added about his private composition of poetry: “I happened to be walking on the Via Sacra, as is my habit, musing on some trifle or other, totally absorbed [nescio quid meditans nugarum, totus in il-

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lis]” (1–2).82 Quickly, however, we learn that it is much e­ arlier in the morning than was allowed, per 1.6—­“I lie in till the fourth hour” (ad quartam iaceo)—­ and the poem goes on to teach us about the opportunity costs that a would-be social climber is prepared to incur.83 For the pest explains that his accompaniment of Horace (i.e., adsectatio [6]) and his desire to join Maecenas’s retinue (i.e., deductio [59]) both require him to repurpose the time he had hoped to use for winning a l­egal dispute: “I w ­ ill make time [tempora quaeram]. . . . ​Life gives nothing to mortals without g­ reat toil” (58–60; see also 37). As an unpleasant consequence of his “somebody” status that did not arise in 1.6, Horace himself is incon­ve­nienced beyond the third hour of the day, “one quarter of the day already past” (quarta iam parte diei / praeterita) (35). The poem concludes with Horace’s day restored to him only as the pest is swept back into the bustle (concursus) of a l­egal proceeding (78). Horace pushes back more directly against the temporal implications of being well connected in the much l­ater Epistles 1.7 (published in 20 or 19 BCE). This letter, written a­ fter the end of August, begins with the poet conceding that he has delayed his return to the city so as to avoid catching fever—­fall being the season when the urban daily routine can r­ eally kill, as “assiduous meeting of obligations and hard work in the Forum [officiosa . . . ​sedulitas et opella forensis] brings on fevers and unseals w ­ ills and testaments” (8–9). Horace, though describing himself to Maecenas as “your bard” (vates tuus) (11), goes on to explain that he values his times of leisure (otia) above any monetary gift (36). The concluding story of Philippus and Volteius (46–95) describes an insistent, even predatory patronage in which one prestigious daily time scheme colonizes a lesser one, with a miserable outcome. While Volteius is first discovered living an unambitious life that has him “in the morning [mane] hawking cheap junk to the tunic-­clad multitude” (64–65) and then “taking plea­sure . . . ​in the games and the Campus ­after the end of business [ post decisa negotia]” (58–59), the aristocrat Philippus encounters him at the end of his own busier day, “when he returns from his round of duties, around the eighth hour [ab officiis octavam circiter horam]” (47–48). Volteius declines Philippus’s impromptu dinner invitation, but Philippus accosts him the next morning in a proactive salutatio (65–66) and insists, “You’ll come ­a fter the ninth [hour]” (post nonam venies) (71). When the dinner goes well and Volteius “fi­nally is allowed to go to bed” (tandem dormitum dimittitur) (73), he first becomes Philippus’s “morning client and now reliable guest” (mane cliens et iam certus conviva) (75) and soon is lavished with gifts that allow him to become a country dweller (rusticus) (83). This suggests a liberation from urban time altogether, but soon enough Volteius goes

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bankrupt, and Horace recounts how his plea “return me to my old life” (vitae me redde priori) (95) erupts suddenly “­after midnight” (media de nocte) (88). The nocturnal time indication dramatizes how far Volteius has been dragged from his pristine, low-­stress daily schedule. While Satires 1.9 exposes the vulnerability of Horace’s autonomous day in the city and Epistles 1.7 hints at the good and bad effects of Maecneas’s gifts on Horace’s personal time, both sets of considerations are elegantly interwoven in Satires 2.6, published in the intervening period of 31–30 BCE.84 This was the first of Horace’s poems to register the gift of the Sabine farm, and the poem is also universally recognized as a sequel to 1.6, given that it spells out how completely Horace’s daily routine has changed now that he can no longer conceal his “somebody” status in the city.85 Nowadays, we discover, an aversive routine on its own is not enough to shelter Horace from the rat race of ambition (18): he requires a starker, spatial separation.86 “When I have removed myself from the city, into the mountains and my citadel,” he asks, “what am I to illuminate first with my satires and my pedestrian muse?” (16–17). He chooses to rehearse in vivid terms his hectic morning in the city, though he soon pre­sents his urban self in the throes of fantasizing about an eve­ning spent in the countryside, thereby giving the poem a spatially varied yet diurnally coherent structure, as scholars have noticed.87 The urban morning is a patchwork of solemn prayer, epic satirization, and vivid realism as Horace tells the time of the day’s beginning in multiple registers: Morning f­ ather [matutine pater]—or if you prefer to be called Janus, from whom ­people begin the first efforts of their works and life (so did it please the gods)—­you be the beginning of my poem. At Rome you seize me to serve as a guarantor: “Hey, move it! ­Don’t let anyone beat you to meeting your obligation!” (20–24)

He intensifies this account of the morning bustle by invoking standard seasonal pressures and cyclic imagery: “­W hether the north wind grates the earth or winter draws the snowy day in a tighter circle [bruma nivalem / interiore diem gyro trahit], g­ oing is mandatory” (25–26). But he also refers to his own obligations: “It was Roscius’s request that you be pre­sent at the Puteal tomorrow before the second [hour] [ante secundam]!” (34–35). Horace has now been in Maecenas’s circle for seven years and is on intimate terms with him. Their chitchat (or is it the request a master makes of a slave?) includes “What is the hour?” (hora quota est?) (44).88 While Horace is clearly boasting, he also pre­sents their daily rou-

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tine as nearly bringing him to his breaking point: “Through this ­whole time our fellow is becoming vulnerable to resentment, more so each day—no, moreso each hour!” (per totum hoc tempus subiectior in diem et horam / invidiae noster) (47–48). Kenneth Reckford, who makes an intriguing argument that Horace plays on the “hora” in his name “not just for occasional fun” but “as a way of asserting, and sometimes exploring, his personal identity beneath the shifting personae of his life and craft,” sees intensive wordplay in Satires 2.6 (e.g., orabant and Quinte [37]) as “represent[ing] Quintus (Horatius) as a ‘fifth-­hour man,’ caught up in a whirl of obligations that seem to multiply.”89 This urban day renews Horace’s fantasy of getting out of town, of redefining his experience of “hours,” and of recovering the freedom from anxiety he had previously been able to experience in the city (recorded in 1.6 in his reference to being “not worried” [non sollicitus] [119]): The day is wasted [ perditur . . . ​lux] amid t­ hese ­things, not without prayers: O countryside, when ­will I see you, and when w ­ ill it be permitted [licebit] for me, now in the books of the ancients, now in sleep and empty hours [inertibus horis], to enjoy pleasant forgetting of the anxious life [sollicitae iucunda oblivia vitae]? (59–62)

The new repository of Horace’s Epicurean ideals is the festivity he envisages in his eve­ning in the countryside: “O nights and dinners of the gods [o noctes cenaeque deum], which I and mine enjoy before my own h ­ ouse­hold god! And I feed my cheeky homeborn slaves on selected portions, as is the desire for each” (65– 67). The subject of the philosophical sermo that the urban Horace is depicted as imagining he w ­ ill engage in at his rustic eve­ning meal (73–76) reflects the broader concerns of his Satires and Epistles and itself may include not simply “the meaning of life” but “the meaning of natu­ral and h ­ uman time.”90

Other Satirists of Urban Days Horace’s Satires 1.6 and 2.6 are hardly the only Roman satirizations of quotidian city life, but they stand out for the extent to which they use the urban scene as a ground against which to figure the daily routine of the author himself. ­Earlier in the tradition, Lucilius describes the Forum with striking emphasis on both diurnal totality and quotidian sameness: But now from morning to night, on festive days and plain, the w ­ hole ­people and the senators, alike and the same, all toss themselves around in the Forum and nowhere yield.

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186  Ordering Lives [nunc vero a mani ad noctem, festo atque profesto totus item pariterque die populusque patresque iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam.] (1145–47)91

But that is primarily the scene of a daily strug­gle among men to cheat one another—­what Lactantius calls a depiction of the tenebrosa vita (life of darkness) (Div. inst. 5.9)—­and not, as far as we can tell from the fragment, a setting for his own day.92 Closer in time to Horace, Lucretius mocks p ­ eople’s circular daily itineraries: “This man,” he observes, “bored of being at home, often goes out of his g­ reat ­house and suddenly returns, since he finds that outdoors t­ here is nothing better” (3.1060–62). Against this foil, the life of the Epicurean stands out: he ­will “first seek to learn the nature of ­things, since what is at stake is the state of time eternal, not of a single hour [temporis aeterni quoniam, non unius horae, / ambigitur status]” (1072–74). Lucretius does not exactly offer an alternative Epicurean routine such as we see in Horace, though he does assume a transcendent viewpoint s­ haped by dawn imagery in his portrayals of Venus and Epicurus (1.5, 9; 3.1–2). The closest we come to a Lucretian routine is “staying awake through the serene nights” (noctes vigilare serenas) describing the poet’s own lucubration in ser­vice of a science that ­will illuminate obscure topics better even than the “light-­ bringing shafts of day” (lucida tela diei) (1.142, 146). Even ­later in the tradition, the authorial persona in Juvenal’s first satire speaks up to counteract the literary recitations that steal his time: “­Will a huge Telephus get away unpunished a­ fter using up the day [inpune diem consumpserit]?” (1.4–5).93 Then, over the course of his first book, Juvenal satirizes the entirety of the Roman day in what Susanna Braund calls a “chronological movement” that begins with the sarcastic ushering in of the day: “The day itself is differentiated by a splendid ordering” (ipse dies pulchro distinguitur ordine rerum) (1.127). That ordering is then reviewed, described as including “An allowance [from the patron], then the Forum, and Apollo the ­lawyer” (1.128). Rome’s disorderly day proceeds further, as Braund notes, through Satires 3’s “twenty-­ four hour cata­logue of horrors, starting with insomnia and the duties of the morning and finishing with the dangers of the eve­ning and the night.”94 It concludes in the dinner party of Satires 5. In Juvenal’s centerpiece passage on a day in Rome (3.232–308), a few positive or at least tranquil experiences of time are alluded to, such as that of the wealthy man who commutes to the salutatio by litter and “­will read or write en route or ­will nap within [obiter leget aut scribet vel dormiet intus]—­since with the win­

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dow closed the litter allows for sleep” (241–42). But such moments inevitably draw attention to the suffering of the everyday Roman, who must scramble to the salutatio but even then ­will not get ­there first (243) and who at the other end of the day must face “the array of night’s ­hazards” (diversa pericula noctis) (268).95 When the speaker signals his own h ­ umble status and time experience (he is “used to getting home by moonlight or the dim light of a candle, economizing on its wick”), he does so simply by way of explaining why his nocturnal assailant must scorn him (286–88). True, after Juvenal’s friend Umbricius describes this Roman day as he departs the city we receive a brief glimpse of the pastoral time scheme he is embracing as an alternative: “I could have added more besides to this chain of reasons, but my beasts of burden summon me and the sun is sloping [sed iumenta vocant et sol inclinat]” (315–16). But this is only a hint, and Umbricius himself may be misguided: he does not speak for Juvenal’s satiric persona in any straightforward sense. Beyond Horace’s Satires 1.6, it is not u ­ ntil such works as Seneca’s On the Brevity of Life, and then Pliny’s letters (e.g., Ep. 1.9), which build on Seneca, that we see the author pivoting from satirizing the day to offering a full-­fledged idealization of a superior routine for himself and/or his reader—as I show in chapter 7.

“Before Sunrise I Call for My Pen . . .”? Our point of entry into Satires 1.6 was Horace’s use of the nonchalant, “Epicurean” motif for referring to his reading and writing as he describes his morning: “I lie in ­until the fourth hour, ­after which I wander or, once I have read or written something that ­will please me in my silence [ post hanc vagor aut ego lecto / aut scripto quod me tacitum iuvet], I have myself rubbed down with olive oil.” Commenting on t­hese verses, Michael Brown rehearses the vari­ous ways in which scholars have sought to read between the lines. One reading, for example, discovers a predawn lucubration (lucubratio antelucana) that Horace conducts while he is still lying down. But as Brown points out, “If the sentence gives a misleading impression, it is ­because Horace is more concerned to emphasise his in­de­pen­dence than his industry, which is no doubt deliberately and ironically played down.”96 As Oliensis puts it, “The inconspicuous place accorded to Horace’s writing erases any suggestion that the officia of Maecenas’ friend might include the production of poems.”97 This is not to deny the hints of Horace’s poetic pro­cess. As we have seen, for example, Horace’s description of himself as having “read or written something that w ­ ill please [him] in [his] silence,” and as g­ oing on solitary walks, seems to be expanded on in the opening of Satires 1.9, where he recounts how he proceeds alone, albeit at an ­earlier

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hour, “musing on some trifle or other, totally absorbed” (nescio quid meditans nugarum, totus in illis). Both of ­these passages, in turn, might be understood as briefer reminders of a sketch Horace gives in Satires 1.4, where he reclines and walks while pondering questions relevant to the stern satirist: “For when I am on my bed [lectulus]” (or alternatively, “couch”) “or in a portico [ porticus], I am not absent to myself: ‘This is right. D ­ oing this I ­will live better [hoc faciens vivam melius].’ ” (133–35). And then, “I go over ­t hese ­t hings to myself, ­under my breath [haec ego mecum / conpressis agito labris]. Whenever I have some leisure [ubi quid datur oti], I capture them on the page [includo chartis]” (137–39).98 The bed/couch ­here sets the scene for Horace’s lie-in of Satires 1.6—­“I lie in till the fourth hour”—­just as the portico sets the scene for his wandering ­there (vagor). The phrase “whenever I have some leisure [oti]” predisposes us to read 1.6’s postlunch “I leisure [otior] myself at home” as referring to a time for literary creativity.99 ­Later in Horace’s c­ areer, diurnal time comes to serve a broader variety of goals for staging literary study than it does in book 1 of Satires, which highlights a poetic pro­cess that is informal, f­ ree from obligation, and private. In Satires 2.6, as we have seen, the satiric voice speaks not from the setting of a lazy day but from the space of rustic retreat (16–17), and that poem gives us reason to think of the eve­ning dinners as the primal scene in which “speech arises” (sermo oritur) (71), although it is not clear ­whether speech is the same ­thing as writing. In the second poem of book 1 of Epistles, in turn, Horace laments that ­people’s motives for rising before dawn have nothing to do with reading. We are like a suitor of Penelope, he writes, “to whom it was a fine ­t hing to sleep into the ­middle of each day [in medios dormire dies] and to fall asleep to the tune of the lyre. Bandits rise before daylight [surgunt de nocte latrones] to cut someone’s throat. Do you not awake even to save yourself [ut te ipsum serves, non expergisceris]?” (30–33). But ­things ­will be dif­fer­ent when misfortune strikes and we have need of comforting. Then, he says, “if you d ­ on’t demand a book and a lamp before daybreak [ni / posces ante diem librum cum lumine], if you d ­ on’t concentrate your mind [intendes animum] on studies and honest ­things, you ­will instead lie awake tortured [vigil torquebere] by envy or passion” (33–37). The suitor foil, with his attachment to banqueting, crime, anxiety, or lust, “postpones the hour for living rightly” (vivendi . . . ​recte prorogat horam) (41). Horace appears to own an early morning writing habit in the first epistle in book 2 (c. 11 BCE), but he inscribes this within a Roman literary and moral history that raises as many questions as it answers.100 His initial sketch of this

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history follows a diurnal structure, beginning, “For a long time at Rome it was sweet and normal to be awake in the morning [mane . . . ​vigilare], open up one’s ­house, and dispense justice to clients” (103–4). But he then describes the decline that has ensued: “The ­people, fickle, changed their mind and are hot for one pursuit, writing” (108–9), and “boys and stern ­fathers alike dine [cenant] with garlands in their hair and tell poems [carmina dictant]” (109–10). Horace then mentions himself, supposedly to illustrate how widespread Romans’ addiction to superficial and spontaneous poetry writing has become: “I myself, who affirm that I do not write any verses, am found to be more of a liar than the Parthians, and waking before sunrise I call for my pen, pages, and book box [ prius orto / sole vigil calamum et chartas et scrinia posco]” (111–13). But if this formulation is intended primarily to show just how far the cancer of bad poetry has spread, Horace’s early morning wakefulness also suggests his reappropriation of an ancient authority.101 And if Horace’s saying “I myself . . . ​a ffirm that I do not write any verses” (ego ipse . . . ​nullos me adfirmo scribere versus) (111) is meant at the most basic level to identify him as an a fortiori example (i.e., even the nonwriter writes), on another level it shows Horace admitting that the retirements he has announced in the course of his ­c areer, such as his laying aside of lyric poetry in 21 BCE (versus . . . ​pono [Ep. 1.1.10]), ­were never ­really final. As Rudd points out, at the time he wrote epistle 2.1 Horace had recently produced the Carmen saeculare and the fourth book of Odes (17 BCE).102 This helps us to spotlight the dissimulative implications of epistle 2.2 from a few years e­ arlier (19 BCE), where he gives his fullest sketch of the temporal obstacles to writing poetry in the city. As in Satires 2.6, Horace begins with the scene of morning officia (65–70) during which “this one calls [me] to serve as guarantor” (hic sponsum vocat) (66), and he then points to the countryside and the eve­ning as offering appropriate spatiotemporal conditions for the writing of lyric: “The w ­ hole chorus of writers love a grove and flee the city, being rightful clients of Bacchus whose pleasures are sleep and shadow. How can you want me to sing and to follow in the strict footsteps of bards, while the cacophony goes on night and day [inter strepitus nocturnos atque diurnos]?!” (77–80). The poet thus pre­sents an alternative routine of bacchic officia as substitutes for the city’s ceaseless grind. As this epistle itself amply demonstrates, however, the city continues to provide rich material for the virtuoso “prosaic” writing that is the mode of his Satires (2.6.17 [musaque pedestri]) and that continues in the Epistles. As the restart of Horace’s lyric ­c areer following epistle 2.2 further shows, Horace can indeed find the times and spaces he needs for writing “poetry”

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too—­whether in the city (giving the lie to his protests) or in the setting of rural otium the Sabine farm gives him access to.

Rituals of the Lyric Day We encounter other forms of Epicurean life and Roman life in the day patterns of Horatian lyric. The “prose” Horace, first as a nobody and then as a somebody, averts his life from the intrusive quotidian schedule of the city. In the “poetic” Horace of the Odes additional temporal challenges are salient: mortality and, at the end of the day, ephemerality.103 The lyric Horace embraces time techniques such as presentism, synchronization, iteration, and immortalization—­a ll of ­these employed frequently in painting the canvas of the day. Denis Feeney notes how evocations of time in Horatian lyric such as “the times which once and for all the fleeting day has closed and stored away in the calendar known to all” (tempora quae semel / notis condita fastis / inclusit volucris dies) (4.13.14–16) rest on specifically Roman calendrical discourse—in this instance “a mode of apprehending time as an organised grid through which natu­ral time flows, or flies.”104 Alessandro Barchiesi draws attention to how Horace’s lyric persona asserts “defensive control over anx­i­eties” by focusing on “marked, single occasions,” “marked, ritualised times of life,” opportunities for reper­for­mance, and so on.105 In famous verses Horace tells Leuconoe: “While we speak, our life, jealous with its time, ­will have fled. Seize the day [carpe diem], trusting ­little in the next [day]” (1.11.7–8). Barchiesi, however, emphasizes Alfonso Traina’s reading in which “carpere” “conveys not rushed pleasures but the attempt to slow down the pre­sent, as if by plucking and grazing.”106 “Carpe diem” in the sense of “grazing” rather than the sense of “seize the day” would seem to be allied with, or even a version of, a pervasive day-­based motif in Horace that refers to the “breaking” of a “solid” (solidus) or “untouched” (integer) day.107 Together with his friend Pompeius, he recalls, he has “often broken a lingering day with straight wine” (morantem saepe diem mero / fregi) (2.7.5– 7). The motif does evoke a hedonistic grasping of the opportunity before it dis­appears—as in poem 13 of the Epodes in which he exclaims, “Friends, let us seize the occasion from the day” (rapiamus, amici, occasionem de die) (3–4). But it evokes, too, the joys of breaking the day in two, allowing time for both action and leisure, and a pleas­ur­able dissolution of diurnal time through the effects of wine. Chief among Horace’s terms for denoting the passage of time is “hora” in the sense of “hour,” accentuating brevity. In Odes 3.8, he directs Maecenas to “take the gifts of the pre­sent hour and be happy” (dona praesentis cape

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laetus horae) (27), and as I note in the introduction to this book, his focus on the “hora” that ravages the fertile day (almum / quae rapit hora diem) (4.7.8–9) involves “hora” in the sense of each “hour” that passes, albeit intensified by the pro­cess of the hour’s seasonal shortening through fall and winter.108 At other moments Horace’s lyric time is less focused on the internal temporalities of the day and on sublimating ephemerality than it is on immortalization as a product of synchronizing a poem’s time with larger temporal schemes that promise f­ uture iteration. To some extent such an ambition is baked into the temporality of the Odes. Michèle Lowrie has argued that a feature especially distinctive of Horace’s lyric is “the way the utterance of a speaking ego inscribes the ever-­recurring pre­sent into the fabric of the text,” which she terms “the time of writing,” distinguishing this both from the “idealized temporality” of natu­ral cycles and the “contingent temporality” of finite h ­ uman life.109 How Horace seeks to secure a transcendent iteration for his diurnally located “time of writing” is exemplified in three moments from three consecutively published lyric poems in which certain ­grand, external quotidian time schemes are invoked. First, in the final poem of book 3 of Odes, Horace specifically ties his famous monumentalization of his poetic reputation to a repeated Roman ritual: his fame ­will live on “so long as the priest together with the s­ilent virgin s­hall climb the Capitol” (dum Capitolium / scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex) (30.8–9). The shred of evidence we possess concerning a pos­si­ble ritual alluded to h ­ ere suggests that it may have been an annual (rather than daily) prayer for the republic, conducted each Ides of March.110 Yet on its surface the vivid description evokes an iterated day. Then, as if to intensify this effect when he returned to lyric poetry some years ­later, in the first poem of book 4 of the Odes, Horace begins by describing to Venus the daily rituals that ­will be carried out for her, presumably at day’s beginning and end, when she is enshrined by the Alban lake: “­There, twice a day [illic bis . . . ​die], boys together with delicate virgins, praising your divine power, ­will beat the ground with their white feet three times in the Salian manner” (25–28). Horace’s most emphatic synchronization between his time of writing and quotidian rituals comes in the Carmen saeculare produced in the intervening period (17 BCE): Nurturing Sun, who with shining chariot bring the day and bury it and are born dif­fer­ent and same, may it never be pos­si­ble for you to look upon anything greater than the city of Rome.

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Though much e­ lse can always be said about t­ hese verses, for our purposes it is enough to note how the singers’ apostrophe to the sun evokes its daily return in terms that suggest fluctuation from one day to the next and over longer time periods (“dif­fer­ent”) but equally a reliable iteration and sameness—­where “idem” (“same”), as Michael Putnam notes, plays on the form of “diem” (“day”).111 In this context the quotidian time scheme of the sun’s return—­the quotidian time scheme—is not, of course, solely an image of natu­ral permanence. The sun’s witnessing of Rome’s superlative greatness on a day-­by-­day basis is intimately tied to its other dynamics familiar from elsewhere in Horace and in Augustan culture, ­whether as Apollo, as a trope for the figure of Augustus, or as the body that with its rising and setting “defines the extent of empire.”112 In Horace’s own commentary on the Carmen saeculare in Odes 4.6 that culminates with the young singer’s ­future boast that she sang the poem of “bard Horace” (vatis Horati) (44), we hear the poet celebrate “his finest hour,” argues Reckford: “As Hora-­tius, he knows the time, he keeps time for the per­for­mance with the movement of his thumb, . . . ​but his private timekeeping serves larger public and celebratory meanings.”113 Reckford, however, appears to see this as Horace’s claiming something that he ­later warns, in the melancholy mode of Odes 4.7, was ultimately not pos­si­ble. “That you not hope for immortal t­ hings is warned by the year and the hora that ravages the nurturing day [almum / quae rapit hora diem]” (8–9).114 Cicero and Horace stand as two authors who pre­sent their daily writing schedules in plausibly deniable terms. Each experiment with an Epicureanizing day pattern and life-­form—­Cicero in his quest to replace his statesman’s life ­under Caesar and Horace in his leaning into his life as a nobody-­somebody at the edge of the nascent Augustan era. In the following chapter we move ahead to the more ostentatious literary schedules of Martial and Pliny in a much l­ater imperial microclimate, from the reign of Domitian to the early years of Trajan.

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ch a pter 7

Literary Days Martial and Pliny the Younger

The Day as Factory of Lit­er­a­ture “The tenth, Euphemus, is the hour of my l­ittle books.” Thus announces Martial in his poem detailing the activities of Romans at each numbered hour in a typical urban day (Epigr. 4.8.7). Martial’s reference to a precise time of day for his poems may be compared with Pliny’s two letters describing his own days at his villas in summer and winter, which chart all the stages in the pro­cess of literary composition ranging from the initial act of invention to memorizing a polished speech—­each of ­these occurring during specific parts of the day from early morning to late eve­ning (Ep. 9.36, 9.40). In Martial and Pliny we encounter a more ostentatious schedule of literary activities than we saw in the plausibly deniable writing of Cicero and Horace in their Epicureanizing routines. We are also dealing with two authors who inhabited a changed social and po­liti­cal context, over a ­century ­later, ­under the Flavian emperors and their successors.1 Writers Clock In Martial’s and Pliny’s portraits of their literary schedules are part of a broader Roman discourse in which literary or rhetorical activities, at vari­ous stages of the dynamic pro­cess of Roman text production and publication, are frequently

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connected to a specific diurnal or quotidian framework.2 Suetonius’s history of rhetoricians in Rome includes time information. One teacher is said to have “declaimed and disputated on alternating days [alternis diebus]” or sometimes to have subdivided the day to the same effect, “being in the habit of lecturing in the morning [mane] and removing his stand and declaiming in the after­noon [ post meridiem]” (4.6).3 Donatus’s Life of Virgil famously describes how it was the poet’s habit when composing his Georgics “to dictate a g­ reat many verses he had in­ven­ted in the morning [cotidie meditatos mane plurimos versus dictare solitus] and by revising them throughout the day to reduce them to just a few [ per totum diem retractando ad paucissimos redigere]” (22).4 The same biography mentions a ­later stage in the Georgics’ production when Virgil, in the presence of Octavian ­a fter the ­battle of Actium, “read for four consecutive days [ per continuum quadriduum],” being relieved by Maecenas when his voice wore out (27). Another reciting poet recalled by Seneca wears out his audience’s patience. Julius Montanus, the “tolerable poet” notorious for incessant descriptions of sunrises and sunsets as well as for reciting all day long, is mocked by one audience member, who asks “Can I be more generous? I am willing to listen to him from sunrise to sunset [ paratus sum illum audire ab ortu ad occasum]” (Ep. 122.11) and in so ­doing exploits the poem’s internal time obsessions to short-­circuit its public lifespan. Writers including Aulus Gellius in Attic Nights use a nocturnal scene of writing as “an auspicious preface to a text’s entry into the world of its audience, or to the entry of the audience into the world of the text.”5 The satirist Persius seems to push against this discourse, propelling himself into a self-­ironizing morning scene of writing. He first evokes a sleep-­in: “This once more, without ceasing [adsidue]! Now bright morning enters through the win­dows [iam clarum mane fenestras / intrat] and widens the narrow cracks with light. We snore on [stertimus] for as long as is needed to take the foam off the sleepless Falernian wine, ­until the line is touched by the fifth shadow [quinta dum linea tangitur umbra]” (3.1–4). Then follows the detailed description of his hangover and headache and his frustrations with pen and ink (9–14); the poet’s dysfunctional attempts at writing w ­ ill fool neither himself nor his friend, who reacts by calling him a “loser and more of a loser by the day [in . . . ​dies]” (15). Persius’s scene is the opposite of lucubration, both temporally and ideologically. Or rather, if Jennifer Ferriss-­Hill is right, we are witnessing Persius’s morning-­after recovery from a failed experiment in combining “the motif of the night-­writing poet” with “the wine-­drinking poet”—­something he hoped, based on his reading of specific poems in Horace, would be especially conducive to the writing of sat-

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ire.6 It is worth noting in this connection that Persius sleeps in a ­whole hour longer than Horace, who proclaims that “I lie in till the fourth” (ad quartam iaceo) (Serm. 1.6.122). Poetry requires long work but only results in brief benefits, according to the orator Marcus Aper in Tacitus’s Dialogue on Orators. Aper mocks how a poet, “­after he has hammered out and lucubrated [excudit et elucubravit] a single book for an entire year through ­every day [ per omnes dies] and a ­great part of the nights [magna noctium parte], is required to beg and hustle”—­after which any praises pass away “within one or two days” (intra unum aut alterum diem) (9.3– 4) just as picked flowers wilt quickly.7 This image serves for Aper as a foil for his equally specific account of the enjoyments that the orator experiences “virtually on ­every day and at ­every hour” (omnibus prope diebus ac prope omnibus horis) (6.1). He chronicles the orator’s day from salutatio onward, from “seeing one’s ­house always full and crowded” and “coming out accompanied by men in togas” to “being seen in public” and “being revered in the law courts” and culminating in “the joy that comes from arising and standing t­ here amid a s­ ilent crowd intent on you alone” (6.1–4). That daily routine in the courts might surpass even the festive days on which he undergoes rites of passage such as receiving the broad stripe (latus clavus) that makes him a senator (7.1).

Pliny’s Factory Yet no authors “clock in” more frequently and more ambitiously than Pliny and Martial. Stanley Hoffer, in a chapter on Pliny entitled “Villas as Factories of Lit­ er­a­ture,” quotes Pliny’s letter to his friend Caninius Rufus in Comum that unfolds as a series of questions that “mark out a temporal schedule of activities in the villa, first exercising in the riding grounds, then having a bath and dinner, and fi­nally withdrawing to the bedrooms (cubicula) where the serious business of studying and writing goes on”—­bedrooms that include “day ones and night ones” (diurna nocturna) (1.3.1).8 Such descriptions, I suggest, permit us to see the day, no less than the villa, as a factory of lit­er­a­ture. In a ­later letter detailing his own villa in Laurentum, Pliny mentions “a private room curved in an arc [cubiculum in hapsida curvatum], which follows the rotation of the sun [ambitum solis . . . ​sequitur] through all its win­dows.” Its wall features “a bookcase . . . ​that contains books to be read not just once but over and over [non legendos libros sed lectitandos]” (2.17.8). This account pre­ sents a seamless interpenetration of rounded domestic space, the shape of the day, and quotidian iteration. Before Pliny describes his own days in detail at the end of his correspondence, he offers us passing glimpses of day-­shaped literary practices. When he praises

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the writings of his con­temporary Pomponius Saturninus, who writes not only orations but also poetry and letters, he does so using the structure of his own daily studies: “And so he is with me through the entire day [ per diem totum]: I read the same man before I write [antequam scribam], the same one when I am done writing [cum scripsi], the same one even when I relax [etiam cum remittor]—­ though not [viewing him] as the same one” (1.16.7). The diurnal framing offers a variegated picture of Saturninus’s polygeneric writings keyed to the dif­fer­ent modes and moods of Pliny’s day. In a less sympathetic sketch of the recently deceased Silius Italicus, who lived a “laudable leisure,” Pliny describes a kind of de­cadent salon in which the poet “received morning greetings, was the center of attention, and, lying on his couch for much of the time, . . . ​spent his days in erudite conversations [doctissimis sermonibus dies transigebat]—­when he had time spare from his writing” (3.7.4).9 He uses diurnal markers to tag his own public speaking. Recounting his defense of Julius Bassus (Ep. 4.9), he mentions time details—­A ndrew Riggsby’s “stopwatch” time—to make a succession of points: that out of the nine hours assigned to the defense Pliny was allotted five; that he made his case succinctly, so that when “nightfall interrupted [his] speech” (actionem meam . . . ​ nox diremit), “as in ­battles,” Pliny was tempted to conclude his speech ­there, even though “an hour and a half remained” (supererat sesquihora) of his allotted time; that he used up the rest of his allotted time the next day only ­after tearful pleas from the defendant; and that the prosecutor Theophanes, by contrast, “claimed time for himself, and indeed a rather generous amount [tempus sibi et quidem laxius vindicavit],” and as a consequence “spoke through nightfall and indeed by night, with lamps brought in” (dixit in noctem atque etiam nocte inlatis lucernis) (9–14).10 Pliny puts himself in an even more favorable light when he recounts the trial of Priscus presided over by Trajan himself: “I spoke for almost five hours. For to the twelve very capacious clepsydrae I had received, four more ­were added” (dixi horis paene quinque; nam duodecim clepsydris, quas spatiosissimas acceperam, sunt additae quattuor) (2.11.14).11 But while the clepsydra could vividly mea­sure out the expansiveness of Pliny’s oratorical standing, it also had the potential to restrict his speech, and not just by cultivating concision, a circumstance he sought to forestall. In the year of his tribuneship (91 CE), Pliny explains, he gave up pleading cases: “I thought it unseemly . . . ​for silence to be imposed by the clepsydra [silentium clepsydra indici] on one who had the authority to command anyone at all to keep quiet” (1.23.2). The carefully curated image is of a Pliny who unlike his fellow elites is not subject to temporal constraints.12

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Pliny also represents literary recitatio as a showcase of temporal expansiveness that can reflect well on all concerned.13 He explains how he had set aside two days to recite “more expansively and abundantly” (spatiosius et uberius) the panegyric speech for Trajan he had initially given in the senate—­a tradition of speechifying that in past years had apparently always driven the senatorial audience into boredom, “even in a pinprick of time” (vel puncto temporis) (3.18.6). Nowadays, by contrast, “­people can be found both who are willing to read this same speech and [who are willing] to listen to it for three days [triduo].” The audience even demanded that a third day be added, in a show of “attentiveness” (sedulitas) to both Trajan and Pliny (3.18.6).14 In an early letter Pliny recounts how “in the entire month of April ­there was virtually no day on which someone was not reciting” (toto mense Aprili nullus fere dies, quo non recitaret aliquis) (1.13.1), but his grumbling is less about the reciters than about the audiences: “The majority sit in the resting areas and wear away in storytelling the time assigned for listening [tempus . . . ​audiendi fabulis conterunt]” (1.13.2), and “all the most leisurely ones [otiosissimus quisque] . . . ​, if they come at all, complain that they have wasted a day precisely ­because they h ­ aven’t wasted it [queritur se diem, quia non perdidit, perdidisse]” (1.13.4). He wears his own assiduous attendance as a badge of pride: “I used up a longer time in the city than I had intended” (longius quam destinaveram tempus in urbe consumpsi) (1.13.6). Within this economy, however, Pliny does not cash in his credit by composing something to recite: “Just as in other ­things,” he observes, “so in the duty of listening: the ­favor is squandered if it is recalled” (1.13.6).

Martial’s Factory In Martial’s poems we are invited repeatedly to picture the times in the day when writing or reading take place. Often this is effected by showcasing quotidian life in the city, as in Epigrams 4.8, but sometimes it is achieved by marking the poem’s time as somehow distinctive. By way of cele­bration, Martial declares, “Let a milky gem mark this day” (hanc lucem lactea gemma notet) (8.45.2).15 His “book of leisure” (liber otiose), the personified pre­sen­ta­tion copy of his poems, is dressed up in “Sidonian [purple] [clothing] not just for any old day” (Sidone non cotidiana) as it approaches a prestigious patron (11.1.1–2). Sometimes Martial’s focus is on the brevity of his poems and his books that contrasts with the “two hundred lines a day without exception” (versus nulla non luce ducenos) that a certain Varus writes (8.20.1–2). He ingeniously uses the brevity mechanism of the epigram to suggest how one might reduce the time that a certain Caecilianus ­will take to finish his speech in the law court: when Caecilianus

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asks for “seven clepsydrae” (septem clepsydras) (6.35.1), which equals about 140 minutes, the poet requests that the orator soothe his throat by drinking some ­water—­from the clepsydra.16 Martial does not use up much papyrus: his secretary can write out the poems of book 2 “in a single hour” (una . . . ​hora) (1.5). “You w ­ ill be able to give your leisure times to this brief book,” he writes to Priscus in book 12, ­because “the hour is not a summer one and yet you ­haven’t entirely used it up!” (hora nec aestiva est nec tibi tota perit) (1.3–4). Poetry is also timed by social rituals: a guest at the convivium can read all of book 2 “once his five mea­sures [of heated wine] have been mixed but before the cup set down has begun to cool” (1.9–10). Nighttime is sometimes signaled as the most appropriate occasion for reading Martial’s poems. He devotes a ­whole short poem in book 11 to the idea that “not ­every page of our book is nocturnal [non omnis nostri nocturna est pagina libri]: you ­will also find, Sabinus, something you can read in the morning [quod mane . . . ​ legas]” (17.1–2). Yet this only qualifies the more general message that his poetry should not be read “with a [stern] morning brow” (matutina . . . ​fronte) (13.2.10). A nocturnal reading is several t­hings at once: it is a reading in the off hours or otium; it is compatible with the world of the convivium; it is ­free from censorious moralizing; and it touts the author’s refusal to attend morning salutationes. In epigram 70 in book 10, first published not long before the death of Domitian in 96 and then in a second edition prior to Martial’s departure from Rome for Spain in 99, the poet boasts that his supposedly slow production—­“scarcely one book in an entire year” (vix unus toto liber . . . ​anno) (1)—is still an impressive feat, “since often w ­ hole days slip away from me” (labantur toti cum mihi saepe dies) (4).17 To begin with, he explains, “awake before night has given way to day [nocturnus] I look upon friends who do not greet me back [non resalutantis . . . ​ amicos]” (5). Then he recounts the day’s full sequence of obligations governed by an hour-­based schedule: Now my gem makes a seal at [the ­temple of ] light-­bringing [luciferam] Diana, now the first [hour], now the fifth, seizes me for itself. Now a consul or praetor holds me, and their recurring song and dance. Often a poet is listened to for an entire day [toto . . . ​die]. But you cannot say no to a barrister without consequences, nor [can you say no] if teachers of rhe­toric or grammar demand. ­A fter the tenth [hour] [ post decumam], fatigued, I seek out the baths and the hundred coins. Potitus, when ­will a book be made [ fiet quando . . . ​liber]? (7–14)

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­ ere lines such as “now the first [hour], now the fifth, seizes me for itself,” (likely H an adaptation of Horace’s “the hour that ravages the nurturing day” (almum / quae rapit hora diem) (Carm. 4.7.8–9), turn Martial’s day into a blow-­by-­ blow cata­logue of vio­lence that precludes “liber” in the sense of both “a book” and “a f­ ree man.” Another poem from the same book, epigram 58, makes Rome herself the agent of this dispossession: “Now mighty Rome grinds us down [nos . . . ​terit]. When, h ­ ere, w ­ ill the day be mine [quando dies meus est]?” (6–7). Martial portrays the poet’s strug­gles with time in epic terms at one moment—­“we are tossed upon the deep of the city” (iactamur in alto / urbis) (7–8)—­a nd at the next in terms of the elegiac lover / salutator who “by night and by day frequents doorsteps” (nocte dieque frequentat / limina) (11–12), an unfamiliar chore for one who loves the muses. The productive writing of libelli belongs to the alternative set of quasi-­“occupations” (labores) that would be available, Martial says to a namesake friend, “if it ­were permitted for me, dear Martial, to enjoy days with you ­free from care [si tecum mihi . . . / securis liceat frui diebus] [and] to order our leisure time [disponere tempus otiosum] and together to make time for true life [verae pariter vacare vitae]” (5.20.1–4). But ­free time and real life are hard to come by.

Interlocking Schedules While Pliny’s and Martial’s time concerns and forms of life are distinct and unique, the famous survival of both Martial’s epigram for Pliny (10.20 [10.19]) and Pliny’s obituary of Martial (Ep. 3.21) allows us to witness how each author sought to relate to the other. Martial’s epigram, once again from book 10, is one of several longer poems that, as Ambra Russotti has argued, may have been added in the second edition of the book (in 98) both to compensate for the removal of poems that praised Domitian in the book’s first edition (in 95) and “in order to flatter some of the most impor­tant personalities of the po­liti­cal élite.”18 The poem begins with the poet instructing his muse Thalia on the itinerary she must follow to take his book to Pliny on the Esquiline: Go, my Thalia, and carry all the way to eloquent Pliny a l­ittle book not very learned and not sober enough, yet not rustic. Brief is the ­labor to cross the Subura and tame the steep path. (1–5)19

But while the ­house itself is easy to find, Martial then cautions Thalia on her timing. He conjures up an image of Pliny’s daytime studies and follows that

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with an exhortation for her to seek him out at night, an appropriate time for both parties: But see to it you do not knock on the orator’s door at a time that is not yours [tempore non tuo] and drunk. He gives ­whole days to sour Minerva while he prepares for the ears of the hundred [jurors] something that the ages and posterity w ­ ill even be able to compare with the sheets of [Cicero’s] Arpinum. You ­will be safer to go late by lantern light [seras tutior ibis ad lucernas]. This is your hour, when Lyaeus rages, when the r­ ose reigns, when hair is damp. Then, even stiff Catos would read me. (12–21)

Pliny ­here is the eloquent orator seeking fame through the centumviral courts rather than the mature statesman and man of letters we know from the correspondence published about a de­cade ­later, though he already aspires to be a new Cicero. His dedication of “­whole days” (totos . . . ​dies) to his oratorical studies is part and parcel of forensic negotium, and during the day this serious work takes priority over the frivolous and less-­learned poetry that Thalia has to offer. If they meet by night as Martial instructs, his poems w ­ ill not interrupt Pliny’s daytime work and they w ­ ill avoid the stern judgment of “stiff Catos.” This is also the time when the licentious poems ­will come into their own. The formula Martial ­here uses to savor the reading of his poetry in a convivial setting—­“this is your hour, when . . . ​when . . . ​then . . .” (haec hora est tua . . . ​cum . . . ​cum . . . ​ tunc)—is one that he had already used several years prior, in Epigrams 4.8, to describe the tenth-­hour convivium of none other than Domitian. That parallel is not surprising, perhaps, if one goal of 10.20 was to pivot from the habit of praising Domitian, which Martial began d ­ oing in book 4, to the enterprise of engaging with the new social landscape of post-­Domitianic Rome.20 ­There is, in any case, a happy compatibility between the imposing schedule of Pliny’s daytime lit­er­a­ture factory and the nocturnal niche that Martial has carved out for the reading of his books. Scholars have debated ­whether Pliny’s assessment of Martial in his obituary, which quotes directly from Martial’s epigram, is sincere or condescending.21 What is clear is that Pliny commandeers Martial’s temporally inflected account of their encounter so as to advertise his own daily literary practices. Writing to

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his friend Cornelius Priscus a­ fter Martial’s death between 101 and 104 CE, Pliny recalls how he had assisted him financially in 99 BCE when he sought to withdraw to Spain: I had given this for friendship, I had given it also for the l­ittle verses which he composed about me. . . . ​You ask, what are the ­little verses for which I repaid the ­favor? I would have sent you the bookroll itself, if I d ­ idn’t retain certain [verses in my memory]. If t­ hese ones please you, seek out the rest in the book. He addresses the muse, he instructs her to seek my home on the Esquiline, to approach rev­er­ent­ly [adloquitur Musam, mandat ut domum meam Esquilîs quaerat, adeat reverenter]: But see to it you do not knock on the orator’s door at a time that is not yours and drunk. (2–5)

He quotes Martial’s poem from ­here to its end (12–21). Scholars have noted how Pliny’s selective quotation from the poem and his subtle annotation—­for example, pointing out that his villa is on the Esquiline hill, which Martial omitted to mention directly—­certainly helps to put him in the best pos­si­ble light.22 Pliny’s framing of the quotation with “He addresses the muse” (adloquitur musam) sounds, I suggest, like the beginning of a dactylic hexameter, and “approach rev­er­ent­ly” (adeat reverenter) sounds like the end of one. This introduces a grandeur that the quoted hendecasyllables themselves lack. In the final part of the letter Pliny seeks to justify attending to Martial and his memory: “Is it not fitting [meritone] both that I sent away on the friendliest terms the one who wrote ­these ­things about me then [tunc] and that I now [nunc] mourn his passing as [at the death of ] one most friendly?” (6). The nunc of posthumous commemoration is made to hearken back explic­itly to the tunc of Pliny’s ­earlier gratitude—­which in turn, I suggest, hearkens back to the tunc of the convivium in Martial’s poem, when the rendezvous between Martial’s muse and the after-­hours Pliny was set to occur. Pliny’s recollection of the poem from memory shows that the muse has stayed with him since she knocked on that occasion and “stays t­ here” even now.23 And this may have implications not simply for Martial’s poetic accomplishment but for Pliny’s own enterprises in neoteric poetry.24 For the most part, however, Pliny’s role in both poem and letter is that of patron. He finishes the letter by suggesting that he is capable of conferring on Martial the immortality the poet had aspired to:

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202  Ordering Lives Though what greater t­ hing can be given to a h ­ uman being than glory, praise, and eternity [aeternitas]? And yet the [words] he wrote w ­ ill not be eternal [at non erunt aeterna quae scripsit]. Perhaps they w ­ ill not be, but he wrote them as if they would be [non erunt fortasse, ille tamen scripsit tamquam essent futura]. (6)

Pliny’s gift of eternity reciprocates the original compliment that Martial conferred on him when he described Pliny as writing “something that the ages and posterity [saecula posterique] w ­ ill even be able to compare with the sheets of [Cicero’s] Arpinum.” At this point, however, as William Fitzgerald puts it, “we have to ask who is displayed in whose gallery.”25 Each author has successfully employed a diurnal framework to construct a broader narrative about his own form of life and its long-­term survival, but each of ­these frameworks depends on the other. It is no secret that Pliny occupies a higher position than Martial in the social hierarchy and that the two have separate agendas. In this, his tenth book, Martial casts around for new patronage in a post-­Domitianic era and elaborates on the prob­lems posed for his authorial life by the city’s grueling schedule. Pliny, ­here capping book 3 of his letters, the book that had begun with the routine of Spurinna, offers—in Martial’s voice—­t he first full allusion to his own daily studies and also offers a unique and valuable glimpse of his urban villa.26 A closer analy­sis of the day patterns in Martial’s epigram 4.8 and Pliny’s letters 9.36 and 9.40 reveals that each author confronts a unique form-­of-­life prob­lem. For Martial, the prob­lem is how to negotiate a social position for his poetry and for himself in urban imperial society. For Pliny, the prob­lem is how to perform a literary leisure that maximizes prestige yet remains defensible within the context of his own busy public life. Martial and Pliny represent their prob­lems with precision at the level of quotidian time, and it is likewise through strategic reconfigurations of quotidian time that they seek to solve them.

Hacking the City Schedule (Martial, Epigrams 4.8) Prefatory Priamel Martial’s fourth book of epigrams begins with a poem celebrating the birthday of Domitian in October (Caesaris alma dies) (1). The book’s dramatic scenario unfolds through the fall and winter of 88–89, with poems about sudden snow (2, 3) and allusions to December and the Saturnalia (14, 19, 46).27 At this time of year the Roman daytime and its hours would have been shortening. Book 4 engages with Domitian in several modes. In the first poem, Martial wishes the princeps many more birthdays and inscribes him into grander time

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schemes: “Let him cultivate the returning saecula with his mighty [five-­yearly] lustrum” (7).28 In the third, the snow is pictured silently falling “onto Caesar’s face and garment-­folds” (2), and not much l­ater, in the twenty-­seventh, Martial w ­ ill boast to his detractors how Domitian regularly praises “my l­ittle books” (1). Poem 8, with its intimate image of the tricliniarch Euphemus mixing the emperor’s wine for him at the convivium, is situated part way through a varied opening sequence that includes several invectives against lowlier Romans delivered in poems 4, 5, and 6 and an exhortation in poem 14 to the poet Silius Italicus to “read [Martial’s] books, which drip with mischievous jests” (15). It is immediately preceded by a lament in poem 7 on the “long night” (nox . . . ​ longa) between “yesterday” (­here) and “­today” (hodie) that has turned a beloved boy into a man, no longer willing to submit sexually (6). This sets the scene for 4.8 with its portrait of the Roman day, albeit now with a decisive shift in tone and perspective. The epigram begins with a six-­line cata­logue of scheduled activities in which the first nine daylight hours impose specific tasks on Rome’s inhabitants ­until, in line 7, the tenth hour is identified as the one that belongs to Martial and his poems: The first hour, and the second, wear the greeters down, the third exercises hoarse barristers, into the fifth Rome stretches its vari­ous ­labors, the sixth ­will be a rest for the weary, the seventh an end [to this], the eighth u ­ ntil the ninth ­will be enough for the oily wrestling grounds, the ninth commands the breaking of the cushion pile. The tenth is the hour of my l­ittle books, Euphemus, when your diligence tempers the ambrosial banquets and good Caesar unwinds with heavenly nectar and holds moderate cups in his huge hand. That’s the time for you to admit my jests: our Thalia is afraid to go with wanton stride to a morning Jove. [ prima salutantes atque altera conterit hora, exercet raucos tertia causidicos, in quintam varios extendit Roma labores, sexta quies lassis, septima finis erit, sufficit in nonam nitidis octava palaestris, imperat extructos frangere nona toros: hora libellorum decuma est, Eupheme, meorum,

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204  Ordering Lives temperat ambrosias cum tua cura dapes et bonus aetherio laxatur nectare Caesar ingentique tenet pocula parca ma­nu. tunc admitte iocos: gressu timet ire licenti ad matutinum nostra Thalia Iovem.]29

Structurally the poem is a priamel. The poet lists a series of unappealing tasks, keyed to specific locations, and then expatiates on the hour special to him, his books, and his muse. He uses the same formula I noted in epigram 10.20 (haec hora est tua . . . ​cum . . . ​cum . . . ​tunc) to zoom in on the hand and face of the divinized emperor familiar from some of the preceding poems (4.1, 4.3). With its numbered list of hours—­“ ­little figures” being, as Victoria Rimell observes, key to how Martial represents “real and poetic worlds and times, spanning the ­whole of h ­ uman experience from the quotidian to the life-­defining”—­the poem resonates with other “cata­logue or cumulatio” poems in book 4, as Rosario Moreno Soldev­ila observes in her commentary.30 More specifically, though, the poem is a recusatio: a refusal to do certain t­ hings at certain times.31 And temporally the poem is circular: its final image of the wanton Thalia confronted with a “morning Jove” (matutinum . . . ​Iovem) (12) returns to the morning scene of the salutatio to reemphasize her absence t­ here. Moreno Soldev­ila draws attention to line 11’s phrase “That’s the time for you to admit my jests” (tunc admitte iocos) as key for understanding the poem’s mission of defining an alternative, “nocturnal ‘salutatio’ ” in the setting of the convivium.32

Pageant of the Hours Martial’s march of numbered hours has become a locus classicus for historians seeking information about the typical sequence of the Roman day, or wanting to draw attention to a “greater precision . . . ​reflect[ing] an increased use of sundials” during Martial’s era, or investigating w ­ hether Roman numbered hour references denote the span of the hour or its completion.33 Yet the epigram’s stylized repre­sen­ta­tion perpetually frustrates such goals. As Gustav Friedrich noted long ago, “The day schedule given h ­ ere is by no means clear,” and we may note basic divergences in scholars’ interpretation of, say, the function of the seventh hour as an end to the siesta (which is what most suggest) or as a final end to ­labors.34 The lack of any mention of the baths is indication enough that this is not a comprehensive picture of the Roman day, just as another poem of Martial where bathing hours are a focus makes it clear it is equally idiosyncratic in its temporal topography:

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Literary Days: Martial and Pliny the Younger   205 The Pharian heifer’s [Io / Isis’s] crowd announces the eighth hour [nuntiat octavam] for her, and the spear-­holding cohort [of the praetorian guard] returns [to quarters], and [another] comes on duty. This hour tempers the baths [temperat haec thermas], the previous one [ prior hora] exudes excessive clouds of heat, and the sixth hour sizzles, Nero showing no mercy [inmodico sexta Nerone calet]. (10.48.1–4)35

­ ere we are thrown into dif­fer­ent rhythms, and not just the routine of the pubH lic baths but the clockwork schedule of the Isis ­temple. This schedule was likely monitored by devotees using a ­temple device; three outflow ­water clocks found in or near the Iseum on the Campus Martius originated in Egypt but ­were used in Rome.36 Martial’s story in 4.8 fuses social time through poetics.37 The story begins with the client’s perception of conventional morning business and even subsequent leisure as a repetitive and coercive cycle. All but two of the hours are grammatical subjects—no place ­here for the ablative of time “when” or the accusative of time “throughout which”—­and t­hese subjects are paired with compound verbs (e.g., “conterit,” “grinds down,” “extendit,” “stretches,” e­ tc.) so that they act on ­people as objects and victims.38 Anja Wolkenhauer has suggested that the time of day and the space of the city are portrayed as “agents” who provide “the framework within which p ­ eople do their business,” and she draws comparisons to the imposed social schedule symbolized by the sundial that is complained about by the parasite in Plautus.39 This is not to deny that Martial may be conveying some of the phenomenological dynamics of a “real” experience of Roman time: the elision in “and the second” (atque altera) enacts a protraction of the first hour into the second that may suggest the ranking of greeters into first and second admissiones, while “the ninth commands the breaking of the cushion pile” (imperat extructos frangere nona toros) conveys the sense that even acts of leisure may feel “tedious when they are compulsory.” 40 The first six lines are also concerned with the mimetic relationship between poem and schedule (or between poem and sundial), a miniature version of Ovid’s “As the poem grows, so the year grows” (cum carmine crescit et annus) (Fast. 2.1)—­except that the compression of nine hours into six lines serves as a foil for the expansive tenth hour described over lines 7–10.41 Martial’s hour sequence leading up to a pivot time is closely tied to other ancient discourses on time structures, including the hours and sundials.42

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Artemidorus, discussing the symbolism of sundials in dreams, observes that “the sundial signifies [hôrologion . . . ​sêmainei] actions [ praxeis] and initiatives and movements and entering upon business” but adds more specifically that “it is always better to count the hours before the sixth than ­after the sixth” (aiei . . . ​ tas pro tês hektês hôras arithmein ameinon ê tas meta tên hektên) (3.66).43 The tracing of a bipartite day in the sequence of numerical letters on the sundial is the focus of the witty ancient epigram that cleverly decodes the message spelled out in plain sight by the letters for 7-8-9-10: “Six hours are ample for l­abors [hex hôrai mochthois hikanôtatai] / The ones a­ fter ­these, marked by the letters ΖΗΘΙ, tell mortals LIVE!” (Anth. Pal. 10.43).44 Scholars have not missed the relevance of this epigram to Martial’s and have suggested correspondences in Martial’s terms “labores” (Gk. “mochthois”), “lassis” (Gk. “brotois”), and “sexta . . . ​finis . . . ​sufficit” (Gk. “hex hôrai . . . ​hikanôtatai”).45 But a further comparison between the Greek epigram’s “mortals” (brotois) and Martial’s “immortal banquets” (ambrosias . . . ​ dapes) characterizing his tenth hour, shows us how Martial upgrades the after­ noon’s “LIVE!” to a convivial life in divine com­pany.46 Add to this Martial’s claim elsewhere that his poetry itself offers to the reader “that of which life can say, ‘That is mine’ ” (quod possit dicere vita “meum est”) (10.4.8), and we see how in the pivot from ninth to tenth hour in epigram 4.8, he customizes the message of the ΖΗΘΙ poem for his own programmatic purposes. Martial’s pivot to the tenth hour rather than to the seventh through tenth (ΖΗΘΙ) has a parallel in third-­century CE dining-­room mosaics from villas in Antioch.47 We considered one of t­ hese in chapter 1 (fig. 4), where the ninth hour is marked by Θ. Another mosaic (fig. 11), juxtaposed to a panel showing a “bust of Dionysus and Ariadne,” is described by Christine Kondoleon: A bearded man calls out the lines of the sundial, and a Greek inscription reads “enate parelasen” (the ninth hour is past)—in other words, dinnertime. As the guests entered the room, they w ­ ere greeted by their divine hosts, Dionysus and Ariadne, and called to dinner by the men reading the time off the sundial.48

The completion of the ninth hour, of course, ushers in the tenth—­t he hour Martial w ­ ill make so much of. The mosaic may also help us to make sense of Martial’s “the ninth commands” (imperat . . . ​nona), which perhaps hints at an enslaved time teller’s announcement of the time to recline.

Varied Semantics of the Tenth Hour It is fair to say that epigram 4.8 “integrates [Domitian] into the Roman everyday”—at least to some extent.49 Some nineteenth-­century interpreters even sug-

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Figure 11. Sundial and reader/parasite, House of the Sundial, late-­third c­ entury CE, Antioch. ΕΝΑΤΗ ΠΑΡΗΛΑΣΕΝ (“The ninth [hour] is past”). © DeA Picture Library / Art Resource, N.Y. See also Kondoleon 1999, fig. 6.

gested that the quotidian schedule of the poem’s first half was the emperor’s own, the message being that Domitian is not to be interrupted while conducting his officia.50 That was surely a step too far: the schedule of the day’s first half reads more as the alienation of time from a Roman lower down the social hierarchy. But certainly, with the tenth hour, “the clock apparently stops, inasmuch as Domitian is portrayed as a god.”51 The princeps himself defines this time, as in

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Martial’s “day song” in which Domitian’s arrival in Rome is seen to guarantee day’s arrival t­ here (Epigr. 8.21).52 ­Here, Martial and his books partake of this late hour’s transcendence.53 The poem shifts from the brisk, prosaic language of hours—­listed as if being read from a sundial and correlated with quotidian social traffic—to the expansive, poetic phrasing of the tenth hour with its singular gestures, golden lines, sublime aesthetics, mythic resonances, and divine presence. The name of the tricliniarch, Euphemus, is suggestive at once of ritual decorum and mellifluous reading of Martial’s poems, a world away from the “hoarse barristers” of the third hour.54 The servant who “tempers” (temperat) contrasts audibly with the ninth hour that “commands” (imperat) from two lines ­earlier, and, as Moreno Soldev­ila suggests, evokes “temperance and restraint” and perhaps also an etymology of “tempus” based on the idea of mixing.55 “Tempers” also evokes the mixing of wine at the appropriate temperature, recalling how Martial elsewhere idealizes the temperature of warmed wine in a cup before it has cooled or of ­water in the baths when it has reached the perfect heat (2.1.9–10, 10.48.1).56 The poem’s midway shift can be compared with the pivot in Martial’s poem for Pliny (10.20) and ultimately with that in Horace’s Satires 2.6, the most influential model for describing a day begun in a hectic urban mode but finished in convivial leisure.57 The delaying of Martial’s books ­until the tenth hour, together with his appeal to Euphemus, make epigram 4.8 a “commendation” poem, that is, a poem in which the poet instructs an intermediary to introduce his poems to the power­ful patron.58 One obvious model is Ovid’s exile poetry, although Martial’s book does not need to navigate the seas but only a daily schedule (as described in 4.8) or the city’s topography (as outlined in 10.20).59 Some times of day, of course, ­were better than ­others for interrupting an emperor, and in a ­later poem, Martial asks his muses to voice the following request to Domitian’s bedroom attendant: “Please admit [admittas] my fearful [timidam] and concise page within the threshold of his very sacred court. You know the times when Jove is calm [nosti tempora tu Iovis sereni]” (5.6.7–11). As Don Fowler remarks on this passage, “The reader may also figure the emperor as a model for her own reception of the book.” 60 Martial himself, in a l­ater preface, tells Domitian directly that he has given his books “fame, that is to say, life [ famam, id est vitam]. And ­because of this, I believe, they ­will be read [legentur]” (8.pr.1–3). Martial’s access to the tenth hour, then, opens up a portal in the day’s routine that allows his poems to pro­gress to a form of life—­a life through fame—­ that is unobtainable during the e­ arlier hours. This is the kind of nocturnal doorway to literary immortality that Martial ­later seeks from Pliny in epigram

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10.20, placing Pliny in a position analogous to that of Domitian, even if Martial is strikingly more deferential when it comes to Pliny’s day, letting Pliny work ­until nightfall before bother­ing him.61 But even as the poem is a means for Martial to seek the emperor’s support, it also more obviously belongs to the set of poems in which Martial refuses to greet a patron in the morning—­hence his interest in figuring the tenth-­hour reading of his poems as a “nocturnal ‘salutatio.’ ” 62 Moreno Soldev­ila sees in Thalia’s tentative approach to Domitian the “latent conflict between a need for protection and a craving for freedom,” between social de­pen­dency and literary autonomy.63 For one ­thing, the poet needs the morning to sleep or to write, poetry being “constant hard work analogous to the duties performed by clients for their patrons.” 64 For another, the equestrian poet has something greater to offer than does a senator who attends sixty salutationes in a day (12.29.1). When Martial sends his book to serve in his place at a salutatio with Proculus (1.70), his message is, as Fitzgerald puts it, that he “can deliver a ­whole busload of readers at Proculus’ doorstep.” 65 The greeting or gift that Martial can give at the tenth hour is thus of “a higher order” altogether.66 The tenth hour plays a distinctive yet varied role in Martial’s salutatio refusals. “I ­will greet you in person often at the tenth hour” (ipse salutabo decuma te saepius hora) he explains, whereas “in the morning [mane], my book ­will say hello to you for me” (1.108.9–10). He complains about a salutatio (greeting) that extends into an adsectatio (accompaniment) and so lasts all day long, proof of an intolerable threat to his autonomy: “As a result, I greet you always first t­ hing in the morning [ primo semper te mane salutem], and your sedan-­chair drags me amid the mud, and weary, at the tenth hour or ­later [decima vel serius hora], I follow you to the baths of Agrippa, though I myself bathe at the [baths] of Titus” (3.36.3–6). Martial should be his own man by the tenth hour, if not ­earlier. In another instance again (7.51), the tenth hour serves as an after-­hours time and as license for autonomy. Anyone wanting to hear Martial’s book being read aloud can wait for the reciter Pompeius Auctus: “You can [hear] him from the tenth [a decima]—­for he w ­ on’t be f­ ree enough before then” (11). But then Martial says that Pompeius ­will not stop reading even if you say, “That’s enough now” (iam satis est) (13–14). The book goes from knowing its time to exceeding its time allowance, as Martial implicitly distances himself from the amplifications of the aptly named Auctus (“grown”).67 Such are the varied semantics of the tenth hour, to which Domitian’s convivium in epigram 4.8 makes its own contribution by elevating life to a transcendent temporal level.

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Contrasting Routines Martial uses day patterns not only to claim a time that belongs to him but also to mock ­others and indicate that his own routine is subject to change. Advising the usurer Titullus, “Live!” (vive), Martial charts Titullus’s hour-­by-­hour itinerary of greedy accumulation and failure to live: “But you wear down e­ very threshold as a greeter [sed omne limen conteris salutator] and in the morning [mane] you sweat, damp with a city’s kisses, and spreading yourself over three forums. . . . ​To the ­temple of Mars and the colossus of Augustus you run throughout all the thirds and the fourths [third and fourth hours] [curris per omnes tertiasque quintasque]” (8.44.3–8). If the poem ends in an image of sleep bookending the day, the chronological elegance is illusory: the sleep in question is the sleep that Titullus’s son w ­ ill enjoy with Titullus’s own male lover (concubinus) on the first night a­ fter Titullus passes away (nocte . . . ​prima) (17). In an equally scathing personal attack on the tribas Philaenis (7.67), the poet reckons that Philaenis “fucks boys” (1) and “drills eleven girls per day” (undenas dolat in die puellas) (3). We trace her aspirational manly itinerary through dirty antics in the wrestling ground (palaestra) (7) to a gluttonous dinner (cena) (9). Subsequently, “when she is lusty [even] a­ fter all t­ hese t­ hings, she does not fellate—­ she thinks this insufficiently manly [ parum virile]. Instead, she openly feasts on the ­middle parts of girls” (13–15). While Titullus pursues a schedule inappropriate for his age, Philaenis’s routine amounts to a perverse dietetics in pursuit of a misconceived masculinity.68 If epigram 4.8 shows us Martial’s seemingly successful “hacking” of the urban schedule in a Rome controlled by the Flavians, in the post-­Domitianic poems that possibility no longer exists. We see this, as already noted, in Martial’s transferal of the 4.8 formula to Pliny’s doorstep in 10.20. We see a further migration in his withdrawal to Bilbilis portrayed in book 12—­a new route facilitated by Pliny’s gift of travel money. Martial recasts his critique of the city schedule from the perspective of his remote rural setting in Spain, and while his portal to security is now primarily spatial rather than temporal, time structures still play a significant role. Thus, in a short poem that begins with an echo of Horace’s “morning f­ather” (matutine pater) (Serm. 2.6.20) and so invites us to think of him occupying his own equivalent of the Sabine farm, Martial follows the familiar Horatian arc from city morning to rural night: Morning client [matutine cliens], reason why I left the city, if you had any sense you would cultivate ambitious atriums.

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Literary Days: Martial and Pliny the Younger   211 I am not a barrister, nor well suited to b­ itter litigation, but rather a lazy and ageing companion of the Pierian Muses. My pleasures are leisure and sleep, which ­great Rome denied me. I [­w ill] return—if sleep eludes me h ­ ere as well [redeo si vigilatur et hic]. (12.68)

The priamelic structure persists in the morning sequence of metonymic “atriums” (atria) and “barrister” (causidicus) contrasted with the plea­sure of otium and sleep, but this is packaged within the autobiographic narrative that opposes his pre­sent retirement to the past of the now-­abandoned Rome (10.58). The twist in the final line, the possibility of a return to Rome, fleetingly imagines the conditions that might send Martial’s life course in a circle.69 Martial embraces Bilbilis decisively in the same book, in a poem addressed to Juvenal (12.18). Imagining urban and rustic (provincial) routines juxtaposed, he first tries to imagine Juvenal’s routine: “Perhaps you wander restless in the noisy Subura” (2). H ­ ere, he refers to the sort of complaints made by the departing Umbricius in Juvenal’s own third satire. James Uden argues that the “exaggeratedly unpleasant vision of Rome presented by Juvenal in his first book” is alluded to repeatedly in Martial’s poem and is countered by an equally exaggerated sketch of “carefree existence” in Bilbilis.70 Martial describes how his own sleep “is often not interrupted by the third hour [nec tertia saepe rumpit hora], and I now recover for myself the w ­ hole of [what I lost while lying] awake through thirty years” (15–16). Mornings in Bilbilis evoke familiar Roman fantasies of rustic life: “When I get up [surgentem], I am greeted by a hearth nourished with a proud pile from the neighbor’s oak grove. The overseer’s wife [vilica] crowns the hearth with a crowd of pots.” (19–25). “Thus does it please me to live and thus to die” (sic me vivere, sic iuvat perire), Martial declares in the final line (26).71 ­There w ­ ill be no circling back into Roman time a­ fter all.

A Suspiciously Composed Day As we prepare to turn from Martial to Pliny, we can test our sense of Martial’s day pattern and form of life against a very precise daily schedule presented in a nine-­verse hexameter poem found in the Latin Anthology (26 Riese, 13 SB) and transmitted in one manuscript ­family of Martial (A A) at the beginning of book 5 of the Epigrams.72 The poem is labeled “by Martial, concerning life in the countryside” (Martialis de habitatione ruris), and yet it is likely not by Martial, as suggested by both its metrical patterns (e.g., repeated shortening of -­o) and its substance and technique.

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In response to an unnamed questioner, the poet proceeds to describe how he spends his day on his country estate: Lingering in the countryside [and] asked “What do you do?” I respond in a few words. In the morning I pray to the gods, my servants I inspect, ­a fter the fields, and sharing out just l­abors I announce them to my [own]. Then I read and I summon Phoebus and call upon the muse. From h ­ ere I shape my body with oil and strip my body in the soft palaestra willingly. Rejoicing in my mind and f­ ree from debt I lunch, drink, play, wash, sing, dine, rest. While my small lamp was using up a meager quantity of oil, ­these [words ­were] dispatched, lucubrated with the night’s muses.73 [rure morans, “quid agis?,” respondeo pauca, rogatus: mane deos oro; famulos, post arva, reviso partitusque meis iustos indico labores. deinde lego Phoebumque cio Musamque lacesso. hinc oleo corpus fingo mollique palaestra stringo libens. animo gaudens et fenore liber prandeo, poto, cano, ludo, lavo, ceno, quiesco. dum parvus lychnus modicum consumit olivi, haec dat nocturnis elucubrata Camenis.] ([4.91 / 5.pr.])

The poem’s compact day pattern bundles the routines of rustic paterfamilias, elite urbanite, and poet into one strongly first-­person-­singular itinerary emphasizing frugality and freedom. Although such details as the nocturnal Camenae invite comparison to Martial, the poem is unlike Martial’s other work. It has more in common with Horace’s Satires 1.6, especially given its solitary protagonist and its dactylic hexameter form. But neither Horace nor Martial ever boast of rising early; preexercise drinking would be out of character for them; and so on. The con­spic­u­ous absence of the city as foil further differentiates the method of the poem from Martial’s normal approach to defining his rural seclusions.74 And the poem’s descriptions of literary praxis emerge at unexpected moments, such as in the late-­morning reading followed by muse invocation (4), the “singing” that comes between bath and dinner (7), and the frugal late-­night lucubration that produces “­these lines” (9).75 This closing deixis pre­sents the poem itself as a kind of day-­end self-­review of a kind that we do not find in Martial but do see in the letters of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. The packaging of the poem

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as the response to a friend’s inquiry (1) more closely resembles the opening of Pliny’s letter 9.36, which I take up next, and the asyndetic series of verbs in line 7 has a parallel in the same Plinian letter’s third section. W. M. Lindsay tentatively ascribes the poem to the anonymous compiler of a late-­antique edition of Martial’s poems intended “for more elegant consumption,” since Martial’s coarser language in some of the epigrams was also modified, seemingly so that it would be “less offensive to refined readers.”76 Clearly the anonymous poet draws on multiple models to sustain the day pattern of a rustic form of life and lit­er­a­ture factory. It scarcely seems coincidental that the poem was inserted following the end of Martial’s fourth book, the implication being it was intended to supplement epigram 4.8. Yet the poem itself defines Martial less by replication than by difference.

Salvo et Composito Die (Pliny, Letters 9.36, 9.40) “Without Preserving Temporal Order”? In a pair of letters at the end of the ninth and final book of his private correspondence, Pliny answers two questions from his younger friend Fuscus. One of t­ hese questions prompts letter 9.36, which begins, “You ask how I spend my day at my Tuscan place in summer” (quaeris quemadmodum in Tuscis diem aestate disponam) (1). The final letter, 9.40, is prompted by a subsequent query: “You ask what I change from this at my Laurentine [villa] in winter” (requiris quid ex hoc in Laurentino hieme permutem) (1). T ­ hese requests give Pliny an opportunity to describe his entire daily routine, in an epistolary diptych that covers two locations and, in the end, all four seasons. Let us begin by tracing the narrative strands in Pliny’s correspondence that ­will be drawn together in t­ hese final moments. For example, letter 7.9 to the same Fuscus begins, “You ask [quaeris] how I think you ­ought to study in the seclusion that you have been enjoying for a long time already” (1), and Pliny proceeds to school him in a myriad of exercises, such as preparing to write oratorical prose by first writing poetry (13–14).77 That letter says nothing about times of day: Pliny simply indicates that ­there are some literary tasks that Fuscus w ­ ill require otium to accomplish (9). And so it is understandable why Fuscus ­will ­later request guidance on time use, thereby prompting the letters in book 9. A longer narrative centers on Pliny’s villas, each of which is described ­earlier in a major letter (Laurentine [2.17]; Tuscan [5.6]). The letters of book 9 revisit ­these villas, in chiastic order, with the new focus on time schedules supplanting the primarily spatial ecphrases from before.78 Another narrative recognized

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by scholars is Pliny’s quest for his own daily routine that he indirectly adverts to through the pair of extensive day descriptions in book 3, first on Spurinna in retirement (letter 1) and then on Pliny the Elder in mid-­career (letter 5). Pliny concludes the Spurinna letter with a promissory gesture ­toward his own old age: “This life I anticipate in vow and in thought” (11). Subsequent letters continue to warn, however, that Pliny’s own turn ­toward full-­time otium is still far off—­ such as 3.21, where (as we have seen) Pliny quotes from the part of Martial’s poem portraying him at work on his oratorical studies all day long in his urban villa, and 4.23, where he recognizes the freedom of the retired Pomponius Bassus to “arrange his leisure” (disponere otium) (1) but contextualizes this within specific social norms of the life course: “For we should allot both the first and the ­middle times of our life to our fatherland, the final times to ourselves—­just as the laws themselves advise, returning the el­derly to leisure” (3).79 The idea that Pliny’s letters describe a chronological trajectory from his “­middle times of life” (media vitae tempora) to his “final times” (extrema) is not borne out in a s­ imple sense. As he declares in his first letter, “I have collected [­these letters] without preserving temporal order [non servato temporis ordine]” (1). Scholars have noted broad chronological movements in the correspondence—­ for example, from early vagueness on the Domitianic years to a chronicling of his activities as a statesman u ­ nder Nerva and Trajan.80 Yet in book 9 Pliny is still not an old man, and the otium in the final pair of letters clearly alternates with urban negotium. ­There are, however, clear closural dynamics in book 9.81 Pliny’s opening clause in 9.40, “You write that you w ­ ere pleased by my letter(s)” (scribis pergratas tibi fuisse litteras meas) (1), is arguably a meta-­allusion to the correspondence as a ­whole, while the shift of season from summer (9.36) to winter (9.40), as Roy Gibson observes, “vividly evokes the crepuscular atmosphere of the winter months.”82 With his term “crepuscular” Gibson also registers the now widely accepted reading of the names of Pliny’s first and last addressees in the correspondence, Clarus (bright) and Fuscus (dusky), as marking a diurnal structure for the epistolary corpus.83 Beyond what it adds in aesthetic terms, this day shaping also seems—­despite Pliny’s claim to the contrary—to preserve a semblance of “temporal order”—­ not in a strict chronological sense but in terms of the pervasive theme that Gibson and Ruth Morello call “time management,” “the need to use one’s time and manage one’s day (and even ­career) effectively.”84 Christopher Whitton has noted that Pliny’s phrase “without preserving temporal order” evokes the opening of Seneca’s Moral Letters, where Lucilius is advised to “collect and preserve the time [tempus . . . ​collige et serva] that before now ­either was taken away, was

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spirited away, or drifted away” (1.1).85 Although Pliny adapts Seneca’s phrasing for a new purpose, he also seems to have given thought to Seneca’s claim in the same letter about his own use of time—­“I have a balanced account of my expenditure [ratio mihi constat inpensae]” (1.4)—as well as about Lucilius’s “command that single days of mine be told to you, in their entirety” (singulos dies tibi meos et quidem totos indicari iubes) (83.1). Pliny repeatedly grapples with the prob­lem of how he and o­ thers should balance their time-­accounts. As I noted in chapter 4, Riggsby distinguishes between Pliny’s “stopwatch” time, emphasizing his urban commitments and his “flexible” time indications in the context of his villas that show he is “not controlled by the clock.” 86 A further question arises, however, concerning Pliny’s repeated transitions between urban time and villa time. The one can disrupt the other, upsetting the balance between negotium and otium and distorting Pliny’s own perspective on what constitutes a valuable activity. Letters 9.36 and 9.40, with their focus on Pliny’s villa life, amount to his best attempt at showing how villa time can be accounted for in ­these terms.

Conflicting Views of Quotidian City Life The challenges to arriving at such a perspective are made clear early on. Pliny’s letter 1.9 begins with an evocation of urban quotidian time that I quoted from briefly at the beginning of this book: It is remarkable how, for individual days in the city, the account e­ ither balances or seems to balance [singulis diebus in urbe ratio aut constet aut constare videatur], [yet] for multiple days in a row it does not balance [ pluribus iunctisque non constet]. The t­ hing is, if you should inquire of someone, “What did you do t­ oday [hodie quid egisti]?,” he would reply, “I attended the assuming of a toga of manhood, I joined the crowd at a betrothal or a marriage. One person asked me to sign a ­will, another to lend advocacy, another to give advice.” On the day you did ­t hese ­t hings they seem necessary [haec quo die feceris, necessaria]. Yet the same ­things seem empty, once you realize that you did them e­ very day [eadem, si cotidie fecisse te reputes, inania videntur]—­a ll the more so once you have gone into seclusion [multo magis cum secesseris]. For then the recollection comes to you: “How many days I used up on such unimportant ­things [quot dies quam frigidis rebus absumpsi]!” (1)

Recent scholarship has opened this passage up to a number of readings.87 For example, we may question Pliny’s sincerity as he expresses doubts about the value of what appear to be countless acts of public ser­vice that would fill out a typical

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morning of officia. The first-­listed items are personal and private, but l­ater items are clearly acts of statesmanship, likely including advice to the emperor—­ things Pliny is effectively boasting about h ­ ere.88 Or, instead, it may be that Pliny’s main goal is to conceal or downplay his public activities during the reign of Domitian.89 Eleanor Leach, meanwhile, notes that virtually all of the quotidian events mocked as seemingly trivial at the beginning of the letter are ones to which Pliny devotes w ­ hole individual letters at one time or another in the 90 correspondence. It has long been recognized that Pliny’s satirical sketch of the morning scene channels Seneca’s On the Brevity of Life.91 ­There Seneca interrogates “someone from the crowd of older men”: “Go over in your memory [repete memoria tecum] when [it was that] you ­were steadfast in your plan; how many times your day went as you had intended [quotus quisque dies ut destinaveras cesserit]” (Brev. 3.3). Pliny, however, follows his sketch of wasted days by revealing the vantage point from which he is examining the question: “This is how it goes for me, at my Laurentine villa, a­ fter I read or write something or even make time for my body [aut lego aliquid aut scribo aut etiam corpori vaco], [since] my mind is sustained by my body’s foundations” (4). He now leans into a more idealized version of Cicero’s full-­time Epicurean withdrawal and echoes Horace’s pivot from city life to Sabine farm in Satires 2.6:92 I hear nothing that I regret to have heard, say nothing I regret having said. No one rails at another with malicious talk, I myself chastise no one (except for myself, when I ­don’t write well enough). I am vexed by no hope and no fear, I am disturbed by no rumors. I speak only to myself and my books [mecum tantum et cum libellis loquor]. What a straight and pure way of life [o rectam sinceramque vitam]! Sweet and virtuous leisure, and finer than almost any public action [o dulce otium honestumque ac paene omni negotio pulchrius]! (5–8)

But while Pliny ­here echoes Seneca’s and Martial’s antipathy to urban discursus (bustle) and their pining for otium, Leach observes that in Pliny’s “finer than almost any public action” (paene omni negotio pulchrius) the “almost” (paene) sticks out.93 And sure enough, Gibson and Morello have shown that letter 1.9 must be read in close conjunction with its sequel, 1.10, where Pliny allows his initial complaint—­“I sit before the seat of judgment, I sign documents, I compile accounts, I write a g­ reat many unlettered letters [subnoto libellos, conficio tabulas, scribo plurimas sed inlitteratissimas litteras]” (9)—to be thoroughly repudiated by the phi­los­o­pher Euphrates.94 “He consoles me,” says Pliny: “He affirms that even

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this, d ­ oing public business [agere negotium publicum], is a part of philosophy and indeed a very fine part [ pulcherrimam partem].” ­Here, the final descriptor, “very fine,” surpasses Pliny’s description of leisure in the previous letter as “finer than almost any public action.” Euphrates, a foil to Seneca’s philosophy of withdrawal, even seeks to persuade Pliny that “it is preferable to do ­these ­things rather than to use up w ­ hole days [dies totos . . . ​consumere] together with him in listening and talking” (11). When Pliny turns to describe his Laurentine villa in letter 2.17, it is as if he has fully come to his senses ­after the doubts he expresses in letter 1.9. Now he is confident that the villa is compatible with maintaining a balanced account of his urban activities: “It is seventeen miles removed from the city, so that when you have completed the t­ hings you needed to do [ peractis quae agenda fuerint] you can stay t­ here with the day already secured and put in order [salvo iam et composito die]” (2). The phrase “the day already secured and put in order” evokes the integrity of the unbroken day (solidus dies) prized by Seneca (Ep. 83.3) and is also suggestive of an account-­book entry that registers a given day as profitable and ­whole, evoking a contrast with the repeated daily activities Pliny describes in letter 1.9 that seem “void” (inania) (3).95 In his detailed descriptions of the “design” (ratio) and “arrangement” (dispositio) of both the Laurentine and Tuscan villas (2.17.22–23, 5.6.32), Pliny proceeds to mention vari­ous ways in which ­these spaces configure their own­er’s experience of dies or sol, terms blending notions of time, daylight, weather, heat, activity—­subcategories of what Riggsby refers to as Pliny’s primarily “qualitative” account of his domestic spaces and times.96 Pliny describes how his Tuscan villa as a ­whole “for the most part looks south [meridiem spectat] and, as it ­were, ‘welcomes’ the sun [quasi invitat] into its portico that is broad and proportionately long—­the summer sun from the sixth hour, the winter sun somewhat e­ arlier [aestivumque solem ab hora sexta, hibernum aliquanto maturius]” (5.6.15).97 Clearly the villas are more than simply places to “stay the night” (manere) (2.17.2), and terms such as “welcome” (invitat) (5.6.15) make the space’s relationship to dies an evocation of quasiurban socializing.98 Yet the very idea of spending significant time in ­those spaces—­whether we understand the sense of “you can stay t­here” (possis ibi manere) as referring to an overnight stay or something more open ended such as retirement—­seems to have as its precondition that “the day [has been] already secured and put in order,” with reference to the city day. Certainly that would seem to facilitate Pliny’s ultimate conclusion of his private correspondence with the Laurentine villa in letter 9.40.

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Spurinna’s Daily Virtues Spurinna’s routine described by Pliny in letter 3.1 shows how easily a Roman statesman could enjoy full days at his villa without undermining the integrity of his city days.99 The key, of course, is that Spurinna’s city days occupied the early and ­middle parts of his life, whereas the villa routine observed by Pliny belongs to Spurinna’s old age. Pliny views Spurinna as relevant to his own eventual retirement: This life I anticipate in vow and in thought [hanc ego vitam voto et cogitatione praesumo]. It is my intention to embark upon it most greedily as soon as the rules of age allow me to sound the retreat. In the meantime I am ground down by a thousand l­abors, for which the same Spurinna is at once a comfort and an example [mille laboribus conteror, quorum mihi et solacium et exemplum est idem Spurinna]. For he also, so as long as it was honorable, went about his public duties, conducted magistracies, ruled provinces, and earned this leisure through much ­labor [multoque labore hoc otium meruit]. (11–12)

Pliny ­will continue his ­labors: if “I am ground down by a thousand l­abors” (mille laboribus conteror) makes Pliny sound like poor Martial (Epigr. 4.8.1–3), Spurinna shows him that ­there is light at the end of the tunnel. In the final sentence that follows, however, Pliny alludes to an opposite risk. His addressee, Calvisius Rufus, might need to remind him to stop working: And so I set for myself the same course and the same limit [eundem mihi cursum, eundem terminum statuo], and already now I appeal to you in writing that if you see me venturing further, you should invoke this letter and take me to court and order me to rest, since by then I ­will no longer be at risk of being charged with laziness. (12)

The tone ­here is only semijoking, and it highlights a key detail of Spurinna’s story: he knew when to stop. Pliny’s “this life I anticipate in vow and in thought” appears to be a self-­conscious echo of Seneca’s Augustus, who “anticipated” otium “in his thoughts” (cogitatione praesumeret) (Brev. 4.4). If so, the echo serves both as a power play and as a wake-up call about the risks of never retiring. Spurinna’s example is fine grained. Scholars have noted subtle external allusions not only to Seneca but also to Cicero and Quintilian, and they have also carefully mapped the verbal and temporal correspondences between the routine of Spurinna (3.1) and t­ hose of Pliny the Elder (3.5) and Pliny the Younger (9.36, 40).100 The consensus is that Spurinna is the closer model for Pliny the Younger’s

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own routine, since unlike Pliny the Elder the other two shift repeatedly between physical, literary, and social activities, and they are both presented in a rural setting that contrasts with Pliny the Elder’s primarily urban milieu.101 Gibson and Morello argue that for Pliny the Younger to mimic Spurinna’s transition to retirement requires “only a change of emphasis” on his part and that “the combination of essential sameness and profound difference implicit in the mirror-­image reversal perhaps encourages the reader to ask how Pliny’s life is similar to Spurinna and in what sense it radically differs.”102 One difference, however, is especially significant: Pliny the Younger’s routines in book 9 belong to the m ­ iddle stage of life. In spite of their rural setting, his routines, like t­ hose of Pliny the Elder in 3.5, are maintained amid the commitments of his “­middle age swollen and constrained by high-­level duties and friendship with emperors” (medium tempus distentum impeditumque qua officiis maximis qua amicitia principum) (7).103 Pliny’s observation of Spurinna’s routine evidently took place over several days while the city was celebrating a festival (festis diebus [3.10.2])—­a brief hiatus in Pliny’s other­wise hectic everyday schedule. Let us review how in letter 3.1 Pliny pre­sents the details of Spurinna’s routine that w ­ ill serve as both model and foil: In the morning he keeps to his couch [mane lectulo continetur], at the second hour he requests his shoes [hora secunda calceos poscit], and he walks three miles, exercising his mind no less than his body. If friends are pre­sent, discussions proceed, of the utmost virtuousness. If not, a book is read, sometimes even when friends are pre­sent, so long as they are not both­ered [by this]. Then he sits down and once again [takes up] a book—or, even better, conversation. Soon he climbs onto a wagon and brings along his wife (she is exemplary beyond compare) or one of his friends, such as me recently [ut me proxime]. (4–5)

As Pliny begins narrating the insistent sequence of alternating activities, several noticeable emphases emerge. T ­ here is a near-­total silence on “physical location,” as Gibson and Morello note: this is “left largely to our imagination.”104 Then ­there is the con­spic­u­ous modulation of each activity according to who ­else is pre­ sent, Spurinna himself, when given a choice, preferring to converse rather than read. Since Pliny observed this all firsthand, it is perhaps no surprise that he describes the impression Spurinna made on him: How beautiful that seclusion, how sweet! How much antiquity ­there [quantum ibi antiquitatis]! What deeds you would hear about! What men! What lessons you

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220  Ordering Lives would be immersed in! He does, however, impose this tempering, [a sign] of his modesty [hoc temperamentum modestiae suae indixerit]: he does not give the appearance of teaching lessons. (6)

Pliny resumes by describing the m ­ iddle of Spurinna’s day, which lacks an outright siesta: “­A fter covering seven miles, he again walks another mile and again sits down or gives himself to his chamber and pen [residit vel se cubiculo ac stilo reddit]” (7).105 At this point, Pliny breaks off again to indicate that he is familiar with the content of Spurinna’s writing: For he writes the most erudite lyric poems, and indeed in both languages. The poems have a remarkable sweetness, a remarkable smoothness, a remarkable cheerfulness, and their appeal is capped by the writer’s purity [mira illis dulcedo, mira suavitas, mira hilaritas, cuius gratiam cumulat sanctitas scribentis]. (8)106

Pliny’s ­running commentary, then, showcases the inherent exemplary potential of Spurinna’s day, distilling as he goes a handlist of virtues, from antiquity and modesty to smoothness and purity.107 Then come the details of Spurinna’s after­noon: When the hour for bathing is announced (which in winter is the ninth, in summer the eighth), he walks in the sun naked, if t­ here is no wind. Then he moves with a ball, vigorously and for a long time. For this kind of exercise, too, is one of his weapons against old age. ­A fter bathing he reclines and postpones food for a ­little while. During this time he listens to someone reading something rather relaxed and sweet. (8)108

­ ere scholars have seen a textbook application of the sequence prescribed by H medical writers such as Celsus, and it is notable that Pliny spells out the casuistic reckoning typical of dietetic discourse, such as a sensitivity to season and conditions and a customization to Spurinna’s old age.109 But it is also worth noticing the accumulation of Pliny’s own leitmotifs, such as the term “sweet” (dulc-­), which by this point in the letter has occurred three times (6, 7, 8), along with comparable terms such as “more enjoyable” (iucundius) (1), “delight” (delect-­) (1, 9), and “pleasures” (voluptates) (9) that play up the routine’s aesthetic qualities both for Spurinna and for the observer. At this point Pliny once again pauses to emphasize the perspective of the visitor-­participant: “Through this ­whole time, friends are ­free to do ­either the same ­things or other ­things if they prefer” (8).

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Pliny concludes by describing the frugal yet cultivated dinner scene: A dinner is set out, no less splendid for being frugal, on pure and ancient silver. He even has Corinthian ware in use, and is delighted by it but not seduced. His dinner is punctuated frequently by comic performers, so that the pleasures may be seasoned with studies. He takes a l­ ittle from the night even in summer [sumit aliquid de nocte et aestate]. This tries no one’s patience, since the party is extended by such sociability. (9)

Once again Spurinna’s time usage is assessed via the visitor’s experience, providing Pliny with the opportunity to distill another virtue of his host: comitas (sociability). The routine also actively produces specific bodily and m ­ ental qualities: “This has kept intact for him, even a­ fter his seventy-­seventh year, the power of his ears and eyes, and it explains his agile and lively body and the knowledge that comes only with old age” (10).110 Spurinna’s day, all told, is a vivid embodiment of virtues, and it is at this point that Pliny steps back to consider the routine as a solacium (comfort) and exemplum (example) for his own life course (11–12). A further example is now available, too, in the form of Pliny’s own epistolary rec­ord of that routine, including his rhetoricized sublimation of its orderliness.111

Summer Days in Tuscany (Letters 9.36) Now we can advance to letters 9.36 and 9.40, with their accounts of Pliny’s seasonal routines and their concluding perspectives.112 In the first of this pair, Pliny describes his summer days in the Tuscan villa, just as Fuscus had requested: “I wake up whenever I please, usually around the first hour, often e­ arlier, seldom ­later” (evigilo cum libuit, plerumque circa horam primam, saepe ante, tardius raro) (1). Pliny’s freedom to lie in makes him, as Whitton notes, “a veritable Horace reincarnate (give or take).”113 But the preposed verb “evigilo” (“wake up”), sometimes used as a literary technical term in the sense “compose” with books as its direct object, imputes to Pliny’s morning studies an ­earlier and more explicit start on writing than to Horace’s in Satires 1.6 and a more proactive edge than in his own description of Spurinna (“in the morning he keeps to his couch”) (4).114 Pliny next devotes several sentences to describing in minute detail the scene of his morning composition and dictation (1–2). In this opening section we also learn that Pliny’s routine is more flexible than Spurinna’s regula described in letter 3.1 (3). Pliny equivocates about the hour at which he wakes, even if the greater frequency indicated in “often e­ arlier” (saepe ante) suggests a bias t­ oward diligence.115

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Literary seriousness and hour equivocation continue as themes in Pliny’s l­ater morning and after­noon: When it is the fourth or fifth hour [ubi hora quarta uel quinta] (for the time is neither precise nor mea­sured out [neque enim certum dimensumque tempus]), in accordance with what the day persuades [ut dies suasit] I take myself into an open walkway or a covered one. I go over the rest, and I dictate it. I climb onto a wagon. ­There also, the same ­thing as when walking or lying. My concentration persists, being refreshed precisely by the change. I fall asleep for a ­little while, then I walk, and soon I read a Greek or Latin oration clearly and energetically, not so much for the sake of my voice as for my chest, though my voice is also strengthened at the same time. Again I walk, I am anointed, I exercise, I bathe. (3)

The routine described h ­ ere is broadly comparable to Spurinna’s, especially in the alternation of exercise and intellectual activity. H ­ ere, though, we encounter the detailed spatial references that are entirely absent from the Spurinna letter, for which the reader has been prepared by the description of Pliny’s Tuscan villa in letter 5.6.116 Some of Pliny’s details also suggest a studied variation of the specific routines he has mentioned in ­earlier letters, such as the outloud reading of an oration in Greek or Latin that resembles but contrasts with both Spurinna’s lyric poetry in the two languages (3.1.8) and the Greek-­to-­Latin and Latin-­to-­Greek translation exercises Pliny had recommended to Fuscus (7.9.1). The asyndetic series “I walk, I am anointed, I exercise, I bathe” (ambulo ungor exerceor lavor) describes physical exercise in shorthand, an obvious contrast with the amply described morning scene of study.117 The final sequence of the day echoes Spurinna’s day-­ending dinner but relegates the dinner event to a mere participle, the only description of eating in the ­whole letter: While I dine, if [I am] with my wife or a small group, a book is read. ­A fter dinner, a comedy or a lyre player. Soon I walk with my [house­hold slaves], some of whom are erudite. In this way is the eve­ning drawn out in diverse conversations, and even the longest day is put to rest well [ita variis sermonibus vespera extenditur, et quamquam longissimus dies bene conditur]. (4)118

Pliny’s day end resembles Spurinna’s with its extended dinner conversation, but unlike Spurinna’s it concludes in one more round of walking—­the fourth walk mentioned in the letter.119 Letter 5.6 has already prepared the reader to correlate ­these walking events with spatial arrangements of the villa, such as an area outside one of Pliny’s most pleasant cubicula (chambers) with “seats made from

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marble, arranged [disposita] in a number of locations, which help ­t hose tired with walking no less than does the chamber itself” (40). In case it was not already clear that his summer routine is flexible (more so than Spurinna’s regula), Pliny now points out that “on occasion, some t­ hings are changed from this order” (non numquam ex hoc ordine aliqua mutantur) (5).120 ­Here, “order” does not mean “sequence” so much as “arrangement” or “practice,” since Pliny next describes how he sometimes economizes on time and how his time is sometimes wasted by o­ thers: For if I have been lying down or walking for a long time, then ­a fter my sleep and my reading I drive not in a wagon but on a ­horse, which takes less time ­because it is faster [brevius quia velocius]. Friends come over [interveniunt] from the nearest towns, and they draw out part of the day for themselves and sometimes rescue me from my fatigue with a timely interruption [ partemque diei ad se trahunt interdumque lasso mihi opportuna interpellatione subveniunt]. I sometimes go hunting, but not without my tablets, so that even if I catch nothing I w ­ ill not come back emptyhanded. Time is given also to my tenant farmers—­t hough not enough, in their opinion [datur et colonis, ut videtur ipsis, non satis temporis]. Their rustic complaints send me back to my letters and to ­these urban tasks. Farewell. (5–6)

In this last part of the letter we are given snapshots of the social world of Pliny’s summer otium. This demonstrates what Hoffer, discussing another Plinian letter (1.3), calls the interdependence between “the internal friendly cycle of the self” and “the external cycle of friendships.”121 In the pro­cess Pliny adds a more emphatic social dimension to the lonely space of the Tuscan villa as depicted in 5.6, though Pliny’s sociality remains subordinate to his studies—­a sharp contrast with Spurinna.122 Pliny’s concentric social circles in letter 9.36 move outward from his wife and close friends (4) to slaves who include scribes, readers, and learned conversation partners (4) to friends from the neighboring towns (5) to tenants (coloni [6])—­a cast of characters familiar from vari­ous other letters. The interruptions in Pliny’s day by friends (amici) and tenant farmers (coloni) are notable for the contrasting and complementary effects they have on Pliny’s day of rural studies. The friends “draw out part of the day for themselves” (partem . . . ​diei ad se trahunt) in a way that is timely and refreshing; Pliny’s repetitious phrasing “come over . . . ​sometimes . . . ​interruption . . . ​rescue” (interveniunt . . . ​ interdum . . . ​opportuna interpellatione subveniunt) (5) suggests an elegant and dynamic interaction that may recall the visitors who rescued Cicero from his solitude and studies.123 Conversely, the coloni, in what A. N. Sherwin-­White suggests

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may be a salutatio of some kind, make Pliny’s rural days unbearable and push him back, he says, to “my letters and to ­these urban tasks” (litteras nostras et haec urbana opera).124 The deictic phrase “­t hese urban tasks” is quite a revelation: it tells us that Pliny has provided the entire account of “how he [spends his] summer leisure at [his] Tuscan villa” from a location in the city.125 Perhaps we should picture him writing the letter at the Esquiline villa where Martial had depicted him at work. This perspective reverses the spatial configuration of letter 1.9, in which the city scene was viewed in retrospect from the countryside, and the rural villa is the telos. It indicates instead that Pliny’s days of otium remain subordinated to an ongoing rhythm of urban business.

The Morning Scene of Composition The dispositio (arrangement) of Pliny’s day is anchored above all in the pro­cess of literary composition. Letter 9.36, as a sequel to 7.9 advising Fuscus on the exercises that w ­ ill improve his orations, now maps his studies across the times of 126 the day. ­These studies are more per­sis­tent and concentrated than anything in Spurinna’s day. As Pliny says of his own wagon ­ride, “­There also, the same ­t hing as when walking or lying. My concentration persists, being refreshed precisely by the change [durat intentio mutatione ipsa refecta].” If this makes us think of Pliny the Elder’s intentio (­mental concentration) (3.5.17), and his overlaying of studia onto virtually ­every other form of activity (3.5.14), Pliny the Younger’s studies themselves are more varied: the u ­ ncle reads, annotates, and makes excerpts (3.5.10) but does not invent or revise. The u ­ ncle’s time sense is also characterized in more extreme terms, as instantia (urgent per­sis­tence) (3.5.18). Pliny the Younger’s schedule of activities, extending into 9.40, is dynamic and complex, emplotting the stages of the rhetorical pro­cess that include reflection and review.127 It is no surprise that Whitton views both ­these letters, with their numerous critical refractions of Quintilianic advice on the composition pro­cess and oratorical training, as central to Pliny’s proj­ect in the letters, a centrality reflected in the subtitle to his book, “Quintilian in Brief”(“brief” h ­ ere evoking the German 128 “Briefe,” meaning “letters”). The morning studies of 9.36 are a primal scene of controlled literary invention: The win­dows remain closed. For in silence and darkness I am wondrously sheltered from ­those t­ hings that distract, and f­ ree, and left to myself. I do not follow

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Literary Days: Martial and Pliny the Younger   225 my eyes with my mind, but my mind with my eyes. When they do not see anything ­else, they see the same ­things my mind sees. If I have something in hand, I think. I think like one writing and correcting, word by word, now just a few words, now more, depending on ­whether they can be composed or retained with difficulty or with ease. I summon my secretary, and welcoming the day in, I dictate what I had formed. He departs and again is summoned back and again is dismissed. (1–2)

Pliny’s ­earlier villa descriptions have given us every­thing we need for picturing the scene: at the Tuscan villa ­there is a “sleeping chamber that shuts out daylight, shouting, any sound [diem clamorem sonum excludit]” (5.6.21).129 Within the sense-­deprived setting of his bedroom, where dies in both a visual and a temporal sense as “daylight” and “daytime” is excluded ­until the author is ready to admit it again, the primary units of time are the expandable and contractible segments of continuous thought that Pliny writes and rewrites in his mind, each culminating in dictation to the secretary—­after which the pro­cess is repeated again.130 If the solitary Pliny “envisions himself as a pure mind” in the dark, upon the entrance of the slave-­secretary that mind “is, in effect, distributed, reflected, refracted, and articulated throughout his masterly apparatus.”131 Perhaps ­because of its psycholiterary correlation of textual segments with the author’s attention span, this passage has been viewed by some scholars as incriminating evidence. On Sherwin-­W hite’s reading, Pliny’s piecemeal dictation to his secretary “illuminates the practice of Silver Latin prose writing, its concentration on partes and patches, the composition in short sections, and lack of architectonics,” and he cites the same author’s Panegyricus as exhibit A: it “bears the marks of this, in the technical brilliance of its sections and the tediousness of the ­whole.”132 As Hubert Zehnacker points out, however, Sherwin-­W hite’s assessment is predicated on questionable characterizations of imperial lit­er­a­ture and also presupposes that Pliny’s method of composition is representative of his age.133 It is true that Pliny’s morning scene resonates with other imperial texts in which shorter time constraints are invoked along with other f­ actors to account for specific characteristics of con­temporary oratory.134 But the dynamics of Pliny’s scene likely have as much to do with Whitton’s idea of Quintilian in letters: the scene evokes Quintilian’s mention of how De­mos­the­nes lucubrated, and the routine with the secretary repeatedly entering and exiting “neatly solves Quintilian’s objections to dictation as an impediment to f­ ree thought.”135 Just as Stephen Hinds has argued of the ancient and modern periodization of a belated Silver Latin lit­er­a­ture more generally, the motif of a short attention

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span is a trope actively exploited by imperial writers in conjunction with their own literary programs rather than a clinical fact that should be used by literary historians to support a bleak evaluation.136 In the morning scene we see Pliny concerned most of all with making an auspicious beginning to the composition of both day and text, as he plots out the interface between, on the one hand, the private spaces and times of the author’s otium, conspicuously emphasizing that the pro­cess of emendation begins even before he starts dictating, and, on the other, the ever more public spaces and times in which the text ­will be successively received and reviewed.

Winter Days at Laurentum (Letters 9.40) In 9.40, the final letter of Pliny’s private correspondence, we learn that Fuscus has read 9.36 but wants to know more: “You write that you ­were pleased by my letter(s), in which you learned how I spent my summer leisure at my Tuscan villa. You ask further what I change from this in winter at my Laurentine place” (1). This loaded question already suggests an organic systematicity—in Fuscus’s thinking about the guidance he ­will need for pursuing days of study in dif­fer­ ent seasons and locales and equally in Pliny’s ordering of his own life. Pliny’s answer is not much more than a brief footnote to letter 9.36, but it delivers totality and closure, even as it suggests an ongoing life course still anchored in the city. What, then, does he change in the winter at Laurentum? “Nothing,” he writes, except that midday sleep is removed and much is taken from the night ­either before daylight or a­ fter [nihil, nisi quod meridianus somnus eximitur multumque de nocte vel ante vel post diem sumitur]. Also, if t­ here is a pressing need to deliver an oration, which is frequent in winter, ­there is no longer space for a comedian or lyre player ­after dinner, but rather, ­those t­ hings I have dictated are repeatedly revised, and at the same time, pro­gress in memorization is aided by frequent emendation. You have my habit in summer and winter. One may add to this spring and autumn [addas huc licet ver et autumnum]. ­These being in the ­middle between winter and summer [quae inter hiemem aestatemque media], as they lose nothing from the day, they glean a modest amount from the night [ut nihil de die perdunt, de nocte parvolum adquirunt]. Farewell. (2–3)

The final two clauses have been rendered in vari­ous ways by modern translators, but I ­here understand Pliny to mean that in the seasons of spring and fall he does

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not typically take the daytime mea­sure of skipping siesta that he mentions in his winter routine, but since the days are not as long as in summer, he does lucubrate—­just not as extensively as in winter.137 Letter 9.40 completes a framework within which all Pliny’s days can be incorporated and correlated. As Alessandro Barchiesi observes, “The author emerges from this final letter as a master of time: his control over his rhythm of work and leisure corrects the asymmetry created by the natu­ral alternation of long winter nights and long summer days.”138 Achieving this control also realizes Pliny’s express goal of balancing his accounts that he mentions in 1.9 (1). Several terms in the final sentence suggest this, such as “one may add” (addas), “lose” (perdunt), which could also be rendered as “waste,” and “glean” (adquirunt), which literally means “take” or “acquire,” and t­ hese are compatible in a general sense with Pliny’s ideal of “the day already secured and put in order.” Barchiesi notes in Pliny’s language “an elegant stylization of the very idea of closure: seasons and times of day complete each other (note the striking abundance of “aestatis . . . ​hieme . . . ​meridianus . . . ​nocte diem . . . ​aestate . . . ​hieme . . . ​ver . . . ​autumnum . . . ​hiemem aestatemque . . . ​die . . . ​nocte”) just as the collection saturates a mosaic of the lifetime of Pliny.”139 I would add that the framing of day and night within the seasonal cycle in letter 9.40 enhances this letter’s status as a sequel and complement to 9.36, where the focus is trained more on daytime itself in its subparts and inflections: “diem” (acc.) . . . ​“aestate” (abl.) . . . ​“ horam” (acc.) . . . ​“die” (abl.) . . . ​ “hora” (nom.) . . . ​“tempus” (nom.) . . . ​“dies” (nom.) . . . ​“dies” (nom.) . . . ​“diei” (gen.) . . . ​“temporis” (gen.) (1–6). Barchiesi uses the term “mosaic” to characterize Pliny’s self-­portrait, and Eckard Lefèvre also uses the term “arabesque” to characterize the symmetrical impression created by letter 9.40’s seasonal framework.140 As it happens, Kondoleon has drawn attention to the proliferation of mosaics and other visual images in domestic settings of the imperial period that depict the seasons in vari­ous orderly arrangements and often feature other allegorical figures such as the year or the sun and moon and specific mythical or divine figures alluding to festivals in the calendar, the upshot of which is a repre­sen­ta­tional paradigm that has rich pre­ce­dents in Hellenistic art and spectacle.141 Although Kondoleon is understandably reluctant to generalize too far about the function of such a varied range of images, she suggests that “by selecting time imagery as domestic decoration, Roman ­house ­owners ­were able to survey and control, if only symbolically, the yearly cycles and the associated events and seasons.”142 One of Kondoleon’s examples is quite evocative for the role played by Pliny in the ordering of the seasons: an early third-­century mosaic from a Roman villa in

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Sillin, Libya, “wherein graceful Seasons dance through the hoop of the constellations held by Aion,” reflecting Aion’s association with the recurring year and a role as temporal “ringmaster.”143 It would be in keeping with Barchiesi’s description of Pliny as a kind of time master to see Pliny not simply as the artist or the villa owner but indeed as a choreographer of the seasons in the manner of Aion, both as he arranges them in the final sentences of his letters and as he o­ rders his days throughout the year.144

The Eve­ning Scene of Emendation Letter 9.40 intensifies the focus on Pliny’s diurnal lit­er­a­ture factory. It is not just that winter’s shorter days require Pliny to dispense with the siesta if his study time is not to suffer, but, as he points out, the yearly rhythms of public life mean that “the need to deliver an oration” (agendi necessitas) is “frequent in winter” (frequens hieme), which entails that Pliny must often work on speeches in the eve­nings. Barchiesi sees Pliny as describing this after-­dinner scene in terms that add to letter 9.40’s impact as a closural device for the correspondence as a ­whole: “Precisely h ­ ere we encounter a reference to the stages of creative rewriting—­dictatio, retractatio, memoria, emendatio, the ­whole pro­cess of textual composition by an illustrious prose writer in Roman culture.”145 I would emphasize, however, that it is primarily textual completion that is foregrounded in this letter rather than composition as a ­whole. For the impact of letter 9.40 as closural device is dependent in no small part on its prequel in 9.36. The pro­cess of literary composition that had begun with the cogitatio (conceptualizion), formatio (shaping), and dictatio (dictation) of the morning scene in letter 9.36 is now brought to an end in the retractatio (revision), emendatio (emendation), and memoria (memorization) of the eve­ning scene in 9.40. Along with this, the ­earlier recursive cycle of dictation, as the secretary “departs and again is summoned back and again is dismissed” is echoed in the l­ater cycle of editing: “­Those ­things I have dictated are repeatedly revised, and at the same time pro­gress in memorization is aided by frequent emendation.” Yet the end of letter 9.40 is not the end—­and not just ­because, as Greg Woolf has argued, the Pliny-­Trajan letters of book 10 give us a portrait of “Pliny a­ fter dusk” that retroactively populates the time period of the private letters with scenes from the rich imperial correspondence.146 For letter 9.40 looks ahead to a con­spic­u­ous gap: the component of the rhetorical pro­cess that still lies ahead, namely actio (delivering an oration).147 Further, while actio lies not far away in space given the proximity of the Laurentine villa to Rome, its elision in 9.40 means that Pliny’s day is not entirely self-­contained.148 That temporal gap can,

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of course, be filled by any of the letters from e­ arlier in the correspondence in which Pliny recounts the days he spent speaking in the law courts or elsewhere (e.g., 2.11) or by other publications such as we see in the surviving Panegyricus. The rural routine, once again, is subordinated to a cycle of study whose telos lies in Pliny’s public eloquence in the city. Pliny’s studious days at his Laurentine villa, then, implicitly ascend to the still grander time scheme that Martial charts for Pliny at his urban villa: He gives ­whole days to sour Minerva while he prepares for the ears of the hundred [jurors] something that the ages and posterity w ­ ill even be able to compare with the sheets of [Cicero’s] Arpinum.

In his poetic overtures to Pliny, Martial attempts to coordinate, however temporarily, the distinct daily routines of their respective lit­er­a­ture factories, just as each writer also uses day patterning to locate his own form of life within the sociotemporal order of Flavian and post-­Flavian Rome. Martial portrays himself as negotiating a ­humble autonomy for his quotidian poetry amid the alienating experience of the client’s day, while Pliny arranges days of suburban leisure yet without sacrificing the idealized routine of the urban statesman. In the next chapter we move both backward and forward in time, juxtaposing letters of Seneca the Younger and Marcus Aurelius in which the written text has a still more specific role to play as a time technology. Their letters serve as a device—­whether philosophical, pedagogical, or both—­for active review of the day just completed.

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ch a pter 8

­Today in Retrospect Seneca and Marcus Aurelius

A Review of the Day Just Completed “You command that single days of mine be told to you, in their entirety.” A ­ fter ­these opening words to Lucilius in Moral Letters 83 (1), Seneca proceeds to give an account of “­today’s day” (hodiernus dies) (3). His narrative unfolds as if in real time. “Hear that!” he says at one point: “The clamor of a circus crowd” (7). Undistracted, he begins philosophizing. Marcus Aurelius, in turn, as he concludes the letter in which he has narrated his day to Fronto, switches to the pre­sent tense to describe the last t­ hing he does prior to g­ oing to bed: “Before I turn over onto my side so I may snore, I work through my assigned task [meum pensum explico] and give an account of the day [diei rationem . . . ​reddo] for my dearest teacher” (Fronto, Ep. 4.6.2). He is referring to the pre­sent letter itself. Michel Foucault pairs the letters on the basis of this similarity. In addition to arguing that the “ethopoetic” function of “self-­writing” was intensified in epistolography through the mutual self-­awareness of sender and addressee, he draws attention to how both letters are propelled by self-­review. He notes Seneca’s remarks on the benefits of reviewing one’s days contained in the letter’s programmatic preface (1–2) and argues that the last lines of Marcus’s letter “show how it is linked to the practice of self-­examination: the day ends, just before sleep, with a kind of reading of the day that has passed; one rolls out the scroll

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on which the day’s activities are inscribed, and it is this imaginary book of memory that is reproduced the next day in the letter addressed to the one who is both teacher and friend.”1 The procedures of daily self-­examination referred to ­here, some occurring in the morning and some in the eve­ning, are prescribed or alluded to in vari­ous works of imperial Roman philosophy and notably in writings of both Seneca and Marcus. The discourse of daily philosophical self-­examination is clearly relevant to ­these letters, but is it relevant in the same way or in equal mea­sure? For even as we note overlaps—­between Seneca and Marcus, as well as between the diverse forms of writing in each man’s oeuvre—we want to attend to the heterogeneous details of t­ hese two epistolary moments. Two salient prob­lems addressed in Seneca’s letter are his own situation as an aging former statesman and the philosophical pro­gress of Lucilius, his younger friend. For Marcus, imperial son and devotee of philosophy, the prob­lem is how to communicate appropriately with Fronto, his rhe­toric teacher and older friend. The day patterns through which each writer addresses his form-­of-­life prob­lems are only partially explicable in terms of philosophic practice. Several other paradigms are equally relevant in each case.

Examining Day, Self, Life (Seneca, Moral Letters 83) Benefits of a Day-­Review (83.1–2) What exactly is Lucilius asking of Seneca when he asks him to describe “single days . . . ​in their entirety” (singulos dies . . . ​et quidem totos) (1)?2 The younger friend is holding Seneca to a claim he had made in the very first of the Moral Letters, which concerns the need to reclaim oneself through reclaiming one’s time: “I can say what I lose and why and how: I can give the reasons for my poverty [causas paupertatis meae reddam]” (4). In another letter, Seneca goes on to boast that “you cannot imagine in your mind how much pro­gress I see single days [singulos dies] bringing me” (6.3). Letter 83 is certainly an instance of what Donato Gagliardi describes as the successive “deepening” of the topic of time in the course of Seneca’s correspondence.3 It is not only the topic of time that deepens. Letters 1 and 2 form a tight sequence proceeding from Lucilius’s use of time to his reading practices, and now letter 83 on days is followed by letter 84, in which Seneca addresses reading again, only this time arguing for the benefits of writing also, suggesting “that what­ever has been collected in reading, the pen may reduce into a body [stilus redigat in corpus]” (2).4 The complementarity of letters 83 and 84 is not lost on Foucault, who sees the writing of a person’s “days” and “body” as “two strategic

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points that ­will ­later become the privileged objects of what could be called the writing of the relation to the self.”5 The temporal and bodily dimensions of ­these same letters have also been situated by Victoria Rimell within the array of “enclosures Seneca has us envisage—­from ­houses and workshops to temporal, bodily, textual, and linguistic confines”—­spaces “alternately oppressive and inviting” in Seneca’s Neronian world.6 In the opening of letter 83, Seneca elaborates on why it is good to review one’s time use like this. One benefit is that it can reveal the state of one’s conscience: “You judge me favorably if you think ­there is nothing in all of this that I would conceal. Certainly we o­ ught to live just as if we w ­ ere living in full view, and we ­ought to think just as if someone could peer right into our heart. And he can!” (1), “he” ­here referring to God. Unlike the epistolary addressee, however, God resides with us permanently: “He is pre­sent in our minds and he intervenes amid our thoughts [interest animis nostris et cogitationibus medius intervenit]. I say ‘intervenes’—as if he ever left!” (1). Another benefit is the self-­improvement that Seneca says ­will ensue as he reflects on how he has been employing and organ­ izing his past time: And so I w ­ ill do what you command and w ­ ill write to you, willingly, about what I do and in what order [quid agam et quo ordine libenter tibi scribam]. I ­will observe myself at once and, a most useful ­thing, I ­will review my day [diem meum recognoscam]. We are ruined by the fact that no one looks at his own life [nemo vitam suam respicit]. We think about what we ­will do [quid facturi simus cogitamus], and even this we do only seldom. But we do not think about what we have done [quid fecerimus non cogitamus]. Yet planning for the ­f uture comes from the past [consilium futuri ex praeterito venit]. (2)

­ hese comments amount to a preface for the letter, correlating the day descripT tion that follows with two specific broader themes concerning daily time in Seneca’s letters: daily self-­examination and reflection on the day as a way to gain perspective on one’s life.

Philosophical Daily Self-­Examination Foucault and o­ thers have unsurprisingly connected letter 83 to Seneca’s much-­ quoted description of self-­examination in On Anger, seeing in the letter a textualization of the same procedure.7 In that famous passage, which concerns how we can rein in our tendencies to anger, Seneca first relates how the Roman phi­ los­o­pher Sextius, “the day complete [consummato die], when he had withdrawn for his night’s sleep, questioned his mind: ‘Which ill of yours did you cure t­ oday?

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What fault did you head off? In what part are you improved?’ ” (3.36.1)—­questions echoing the Pythagorean Golden Verses (40–44 Thom) that we find in several other texts (in Greek) on self-­examination.8 Seneca then describes his own similar practice: I exercise this authority and each day plead my case before myself [utor hac potestate et cotidie apud me causam dico]. When the light has been removed from view, and my wife, now a witness to my habit, has fallen s­ ilent, I scrutinize my ­whole day and go back over what I have said and done [totum diem meum scrutor factaque ac dicta mea remetio]. ­There is nothing that I conceal from myself or pass over. (3.36.3)

The similarities to letter 83 are many: Seneca’s emphasis on the exercise’s overall utility (utor); the reviewing of the day in its entirety; his lack of concealment; and the overall configuration of the scene as a self-­run judicial review (recognitio sui) (3.36.2). Seneca’s figuration of the judge’s role through such meta­phors as “self-­observer and private censor” (speculator sui censorque secretus) in On Anger is matched in letter 83 by God’s access to our inner hideaway (secretum) and by Seneca’s “I ­will observe myself at once” (observabo me protinus), as if he is paying himself a visit to conduct an inspection.9 Foucault understands the self-­review in letter 83 as subsuming a variety of the functions we see self-­examination performing in On Anger or in other testimonies: it is an “examination of conscience” that is at once “an account of the everyday banality, an account of correct or incorrect actions, of the regimen observed, of the physical or m ­ ental exercises in which one engaged.”10 A crucial difference to note in letter 83, however, is that nothing is said about managing emotions: Seneca mentions t­ here that failing to “look at one’s own life” (2) can be detrimental to us, yet in the narrative portions of the letter he pays ­little attention to reviewing and correcting his feelings. He is concerned with describing, as he says, “what I do and in what order”, and “order” (ordo) ­here pertains not only to sequence but also to the rationale of his time use and how this reflects his life situation. The vari­ous functions of daily self-­examination in the ancient tradition extend from mnemonics to moral self-­correction. While we need not rehearse all of t­ hese functions ­here, the focus on days in letter 83 makes it essential for us to recognize some of the diurnal and quotidian dynamics that are central to the practice and make it, among other ­things, a ­matter of time management.11 An anecdote from early in the philosophical tradition relates how Plato’s student Xenocrates “many times in the day [ pollakis tês hêmeras] attended to himself,

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and, they say, devoted one hour to silence [hôran mian . . . ​apeneme siôpêi]” (Diog. Laert. 4.11); in a slightly dif­fer­ent version Xenocrates does this while “differentiating each part of the day for a specific activity” (diairôn hekaston meros tês hêmeras eis praxin tina) (Stobaeus, Flor. 33.33.11). Among the vari­ous legacies of self-­examination in the Christian tradition, the sixth-­century abbot Dorotheus of Gaza offers precise temporal guidelines; for example, he advocates self-­examination in the eve­ning and then in the morning a review of one’s activities of the night, and given how often ­humans sin and how easily we forget, he also recommends an examination “­every six hours.”12 The main evidence from ancient philosophy concerns eve­ning reflection and morning anticipation. The eve­ning scene of On Anger 3.36 is at once a replay of the day’s events, a tracing of day-­to-­day changes, and a preparation for sleep.13 Seneca exclaims: “The sleep that follows a self-­review [ post recognitionem sui]—­ how tranquil, deep, liberated!” (2). It is, furthermore, an event with deterrence value: “Anger w ­ ill cease and w ­ ill be more moderate if it knows that it must come before a judge each day [cotidie]” (2). The morning scene, in turn, involves a girding of the self for the expected sequence of everyday scenarios. In On Anger the wise man “ventures forth each day [cotidie] with this thought: ‘Many w ­ ill cross my path who are devoted to wine, many full of lust, many misers, many stirred up by the madness of ambition’ ” (2.10.7). No source gives us a better sense of daily examination’s time consciousness than that of Epictetus’s Discourses. “Whenever the need for each belief is pre­ sent,” the phi­los­o­pher advises, “we must have it ready to hand” (3.10.1). He then mentions specific times of day: At breakfast, the ­things that concern breakfast; at bathing, the ­things concerning bathing; in sleep, the t­ hings concerning sleep [ep’ aristôi ta peri aristou, en balaneiôi ta peri balaneiou, en koitêi ta peri koitês]: Do not receive sleep upon your gentle eyes before accounting for each of the day’s deeds: “How did I pro­gress? What did I accomplish? What necessary ­thing remains unfinished for me?” Beginning from this, advance. And ­a fter this if you accomplish bad ­things, chastise yourself, and if good ­things, rejoice. [GV 40–44 Thom] Keep t­ hese verses in mind, ready to use. (2–3)

Epictetus thus maps his practical conception of philosophical vigilance—­“being prepared for contingencies” (6)—­across the anatomy of the Roman day.

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In another discourse, however, Epictetus mockingly observes that the social be­hav­ior of the Roman elite is so utterly misguided that it is as if they ­were vigilantly perverting both morning and eve­ning examinations: He, rising at dawn [ex orthrou anastas], seeks out whom from the ­house­hold of Caesar he may greet, to whom he may say a gratifying word, to whom he may send a gift, how he may please the dancer, how he may please one man by disparaging another. Whenever he prays, he prays about t­ hese ­things. Whenever he sacrifices, he sacrifices for t­ hese. The saying of Pythagoras, “Do not receive sleep upon your gentle eyes . . . ,” he has wrenched to suit himself: “How did I pro­gress” . . . ​in flattery? (4.6.3–5)

­ fter this miniature satire, however, Epictetus pivots back to describe best A practices: But if in truth you have given no thought to anything other than what use you should make of impressions, immediately upon waking up think to yourself beginning from dawn [euthus anastas heôthen enthumou], “What t­ hings remain for me to be f­ ree from passion? To be f­ ree from disturbance? Who am I? I am not a ­little body, am I? A piece of property? A reputation? None of ­these ­things. But what? I am a rational animal.” What ­things then are asked of you? Rehearse what you have done. “How did I pro­gress” . . . ​­toward tranquility? (6)

­ ere Epictetus represents the morning examination as an opportunity for one H to remind oneself about goals not yet accomplished and also to reflect on what sort of creature one r­ eally is—­a sequence of actions repeated in the morning self-­ addresses in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, though not in his letters. The eve­ ning examination, in turn, is confirmed as a time when one can retrace one’s actions with a focus on lapses and deficiencies. As t­ hese examples make clear, the morning and eve­ning self-­examinations both previewed and reviewed the ­whole day as a structured sequence of social encounters, the goal being to hone the be­hav­iors through which this schedule could best be navigated.

The Day as Life A second, broader theme of letter 83’s preface, separable from daily self-­ examination, is Seneca’s interest in the day as a lens allowing us to gain perspective on our time and life.14 He explic­itly indicates that his day review (2) w ­ ill have a larger temporal scope: “No one looks at his own life” (nemo vitam suam respicit). “We do not think about what we have done” (quid fecerimus non cogitamus). Several of the concepts and terms ­here recall Seneca’s own discussion of

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“time’s three parts” (tria tempora) in On the Brevity of Life and his criticism t­ here of the “busybodies” (occupati) who “do not have the time to look back at past ­things [ praeterita respicere]” or who even when they do are brought no plea­sure by “recollection of a t­ hing they regret” (10.2). T ­ here the focus is less on planning for the ­future—­Seneca dares Fortune to “set in order [ordinet] the time that remains, however she wants” (7.9)—­and more on asserting that even without the ­future “life is secure” (7.9). Our past actions—­our past days—­are rather a resource from which we should be able to salvage the sense that we have lived a ­whole life:15 Only single days are pre­sent—­a nd ­t hese, moment by moment [singuli tantum dies, et hi per momenta, praesentes sunt]. Yet all the [days] of past time ­will be pre­ sent whenever you command [and] w ­ ill permit themselves to be inspected and detained—­a ­thing the busybodies do not have the time to do. It is the sign of a mind that is calm and f­ree of care to roam freely over all the parts of one’s life [in omnes vitae suae partes discurrere]. The busybodies’ minds are as if yoked: they cannot turn themselves and look back [respicere]. (10.4–5)

This autobiographic perspective, encompassing all the days of one’s past, is relevant to the exercise Seneca undertakes in letter 83. We may revisit Jean Starobinski’s comment on the letter: “To say how one passes the time is to say oneself, to construct an identity, to fix ‘myself’ in the singularity of one’s acts and gestures.”16 That is precisely what the busybodies cannot do: they cannot provide an “account of [their] own life” (Brev. 18.3). Yet we also need to acknowledge that in letter 83 Seneca’s more immediate concern is with reviewing a single, pre­sent day’s actions and order as a basis for considering his form of life. To begin with, Seneca’s choice to focus on “­today’s day” (hodiernus dies) (3) is in keeping with the basic temporal rhythm of the Moral Letters in which each letter marks a day, as seen in such remarks as “­Today’s [quotation] [hodiernum] is this that I located in Epicurus” (2.5). Lucilius’s philosophical studies are conceived of as a “daily rehearsal” (cotidiana meditatio) (4.5).17 This, combined with the highly presentist modality of Seneca’s reflections, establishes a basic correlation between the literary structuring of the letter and the ordering of the day, such that a given letter might be brought to a close with the acknowl­edgment that “­there is material that could draw out the day [ducere diem]” (58.37).18 The single day, as the defining temporal currency of the correspondence, is the showcase within which the exemplary details of life are discovered, presented, and interpreted by the epistolographer and his audience.

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Letter 83 also resonates with a broader cluster of Senecan conceits in which the temporal structure of the day facilitates meditatio mortis (rehearsal of death). In On the Brevity of Life he observes that “someone who ­orders ­every day as his last [qui omnem diem tamquam ultimum ordinat], neither hopes for tomorrow nor fears it” (7.9).19 One related but distinct theme is Seneca’s anticipation of his deathday in letter 26 as a day of self-­judgment (4–5), while another, found in letter 101, is for each day to be an image of a w ­ hole lifetime (10) or as a reinforcement of life closure, as in letter 61 (1). In letter 12 we find both the concentric circles model that emphasizes structural similarities between life (from birth to death) and day (from sunrise to sunset) (6) and the assertion that “­every day [dies omnis] should be ordered [ordinandus] just as if it ­were bringing up the rear and finishing and completing our lives [consummet atque expleat vitam]” (8).20 Foucault, in a 1982 lecture preserved in his Hermeneutics of the Subject, sees signs in letter 12 of a more general notion that “all in all a day, the passing of a single day, is the model for the organ­ization of the time of a life, or of dif­fer­ent or­ga­nized times and durations in ­human life.”21 Another much-­cited passage from Seneca’s letters invokes the image of the clepsydra that is emptied not just by the final drop but by longer-­term dripping: “So too the last hour, the one in which we cease to exist, is not the only [hour] that makes our death, but simply the one that finalizes it” (24.20).22 Certainly we see Seneca embracing opportunities to use the single day to capture life’s totality and precarity. In one of several passages from letter 101 emphasizing the changes a single hour can bring, he observes that “­every day, ­every hour, shows how we are nothing” (omnis dies, omnis hora quam nihil simus ostendit) (1).23 He then recounts the rags-­to-­riches life of his equestrian friend Cornelius Senecio that terminated in his dramatic itinerary from vitality to sudden death, emplotted over the course of a single, socially structured day: ­ fter seeing me in the morning as usual, a­ fter he had sat for the w A ­ hole day [ per totum diem], and into the night [usque in noctem], with a friend who was in a very bad way and lying without hope, a­ fter he had cheerfully dined [cenasset], he was seized by a sudden form of illness, angina. He scarcely kept breathing to the morning, his breath being constricted by a tightening of the throat [vix conpressum artatis faucibus spiritum traxit in lucem]. And so he died, within just a few hours of having served all the duties of a sound and healthy man [intra paucissimas ergo horas quam omnibus erat sani ac valentis officiis functus]. (3)24

Seneca’s conceptual reliance on the day as microcosm of life is evidenced even at off-­handed moments, as in a preface from Natu­ral Questions where he admits

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that he is an old man in the postmeridianae horae (after­noon hours) of his life (3.pr.3).

The Old Man’s Day (83.3–7) In letter 83’s narration of ­today, Seneca’s opening is general and ­simple: “The pre­ sent day is unbroken [hodiernus dies solidus est]. No one has snatched [eripuit] any of it from me. It has been divided equally between lying down and reading” (3). His day, then, has eluded the threat flagged in his first letter—­t hat “some times are snatched away [eripiuntur] from us” (1) and cannot be recovered. It also accords with Tacitus’s report in the Annals that around this time (c. 62 CE) Seneca did not follow a standard public day: he “excluded crowds of greeters [salutantium], avoided ­those who would escort him, [and was] seldom [seen] through the city [rarus per urbem]” (14.56). The rare epithet solidus (unbroken, intact) that Seneca uses of his day h ­ ere in letter 83 is one that he elsewhere applies to the mind (animus) of the wise person (Constant. 2.5). As applied to dies, it also invites a contrast with Horace in his lyric poetry, who as we saw in chapter 6 celebrates a friend who “does not scorn to take away a part from the solid day [solido . . . ​de die]” in order to drink with him (Carm. 1.1.20–21).25 While Seneca ­here is primarily emphasizing his uninterrupted solitude—­a nd perhaps above all the lack of any morning salutatores—­the potential association with sobriety may prefigure letter 83’s l­ater turn t­ oward philosophical arguments against drunkenness. It is likely, too, that we are expected to contrast this picture with how Seneca begins in another recent letter: “Seneca to Lucilius, greeting. I split yesterday with ill health, which claimed the morning for itself but yielded to me in the after­noon” (hesternum diem divisi cum mala valetudine: antemeridianum illa sibi vindicavit, postmeridiano mihi cessit) (65.1). That day was dif­fer­ent not only in terms of Seneca’s physical condition—in letter 83 he feels well enough to exercise—­but also in terms of the activities he pursued. For on that after­noon, he says, ­after he “first tried [his] mind with reading [lectione]” and then gave ­free rein to his mind and “wrote [scripsi] more intensively than usual,” he was rescued from a challenging topic by the interruption of some friends (intervenerunt amici) who twisted his arm to debate philosophy with them. Thus “the pen was replaced by conversation” (in locum stili sermo successit) (2). How, though, are we to understand Seneca’s slightly puzzling claim in letter 83 that his day “has been divided equally between lying down and reading” (totus inter stratum lectionemque divisus est)? One option, I suggest, is to see it as referring to the w ­ hole day so far, as detailing from the perspective of the morning

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how Seneca has so far experienced only ­these two ­things. For in the lines that follow he goes on to describe numerous other activities: his physical exercise, bath, lunch, siesta, and thinking (3–8). Indeed, although Seneca’s day ­will not be fractured by hedonism or interaction with friends, his activities turn out to be more diverse and balanced than one might expect from his opening claim.26 Another option is to take Seneca to be treating his bodily activities as so brief that they do not seriously intrude on a day split (almost) entirely between lying down and reading, a reading that is perhaps more probable. E ­ ither way, the emphasis is on his control over his time use and the lack of interruptions, and while the day seems to have culminated in his writing or dictating the pre­sent letter, it does not seem to have included any visits by friends or any substantial sermo. Seneca next describes his brief physical routine. We may recall that Cicero had summarized his body life briskly: “From that point onward all my time is given to the body” (inde corpori omne tempus datur) (Fam. 9.20.3). Seneca’s account is disproportionately long: “The smallest amount [of time] is given to the exercise of the body [minimum exercitationi corporis datum], and for this reason I give thanks to old age: it does not come to me at ­great expense. Whenever I move myself, I am tired, and this is the limit of exercise for even the strongest of men” (3). The old-­age theme follows on from comments in e­ arlier letters such as 26: “Just now I was saying that I am within view of old age. Now I fear that I have left old age ­behind me.” (1). In letter 83, the scene of the aged Seneca exercising unfolds like a kind of satire. His instant fatigue short-­circuits the princi­ple defined by Celsus that “the limit of exercise, as a rule, should be sweat or certainly fatigue [lassitudo]” (Med. 1.2). And then he describes a comical ­running race against his young slave: Do you seek to know my trainers? Pharius alone is enough for me (a likeable boy, as you know). But he ­w ill be exchanged [mutabitur]: I am now seeking someone more tender. Indeed he says that we are at the same stage of life [eandem crisin habere], since we are both losing our teeth. But now I can scarcely keep up with him as he runs, and it w ­ on’t be more than a few days before I cannot [intra paucissimos dies non potero]. See what pro­gress daily exercise can produce [vide quid exercitatio cotidiana proficiat]! . . . ​But do you seek to know how t­oday’s contest [hodiernum certamen] went for us? Something rare among runners: we tied. (4–5)

The morning race occupies the time of morning scholê that Romans can only embrace if they withdraw from social obligations, and a striking concentration

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of Greek technical terms ­here, supposedly reflecting Seneca’s banter with the Greek Pharius, underlines the effect.27 In Seneca’s sketch we also encounter striking allusions to ­earlier moments in the correspondence that make this day review a retrospective on the corpus of letters as well as on his life course. The image of the toothless old man and child recalls Seneca’s encounter with the once young but now old slave Felicio (12.3)—­ part of a pattern in which Seneca, by contrast with the more standard elision of enslaved persons’ roles altogether, ostentatiously parades a slave as part of the apparatus of his self-­k nowledge.28 But his joking “he ­will be exchanged” or “I ­will trade him in” (mutabitur) painfully illustrates the eclipsing of Pharius’s personal experience in the sentimental spotlighting of the life course of the enslaver. At the same time, Seneca’s ironizing reference to “exercitatio cotidiana” seems intended to make his own feeble physical condition a grotesque parody of the daily philosophical exercise he has recommended repeatedly to Lucilius.29 The symbolic implications of the ­running race as a vista of life’s stages and its tension are easy to trace in light of Seneca’s reflections on his gerontian perspective in letter 49: Time’s speed is unlimited [infinita est velocitas temporis], and it appears more so to t­ hose looking back [respicientibus]. . . . ​Time did not always seem to me so speedy. Now its course [cursus] appears incredible, e­ ither b­ ecause I feel the lines being moved closer or b­ ecause I have begun to pay attention and to calculate my loss [conputare damnum meum]. (2–4)

­ hose reflections in letter 49 include a vivid autobiographic sketch: “Just now T [modo] I sat with Sotion the phi­los­o­pher. Just now [modo] I began to plead cases. Just now [modo] I ceased wanting to plead. Just now [modo] I ceased being able to” (2). In letter 83, too, as Seneca proceeds to describe the next part of his day—­ his bath—he contextualizes this not just within his day but within his life course: From this—­not exercise, but rather exhaustion—­I plunged into cold ­water. . . . ​ I, the g­ reat cold-­water bather, who used to greet the canal [on the Campus Martius] on the first day of January, who used to inaugurate the New Year not only by reading, writing, or saying something but also by jumping into the Aqua Virgo—­I first shifted camp to the Tiber, then to this tub. Whenever I am very brave and every­thing is reliable, the tub is sun warmed. I am on the verge of a heated bath. (5)

The ever-­increasing warmth of Seneca’s baths is ­here aligned both with his aging and with his movement from an inaugural icy dip that presumably took

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place in the early morning (salutabam . . . ​auspicabar) to a bath in sun-­warmed ­water l­ater in the day (sol temperat).30 Seneca’s morning sequence culminates in lunch and siesta, both extremely frugal: Then dry bread and lunch without a ­table, ­a fter which one’s hands do not need washing. I sleep very l­ittle [dormio minimum]. You know my habit: I take the briefest of snoozes and, as it w ­ ere, [merely] “unharness” [brevissimo somno utor et quasi interiungo]. It is enough for me to have ceased being awake. Sometimes I know I have slept, sometimes I [only] suspect that I have. (6)31

The light lunch conforms with dietetic strictures for old men, though Seneca is also not averse to imbuing an everyday frugal diet with a kind of festive symbolism. Just a few letters ­later, he describes his journey with his friend Maximus: “Each day [my lunch of figs] makes for me a New Year, which I make auspicious and happy with good thoughts and greatness of mind [cotidie mihi annum novum faciunt]” (87.3).32 In letter 83, however, Seneca is evidently located at a residence e­ ither in or close to a city, likely in Campania (mentioned in letter 86). His siesta seems to be interrupted by a noise that identifies a foil for his secluded day (and his private r­ unning race): “Hear that! The clamor of a circus crowd [ecce circensium obstrepit clamor]. My ears are struck by a sudden and unan­i­mous voice, and [yet] they do not disrupt my thought. They ­don’t even interrupt it. I endure the roar most patiently” (7). Although the noise could in theory threaten the thoughts to which he wants to devote himself, Seneca’s instant dismissal of it amounts to a more rapid recap of the pro­cess seen in the ­earlier letter 56, with its famous opening description of Seneca’s noisy neighbors in Naples—­“Hear that! All manner of clamor resounds around me!” (ecce undique me varius clamor circumsonat)—­that is followed by the boast “I force my mind to be intently focused and not be distracted by extraneous t­ hings” (1, 5).

Drunken Foils (83.8–27) The day’s events described thus far turn out to be simply the preface to Seneca’s extended pro­cess of philosophical cogitation: What is the ­thing, then, to which I have now cast my mind? I ­will tell. Left over from yesterday is my thinking about the motives of t­ hose very prudent men who made the most trivial and complex proofs for very impor­tant ­things—­proofs that, even if they are true, still resemble lies. (8)

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Seneca’s thought pro­cess does, in fact, follow on closely from that of letter 82, where he mocks the way moral truths (e.g., death is not an evil) are analyzed and argued for through sophistries (cavillationes) by even the most authoritative of Stoics (8). T ­ oday he focuses on how ­these same problematic methods have been applied to a dif­fer­ent topic: “Zeno wants to deter us from drunkenness” (9). But Zeno’s words and sophistries, Seneca complains, are ineffectual. Seneca c­ ounters with facts and examples (27). ­There is no need for us ­here to rehearse his discussion of drunkenness in full, but t­ here are three examples of Roman drunks Seneca mentions along the way that offer in­ter­est­ing comparisons for his focus on time in the first part of the letter.33 Two of ­these are magistrates appointed by Tiberius whose insobriety did not prevent them from discharging their responsibilities to the state. Lucius Piso, guardian of the city, “would spend the greater part of the night [maiorem noctis partem] in banqueting and usually slept all the way to the sixth hour [usque in horam sextam fere]. That was his ‘morning time’ [hoc eius erat matutinum]” (14– 15). Cossus, urban prefect, was “a man serious and restrained, but drenched and dripping with wine—so much so, that on one occasion, a­ fter he had come to the senate directly from a banquet, he was carried out of t­ here in the depths of an unrousable sleep” (14–15). Although Seneca h ­ ere defends Piso and Cossus as dependable Roman statesmen despite their foibles, the details he adds about their nocturnal festivities and late waking makes them implicit contrasts for Seneca, Nero’s erstwhile confidante. And in a l­ater letter (122) Seneca pre­sents Piso’s and Cossus’s nocturnal milieu as a clear negative contrast to the conventionally ordered day. Another striking example from the letter’s final page is Mark Antony. Wine rendered Antony utterly cruel, and in Seneca’s culminating image of him—­ “amid the most sumptuous banquets and luxuries fit for a king, he reviewed [recognosceret] the f­ aces and hands of t­ hose who had been proscribed [and killed]” (25)—we may see a nocturnal foil to Seneca’s procedure summarized in “I w ­ ill review my day” (diem meum recognoscam). Letter 83 concludes without any further recapitulation of Seneca’s day or any specific mention of the scene of day review: we are left to supply ­these for ourselves.

How Recent Romans Divided Their Days—­and Nights The reviewed day of letter 83, then, belongs within Seneca’s approaches to daily examination and day-­based perspectives on life that we have already explored. But we have not yet considered two key Senecan texts that address day ordering itself as a morally significant form of both social policy and personal agency.34

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The first of ­these is a passage in chapter 17 of Seneca’s ­earlier work On Tranquility of Mind, where time management emerges as one of the areas he recommends that his friend Serenus should become better at by effecting a balance between seriousness and joking, between waking and sleeping. He mentions Rome’s festivals established by “the found­ers of our laws” (legum conditores festos instituerunt dies) (7) and then adds more specific and personal examples: “And some g­ reat men would grant monthly holidays to themselves on certain days, some men divided e­ very day without fail between leisure and cares [nullum non diem inter otium et curas dividebant]” (7). To illustrate this subdividing of each and e­ very day, Seneca homes in on a specific example within memory: the orator Asinius Pollio, “whom no m ­ atter detained beyond the tenth [hour] [nulla res ultra decumam retinuit]. He did not even read letters a­ fter that hour, so that no new care could arise. Instead, for t­ hose two hours he laid aside his fatigue from the ­whole day [totius diei lassitudinem duabus illis horis ponebat]” (7).35 Although it is easy for us to think h ­ ere that Seneca might be tapping into the longer tradition of idiosyncratic time regulation in which Xenocrates and Scipio Africanus typically feature, it is notable that he chooses a recent example instead, Asinius Pollio having been a con­temporary of Seneca’s f­ ather.36 In the same chapter Seneca surveys Roman time management more broadly. “Some men,” he continues, “have unharnessed in the ­middle of the day [medio die interiunxerunt] and have postponed some lighter work for the after­noon hours [in postmeridianas horas aliquid levioris operae distulerunt]” (7)—­where “interiunxerunt” evokes the moment in letter 83 when Seneca says he “unharnesses” prior to his after­noon of cogitation. ­Here, though, the verb denotes the more conventional pivot point between morning negotium and after­noon otium. To round out his picture Seneca returns to describe two other official Roman conventions: “Even our ancestors forbade any new motion to be made in the senate a­ fter the tenth hour [ post horam decumam]. The soldier divides up watches [miles vigilias dividit], and ­those returning from an expedition have the night off [nox immunis est ab expeditione redeuntium]” (7). His concluding advice—­that “the mind needs to be indulged and leisure needs to be provided frequently [dandumque subinde otium]” (8)—is tailored for the situation of his addressee Serenus, who is at risk of becoming excessive in his moral and intellectual self-­discipline. Seneca’s individually ordered day in letter 83, then, with its putative division between lying down and reading, together with the narrated sequence of exercise, bathing, lunch, sleep, thinking, and (we surmise) letter writing (83.3–8), appears to conform with his own ­earlier strictures in On Tranquility of Mind

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about balancing work-­like activities with leisure, food, and exercise. Yet letter 83 is conspicuously lacking in the kind of regulated balance that Seneca ascribes to the routine of Asinius Pollio. So too, a more regulated but also less balanced self-­portrait is already given in letter 8, where Seneca declares, “None of my days conclude amid leisure. I reclaim part of the nights for my studies” (nullus mihi per otium dies exit; partem noctium studiis vindico) (1). This would seem to be a marked exception to his more general insistence on the need for daily relaxation. The other text concerned with day ordering per se is Moral Letters 122, which is relevant to the drunken nighttime routines of Piso and Cossus mentioned in letter 83. For in letter 122 Seneca satirizes a “crowd of fugitives from daylight” (turba lucifugarum) (15)—­nocturnal hedonists who “have inverted the functions of daylight and night” (officia lucis noctisque perverterint) (2). Although the names of Piso and Cossus do not come up directly, Seneca writes that “we recall that many lived this life at the same time” (10) and his examples h ­ ere also come from the early Julio-­Claudian period. B ­ ecause I have discussed this letter in detail elsewhere, I h ­ ere limit myself to points most relevant to letter 83 and Seneca’s conception of day-­ordering.37 The lucifugae, Seneca says, “want their lives to be talked about while they are alive” (14), and the salient way in which they seek “to set themselves apart” (se . . . ​ separare) is “by the arrangement of their times” (temporum dispositione) (18). He mocks their “antipodean” routine from start to finish: “It is light [lucet]. Time for sleep [somni tempus est]! It is rest [time]. Now let us exercise, go for a drive, eat lunch! Now daylight is approaching. Time for dinner!” (9). This consistency illustrates just how systematically—­even nomothetically in the manner of On Tranquility of Mind 17—­“they resolved to wish all ­things contrary to nature’s custom” (instituerunt omnia contra naturae consuetudinem velle), all to gain notoriety and to be seen as exclusive.38 “Let us abandon the public day!” he mocks them for saying. “Let us have a morning that is private and belongs to us alone!” (dies publicus relinquatur: proprium nobis ac peculiare mane fiat) (9). As the conventional Roman ordered day becomes their ordered night, Seneca recounts anecdotes such as the testimony of someone whose downstairs neighbor belonged to this group: “Around the third hour of the night [circa horam tertiam noctis],” he says, “I hear the sound of flogging. I ask what he is ­doing: he is said to be receiving his accounts. Around the sixth hour of the night [circa horam sextam noctis] I hear an excited clamor. I ask what it is: he is said to be exercising his voice. I ask around

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­Today in Retrospect: Seneca and Marcus Aureliu   245 the eighth hour of the night [circa horam octavam noctis] what is ­going on with that sound of wheels: he is said to be g­ oing for a drive. Around daylight [circa lucem] ­there is a scurrying, slaves are being called, and butlers and cooks are raising a ruckus. I ask what it is: he is said to have called for honey wine and grits, (and) to have emerged from the bath. (15–16)

The social and moral norms of time ordering that t­ hese routines deviate from have already been spelled out by Seneca at the beginning of the letter: No day is long for one who is active [nullus agenti dies longus est]. Let us extend life [extendamus vitam]: action is a duty of life and a sign of life [huius et officium et argumentum actus est]. Night must be hemmed in and something from it transferred into day [circumscribatur nox et aliquid ex illa in diem transferatur]. (3)

The allusion h ­ ere to lucubration also aligns with the letter’s opening pretext, namely, the encroachment of fall and the shortening of daylight: The day has now felt a decrease: it has ebbed somewhat. But not without t­ here still being a generous span [liberale . . . ​spatium] if someone should rise with the day itself, as it ­were. More dutiful and better is he who waits for the day and seizes on first light [lucem primam excipit]. Disgraceful is he who lies half asleep when the sun is high, who begins to be awake at midday [cuius vigilia medio die incipit]. And still for many this is predawn [et adhuc multis hoc antelucanum est]! (1)

Seneca’s satirization is intended to define through opposition the normative social and moral pressure on the Roman elite to maximize their own signs of life, and it directly echoes his characterization of Lucius Piso in letter 83, for whom the sixth hour “was his ‘morning time.’ ” If, as many have suspected, Seneca’s implicit con­temporary target in letter 122 is Petronius Arbiter, whose “day was passed in sleep, his night in life’s duties and entertainments” (dies per somnum, nox officiis et oblectamentis vitae transigebatur) (Tac. Ann. 16.18), then Seneca’s moralistic championing of the conventional dies publicus is a pointed contestation of power within the culture of the imperial court.39 In letter 122, then, Seneca places par­tic­u­lar weight on the negative symbolism to be seen in individual routines that invert a normative collective habit based in nature. When we put it together with On Tranquility of Mind, however, and compare both of ­t hese in turn with letter 83, we may conclude that Seneca is concerned with day ordering as a pa­ram­e­ter of everyday life that has major collective and personal implications, including for the sociopo­liti­c al

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fortunes of the persons involved, and that he exploits negative and positive examples where it suits his purpose. Letter 83 is Seneca’s clearest first-­person inhabitation of a day pattern—­a pattern comprising both the idiosyncratic bodily and intellectual practice of his old age and a self-­review at each day’s end. This pattern defines the form of Stoic life to which he seeks to lead Lucilius using the epistolary discipline of daily philosophical letters, as well as the reclusive daily life of survival that he himself pursues following his withdrawal from the imperial court.

Retelling the Day as Rhetorical Exercise (Marcus Aurelius, Letter 4.6) Marcus’s Daily Wrap In the sample letter highlighted by Foucault, Marcus Aurelius is concerned, like Seneca, with describing a single day. On this par­tic­u­lar day, Marcus was in close contact with his adoptive ­father, the emperor Antoninus Pius, and with his ­mother, Domitia Lucilla, while the ­whole imperial retinue was in the countryside. The letter survives in the fragments of Fronto’s correspondence rediscovered in 1815 on a manuscript palimpsest, which includes several dozen letters exchanged between Marcus and Fronto ranging from when Fronto was his teacher (136–45 CE) to Marcus’s accession as emperor in 161 and Fronto’s death in 167.40 Letter 4.6 is the second in a pair of letters written by Marcus to Fronto (Ep. 4.5, 4.6) that have been tentatively dated to September or October of 143, when Marcus was twenty-­t wo years old, not long ­after Fronto’s suffect consulship began in the summer of that same year. The preceding letter, 4.5, describes Marcus’s routine on the day before that described in 4.6, and a comparison of the two letters is crucial to my analy­sis. Since, however, Foucault focuses exclusively on 4.6, I initially confine my focus to this letter, explaining what Foucault sees in it and what ­else we might notice. I then locate 4.6 in relation to Marcus’s other writings, including the Meditations and letter 4.5, and also in relation to the discursive framework that I argue is most relevant—­not daily philosophical self-­examination but rather a well-­ documented pedagogical tradition that centers on retelling the day as a rhetorical exercise. Foucault describes letter 4.6 as both “a notable example” of the “conjunction of epistolary practice with self-­examination” and “a description of everyday life. All the details of taking care of oneself are h ­ ere, all the unimportant t­ hings he has done.” 41 Just prior to quoting the letter in full Foucault outlines it in the following terms:

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­Today in Retrospect: Seneca and Marcus Aureliu   247 It was written during one of t­ hose stays in the country which w ­ ere highly recommended as moments of detachment from public activities, as health treatments, and as occasions for attending to oneself. In this text, one finds the two combined themes of the peasant life—­healthy ­because it was natu­ral—­a nd the life of leisure given over to conversation, reading, and meditation. At the same time, a ­whole set of meticulous notations on the body, health, physical sensations, regimen, and feelings shows the extreme vigilance of an attention that is intensely focused on oneself.42

With Foucault’s perspective in mind, let us examine letter 4.6 in full: Greetings to you, sweetest of teachers. (1) I am well. I slept a ­little e­ arlier due to a slight cold [ego aliquantum prodormivi propter perfrictiunculam], which seems to have subsided. And so from the eleventh hour of night into the third hour of the day [ab undecima noctis in tertiam diei] I partly read from Cato’s Agriculture and partly wrote, less poorly than yesterday, by Hercules. Then ­after greeting my ­father [inde salutato patre meo], sipping honeyed w ­ ater all the way to my throat and spitting it out I “tended my throat” [ fauces fovi]—[which I say] rather than saying I gargled [gargarissavi], b­ ecause it is in Novius, I believe, and elsewhere. But ­a fter treating my throat [ faucibus curatis] I went off to my ­father and stood next to him as he sacrificed [abii ad patrem meum et immolanti adstiti]. Next t­ here was a move t­oward lunch [deinde ad merendam itum]. What do you think I lunched on? The tiniest piece of bread [ panis tantulum], while I saw o­ thers devouring beans, onions, and sprats full of roe. Next [deinde] we devoted ourselves to harvesting grapes and we worked up a sweat and yahooed [iubilavimus] and— as the author says—­“we left vintage survivors dangling high.” ­A fter the sixth hour we returned home [ab hora sexta domum redimus]. (2) I studied for a ­little while [ paululum], and that in­effec­tively. Next I chatted [garrivi] at length with my dear ­mother [deinde cum matercula mea] while she sat on the bed. My talk was this: “What do you think my Fronto is ­doing just now?” Then she: “And what about my Gratia?” Then I: “And what about our wee sparrow, l­ ittle Gratia?” While we told tales and debated [dum ea fabulamur atque altercamur] which [of us] loved one or the other of you more, the gong sounded [discus crepuit]—­that is, my ­father was announced to have passed into the bath. And so, having bathed in the winepress barn we dined (not having bathed in the barn but having bathed we dined). And we listened happily to the farm folk bantering [rusticos cavillantes]. Then having returned [inde reversus], before I turn over onto my side to snore, I untangle my yarn load and give an account of the day to my dearest teacher

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248  Ordering Lives [meum pensum explico et diei rationem meo suavissimo magistro reddo]. I could not miss him more—[if you need proof of this,] I would happily submit to torture. (3) Be well for my sake, Fronto, wherever you are, honey sweetest, my love, my plea­sure. What’s the deal with me and you? I love you in your absence.43

The Focus on Time and Language Foucault’s reading captures a cluster of self-­care practices that are clearly key to the letter, particularly ­those concerning the life of the body. Yet ­there are features and patterns ­here that require us at the very least to look beyond the role of philosophical daily self-­examination. First and most obviously, Marcus does not observe himself through a moral lens, and the only emotions mentioned concern his and his ­mother’s love for Fronto and ­family. The letter also stands apart from the letters of Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny in its day specificity and its fine-­grained totality, in its pre­sen­ta­ tion of an uninterrupted sequence of activities from rising to sleeping. Perhaps more than any other surviving ancient letter it shows a marked self-­consciousness about accounting for time spent, giving precise indications (e.g., “from the eleventh hour of night into the third hour of the day”) along with frequent markers of sequence (“next,” “then”; ablative absolutes, perfect participles), duration (“for a l­ittle while”), and simultaneity (“while we told tales”). Several other salient time schemes inform the letter’s rhythm. The season is fall, a f­actor that explains all at once Marcus’s predawn lucubration, his susceptibility to illness, the exodus of the imperial court from the city, and their participation in the grape harvest followed by dinner in the winepress barn. Another time scheme, of course, is the life of the body: the overall portrait of Marcus’s good health now (“I am well”) is qualified by the impact of his cold that compelled him to go to bed early the night before and requires him to take time out to gargle. The gargling briefly interrupts the routine of ­house­hold duties, and this domestic time scheme has a social dimension. Marcus’s solitude is broken up by the visits to his parents and the group activities of harvest and dinner. The domestic schedule ­here is also semipublic, given that this is the ­house­hold of the princeps. In the biographic tradition on Marcus we learn that following his adoption by Antoninus Pius in 138 he spent only two nights apart from him in twenty-­three years (SHA Marcus 7.2), and in this letter we glimpse him joining in on standard daily events of Pius’s court. We learn elsewhere about Pius’s salutatio—­for example, that he was not a stickler for attendance (Med. 1.16); we know that “he never conducted any sacrifice through a proxy except when he

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was unwell” (SHA Antoninus Pius 11.5); concerning his bathing routine we know that “he was not an irregular bather” (ouk ên aôri loustês) (Med. 1.16) and that “when [Pius] was unwell, [Marcus] likewise went without a bath” (Fronto, Ep.1.5.5).44 So Marcus’s daily routine is molded around his f­ ather’s day—­just as the personal routines of the enslaved members of his h ­ ouse­hold are determined by Marcus’s day during his own time as emperor (Galen, San. 6.5).45 Marcus choreographs ­these multiple time schemes in a dramatic and linguistically polished package. He parcels out the day in vivid episodes, and his account of the gargling, lunching, and harvesting is rendered in broadly comic and archaizing terms that echo the topics and the language of his readings from Cato and Novius. He goes out of his way to produce patterns with alliteration (e.g., prodormivi propter perfrictiunculam) and variation (fauces fovi; gargarassavi; faucibus curatis) and frequently uses diminutives (perfrictiunculam; tantulum; matercula) and archaic diction (fauces fovi; merendam). His playful clarification that “having bathed we dined in the barn,” not “having bathed in the barn we dined” (loti . . . ​in torculari cenavimus) self-­consciously exhibits his corrective hand and at the same time embraces an archaic form (“loti” vs. “lauti,” consistent with Novius’s use of “fovi”) that caters to Fronto’s general interest in archaism and even, perhaps, Fronto’s attested interest in the usage and forms of the specific verb “lavo” (“bathe”) (4.3). The letter’s central episode, Marcus’s conversation with his ­mother, represents in one sense a break from the day’s sequential routine in its informal conversation and tale telling in the bedchamber (prob­ably Marcus’s bedchamber, not hers), a break that ­will be brought to an abrupt end by the emperor’s bath-­time gong.46 But the symmetrical agon between ­mother and son over who loves who more relates directly back to the epistolary addressee Fronto and his wife, and Marcus’s affection for them is reemphasized in the letter’s final sentence: “I love you in your absence” (amo absentem). The most significant time scheme of all is the day of studies, which is focalized through Fronto in his twice-­mentioned role as magister. Marcus begins his day with the extensive lucubration, returns to his studies a­ fter the sixth hour when he could have taken a siesta, and concludes by writing up the diei ratio (account of the day). Each of t­hese activities is responsive to the scrutiny of Fronto, who is foregrounded not only in Marcus’s conversation with his m ­ other but also in Marcus’s turning attention from his health at the beginning (first-­ person “valemus”) to Fronto’s at the end (second-­person “valebis”), in a second-­ person aside (“What do you think I lunched on?”), and in Marcus’s ongoing awareness that someone may be questioning his word choice. Marcus internalizes the eye of the evaluator as he describes his daily fluctuations and his failings.

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He also provides very specific information regarding his efforts to improve his writing—in the formal exercise of reading Cato as preparation for writing, in his care for his throat and his taxonomy of speech acts (iubilavimus, garrivi, fabulamur, altercamur, cavillantes, ­etc.), and most of all in his retelling of the day itself as a form of homework owed to the absent teacher: “I untangle my yarn load” (meum pensum explico).

Day Dynamics of the Marcus-­Fronto Letters Letter 4.6 is of a piece with other letters in the Marcus-­Fronto correspondence. Marcus’s concern with his own and (more often) Fronto’s health and the intimate homosocial affection are seemingly integral to the epistolary management of Marcus’s ongoing rhetorical education and the student-­teacher relationship—­ though the latter faced more than one test. T ­ here w ­ ere events that strained Fronto’s relationship to the Antonine court, and Marcus’s unflagging interest in philosophy troubled Fronto to some extent as did his diminished availability ­after he became emperor.47 The epistolary mode allows the two parties to reaffirm their mutual commitments using language that idealizes a daily togetherness when they are separated. In one case (c. 143 CE), a­ fter Fronto has visited Antoninus Pius’s villa, Marcus sends him a letter of thanks for “that daily [cotidie] travel of yours to Lorium, that waiting u ­ ntil late [in serum]” (2.15), but in the same year an apol­ o­getic Fronto uses a letter to compensate for his absence and imagines how a hostile onlooker might perceive this negligence. They might conclude that he does not surpass ­others even in his daily duties ­toward you! [ne cotidianis quidem istis officiis circa te]. In fact, if you want to know the truth, he is very occasional [satis infrequens]. For he is not in the habit of coming to your h ­ ouse at dawn [neque . . . ​diluculo ventitat], nor does he greet you each day [neque cotidie te salutat]. (1.3)48

Fronto, for his part, sometimes ­gently protests Marcus’s unavailability, but on one occasion in a letter that dates to circa 145–47 CE, Fronto wishes that he could invent a word to describe more accurately the constancy (adsiduitas) of Marcus’s letters to him: “Since in truth t­here are more letters than days, this word ‘daily’ does not signify enough [verbum istud ‘cottidie’ minus significat]” (3.14.2).49 In letter 4.6 we encounter some of the emphatic asymmetries in the correspondence overall. It is Marcus, not Fronto, who generally adopts a more colloquial, comedic mode in his letters, and this letter’s temporal precision and concern with lucubration are characteristic of Marcus in par­tic­u­lar.50 Both cor-

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respondents make reference to the specific hour of the day in their ceaseless exchange of letters. Upon hearing a signal, Marcus writes: “But ­there w ­ ere even more t­ hings I could write about that ­matter, w ­ ere the messenger not now summoning me to the bath [nisi iam me nuntius in balneum arcesseret]” (2.13). In a letter from 143 CE, Fronto, his eye on the sundial, remarks that “now it touches the tenth hour [iam horam decimam tangit], and your message carrier is murmuring. So let t­ here be an end to the letter” (1.3.12).51 But Marcus is more likely than Fronto to give a time indication or note a period of time when describing his own studies, as in a fragment from a letter from around the same time as 4.6 (143 CE) that he evidently handed to a messenger part way through the day: “To my teacher. From the fourth and a half hour into this hour [ego ab hora quarta et dimidia in hanc horam] I have written and I have read much Cato, and I write this to you with the same pen, and I greet you and seek to know how well you are d ­ oing” (2.4).52 The lucubrations mentioned in Marcus’s letters, which no doubt reflect his busy public schedule, become a leitmotif. While Fronto is sleep’s advocate, perhaps owing to the full-­time diurnal schedule of his own salon (contubernium), Marcus is found bargaining with sleep: “Let [sleep] retreat from me for a l­ittle while and for once give me the chance to do a ­little lucubrating [lucubratiunculae]” (1.4.1).53 Despite Marcus’s exhaustion from his public duties, he is only prepared, he notes in a letter from 143 CE, to justify the opportunity cost of reduced lucubration if it gives him more direct access to Fronto: “When I am without you, I listen to barristers into the eleventh hour [in undecimam horam]. Personally I would like for this night, which follows, to be as brief as pos­si­ble. Lucubrating less is worth the cost, if it means I may see you ­earlier [tanti est minus lucubrare, ut te maturius videam] (2.14). Letter 4.6 belongs to Pascale Fleury’s category of letters that “relate details of a day or of a journey,” a kind of letter that only the young Marcus writes, not Fronto.54 ­These are “constructed narrations, as if Marcus, through the description of daily routine, pursued his work on rhe­toric and sent ­little pieces of homework back to his teacher.”55 Fleury’s reference to “homework” is justified not only in light of the wool-­working meta­phor “I untangle my yarn load” (meum pensum explico) but also given the battery of rhetorical exercises alluded to in multiple letters. On one occasion, in a letter that dates to circa 145–47 CE, Marcus anticipates a moment of relative leisure and writes: “My entire day ­will be empty [dies mihi totus vacuus erit]. If you have ever loved me, ­today love me and send me fertile material—­I beg, request, entreat, ask, supplicate” (5.28). This accumulation of synonyms, in both Latin and Greek, may itself reflect one of the

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rhetorical exercises Fronto assigns. On another occasion, in a letter from circa 139–40 CE, Marcus modestly boasts about his pro­gress in an exercise that Fronto has given him of matching images [eikones] to p ­ eople or situations, which he apparently sacrificed his siesta to complete: “­Today, from the seventh hour [hodie a septima], on my couch, I accomplished something” (3.7). Sometimes, however, Fronto must g­ ently crack the whip in order to ensure that Marcus maintains the daily rhythm. He threatens Marcus: “When you return to Rome, I ­will demand from you once and for all your daily verses [versus diurnos]” (3.12.2). And sometimes Marcus ekes out time from his complex daily routine of public duties, as suggested by his boasting that he has finished some hexameters by lucubrating, in a letter from the period 139–45 CE: “I study h ­ ere by night [noctibus], for by day [interdiu] [I am] in the theater” (2.10). He apologizes for his reduced productivity: “Even if I should wish to study, ­trials prevent it [iudicia prohibent]. They ­will take away ­whole days [dies totos eximent]—­ according to ­those who know. Still, I have sent ­today’s thought [misi tamen hodiernam γνώμην].” (5.59).

Multidimensional, Meditative Marcus Day-­based exercises are even more central to the Marcus-­Fronto relationship than we have seen yet. But before we consider what I believe to be the most relevant comparisons for the day pattern in letter 4.6, it is necessary to assess how the Marcus-­Fronto letters relate to Marcus Aurelius the emperor and phi­los­o­ pher. For ­until the rediscovery of the letters in the nineteenth ­century, Fronto was known primarily from the first book of the Meditations, where Marcus briefly mentions that it was from Fronto that he learned “to understand the tyranny of envy, duplicity, and dissimulation and that ­those we call patrician are somewhat lacking in affection” (1.11). Fronto, then, is essentially the Fronto we know from the letters. Marcus, by contrast, had been known through two distinct sets of material: the Meditations (aka To Himself ) and the archaeological and literary evidence documenting imperial Roman history and biography, especially Dio Cassius and the authors of the Historia Augusta. The letters have complicated our understanding of Marcus.56 Foucault’s account of self-­w riting presupposes an essential continuity between epistolary self-­review, which he treats Marcus’s letter 4.6 as a prime example of, and written notes (hupomnêmata) such as we see in Marcus’s self-­addressed Meditations. Letter 4.6 has long been used as a portal to the Meditations. Constant Martha reads the bedroom conversation between Mar-

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cus and his m ­ other in close connection with Marcus’s sketch in Meditations 1 of what he learned from his ­mother, such as “reverence for the divine” (theosebes) (1.3), and this in turn helps to flesh out what Martha refers to as Marcus’s “purity of soul.”57 If we put aside the teleological aspect of Martha’s reading, ­there is perhaps nothing intrinsically wrong with such comparisons, and one may reasonably pursue the maternal theme in the historiographic tradition, for example, where we read that Marcus “reluctantly conceded, at his ­mother’s insistence, to sleep on a couch covered with skins” (SHA Marcus 2.6). I have tentatively invoked passages from the Meditations and biographies to fill out the references to the “emperor’s day” of Antoninus Pius in my initial reading of letter 4.6, and it would also be valid to consider a passage from the Meditations in which Marcus writes of Pius that “he was such a man as to remain in the same place u ­ ntil eve­ning [mechri hesperas], due to his strict diet not even needing to relieve himself except at his accustomed hour [ para tên sunêthê hôran]. . . . ​ So may your final hour arrive for you in such a state of good conscience [eusuneidêtôi soi epistêi hê teleutaia hôra] as it did for him” (6.30). Amy Richlin, however, spotlights a fundamental prob­lem for the interface between the Meditations and letter 4.6 in par­tic­u­lar.58 Commenting on F. W. Farrar’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the letter in his Seekers a­ fter God (1868), she notes that 4.6 is “the one letter Farrar chooses to quote” and that “he cuts off at ‘I had a long talk with my m ­ other, who was lying on her couch.’ ” “From this,” Richlin notes, “Farrar draws his moral”: “Who knows how much Aurelius and how much the world may have gained from such conversation as this, with a m ­ other 59 from whom he had learnt to hate even the thought of evil?” “So,” Richlin observes, “[Farrar] draws the reader, without so noting, back from the letters to Book 1 of the Meditations. . . . ​The rapturous endearments, and Fronto, are not ­there.” 60 For Richlin, this partiality belongs to the “sanctification of Marcus Aurelius” as the “unhappily embodied” transcendent phi­los­o­pher of the Meditations, often with a proto-­Christian teleology, that began prior to the rediscovery of the letters but has persisted in spite of the letters’ portrait of a “happily embodied” Marcus and of the love relationship between Marcus and Fronto.61 Foucault, of course, does not give us a disembodied Marcus. For at the same time as he proj­ects philosophical self-­examination onto the letters, he also uses letter 4.6 to situate the spiritual exercises of the Meditations in an everyday practice attentive precisely to the body. And indeed the three main sources of information we have about Marcus—­the Meditations, the daily rhythms of the Marcus-­Fronto correspondence, and the historical accounts of Marcus’s

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day-­to-­day life as emperor—­often seem to throw useful light on one another, though not without controversy.62 Richlin points to Farrar’s vignette of Marcus at the Roman frontier: And in that tent long ­a fter midnight sits the patient Emperor by the light of his solitary lamp, and ever and anon, amid his lonely musings, he pauses to write down the pure and holy thoughts which ­shall better enable him, even in a Roman palace, even on barbarian battlefields, daily to tolerate the meanness and the malignity of the men around him; daily to amend his own shortcomings, and, as the sun of earthly life begins to set, daily to draw nearer and nearer to the Eternal Light.63

In Farrar’s account the nocturnal Marcus imbues a morning reflection from the Meditations—­“I ­will encounter a busybody, an ingrate, a lout, a trickster, a jealous man, and one without fellow feeling” (2.1)—­with the proto-­Christian imagery of an awaited dawn that w ­ ill rescue the mundanity of the waning empire. Farrar is additionally channeling the biographers’ image of Marcus “at all hours keeping vigil [horis oibus . . . ​incubaret] over the workings of the state” (SHA Marcus 8.13), not to mention the lucubrating Marcus of the letters who works hard to complete Fronto’s daily assignments. The Meditations, though written by Marcus during the last de­cade of his life, have recently been characterized as a kind of nightly homework, no doubt inspired by the letters, which led Walter Pater to characterize the Meditations as “the journal of [Marcus’s] daily commerce with” his reason.64 R. B. Rutherford’s more disciplined sketch of the scene of composition seems at first glance plausible: “At the end of the day the emperor would rec­ord a few reflections and admonish himself to observe certain precepts and ethical rules which he might have neglected in the course of the day.” 65 And yet ­there are only one or two allusions to an eve­ning self-­examination in the Meditations, such as “­today [sêmeron] I withdrew entirely from external circumstances” (9.13). Rutherford’s sketch appears to presuppose an eve­ning examination such as that prescribed by Seneca and Epictetus—­and, perhaps, closer to home, the self-­critical day-­review of the student Marcus in letter 4.6.66 The epistolary Marcus and the meditative Marcus are both conscious of time but in strikingly dif­fer­ent ways. In an essay that traces some of the surprising preoccupations of the Meditations, P. A. Brunt notes that “the minor duty of rising early recurs four times,” and Pierre Hadot sees it as significant that the beginnings of books 2 and 5 coincide with the beginning of the day.67 The opening of book 5 is representative:

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­Today in Retrospect: Seneca and Marcus Aureliu   255 At dawn [orthrou], whenever you awake in a state of laziness, have this on hand: “I am waking to the work of a ­human being.” And am I still then annoyed, if I am on my way to ­doing the ­things for which I was born and for whose sake I have come forth into the world? Or rather have I been equipped to lie in blankets and keep myself warm? “But this is more pleasant! [alla touto hêdion].” (1)

A meditative Marcus, up with the birds, seemingly coheres with the Marcus who undertakes morning ­labors in letter 4.6 and with biographers’ mentions of a sleep-­deprived Marcus. Yet the most relevant comparanda are from the philosophical tradition, and more specifically from Epictetus’s advice on morning self-­examination and his castigation of the Epicurean day, which is capped with the same mocking utterance: “That’s right. For it is pleasant [to live this way].” (hêdu gar estin) (Arr. Epict. diss. 3.24.37).68 The Marcus of the Meditations certainly devotes attention to time and the hour. He emphasizes existential brevity, w ­ hether in asserting that “all is ephemeral [ pan ephêmeron], both the rememberer and the remembered” (4.35) or that “life is expended day by day [kath’ hêmeran] and a lesser part of it remains” (3.1). As a corrective, he urges himself to circumscribe himself and more specifically commands that one should “circumscribe the time that is pre­sent” (perigrapson to enestôs tou chronou) (7.29).69 Time is pre­sent most often in the unit of the hour: “At ­every hour [ pasês hôrês] reflect valiantly, like a Roman and like a man” (2.5); ­“Focus upon the final hour” (ennoêson tên eschatên hôran) (7.29); “Make no distinction as regards how long a time you w ­ ill do t­ hese t­ hings, for even three hours of this sort ­will suffice [kai treis hôrai toiautai]” (6.23). The epistolary Marcus, as we have noted, is emphatically conscious of the numbered hour of the day. But once again the more relevant comparisons for the Meditations come from other texts in the philosophical tradition, such as in Seneca’s Moral Letters, in which, as I have noted, he repeatedly mentions the reminders of mortality brought by “­every day, e­ very hour” (101.1). In one instance in the Meditations Marcus plays on Greek “hôra” in the senses of both season and hour: death is like the other natu­ral functions that life’s “hôrai” bring, and “just as now you wait for the unborn child ultimately to come forth from your wife’s belly, so expect the “hôra” in which your soul ­will fall out from its [bodily] husk” (9.3). This formulation tells us much about his immersion in the Greek linguistic register of his philosophizing—­and not much at all about the discourse of day ordering that shapes the Latin letters. So the coexistence of the Meditations, the biographies, and the letters provides us with few genuinely productive lines of internal comparison. Fleury is rightly unfazed by the heterogeneity of t­ hese bodies of evidence:

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256  Ordering Lives Nothing prevents Marcus Aurelius, as all other ­human beings, from having many facets, a public one that reflects the way the imperator should be seen, a personal one where he strug­gles to be a better man, and another also found in the letters, more light-­hearted and emotional, and appropriate to the development of friendship and intimacy, the typical goal of all correspondences.70

That consideration certainly liberates us from the expectation that Marcus’s day in letter 4.6 w ­ ill be congruous with the day of self-­examination in the Meditations.

The Letter of the Previous Day (Letter 4.5) The day pattern in letter 4.6 can be better understood if we recognize the striking recurrence of day patterns at several moments in Fronto’s pedagogy for Marcus. Let us begin by comparing letter 4.6 with letter 4.5, which also describes Marcus’s day in its totality.71 Despite the chronological uncertainties of the Frontonian corpus, letter 4.5 was almost certainly written on the immediately preceding day, since h ­ ere Fronto says he “seem[s] to have caught a cold [ perfrixisse]” (4.5.4), no doubt the cold mentioned in 4.6.1 (perfrictiunculam), and he goes to bed early, just as he reports in 4.6.1 (prodormivi).72 Marcus also confesses in 4.5 that his writing was particularly bad (“I wrote poorly [misere scripsi], something I might dedicate to the gods of ­water or fire” [4.5.3]), which provides the standard of comparison for the comment in 4.6.1: “I wrote—­less poorly than yesterday, by Hercules” (minus misere mehercule quam heri). The nature of his circumstances and the activities he engages in are especially clear ­because of the comprehensive similarity of the two letters. If Marcus’s pensum (yarn load or assigned task) in 4.6.2 is to provide his teacher with diei ratio (an account of the day), then 4.5 is simply his prior attempt at the same exercise. Rather than quoting 4.5 in full ­here, however, I survey its similarities with 4.6 as well as some of its distinctive features. Like its sequel letter, 4.5 begins with “I am well” (nos valemus) and ends by wishing Fronto good health, ­here without any explicit reference to the day review itself and with a more concise but still affectionate sign off to Fronto: “Be well for my sake, dearest and sweetest of teachers. I miss you, I would dare to say, more than Rome itself” (4.5.5). The day is described from beginning to end, with the same temporal precision in t­ hese framing expressions: From the ninth hour of the night into the second of the day [ab hora nona noctis in secundam diei] . . . ​f rom the second into the third [a secunda in tertiam] . . . ​ next [deinde] . . . ​then ­after midday [inde post meridiem] . . . ​for around two hours

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­Today in Retrospect: Seneca and Marcus Aureliu   257 [ad duas horas] . . . ​a ­little while [ paululum] . . . ​I ­w ill begin to sleep . . . ​­today [hodie]. I do not contemplate dropping any oil into my lamp. (4.5.1–4)

The day’s components are comparable with 4.6, in part reflecting the fact that Marcus writes both letters from the same rural location. For example, the one external episode is a group outing, this time a boar hunt rather than grape picking, and Marcus’s parents are more peripheral, alluded to only in “I went off to greet my master” (abii salutatum dominum meum) (4.5.1). The life of the body ­here is more detailed, not only when Marcus describes his cold, reflecting that he is “a person generally slimy but t­ oday even more mucusy” (4.5.4), but also in his attention to shoes and clothing. He initially walks around wearing sandals (soleatus [4.5.1]), then puts on boots (calceatus) and dons a cloak (sagulo sumpto), following court directives for the hunt (“for we had been instructed to arrive so”), and then a­ fter returning he removes his boots and clothes (calceis detractis, vestimentis positis) (4.5.2)—­data points that become especially relevant at the end when Marcus speculates on ­whether he caught his cold “­because [he] walked around in sandals in the morning” (quod mane soleatus ambulavi) (4.5.4). The focus of letter 4.5, as in 4.6, is Marcus’s study routine. While his early morning activity is referred to simply with the phrase “I studied” (studivi), ­after the hunt he is more expansive in his descriptions: “I [applied] myself to my ­little books” (ego me ad libellos) and “I lingered on my couch for around two hours” (4.5.2). The studies consist of thorough reading from two orations of Cato once again followed by his wretched attempt at writing, which he ­here caps with a Greek phrase prob­ably quoted or adapted from comedy: “Truly unfortunately has my writing gone t­ oday” (alêthôs atuchôs sêmeron gegraptai moi) (4.5.3).73 The reading and the writing are fleshed out with asides humorously directed at Fronto himself. Marcus first pretends that Fronto ­will immediately send his slave around Rome’s libraries to get the two Cato orations and then blames his poor writing on the noise made by the rustics who “fill my chamber with the clamor of their yahoos” (iubilis suis cubiculum meum perstrepunt) (4.5.3), which Marcus compares to the noise of the law courts, with a friendly dig at Fronto the orator (4.5.3). Marcus also jokingly considers that he may actually have caught cold ­because his writing was so bad, and he jests that he ­will be pouring the oil—­ which he might have used for lucubration—­onto his head for therapy (4.5.4). Once again, then, Marcus remains ever conscious of how his account ­will sound to Fronto’s evaluating ear, both in its language and in its modest characterization of his study practices through the day.74

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Day-­Shaped Rhetorical Exercises While letters 4.6 and 4.5 themselves give some indication of what Fronto sought from Marcus in his “account of the day,” the day-­t hemed bilingual colloquia that accompany the texts and glossaries known as the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana, surviving from the late-­imperial period, also provide insight.75 One of t­ hese colloquia begins: Before daylight I woke from sleep. I arose from my bed, I sat, I received gaiters, boots. I put them on [ante lucem vigilavi de somno; surrexi de lecto, sedi, accepi pedules, caligas. calciavi me]. I demanded w ­ ater for my face. I wash first my hands, then I washed my face. I dried myself. I put aside my sleeping clothes. I received a tunic for my body. . . . ​I proceeded from the chamber with my paedagogus and my nurse to greet my f­ ather and m ­ other. I greeted both, and kissed them, and thus went out from the ­house. I go into school. I entered, and I said: “Greetings, teacher,” and he himself kissed me and greeted me in return. (ME 2a–­g )76

Thanks to Eleanor Dickey’s edition of the colloquia, we have a relatively clear picture of t­ hese pedagogical materials, which use the framework of the day as an instrument for teaching students how to use appropriate words and phrases in both Latin and Greek in everyday situations. They are the product of multiple developments over a long span of time in at least two distinct pedagogical environments. In Dickey’s account, they are “composites made up of schoolbooks that describe a boy’s day from dawn ­until lunchtime and phrasebooks that describe the rest of the day from an adult’s perspective.”77 The “schoolbooks,” she suggests, likely catered to Roman ­children learning Greek, while the “phrasebooks,” a development that prob­ably dates to the second c­ entury CE, catered to Greek adult learners of Latin.78 Narrative pre­sen­ta­tion of the day is most emphatic in the “schoolbooks,” which chronicle the day ­until school lunchtime, whereas the pre­sen­ta­tion of the rest of the day, found in several but not all of the colloquia, is loosely sketched in phrasebook form rather than through a tight narrative, and so “it is probable that the whole-­day chronological princi­ ple is a fairly late development, perhaps even in­de­pen­dent developments in the vari­ous colloquia that employ it.”79 A. C. Dionisotti sees ­these colloquia as inspiring the “scale, form and stance” of Ausonius’s poem cycle Ephemeris (discussed in the following chapter), but we may already witness their influence in Marcus Aurelius’s letters.80 We do not need to presuppose that Marcus was exposed to any of t­ hese specific colloquia in order to discern the general appeal of the totius diei conversatio (routine of a

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­ hole day) as a useful didactic framework for the basic schoolteachers (gramw matici) of his era and likely for rhetoricians too. Fronto must have been aware of the phenomenon, even though one of the colloquia is not datable to before the 160s CE and most of them may date from ­later. Certain aspects of the colloquia are not directly relevant to the “account of the day” as we see it manifested in Marcus’ letters 4.5 and 4.6, such as bilingual form and a focus on basic language competency. Yet accounting for the day is the common goal of both, and the worlds of the colloquia and Marcus’s letters are similar in a number of striking ways. Lexical overlaps are evident in the mention of specific places and times of day: Marcus writes that “­after midday we took ourselves home” (post meridiem domum recepimus) (4.5.2) and “had lunch” (prandisse) 4.6.1) and that “having bathed . . . ​we had dinner” (loti . . . ​cenavimus) (4.6.2), while in the colloquia we read variously that “at noon you ­were not at home” (meridie in domum . . . ​non eras) (H 8a), “having lunched” (pransus) (ME 2u), and “having bathed, you went to dinner” (lotus ad cenam ibas) (H 14a). Marcus’s day begins and ends in his cubiculum (4.5.1, 3), just as we find in the colloquia (e.g., LS 12e). We observe similar daily personal habits: Marcus’s phrases “removing my shoes, putting aside my clothes” (calceis detractis, vestimentis positis) (4.5.2) appear constructed from the same lexical inventory we find in the colloquia: “shod” (calceatus [LS 1e]), “I put aside my sleeping clothes” (deposui dormitoriam) (ME 2b), “clothe me!” (vesti me) (LS 1a), and so forth. It is almost as if Marcus is having fun with the regular props and activities of the colloquia, such as “I anointed my head” (unxi caput meum) (ME 2c), “lamp” (lucernam) (H 6d), and “sleep” (dormite) (ME 12d), when he writes: “I ­will pour oil on my head and begin to sleep, as I do not contemplate dropping any oil into my lamp” (oleum in caput infundam et incipiam dormire, nam in lucernam hodie nullam stillam inicere cogito) (4.5.4). The references to the authority figures with whom Marcus must interact, as in “I went off to greet my lord ” (abii salutatum dominum meum) (4.5.1), “­after greeting my f­ ather” (salutato patre meo) (4.6.1), and “I chatted with my dear ­mother” (cum matercula . . . ​garrivi) (4.6.2), echo “I went forth . . . ​to greet my ­father and ­mother” (pro­cessi . . . ​salutare patrem et matrem) (ME 2e) and “my lord,” or alternatively “master” (dominus meus) (CC 71a). One of the most compelling intersections between Marcus’s world and that of the colloquia arises when we compare Marcus’s statement “I went off to my f­ ather and stood next to him as he sacrificed” (abii ad patrem meum et immolanti adstiti) (4.6.1) with “my ­father [ pater meus] . . . ​was greeted by the magistrates and received letters from my lords the emperors [a dominis meis imperatoribus], and he directly

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ascended to the ­temple and sacrificed [immolavit] for the eternity and victory of the emperors [ pro . . . ​victoria imperatorum]” (H 9a–­b). In both cases, a son describes his power­ful ­father conducting public sacrifice—­even if in the colloquium the ­father is a personage beneath the coemperors.81 Another major authority figure in the colloquia and for Marcus is the magister (teacher) who presides over the student’s reading, writing, and studies (CC 45a; 4.5.1). Several more specific features of the colloquia enhance our understanding of ancient perspectives on the potential cultural significance of day-­based rhetorical exercises and indeed of Marcus’s homework. Each of the colloquia is preceded by a preface, all variations on the following (fig. 12): A routine, a daily usage [conversatio, usus cottidianus], ­ought to be given to all boys and girls, since ­these are necessary both for younger and for older ones, on account of ancient custom and discipline. So I ­shall begin to write, from the beginning of daylight all the way to eve­ning. (CC pr.1a)82

The term “daily” (cottidianus) ­here relates most immediately to everyday situations as a domain in which to exercise linguistic competency, but it variously also relates to everyday repetition and memorization of the exercise—­“daily usage makes an expert” (usus cottidianus artificem facit) (Mp 2f )—­its focus being on a colloquial rather than classical register, “everyday talk,” (sermo . . . ​cottidianus) (ME second preface, 3a), the narrative pre­sen­ta­tion of a day reflected in the phrase “on day narratives” (de fabulis cottidianis) (ME second preface, 3a), and unmarked ordinariness, seen for example in the donning of everyday clothing: “I take off my clothes, fancier attire; I put on everyday (wear) [cottidianum]” (CC

Figure 12. Preface to Colloquium Celtis. Dickey 2013, 2:165.

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3a). W. Martin Bloomer points out that the exercise is “a repetition of interconnected routines” and that the boy’s “power to utter a command . . . ​grows unambiguous and efficacious in its iteration”—in other words, it serves to normalize an everyday life for the elite.83 The paternalistic insistence ­here on inculcating “ancient habit and discipline” (antiqua consuetudo et disciplina) (CC pr.1a) is borne out especially in the Colloquium Harleianum, where a ­father explains: “Most beloved son, heed my words: t­here is ­great profit in listening . . . ​that you may be a h ­ uman being, . . . ​that you may come of age heartily, both skilled and honest”—at which the child is prompted with “respond” (ad haec, puer, responde) (1k). Bloomer observes how the elite-­focused goal of the day narrative supplied by the colloquia is “in fact a series of imperatives” in which “the boy was learning to command: he was rehearsing the role of slave owner, f­ather, advocate, all the roles of paterfamilias.”84 The colloquia pre­sent the student with numerous linguistic tools for time navigation that add to our conception of what it means to order the day, in such realms as issuing a dinner invitation (“Come to us on time” [temperius . . . ​veni ad nos] [ME 3c]), complying with judicial pro­cess (“You made an arrangement? At around what hour?” [constituisti? circa quam horam?] [ME 3i]), diligently exercising a magistracy (“­Today he has been hearing l­egal claims from the first hour” [hodie . . . ​condictiones audit ab hora prima] [H 9e]), wishing someone well (“Good hours!” [bonas horas] [H 10g]), asking the time (“What hour is it?” [quot horae sunt?] [Mp 13g]), praying to the gods for a good day (“I sought a good passage and result for the ­whole day” [ petivi . . . ​bonum pro­cessum et eventum diei totius] [CC 14a]), and proceeding through the individual stages of the bathing routine (ME 10).85 Special attention is given to day ordering itself in the preface to the Colloquium Celtis: “So I ­shall begin to write, from the beginning of daylight all the way to eve­ning” (sic incipiam scribere, ab exordio lucis usque ad vesperum) (pr.1a). In one sense the teacher h ­ ere simply draws attention to his use of the day frame as a con­ve­nient sequence of familiar scenarios that can perhaps aid memory and facilitate access to information, much as when he l­ater organizes his glossary alphabetically: “I begin to write from alpha to omega” (incipio scribere ab alfa usque o) (Mp 11d). But the phrasing also recalls what Censorinus writes in On Your Birthday concerning the parts of day and night: “I ­will set forth all of ­these in their order. I ­will begin from ‘midnight’ [ea omnia ordine suo exponam. incipiam a nocte media], which is the first and last time of the Roman day” (24.1).86 This resonance with the antiquarian’s survey of the parts of day and night can add depth to our understanding of the “ancient custom and discipline” (antiqua

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consuetudo et disciplina) promised by the colloquium preface. One section of the phrasebook taps precisely into the antiquarian list of partes noctis as part of its dramatized lucubration: On lamps and business in the law courts. (Lamp, I lucubrate, I w ­ ill lucubrate, lucubrate!, we lucubrate, eve­ning, late, murky, dark, midnight, chicken crow, cockcrow, sleep, I sleep, I slept it off, I awoke again, the chicken crowed.) Get up, boy, rise at the double and lucubrate with good result. To the best of my knowledge, thus w ­ ill you shine in your reading for tomorrow. [De lucubris et negotiis forensibus. (lucubrum, lucubro, lucubrabo, lucubrate, lucubramus, vesper, sero, obscurum, tenebrosum, media nox, pulli cantum, gallicinium, somnus, dormito, edormivi, revigilavi, pullus cantavit.) leva te, puer, surge celerius et lucubra bono eventu. iuxta posse scientiae meae, sic parebis in recitatione tua in crastinum.] (CC 70a–­f )

Playing with the Template ­There are further indications in the Marcus-­Fronto correspondence that day patterning was an exercise both student and teacher could experiment with. Letter 2.8, which most scholars also date to August of 143 CE (and so just a month or two before letters 4.5 and 4.6), begins with Marcus confessing that he has nothing to report, since “we have spent our days” (dies tramisimus), he says, in an interactive routine of obligations that grows more burdensome “each day” (cotidie) (Ep. 2.8.2). Then, however, he finds a day that he can describe, in the circadian cycle of the climate he is experiencing in Naples: The sky over Naples is entirely pleasant but extremely variable. In single fractions of hours [in singulis scripulis horarum] it becomes colder or warmer or more scorching [torridius]. Now, first, midnight [media nox] is warm, like Laurentum. Then, however, cockcrow [gallicinium] is a ­little cold, like Lanuvium. Now the ­silent time [conticinnum] and morning [matutinum] and dawn [diluculum], right up to sunrise [usque ad solis ortum], is icy, very much like at Mt Algidus. From ­there, in the time before midday [antemeridie], it is springy, like Tusculum. Then midday [meridies] is sizzling, like Puteoli. But when the sun has set off to bathe in Ocean [ubi sol lautum ad Oceanum profectus], fi­nally the sky becomes more moderate, of the kind it is at Tibur. That remains in the same way in the eve­ning [vespera] and the time of deep night [concubia nocte], while as Marcus Porcius [Cato] says, “the timeless night rapidly approaches [se intempesta nox . . . ​praecipitat].” But why

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­Today in Retrospect: Seneca and Marcus Aureliu   263 do I pile up the mad talk of Masurius [deliramenta Masuriana], ­a fter promising I would write only a few words? (2.8.3)

Evidently taking the inspiration for his temporal schema from the antiquarian and l­egal scholar Sabinus Masurius, Marcus organizes his account around the traditional parts of day and night, correlating each time in the Neapolitan day with a specific microclimate and an emblematic place name.87 The tour de force in variatio, with the multidimensional pageant of times and imaginary travels, is calibrated through a mise-­en-­abyme of day division, with the unique phrase “in single fractions of hours” (in singulis scripulis horarum) referring to microscopically small subunits of the hour, based on an analogy from weight units in which t­ here are 288 scripula per pound (libra / pondus).88 This letter shows Marcus coming at the day description from a dif­fer­ent ­angle from that of letters 4.5 and 4.6.89 Yet we have seen already in the school colloquia how narration of the day and cata­loguing of the day’s parts could be presented to students together as complementary exercise schemes within the same “ancient custom and discipline.” Almost two de­cades ­later, in 162 CE, Fronto wrote a series of letters to the busy emperor Marcus Aurelius, who had set aside some time for himself in Alsium (modern Palo).90 The third of t­ hese letters opens with some gentle teasing of the former student. “With heavy irony,” Edward Champlin observes, Fronto “assures how well he knows that Marcus has spent his holiday in the pursuit of relaxation, napping, reading, walking, boating, bathing, dining.”91 Although the text is damaged and some basic details are uncertain, enough survives for us to see that Fronto’s mockery is conspicuously presented as a routine of relaxation and reading to which he knows Marcus ­really is not at all intending to devote his day: That you might succumb to sleep, reclining in the midday sun, then that you might summon Niger [Marcus’s secretary], [and] order him to bring books in. Soon, responding to how a desire for reading had come over you, that you might polish yourself with Plautus or fill yourself with Accius or soothe yourself with Lucretius or set yourself on fire with Ennius, into the fifth [quintam] hour as befits his muses. That you might return from ­there . . . ​[text uncertain] . . . ​if . . . ​ had conveyed to you . . . ​of the language of Cicero, you might listen. From ­there, that you might hurry as much as you could to the shore and go around the noisy swamps. Then, perhaps, if it seemed like a good idea, that you might board a ship, or you might entertain [yourself ] on the sea, the sky tranquil, by seeing and

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264  Ordering Lives hearing the rowers and the ones beating time for them. And then from t­here, without delay, that you might head for the baths, might stir your body to a plentiful sweat, and next, that you might get a royal banquet ­going. (De fer. Als. 3.1)

In his per­sis­tent asyndetic series of subjunctive clauses, Fronto chronicles an envisaged day of refined leisure activities from start to finish. His correlation of the specific emotional impacts from the reading of dif­fer­ent authors, as well as the playful dedication of the fifth hour (horam . . . ​quintam) to Quintus Ennius, show Fronto to be charting a day no less baroque than Marcus’s letter on the climate in Naples from many years before.92 ­Later in the same letter, Fronto, Champlin notes, “begs the emperor to sleep, referring with a jest to the inconsistency of Marcus’ ‘daily’ business extending into the night, and concluding with the amusing fable ‘In Praise of Sleep.’ ” (3.7, 3.9–13).93 Fronto’s humorous taunts derive their power and their irony in large part from his reprising of structures and themes—­day patterns and concerns about timing—­t hat had, at least for a while, provided a useful focus for the young Marcus and had given a special intensity to Fronto’s role as magister. We do not have to believe that Marcus experienced a “second conversion” from rhe­toric to philosophy in order to acknowledge that the rhetorical exercise of day review may by now have been not much more than a quaint memory for him.94 He was older and busier. But both the biographies and the Meditations show that Marcus’s days in the 160s and certainly in the years before his death in 180 ­were now answerable to new and largely irreconcilable forms of daily observation and review.

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pa r t i i i

or de r i ng k now l e d g e

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ch a pter 9

Christian Roman Days

Roman Daily Life from the Outside The day-­shaped colloquia of the imperial language classroom show us the Roman day being used first to teach Greek to young Romans but eventually as a gateway to Latin language and Roman culture for Greeks.1 This was scarcely the first such device: a number of the realist portraits of Roman daily life that we have examined in this book w ­ ere written by Romans originating from outside of Rome, w ­ hether in Italy or the provinces, and thus w ­ ere providing portals into a simplified and idealized Roman life for both writer and audience.2 From late antiquity to the modern era, Roman day patterns continued to serve as a medium through which successive audiences could relate to Roman life. ­These relationships w ­ ere not simply assimilative, however. “Marking time,” as Sarit Kattan Gribetz observes of Jewish relationships to Roman and Christian rhythms in late antiquity, “is . . . ​itself a practice of synchronization and differentiation—­both between moments and between subjects and communities.”3 In the fourth ­century, writing at the end of his ­career serving in the Roman court, the Gallic Christian rhetorician and poet Ausonius dramatized the successive stages of his day in the poem cycle Ephemeris, including this early morning utterance:

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268  Ordering Knowledge C’mon, boy [ puer], get up [surge] and give me my shoes [calceos] and my linen garment. Give what­ever covering [da, quicquid est, amictui] you have prepared, so I can go forth. Give [so I can] wash with fountain w ­ ater [da rore fontano abluam] my hands and mouth and eyes [ma­nus et os et lumina]. (2.1–6)

A. C. Dionisotti has argued that Ausonius’s cycle as a w ­ hole is “a literary reworking of the school colloquia of his day.” 4 One version of the colloquia from Ausonius’s own milieu of fourth-­century Gaul provides exact parallels for the poet’s words and rhe­toric:5 Get up, boy [surge, puer], . . . ​give my ­little covering [da amictulum] . . . ​my shoes are put on [calceor] . . . ​­water is given me for my face, I wash [datur mihi aqua ad faciem, lavo] . . . ​­after I have washed my mouth, I dry myself [cum lavi os, extergo] . . . ​ bring clean ­water for your master my b­ rother [affer aquam mundam tuo domino meo fratri] . . . ​so that he too may go forth with me into public [ut et ille mecum . . . ​procedat in publicum]. (CC 6b–12b)

But Ausonius does not simply parody his school exercises: he synthesizes poetic language and form to compose a Christian’s day, the traditions of the Roman day at once serving as a frame of reference, a model, and a foil. ­A fter describing his toilette, the speaker in the colloquium next embarks on a pagan prayer, reporting that “thus prepared, I worshipped all the gods [adoravi . . . ​deos omnes] and sought a good passage and result for the w ­ hole day” (CC 14ab). Ausonius, by contrast, concludes his poem thus: “I must pray to God and to the son of highest God” (deus precandus est mihi / ac filius summi dei) (2.15–16). One twentieth-­century classicist drawn to Ausonius’s poem was Jérôme Carcopino. His best-­selling La vie quotidienne à Rome à l’apogée de l’empire (1939) features a multichapter account of a typical Roman day from morning to night that cites many of the same sources I have discussed in e­ arlier chapters. “Their breakfast,” writes Carcopino, “consisted of a glass of ­water swallowed in all haste”—an observation gleaned from a poem of Martial and catering to what John Henderson, mocking Carcopino and other modern “handbooks,” has called “the indefatigable urge to recover the mundanity of Roman life.” 6 Carcopino also directly invokes Ausonius’s “charming l­ ittle ode” as a source for the equally minimalist self-­grooming activities of a Roman’s morning. He quotes the lines from Ephemeris I have cited and adds: “­A fter which the poet enters his chapel and, having prayed, sets out to seek his friends.”7

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Carcopino surely found Ausonius’s poem appealing ­because it aligned not only with his interest in daily routine but also with his book’s ultimate Christian teleology. “The dazzling splendour or the sombre shadow” of imperial Roman daily life, remarks Carcopino, w ­ ill one day be succeeded by “the ­little flame—­pale and flickering though it be—­which trembled in the souls of the elect like a faint dawn.”8 And in his book’s concluding sentence, bringing to a close a chapter on night, Carcopino evokes “­t hose serene ‘agapes’ where the Christians lifted up their hearts in the joy of knowing the divine presence in their midst”—­likely channeling a l­ater line of Ausonius’s same poem.9 But while Carcopino is sympathetic to the Christianizing day drama, he directs most of his energy to satisfying modern readers’ curiosity about Roman everyday life in its own right. He chronicles the day of pagan Rome, page by page and hour by hour, representing it as both a prequel and a contrast to the clock-­regulated day of cities in twentieth-­century Eu­rope and the United States. If, then, the day-­shaped colloquia of the Roman imperial era w ­ ere intended to facilitate linguistic and cultural navigation of the Roman day by con­temporary Roman c­ hildren and/or Greek adults, Ausonius and Carcopino each rewrite the Roman day with broadly comparable yet distinct purposes in mind. In this final part of the book I look at how diurnal time served as a medium through which two “post-­Roman communities,” as I term them, could define their own relationships to Rome and their detailed knowledge of Roman life. The first community, early Christians of the Roman empire, ­were—in blunt terms—­ insiders who wanted out. As is well known, Christians defined their distinctive cultural identity in a dialectic with Roman culture, seeking to escape it even as they appropriated many of its structures. The second community, conversely, ­were outsiders who wanted in: modern antiquarians and their audiences. They—­ we—­have used knowledge about the Roman day as a framework for organ­ izing our encounter with ancient Rome, driven by curiosity about the unfamiliar but also by the feeling that the Romans, in one sense or another, gave us our day, even if we have subsequently changed it. In this chapter, I explore the overall structure of the early Christian Roman day, focusing on the monastic rule and on two literary case studies: Ausonius’s Ephemeris and the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris. The day patterns in t­ hese two authors closely recall our pagan case studies from the previous chapters, but they define Christian lives in which Roman time no longer dominates. Then, in chapters 10 and 11, I examine the modern discourse on Roman daily life of which Carcopino’s book is simply the most popu­lar instance. I chart its permutations from the sixteenth c­ entury to the pre­sent, demonstrating how the framework

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270  Ordering Knowledge

of the daily routine has been used to order knowledge about ancient Rome for curious modern readers during a period when clock time itself has under­gone many changes.

Clocks at Vivarium In the opening chapter of this book we considered the pair of letters written around 506 CE in which Cassiodorus, in the persona of Theoderic, explained to the Burgundian king Gundobad the significance of the sundial and ­water clock he was sending to him, describing them as the fruits of Roman civilization: “Life’s order is confused if such a discernment confirmed by truth is unknown. For it is the habit of beasts to sense the hours from the hunger of the belly and to lack certainty in a ­thing that all agree was provided for ­human use” (Var. 1.46.2). Many years a­ fter ­those letters w ­ ere written, in around 554, Cassiodorus, now retired from public life, returned to his ­family estate in the south of Italy to establish a monastery.10 ­There he was to extol once again the benefits of sundial and w ­ ater clock in combination. This time, however, we are in a markedly dif­fer­ent mode, in the opening book of his Institutes of Divine and Secular Learning.11 ­Here he addresses the monks of his monastery, Vivarium: But I have not allowed you to be in any way unaware of the mea­sures of hours, which ­were in­ven­ted to the ­great advantage of the ­human race [sed nec horarum modulos passi sumus vos ullatenus ignorare, qui ad magnas utilitates humani generis noscuntur inventi]. This is why I am understood to have made available to you one clock that the brightness of the sun marks but also another, run by ­water, which marks the quantity of hours jointly by day and by night, ­because frequently on quite a few days the brightness of the sun is known to be absent, and in remarkable manner ­water circulates on the earth—­the same course as is run, in mea­sure, by the flaming energy of the sun on high. Thus the artifice of ­human beings has made ­things go in harmony that by nature ­were separated [ita quae natura divisa sunt, ars hominum fecit ire concorditer]. The consistency of ­these [clocks] stands so true that what­ever is done by each you would imagine to have been arranged through intermediaries. (1.30.5)

Cassiodorus emphasizes many of the same details as in the letters, such as the overall benefit to h ­ uman beings of being able to track the hours and the distinct technologies by which the two devices each emulate the sun’s course in parallel. But then he adds: “And so ­these [devices] have been procured in order that

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the soldiers of Christ, being notified by certain signs, may be summoned to work upon their divine task, as if by resounding trumpets” (1.30.5). The broader context makes clear the specific usefulness the clocks can have for monks. “You have received a kind of city of your own [quaedam urbs propria],” Cassiodorus explains, referring to the monastery (1.32.3). He quotes to them the scriptural exhortation of Psalms 1:2 to “meditate [meditemini] on the law of God day and night [diebus noctibusque]” (1.30.4). Along with the clocks he also mentions the remarkable “mechanical lamps” (mechanicas lucernas) that he has provided for their “night vigils” (nocturnis vigiliis) (1.30.4). ­These technologies are to serve as ancillaries to the monks’ activities as scribes, which in turn supplement the ordo lectionis (order of reading) central to the more general monastic ordo which is, in Mark Vessey’s words, “the keynote of the Institutions.”12 This order has a significant temporal dimension that can be more easily maintained both through the observation of the hours of day and night, which the clocks allow, and, during the nocturnal hours, through work and prayer by lamplight.

Monastic Rule . . . Cassiodorus was scarcely alone in repurposing the technologies of Roman diurnal time within the order of a Christian day. ­Others had been at work on this task e­ arlier in the sixth ­century and long before. Clock technology, including automation and public signaling, was evolving in close conjunction with Christian institutions, and this would continue into the ­Middle Ages and beyond—­ though the notion that the monastery anticipates the modern factory needs to be carefully qualified.13 Astronomical observation, which persisted as the main method for time telling at night, also became more sophisticated, “so that [the stars’] orderly course, established by God, would be reflected in an orderly routine of prayer, decreed by the Rule.”14 For detailed prescriptions on monastic time organ­ization we may consider, from e­ arlier in Cassiodorus’s own lifetime, the Rule of St. Benedict, written for Benedict’s monastery in Nursia in central Italy (c. 516 CE). Key terms referring to temporal organ­ization in this book echo the Roman discourse we have been tracing in this book, such as “arrange” (disponere) (1.13; Plin. Ep. 3.1.2, 9.36.1), “observation” (observatio) (3.11; Cic. Fam. 9.20.3), “rule” (regula) (3.11; Plin. Ep. 3.1.3) “give an account” (rationem reddere) (2.34–40; Fronto, Ep. 4.6.2), and “deviate” or “change” (declinare) (3.7; Sen. Ep. 122.17, 19), as do some longer formulations, such as “to police the actions of one’s life at e­ very hour, to be certain that God is looking back at oneself, in ­every place” (actus vitae suae

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272  Ordering Knowledge

omni hora custodire, in omni loco Deum se respicere pro certo scire) (4.48; Sen. Ep. 83.1) and “to have death in view before one’s eyes ­every day” (mortem cottidiae ante oculos suspectam habere) (4.47; Sen. Ep. 12.6).15 The basic unit of time is the seasonal hour—­the equinoctial hour only comes into common use l­ater— so that stipulations of the hour for everyday routines are differentiated for summer and winter, in what Jerome, writing a c­ entury e­ arlier (404 CE), celebrates as the “useful variation of times” (utilem . . . ​temporum diversitatem) given by God (Ep. 100.10).16 Thomas Wiedemann finds correspondences between monastic and pre-­Christian seasonal habits, pointing out, for example, that “large sections [of the monastic rules] consist of instructions about ­house­hold management similar in kind to that found in the agricultural handbooks of Cato, Varro and Columella (which medieval ecclesiastical landlords found so useful), and likely to reflect traditional practices of man-­management.”17 Yet the monastic discourse on daily time diverges from what we have seen in Rome. For while the Roman day’s core rhythm remains fairly perceptible, Christian adjustments include, among other t­ hings, more frequent precise time indications involving the half hour, the superimposition of canonical hours on the traditional quartered-­day structure, the weekly interruption of quotidian routine by the festive dies dominica (Sunday, the day of the Lord), and the organ­ izing of the year around Easter. The Rule of St. Benedict is just one of the surviving monastic rules, but it allows us to survey three representative emphases in which similarities to the Roman day are embedded within overall difference. Take, first, the new emphasis on vigil in the early morning darkness that is foregrounded in Benedict’s opening exhortation (pr.8–10): “Let us then arise [exurgamus], at last, with scripture rousing us and saying: ‘It is the hour [hora est], now, for us to rise from sleep’, and with our eyes opened up to godly light let us listen with astonished ears to divine t­ hings ­every day [cotidie], crying out as the voice reminds us, saying, ‘­Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts’ ”18 Terence Kardong notes the symbolic implications given ­here to the act of rising: the monks’ open eyes recall the Transfiguration, where the “drowsy disciples are startled by the shining forth of Christ and instructed by the voice from heaven (Luke 9:32)”; their ears, in turn, hear Psalm 94 that we l­ater discover is to be sung e­ very day precisely at this time in the nocturnal office of Vigils (9.3).19 Although Vigils is structurally comparable to such Roman practices as lucubration and auspice taking, and the exhortation to early waking perhaps evokes the same moralism as Horace’s “Do you not awake to save yourself?” (ut

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te ipsum serves, non expergisceris?) (Ep. 1.2.33), the office provides rich material for differentiation of the Christian ritual. In early Christian hymns dedicated to the time of predawn we see scripture-­based allegorical interpretations projected onto the anticipation of daylight’s arrival, and sometimes, as Henri Bardon shows in his classic study of sunrises and sunsets in Latin poetry, Christian poets also periodize the night as paganism succeeded by the light of Christian truth.20 In the early chapters of his De temporum ratione, Bede (c. 673–735) explains how Christians, following Christ’s resurrection, had shifted from a prior conception of the civil day as beginning at dawn (based on the day of Creation) to a day that begins with eve­ning and proceeds into daylight: “This transformation of time [mutatio temporis] means that we also, who once w ­ ere borne away from the light of Paradise to this vale of tears, ­shall very soon be transported from the darkness of sin to heavenly joy” (5.289).21 In addition to noting the impor­ tant anticipatory dimension, Mary Helms has drawn attention to other features of nocturnal experience that come to the fore in vari­ous early or medieval Christian sources on Vigils, including wakefulness against evil or disorder, observation of an orderly sky, and “lengthy night devotions” that “provided a particularly focused and intensive expression of the New Testament admonition to pray without ceasing.”22 Benedict’s directives on how to conduct oneself during Vigils are no more distinctive for their symbolism than for the rhe­toric and rationale through which the rule regulates the collective be­hav­ior of sleep and waking. This can be seen in how Benedict accommodates the monks’ h ­ uman needs: Concerning divine offices at night: in wintertime—­that is, from the Kalends of November all the way to Easter—in accordance with reason, rising should be at the eighth hour of the night [octava hora noctis surgendum est], so that t­ here may be somewhat more of a rest a­ fter midnight and they may rise having already digested [ut modice amplius de media nocte pausetur et iam digesti surgant]. But in the time that remains a­ fter Vigils—­for the b­ rothers need study of the Psalter or reading—­let them devote themselves to reflection. (8.1–3)

This season-­specific advice, while it has the monks rising far before the end of the long winter night, is intended to be lenient. Interestingly, it resembles only the lazier mornings of Pliny the Elder, who in winter r­ ose “from the seventh or at latest the eighth hour, often the sixth” (ab hora septima vel cum tardissime octava, saepe sexta) (Ep. 3.5.8). Benedict is similarly lenient during summer Vigils when the nights are short:

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274  Ordering Knowledge But from Easter all the way to the above-­mentioned [Kalends] of November, let the hour be so adjusted [sic temperetur hora] that the ser­vice of Vigils be soon followed by Matins, which are to be conducted as daylight begins [incipiente luce], with only the smallest time intervening [ parvissimo intervallo] during which the ­brothers may go out to [attend to] the necessities of nature. (8.4)

Benedict thus brings Vigils forward as close as pos­si­ble to the dawn time of Matins, so as to maximize the amount of sleep and digestion prior to waking in a routinization appropriate to both the ideals and the practicalities of monastic living. Leslie Dossey traces Benedict’s leniency to an equally tolerant approach seen in the e­ arlier Rule of the Master as well as in the Latin tradition more generally, such as Celsus.23 A second representative feature of the monastic routine is that the day is completely taken up with God’s work, so much so that the monk’s entire life (vita) becomes coextensive with the rule’s directives on daily activity. Benedict explicates his famous pronouncement that “idleness is an ­enemy to the soul” (otiositas inimica est animae) (48.1) by describing an ideal “daily work of the hands” (opera manuum cotidiana) integrated into a summer routine: And so at certain times the ­brothers should be kept busy in ­labor of the hands and again at certain hours in reading of scripture. And so we believe that both [should] be ordered in time in the following arrangement [ideoque hac dispositione credimus utraque tempore ordinari], namely, from Easter all the way to the Kalends of October, let them go out in the morning and from the first hour all the way virtually to the fourth hour, let them work at what is needed. But from the fourth hour all the way to the hour when they w ­ ill conduct Sext, let them be ­free for reading. But a­ fter Sext, rising from t­ able, let them rest on their beds in total silence, or if anyone should happen to want to read to himself, let him do so—in a manner that does not disturb another. And let None be conducted in a timely way half way through the eighth hour, and again let them work at what needs d ­ oing, all the way to Vespers. (48.1–6)24

While the devotion to ­labor (opera) from the first hour to dusk might recall the day of farm l­abor in Columella and while Benedict’s opening pronouncement itself would seem to resonate with traditional Roman repudiations of otium otiosum (Cic. Off. 3.1), t­ here is also a markedly humane dimension that characterizes the Rule of St. Benedict in contrast with some other rules.25 Benedict’s optional siesta-­time reading is suggestive of Seneca’s survey of mea­sures that help effect a balance between negotium with otium (Tranq. 17.7), although ­here “otium”

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per se is a bad word and both reading of scripture (lectio divina) and rest (quies) are, technically speaking, God’s work pursued by other means. The flexibility of the “­little hours” that allows Benedict’s office of None to occur prior to the ninth hour—­a “tinkering with the horarium” that Kardong calls “revolutionary”—­reflects the license that Benedict affords the abbot.26 His abbot, when adjusting dinnertimes, “should moderate and arrange all ­things” (omnia temperet atque disponat) with an ear open to pos­si­ble murmuratio among the monks (41.5). But if the abbot is allowed to mold the monastic routine to accommodate vari­ous natu­ral and ­human f­actors, he is also the enforcer of a temporal regularity to which all must adhere. Benedict describes cenobitic monasticism as “soldiering ­under the rule, or the abbot” (militans sub regula vel abbate) (1.2), and the fusion of the abbot with the rule in its temporal aspect is emphasized repeatedly, as in the stipulation “Let the announcing of the hour for God’s work, by both day and night, be the concern of the abbot [sit cura abbatis]” (47.1). At ­every turn in Benedict’s rule, the social order of the monastery is explicated as a temporal order. One monk may be punished through desynchronization with the ­others, being forced to eat precisely three hours l­ater (24.5–7), while a monk who arrives at Vigils ­later than the stipulated time—­specifically, “­after the ‘Gloria’ of the ninety-­fourth Psalm”—is not allowed to sit “in his ordered position among the chorus” (in ordine suo in choro) (43.4). Peter Damian (c. 1007–73) ­later urges monks to use Psalms to mea­sure time when a real clock is not available and maintains that monks themselves should be “a sort of clock” (quoddam horologium).27 In his book The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-­of-­Life (2013), Giorgio Agamben emphasizes the distance between this monastic ideal and pre-­ Christian classical discourses. “The novelty of cenoby,” Agamben suggests, “is that, by taking literally the Pauline prescription of unceasing prayer, . . . ​it transforms the w ­ hole of life into an Office by way of temporal scansion”: The continuation of the temporal scansion, interiorized in the form of a perpensatio horarum, a ­mental articulation of the passing of the hours, h ­ ere becomes the ele­ment that permits it to act on the life of the individual and the community with an incomparably greater efficacy than the Stoic and Epicurean care of the self could achieve.28

Nowhere, ­either in classical culture or in the industrial factory, does Agamben see such a “level of consistency” as he sees manifested in “the syntagmas vita vel regula, regula et vita, forma vivendi, forma vitae,” where vita and regula / forma

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are reciprocally constitutive or even “point in the direction of a third ­thing.”29 But whereas Agamben’s observations are pitched ­toward his own exceptionalist account of “form of life” in the ­later emergence of Franciscan monasticism, we are positioned to discern a greater continuity between the ordered Roman day and the monastic day. Pliny’s characterization of Spurinna’s day, for example, as “this rule . . . ​this life” (hanc regulam . . . ​hanc vitam) (Ep. 3.1.3) represents both rule and life as mutually defining, and it is hard to imagine that the Christian discourse would have evolved in the way that it did without awareness of the prior Roman discourse and its aspirations for day patterns as forms of life.30 The overlap in both terminology and time structures is too extensive to allow for a narrative of total difference. A third representative feature, which we have already touched on in passing, concerns articulation of the day’s order through the set times for prayer. The hour schedule described by Benedict represents a relatively evolved stage of the Christian day order: How divine works are to be conducted each day [qualiter divina opera per diem agantur]: As the prophet says, “Seven times in the day I uttered praise to you” [septies in die laudem dixi tibi]. This sanctioned number of seven w ­ ill be fulfilled by us in this way if we complete the duties of our servitude at the time of Matin, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline [si Matutino, Primae, Tertiae, Sextae, Nonae, Vesperae Conpletoriique tempore nostrae servitutis officia persolvamus], ­because concerning ­these hours of the day he said [de his diurnis horis dixit]: “Seven times in the day I uttered praise to you.” For concerning Vigils by night the same prophet himself said: “In the ­middle of the night I arose to confess to you” [media nocte surgebam ad confitendum tibi]. And so, at ­t hese times, let us give back praises to our creator over the judgments of his justice—­that is, at Matins, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. And at night let us arise to confess to him. (16.1–5)31

This schedule is followed by an account of Psalms to be recited in each office (17), which in turn is modified over a weekly schedule that exhausts the full set of Psalms—­though, Benedict points out, “we read that our holy ­Fathers completed this, with g­ reat energy, in a single day [uno die hoc strenue implesse]” (18.25).

. . . ​and Liturgical Day Though Benedict’s hour schedule foregrounds the Psalms, a broader range of foundational rationales and narratives is evident in both e­ arlier and l­ater accounts of the liturgical day in Chris­tian­ity and also in Judaism, and a brief

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sketch of this history demonstrates how ­these responded to preexisting Roman time frames.32 Premonastic routines of hermits’ lives already centered on “a round of meditation on the scriptures (melete), psalmody and manual ­labor.”33 Surviving evidence of Christian hermit life unsurprisingly features personal habit, such as when St. Antony, as Athanasius reports in Life of Antony, responds to Paul’s “I die each day” (kath’ hêmeran apothnêiskô) (1 Cor. 15:31) with an exhortation that recalls philosophical self-­examination and meditatio mortis: “As we awake each day, let us consider that we may not persist u ­ ntil eve­ning, and in turn, as we prepare to lay down to sleep, let us consider that we may not awake” (19.2–3). Jewish daily schemes of prayer can be traced in early historical accounts. Josephus mentions how during Pompey’s siege in Jerusalem in 66–65 BCE, the priests in the ­temple persisted in the “twice-­daily” sacrifices, “first ­thing in the morning and around the ninth hour” (dis tês hêmeras prôi te kai peri enatên hôran) (AJ 14.65). Ancient sundials have been preserved in Jerusalem and other locations in Judaea, and ­there is no reason to doubt that the observation of the hours was as established t­ here as it was anywhere around the Mediterranean.34 But the ­temple routines mentioned by Josephus w ­ ere disrupted and effaced a­ fter the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem t­emple in 70 CE. That traumatic loss of tradition, as Gribetz has shown, was a catalyst for renewed attention to time that is evident in rabbinic sources from the second c­ entury onward, which focus on “pre­sent time—on daily life, its hourly schedules and its annual calendar, and the quotidian, if sacred, activities therein,” particularly such rituals as the recitation of the Shema (a set of scriptural passages) at day’s beginning and end.35 Gribetz’s account is striking ­because it suggests that rabbinic discourse not only mapped h ­ uman differences (e.g., of gender) within diurnal structures but also ascribed to God a deep immersion in diurnal and quotidian time.36 The Jewish discourse on time also more generally contrasted with Roman imperial time with re­spect to both the calendar and festivals; “even as rabbis synchronized their time with the time of the empire, they also found ways of cultivating countertempos.”37 Roman and Christian times, in turn, ­were themselves defined in ongoing conversation (and contrast) with Jewish time, particularly in such categories as the year and the week.38 But early Christian authors do not ostensibly build on Jewish worship routines as a basis for their diurnal and quotidian structures. They draw on specific passages in scripture, most often from the Greek Bible.39 In addition to quoting such verses as ­those quoted by Benedict, they invoke the command to pray “always” (e.g., pantote [Luke 18:1], adialeiptôs [1 Thess. 5:17],

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and en panti kairôi [Ephes. 6:18]), note the example of Daniel, who “prayed three times a day” (Dan. 6:10), and mention the third, sixth, and ninth hours in Acts and in the life of Jesus, especially in Mark’s account of the Crucifixion. Mark details how “it was the third hour [ên . . . ​hôra tritê] and they crucified him” (15:25), “and when the sixth hour came [genomenês hôras hektês] ­there was darkness over the ­whole land u ­ ntil the ninth hour [heôs hôras enatês]. And at the ninth hour [têi enatêi hôrai] Jesus cried out.” (15:33–34).40 Exegetes sought in one way or another to reconcile the Markan narrative with John’s mention that “it was around the sixth hour” (hôra ên hôs hektê) when Pilate was urged to crucify (19:13).41 Further early evidence of Christian daily practices comes from Pliny the Younger’s report from Bithynia-­Pontus in which he mentions Christians’ s­ imple alleged routine of “meeting on an appointed day, before dawn [stato die ante lucem convenire], and singing a song to Christ as if to a god” and then, in the eve­ning, “gathering once again to take food” (Ep. 10.96.7). In the first letter to the Corinthians by Clement of Rome (late first c­ entury CE) we find early proof of specific prayer times: We should do in order [taxei] all the ­things that the Master [despotou] has commanded us to carry out [epitelein] at the stipulated times [kata kairous tetagmenous]. He has commanded that offerings and ser­vices [ prosphoras kai leitourgias] be carried out . . . ​not at random or without order but at appointed times and hours [hôrismenois kairois kai hôrais]. (40:1–2)42

Although it is not made clear exactly what t­ hose times and hours w ­ ere, some slightly l­ater writers take the hours of the quartered Roman day as main points of reference and integrate ­these with scripture-­based etiologies and spiritual narratives. In his work On Prayer (c. 198–204), Tertullian writes how concerning the time [for prayer] it ­will not be idle to observe certain hours outwardly also—­I mean t­ hose common hours that mark the divisions of the day: the third, the sixth, the ninth. We find t­ hese well established in the scriptures. [de tempore vero non erit otiosa extrinsecus observatio etiam horarum quarumdam, istarum dico communium quae diei interspatia signant, tertia, sexta, nona, quas sollemniores in scripturis invenire est.] (25.1–5)43

He then goes on to justify each of ­these three hours in terms of a specific story.44 For example, he refers to Acts 2:15 in noting that “the Holy Spirit was first infused into the gathered disciples at the third hour [hora tertia].” He also justifies

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the practice of three daytime prayers (“Let us worship no less than three times a day, at least” [ne minus ter die saltem adoremus]) by invoking Daniel 6:10, which describes how Daniel prayed three times a day, and also the Trinity before adding “not to mention of course the required prayers [legitimis orationibus] which we are obliged to give at the onset of daylight and of night [ingressu lucis et noctis], without any reminding [sine ulla admonitione]” (25). While Tertullian’s hour schedule focuses on daylight as well as its beginning and end, Hippolytus of Rome (c. 215) attends also to the times of sleep, vigil, and dawn: “Let e­ very faithful man and w ­ oman, when they have risen from sleep in the morning, before they touch any work at all, wash their hands and pray to God, and so go to their work.” 45 He then proceeds through third, sixth, and ninth, connecting each prayer with vignettes from the day of the Passion, before turning to day’s end: Pray before your body rests on the bed. Rise about midnight, wash your hands with w ­ ater, and pray. If your wife is pre­sent also, pray both together. . . . ​A nd likewise rise about cockcrow and pray. For at that hour, as the cock crew, the ­children of Israel denied Christ, whom we know by faith, our eyes looking ­toward that day in the hope of eternal light at the resurrection of the dead. (Apostolic Tradition 41)

Some components of formalized daily liturgy, however, likely began in informal domestic contexts. Kimberly Bowes argues, for example, that the lucernarium, “the lighting of the lamps at sundown,” “may have originated in Jewish or even pagan ­house­holds and was ­adopted by pre-­Nicene Christian homes before being picked up in the public liturgies of the fourth ­century.” 46 Full schemes of canonical hours, in some shape or form and with local variations, w ­ ere central to the monastic rules that emerged in the fourth c­ entury, beginning in the east with the monastic liturgy of Basil of Caesarea and in the west with the Ordo monasterii ascribed to Augustine.47 The Rule of St. Benedict is simply the best known among the numerous such rules that ­were in existence by the sixth ­century and that ­were collected by Benedict of Aniane in the early ninth ­century as the Concordia regularum. The canonical hour schedule would ­later be central in the Book of Hours, which became popu­lar beginning in the thirteenth c­ entury, that featured specific narrative schemes—­the Hours of the Cross, the Hours of the Holy Spirit, the Hours of the Virgin—­and was accompanied by illustrations and liturgical materials.48

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Hymnic and Ascetic Days Against this backdrop of the Christian day’s evolution as a monastic and liturgical structure, modeled on the Roman day in a qualified sense, multiple authors used day patterns to define forms of Christian life in both poetry and prose. In the late fourth c­ entury, Ambrose in Hymns 1–4 and Prudentius in Cathemerinon 1–6 establish schedules of daily prayer in successive poems that relate to times from cockcrow to eve­ning. In Prudentius’s case this sequence offers a remedy for the sinful soul: “Let [the soul] link the days through hymns [hymnis continuet dies],” he writes in his preface, “and let no night go without its singing of the Lord” (pr.35–37). Gerald O’Daly takes from this the title for his book Days Linked by Song (2012) in which he argues that “we discover a traditionally educated Roman shaping a Christian way of life, with minimal reference to doctrine—­only the basics of Christian belief are alluded to—or institutions, using poetry to give new meaning to the tasks and features of the Christian day, and, thus, fashion a Christian identity.” 49 The canonical hours and their scriptural symbolism w ­ ere scarcely the only narrative with which the day’s structure was sketched by ­these authors. One of Ambrose’s hymns maps out its own moral-­theological schema: “Let this day pass happily such that the dawn is shamefastness, midday is faith, and the mind know no twilight” (laetus hic dies transeat / pudor sit ut diluculum, / fides velut meridies, / crepusculum mens nesciat) (7.25–28).50 Prudentius, in turn, begins his matutinus hymnus (morning hymn) (2) with a priamel differentiating the good Christian from “soldier, citizen, sailor, craftsman, ploughman, salesman” to whom “this hour [is] useful” (haec hora . . . ​utilis) (37–40), clearly building on the classical montage of bioi (lives) surveyed at dawn.51 The same hymn concludes with a scene that closely evokes Seneca’s eve­ning self-­examination in On Anger (3.36): Let the watcher stand over who looks forth upon us and our actions e­ very day from first light into the eve­ning. This one is the witness, this one the decider, this one watches what­ever it is that the h ­ uman mind conceives. No one eludes this one as judge. [speculator adstat desuper qui nos diebus omnibus

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Christian Roman Days   281 actusque nostros prospicit a luce prima in vesperum. hic testis, hic est arbiter, hic intuetur quidquid est humana quod mens concipit, hunc nemo fallit iudicem.] (2.105–12)

As O’Daly notes, the phrase “diebus omnibus” expands the single day to ­every day, corresponding to Prudentius’s ­earlier plea directed at Christ to “examine the ­whole of our life” (vitam . . . ​totam dispice) (2.58).52 In a l­ater hymn for the lighting of the lamps Prudentius begins by invoking Christ in his roles as originary day divider and light bringer: Discoverer of rosy light, good guide, who divide the times with decisive changes [certis vicibus tempora dividis], when the sun has sunk terrible chaos ensues, return the light to your faithful, Christ [lucem redde tuis, Christe, fidelibus]. (5.1–4)

As Philip Hardie observes in his discussion of allegory in this poem, “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.”53 This image situates a Christian everyday in relation to salvational history. ­These hymnic idealizations may be compared with what prose authors of the same period wrote concerning ascetic daily practice. Take, for example, Jerome’s twenty-­second letter from 384 CE, which pre­sents an ambitious manifesto on preserving the virginity of the young aristocratic w ­ oman Eustochium.54 First Jerome satirizes the social routine of elite ­women whose days begin with salutatio and conclude with a combination of luxury and false piety: “Following an extravagant dinner they [go to bed and] dream of the apostles” (post cenam dubiam apostolos somniant) (16). This soon finds its contrast in the routine Jerome prescribes for virgins. Jerome’s advice partly recalls Tertullian in his exhortation to “observe the distinct hours for praying” (divisas orandi oras habere), which evokes etymologies for “hora” in both Greek “horizdo,” “distinguish,” and Latin “oro,” “pray,” in the number of prayers (six), and in the maxim “let the time [of day] itself remind us of our duty” (ipsum nos ad officium tempus admoneat) (37).55 But he combines his strictures with descriptions of early cenobitic routines in Egypt, some details of which anticipate what we see in the Rule of St. Benedict, though ­others suggest a markedly dif­fer­ent structure, such as a radical bifurcation

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of the monk’s day between solitude before the ninth hour (usque ad horam nonam) and collective singing and prayer thereafter (post horam nonam) (35). The routines for virgin life Jerome specifies overlap to an extent with the monastic routines of his age. In a ­later letter on the life of the ascetic Paula he describes the “order of the monastery” (ordine monasterii) she established in Bethlehem (108.19), and in still another he describes the life that Paula’s infant grand­daughter would one day live t­ here, mentioning such familiar details as “to rise in the nighttime for prayers and Psalms; to sing hymns in the morning; at the third, sixth, and ninth hours to stand in the b­ attle line like a w ­ oman warrior for Christ; and with lamp lit to render eve­ning rites” (ad orationes et Psalmos nocte consurgere; mane hymnos canere; Tertia, Sexta, Nona hora stare in acie quasi bellatricem Christi; accensaque lucernula reddere sacrificium vespertinum) (107.9).56 In letter 22, we encounter details about daily fasting (cotidiana ieiunia [17]), daily singing and reading (17), daily memorization of scripture (cotidie de scripturis aliquid discitur [35]), and an accounting for ­labor: “The day’s work is appointed” (opus diei statutum est) (35). Jerome is especially concerned with the methods by which this routine could be reproduced in ­women across generations as well as in its potential to symbolically reform feminine identity. Young Paula’s ­mother, Laura, is instructed using terms that make us think of Fronto and Marcus: “Let her give back to you each day her specified mea­sure of scriptures” (reddat tibi pensum cotidie scripturarum certum) (9). But the sense of “pensum” as a mea­sure, a weighed-­out task, or a yarn load is also manifested in a more gender-­specific stricture: “Let her learn to make wool [discat et lanam facere], to hold the distaff, to place the basket in her lap, to spin the wheel, and draw out the yarn with her thumb” (107.9–10). The m ­ other is also instructed that “when she celebrates days of vigils and solemn all-­night observances [vigiliarum dies et sollemnes pernoctationes . . . ​ celebret], our young virgin must never leave her m ­ other’s side more than a fingernail’s thinness” (107.9). The girl is evidently at risk of encountering a lascivious role model, and so “a veteran virgin of upstanding fidelity, character, and chastity should be kept before her [ praeponatur ei probae fidei et morum ac pudicitiae virgo veterana] who can teach her and can accustom her” to the daily routine of prayer “by her example” (exemplo) (107.9).57 The everyday temporal modality of the virgin’s life is closely tied, in turn, to the spatial modality of the early Christian cubiculum (personal domestic chamber). As Kristina Sessa observes, the writings of Jerome and Ambrose represent this space as one “wherein a virgin might focus her attentions on the Lord and escape from the defiling dangers of public society” and from “the nagging social

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rituals performed in other rooms of the h ­ ouse.”58 The cubiculum becomes “a model for everyday living” in which the Christian subject performs, in private, the identity of martyr and so again dramatizes salvation history through a refashioned Roman day.59

Ausonius’s Day of Poems (Ephemeris) Now let us return, however, to a somewhat e­ arlier stage in the emergence of the Christian day. The written repre­sen­ta­tions of the routines of Ausonius (c. 310– 95) and Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 430–89) are less exclusively devoted to the day’s ritual sequence than the monastic and liturgical texts we have been looking at. ­These Gallo-­Roman authors, writing in the fourth and fifth centuries, respectively, gestate their Christianizing days within more explic­itly classical frameworks. In their own literary modes, they offer first-­person day patterns that belong to the same general paradigm as the pagan case studies in chapters 6–8. Indeed they allude to several of ­those texts. The day pattern of Ausonius’s Ephemeris, transmitted with the alternative title Totius diei negotium (Activity of a ­whole day), effectively dramatizes one day in a Christianized Roman life. In the eight poems that survive, in vari­ous meters, the speaker observes morning’s arrival and urges his slave to wake up (1, sapphics, twenty-­four lines), commands the slave to groom him and to prepare his shrine (2, iambic dimeters, twenty-­one lines), prays to an omnipotent, trinitarian God (3, dactylic hexameters, eighty-­five lines), prepares to greet friends in salutatio (4, iambic dimeters, nine lines surviving), notes that it is time to invite friends for lunch (5, iambic senarii, seven lines), and instructs his cook that it is nearly the fifth hour, lunchtime (6, elegiac couplets, seven lines surviving). ­A fter a lacuna of uncertain length, he addresses his scribe and is amazed at the speed of his stenography (7, iambic dimeters, twenty-­nine lines) and then, a­ fter another lacuna, he describes the content of his bad dreams and pleads with the dreams to let him sleep peacefully (8, dactylic hexameters, forty-­t hree lines surviving). I have already noted that echoes of the language-­learning colloquia lead Dionisotti to describe Ephemeris as “a literary reworking of the school colloquia of [Ausonius’s] day.” 60 Ausonius would have been familiar with the colloquia not simply from his youth but from his extensive ­career as a teacher of grammar and rhe­toric. But the cycle is many other t­ hings too: a real-­time drama recalling the scenes and characters of Greek and Roman mime and comedy; a web of allusions to numerous writers both pagan and Christian (including Ambrose, whose hymns are also written in iambic dimeters); a polymetric pageant of genres

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whose centerpiece, however, is the extensive Christian oratio which R. P. H. Green calls the first “non-­liturgical Christian prayer” in poetic history; and a day pattern in which multiple time indications and time perspectives are foregrounded.61 Although Ausonius’s day is a singular per­for­mance that shows rather than tells, it is still akin to the first-­person iterative day patterns we have been studying, and it certainly has pretensions to defining a form of life, even if, as Green puts it, the account of his day is “less documentary” than that found in Pliny’s essays but “fuller” than that supplied by Martial.62 We cannot be certain about Ausonius’s biographic situation at the time of writing or about the dramatic setting ­either, although Green plausibly locates it late in his life and suggests that the poet “is seeking to redefine his image ­a fter his long absence from court.” 63 But even without this context, Ephemeris is clear in its goal of bringing pagan and Christian days into the same pre­sent scene, e­ ither to stage a transition from one time scheme to the other or to pre­sent a dialectical interaction between the two. For while the quotidian temporality of this work contrasts with the historical time frames seen in some of Ausonius’s other poems, the business of the day that plays out in Ephemeris is nothing less than a turning away from an urban pagan past t­ oward a Christian f­ uture and eternity. In each poem of Ephemeris, we witness the speaker correlating the day’s passing time with signifiers of his Roman-­Christian life. In the opening poem the slave Parmeno is warned: “Already bright morning is opening up the win­dows. . . . ​ Arise, fool, . . . ​arise, so that you are not given a long sleep from a source you do not expect” (mane iam clarum reserat fenestras /  . . . ​surge, nugator, . . . ​ / surge ne longus tibi somnus, unde / non times, detur) (1, 17–19). The voice si­mul­ta­neously echoes Persius’s third satire and Horatian lyric, and Parmeno is threatened with the pagan mythic example of Endymion’s paralyzing sleep.64 Yet the term “nugator,” as Green observes, “in Christian usage” denotes “one who is concerned with worldly ­things.” 65 The preparation of the sacrarium (shrine) in the second poem (one of the earliest mentions of a private Christian chapel) is negatively defined through the foil of pagan lararium ritual: “And I do not ask for incense to be burned, nor wafers of honey cake, and I leave the l­ittle hearth of living turf to empty altars [vanis . . . ​altaribus]” (11–14).66 This turns away from traditional rites and circumscribes a space in which to pray to God and Christ: “And behold, now I begin my prayers, and my thinking perceives in awe the presence of divinity” (et ecce iam vota ordior / et cogitatio numinis / praesentiam sentit pavens) (19–21). Ausonius’s words reflect the sea change involved in the Christian conversion of the pagan lararium into a domestic icon shelf: “Not only would the icon permit the

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viewer to call upon divine power, but, like a visual radio, it would permit an ­actual conversation between h ­ uman and divine.” 67 The prayer itself, Ephemeris 3, occupies a dif­fer­ent level of time owing to its meter alone; this evocation of a new kind of time is enhanced by language that defines the temporal reach both of God, “more ancient than time that was or ­shall be” (antiquior aevo / quod fuit aut veniet) (3–4), and of Christ, who through salvation “taught that the path to eternal life can be re-­traversed” (esse iter aeternae docuit remeabile vitae) (23). Ausonius prays that God ­will “open the way that can carry me beyond the bonds of a sick body into sublime heights” (37– 38) and seeks liberation from a life of (future-­oriented) fear and desire (nil metuam cupiamque nihil) (59). Christ’s own temporal reach is defined by his having been “sent forth before the radiance and rosy eastern star yet lit the sky” (editus ante / quam iubar et rutilus caelum illustraret Eous) (11–12)—­terms that strikingly relegate the earthly day to pagan my­thol­ogy. The speaker, ­toward the end of the prayer, voices his aspiration: “When the final hour of day ­shall come [suprema diei cum venerit hora], let our life of good conscience neither fear death nor wish for it” (72–73). The term “day” (diei) h ­ ere may, as Green suggests, re68 fer meta­phor­ically to time of life. But given the cycle’s overall preoccupation with diurnal time, the term likely also has a literal sense, making this a gesture ­toward Christian self-­examination and meditatio mortis on a nightly basis. Everyday time is resumed in Ephemeris 4, which is in the same meter as Ephemeris 2, but the poem adjourns rather than terminates the Christian ritual of poem 3: “Prayers enough have been given to God [satis precum datum deo], although for the guilty no amount of prayer to the divine is adequate” (1–3). In this and the following poems, the solemnity of the preceding prayer is enhanced by bathetic contrast, as when, in the sixth, the speaker navigates social etiquette with an eye on the sundial. He adapts an image that in the satirist Persius had tracked laziness (3.4) to track ­here the imminence of lunch: “Sosia, it is lunchtime! The sun is now blazing fully into the fourth hour. The shadow turns ­toward the fifth mark” (Sosia prandendum est. quartam iam totus in horam / sol calet; ad quintam flectitur umbra notam) (1–2).69 The seventh poem’s focus is on the stenographer’s speed, and while it does not refer to any specific time of day, it homes in on the authorial apparatus itself. Ausonius pre­sents himself dictating to his scribe and correlating the pre­sent scenario with a wondrous modern miracle: “What order of t­ hings is so new [quis ordo rerum tam novus] that a t­ hing comes into your ears that my tongue has not yet completed?” (27–29). The miracle, however, is partly deceptive, not just ­because the novelty of stenography

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and mystification of the enslaved secretary’s l­abor are an ancient topos but ­because the enslaved scribe’s predictive writing registers Ausonius’s own rapid, cento-­like channeling of prior literary and cultural structures in Ephemeris more broadly.70 The order of his day is a “new order of ­things” (ordo rerum . . . ​novus) (7.27) in part b­ ecause he newly reorders the old. In the final fragmentary eighth poem on dreams, we are on less certain ground, but the dreams’ content partly evokes the activities of a day, perhaps of a day such as Ausonius himself had lived during his ­career in the imperial court: Now forums, now ­legal disputes, now a pro­cession in the vast theater are seen [nunc fora, nunc lites, lati modo pompa theatri visitur]. . . . I observe ­temples of the gods and sacred doors and golden palaces, and I seem to recline on Tyrian purple, and soon, a guest, I lie by smoky feasts. (4–5, 19–21)

­ hese time perspectives are incorporated, as we noted at the outset, within a T framework that recalls the pedagogical setting of the colloquia. Eleanor Dickey, we may recall, argues that ­these had begun life as morning narratives for the Roman schoolboy learning Greek but by the time of Ausonius had also been expanded into whole-­day narratives helping adult Greek provincials learn to navigate the language and culture of Rome.71 By analogy, we may suspect that Ephemeris served as a poetic restaging of the vari­ous cultural competencies that make up the Gallic Ausonius’s power­ful Roman-­Christian identity. Yet as it is played out in the poem cycle, the poet’s identity acquisition—or identity transformation—­centers on his ostentatious surrender to a temporal order that transcends the quotidian. While the dramatization of the pagan’s day proceeds through the commanding master’s successful use of imperatives (surge . . . ​da) (2.1, 3) directed at the slave who ­will facilitate his daily activities, that paradigm becomes an obsolete and even nightmarish satire when the day is made part of a divine temporal order and the commanding subject becomes the submissive petitioner whose imperatives now function as a ritualized series of pleas to “God and Lord” or alternatively “master” (deus ac dominus): “Open a path . . . ​Give . . . ​Give . . . ​Give” (pande viam . . . ​da . . . ​da . . . ​da) (3.37, 43, 49, 58). So too the stenographer’s real-­time divining of Ausonius’s diction pales in contrast to Christ’s transcendent function as “himself the word of God, God the word, anticipator of the world he was to make” (ipse dei verbum, verbum deus, anticipator / mundi quem facturus erat) (3.9–10). Or so it would seem. For Ausonius’s prayer does not interrupt the Roman day for long. In the final poem his imprecation to his nightmares (“Allow me to pass

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my cowardly nights placidly, ­until the golden Light-­bringer returns to me in rosy rising” [me sinite ignavas placidum traducere noctes, / dum redeat roseo mihi Lucifer aureus ortu] [8.38–39]) is underwritten by the conspicuously pagan vow that he w ­ ill dedicate to his dreams a private “grove” (lucus) in which they can dwell. Ephemeris, then, dramatizes an oscillation in which the order of the Roman day ironically persists.

Days with Sidonius Apollinaris (Letters 2.9) Sidonius, as we noted in chapter 5, updated the Roman discourse on the princeps’ day, using it to represent the monarchs of his day in his poetry and his prose letters, including the Christian Theoderic II. But we also find Sidonius portraying his own Christian-­Roman daily routines in his letters, once again creatively adapting the model of Pliny the Younger.72 Roy Gibson has argued that Sidonius adapted both micro-­and macro features of Pliny’s correspondence in shaping his own. For example, the names of the addressees of Sidonius’s first and final letters, Constantius and Firminus, respond to the Clarus-­Fuscus diurnal bookending in Pliny, while Sidonius’s final letter (9.16), which refers to “winter time” (tempore hiberno) (9.16.2), has a closural function comparable to that of Pliny’s letter 9.40.73 Sidonius, I suggest, emulates Pliny still further in letter 2.9, where he showcases his own days while drawing on several separate Plinian letters all at once. Writing to his friend Donidius, who has inquired about his slowness in reaching him at Nimes, Sidonius devotes this letter to explaining his delay. The letter’s first words, “you inquire” (quaeris) (1), also open two of Pliny’s letters—­ specifically, two of his three letters to Fuscus (7.9.1, 9.36.1). This puts us on notice that we are in the realm of Plinian day description. The reason for his delay is, Sidonius explains, that he spent “a wonderfully pleas­ur­able time in the countryside with the most agreeable and cultivated hosts, Ferreolus and Apollinaris” (inter agros amoenissimos humanissimos dominos, Ferreolum et Apollinarem, tempus voluptuosissimum) (1), now clearly echoing the opening words of Pliny’s Spurinna letter: “I d ­ on’t know if I have ever spent a more pleasant time” (nescio an ullum iucundius tempus exegerim) (3.1.1). The letter, it turns out, describes the daily routine that Sidonius and his companions w ­ ere treated to during their visits to the two separate hosts, whose villa-­estates are situated next to one another. The pairing of villas still further amplifies and complicates the Plinian resonances, as Sidonius describes the similarities and differences of the two villas’ sites and vistas in terms that clearly evoke the subtle dialogue between Pliny’s letters on his two villas (2.17, 5.6). Not only this, but Sidonius next evokes

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the progression that Pliny conducts over the course of his letters from the description of the villas to the corresponding description of the routines (9.36, 9.40), except that Sidonius’s move is lightning fast: “Though what more [may I say] now concerning the farms’ location, when the order of their hospitality remains to be embarked on?” (quamquam de praediorum quid nunc amplius positione, cum restet hospitalitatis ordo reserandus?) (2). The letter, then, advertises as its starting point a mash-up of the pagan, and specifically Plinian, epistolary discourse on spatially located day patterns. Yet ­these prefatory comments, in which Sidonius effortlessly flits from model to model, also prepare us to notice what is dif­fer­ent about his day. For not only does Sidonius describe the day in his uniquely ornamental style and with an emphasis on t­hings “pleasant to relate” (amoena narratu) (10) but his routine also showcases the distinctive Christianizing leisure of the Gallo-­Roman elite. Sidonius’s narrative of the “order of hospitality” unfolds as a sequence of activities in which t­ here is a continual give-­and-­take between the precisely scheduled formalities imposed by the two rival hosts and the freedom of the guests to enjoy their leisure. It also overwhelmingly focuses on iteration and reduplication, requiring us to imagine that virtually e­ very event he describes was repeated on a daily basis and was the same regardless of which of the two villas he and his friends happened to be spending their day in (!). He describes first how they w ­ ere intercepted on their travels and w ­ ere forced to swear that they would not leave “before seven days had tran­spired” (priusquam septem dies evolverentur) (2), and then he explains how “­every day in the morning” (mane cotidiano) (3) the two hosts would contend for the honor of hosting them for the day. Upon entering “one or the other vestibule” (quodcumque vestibulum) (4), they would be greeted by a succession of spectacles: first ball players, then dice players, and then “an ample supply of books within reach” (libri affatim in promptu) (4). This leads Sidonius to extol the layout and abundance of the library, which is seemingly the same in both villas: “You would believe that you ­were looking on ­either a grammarian’s shelves or the tiers of the Athenaeum or the built-up cases of booksellers” (4). He evokes the reading activities they undertook ­there (lectitabantur [4]) as well as the debates provoked among the guests by some of the books (5). The library scene, constituting the main intellectual activity of the day, concludes with a remarkable transition from f­ree time to time structured by a precise schedule:

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Christian Roman Days   289 While each individual among us was occupied with t­ hese studies, just as it had pleased him [ prout libuerat], behold also, someone arrived from the cook to tell us that it was now time to attend to our bodies [tempus instare curandi corpora]. Proof that this messenger was adhering to the advances of the hours through the spans of the w ­ ater clock and had entered punctually was provided by the departure of the fifth hour [quem quidem nuntium per spatia clepsydrae horarum incrementa servantem probabat competenter ingressum quinta digrediens]. (5)

Although the transition is from intellectual activities to bodily needs, the time signal conspicuously comes not from the hungry belly but from the elegant synchronicity between the ­house­hold w ­ ater clock and the kitchen staff’s clockwork precision.74 The lunch seems to follow Roman aristocratic norms: “We lunched briefly but generously, in senatorial style” (prandebamus breviter copiose, senatorium ad morem) (6). Yet the elaborate marking of the fifth hour’s passing prior to the lunch and the details of the ensuing convivium, with its “snippets of storytelling amid the drinking” (6), portray a substantial lunchtime occasion such as is lacking in other texts we have considered in this book, except, perhaps, Ausonius’s Ephemeris. The ensuing siesta and physical exercise serve both as a means of recovering from lunch and as preparation for the eve­ning meal: “Shaking off our midday stupor [excusso torpore meridiano] we rode on ­horse­back for a short while [ paulisper], to help our bodies, dulled by food, to sharpen up and get an appetite for dinner” (7). The after­noon includes a finely sequenced bathing routine that does not take place at ­either of the villas, since both of their bath complexes are u ­ nder construction, but rather in makeshift baths constructed in the landscape by Sidonius’s drunken slaves (8–9). “­Here,” he recounts, “we drew out the hours with not a bit of witty talk and joking” (9). Sidonius then cuts short his account of the day, mentioning only in passing the splendid banquets that would have required him to double his account once again by writing on the reverse side of the letter’s page (10). Thus far I have omitted mention of the multiple Christianizing components of Sidonius’s day pattern. His letter includes several Christian grace notes in its scenes of socializing, as when he summarizes their hospitable reception by saying “we ­were received with sacred solemnity [sancta], finely, abundantly” (6) and when he anticipates his reunion with Donidius “with the help of Christ” (sub ope Christi) (10). The day as a w ­ hole is also interwoven with major time schemes that are concerned with articulating Christian identity. Their enforced seven-­ day stay at the villas (septem dies) (2) is just long enough to establish a daily

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routine while they are ­there (cotidiano) (3), yet Sidonius’s mention of a “completed span of a week’s extent” (hebdomadis exactae spatia completa) that he says it ­will take him to recover from his feasting (10) also frames his life within the rhythm of the Christian week cycle that had become established in the Roman world beginning in the early fourth c­ entury u ­ nder Constantine.75 In the Christianized days of monastic and liturgical routine, the Roman day arguably was to persist only as a kind of negative image. Sidonius’s description, by contrast, like Ausonius’s diurnal framing of his chapel prayer, situates the Christian conversation within a day that is best described as Roman-­Christian. Such is his creative engagement with Pliny and with other literary models of pagan tradition.

Rabelais Looks Back We may gain a useful retrospect on the story of both Roman and Christian day patterning by fast-­forwarding now to the sixteenth ­century. In the concluding chapters of Rabelais’s novel Gargantua (1534), the protagonist rebels against the monastic breviary routine to which he and his associates w ­ ere previously subjected.76 Specifically, Gargantua founds the new and radical monastery of Thélème (evidently named from Greek “thelêma,” meaning “­will”), announcing that “­because in the religious o­ rders of this world every­t hing is compassed, ­limited and regulated by hours, . . . ​in this one t­ here w ­ ouldn’t be a single clock or sundial.”77 In a chapter titled “How the Thelemites’ Way of Life was Regulated,” we learn that their ­whole life was lived, not in accordance with laws, statutes, or rules, but by their own choosing and f­ree w ­ ill. They got up when they felt like it; they drank, ate, worked and slept when they so desired. Nobody woke them up, nobody forced them ­either to drink, or to eat, or to do anything ­else at all. This is how Gargantua had laid it down. In their rule, ­there was only one clause: DO WHATEVER YOU WANT.78

As Agamben points out, this scandalous founding ideal has an ancient pre­ce­ dent in the ­actual noncenobitic order of the Sarabaites. Of them, Benedict writes in the Rule of St. Benedict, “the ­will of their desires holds the place of law” (pro lege eis est desideriorum voluntas) (1.6).79 Yet the Thelemites ­will not live in chaos but ­will be like a self-­conducting orchestra, ­because, Gargantua explains, “­free, well-­born, well-­educated ­people, thoroughly at home in decent com­pany, by nature have an instinct and goad which always impel them to carry out virtuous deeds, and hold them back from vice: this they call ‘honour.’ ”80 Agamben sees

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in Thélème not so much an inversion of order as a serious parallel to “the Franciscan foundation of a new type of order,” where “the common life by identifying itself with the rule without remainder, abolishes and cancels it.”81 Jean Starobinski, in turn, sees Thélème as “a sort of miniature end of history, a compensation for the laborious efforts of culture.”82 We would also do well, however, to note the close resemblance of the Thelemites’ antiregimen to the “Epicurean day” as we know this from the sketches in Cicero, Horace, and Epictetus.83 Indeed, while the self-­directed daily routine of Thélème serves as a liberation from the order of the cenobitic monastery, within the plot of Rabelais’s novel it is also a strong reaction against another temporal regimen to which Gargantua was subjected ­earlier in the story at the hands of his tutor Ponocrates. When Gargantua first entered into his tutelage, Ponocrates “began by ordering him to behave in the same way as he was accustomed to, so he could find out how it was that for so long his former tutors had made him so empty-­headed, foolish and ignorant.”84 Ponocrates discovers, for example, that Gargantua’s former tutors had ordered him to arise at eight or nine ­o’clock, “citing the words of David: Vanum est vobis ante lucem surgere (It is futile for you to arise before dawn),” from Psalm 127:2, and ­after breakfast “he’d study for a brief half-­hour or so. . . . ​Then, pissing a ­whole urinal full, he’d sit down to t­ able.”85 The next chapter, however, is entitled “How Gargantua Was Taught by Ponocrates in Such a Disciplined Way That He Did Not Waste a Single Hour of the Day,” and the narrator describes his new days of productive study. ­These are required to begin with lucubratory ­labors at 4 a.m. and then must proceed through a regimen combining study with prayer, exercise, dietary care, natu­ ral excretion, and antiquarian inquiry (e.g., consulting Pliny the Elder’s Natu­ral Questions) and conclude in eve­ning reflection and prayer: Then with his tutor he would briefly go over all that he had read, seen, learnt, and heard in the course of the entire day, just as the Pythagoreans used to do. Then they would pray to God the Creator, adoring him and proclaiming their faith in him, and glorifying him for his im­mense goodness, and giving him thanks for all the time past, and commending themselves to his divine mercy for the entire ­f uture. Whereupon, they would go off to enjoy their repose.86

If this routine evokes for us a Christianized fusion of Pliny the Elder’s parsimonia temporis (extreme economization of time) (Ep. 3.5.13) with philosophical daily self-­examination, the following chapter, entitled “How Gargantua Spent the Time When the Weather Was Rainy,” recalls ­Uncle Pliny’s season-­sensitive

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versatility. As Starobinski remarks, Ponocrates teaches his student “in accordance with the most elaborate paradigms made available by classical culture.”87 This pedagogical regimen, no less than the monastic order, is what Gargantua and the Thelemites w ­ ill reject when they abolish clocks and assert their freedom to live their days as they wish. Gargantua’s absurdist plot, proceeding from the pedagogically inflected Greco-­Roman day to the monastic breviary routine to the Thelemites’ life without clocks, retraces many of the dialectical tensions that persisted as the Roman day became Christianized and the discourse of the day pattern was refracted in l­ater periods. As Starobinski notes, Rabelais was con­temporary with, and may have been partly responding to, St. Ignatius of Loyola, who was to revive the tradition of ancient daily spiritual exercises in its most famous Christian form.88 Ignatius was one of the many in the early modern tradition who took up a version of the Roman day as a domain within which to remake a form of life e­ ither for themselves or for a collectivity. T ­ oward the end of his Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin describes how “the precept of Order requiring that ­every part of my business should have its allotted time, one page of my ­little book contain’d the following scheme of employment for the twenty-­four hours of the natu­ral day,” before g­ oing on to detail, hour by hour, his tasks from 5 a.m., “Rise, wash, and address Power­ful Goodness!”, u ­ ntil 8 p.m., “Examination of the day,” followed by sleep.89 In How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910), Arnold Bennett advises the reader to “arrange a day within a day”—by which he means to make use of the hours that come ­after the conclusion of the “business eight” (10 a.m.–6 p.m.).90 If we do not want to read some “Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus,” Bennett writes, then at least he would recommend “a daily, candid, honest examination of what one has recently done, and what one is about to do. . . . ​ The solitude of the eve­ning journey [from work to home] appears to me to be suitable for it.”91 ­Those further receptions, however, that directly repurpose the Roman day as a way of defining new, post-­Roman forms of life, lie beyond the scope of this book. In the next and final chapter, I turn to modern efforts to engage with the Roman day itself as the site in which the historically and culturally distinctive “life” of “the Romans” can be reencountered.

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c h a p t e r   10

La vie quotidienne à Rome

Carcopino’s Modern Curiosity “If ‘Roman life’ is not to become lost in anachronisms or petrified in abstraction, we must study it within a strictly defined period.”1 With ­t hese opening words of his 1939 volume on Rome for Hachette’s new series “La vie quotidienne” (“everyday life”), Jérôme Carcopino announces his goal of giving the modern reader a precise encounter with ancient Romans. As Carcopino goes on to explain in the book’s first pages, he pursues his goal by shifting away from epochal changes, such as are seen in the modern technological revolutions of steam or the automobile, and instead focusing on “the elementary forms of everyday life,” which involve the fine-­grained, immediate details of living. “Nothing changes more rapidly than ­human customs,” he observes, and ­after pointing out successive changes in the modern French diet that came with the introduction of coffee (seventeenth ­century), the potato (eigh­teenth c­ entury), and the banana (nineteenth c­ entury), he notes equivalent contrasts in ancient Romans’ dietary history, quoting Juvenal’s description of the meals, housing, and furniture of Romans in the early republic (11.78–79, 99).2 With ­these ­factors in mind, Carcopino seeks to specify in historical terms the Roman life that he focuses on. It is the life of the generation who w ­ ere adults in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian (though he subsequently expands his focus,

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adding the Antonines). “In the material domain,” he explains, “this generation attained the highest plane of ancient civilisation,” and coincidentally, he adds, it is the best known through both literary and archeological evidence.3 Carcopino’s Roman life is also defined spatially as life in the city of Rome, excluding consideration of the countryside.4 But to add still greater specificity and thereby capture existence in Rome “in its real­ity” the first part of the book, titled “Le cadre de la vie Romaine” (“The Framework of Roman Life”), details the imperial city’s physical, social, and moral milieus: “We can satisfactorily study the method in which the Roman of Rome employed his time only ­after we have plotted out the main lines of the framework within which he lived and outside which the routine of his daily life would be more or less unintelligible.”5 Thanks to the vivid portrayal that ensues, Carcopino’s book has by now come to represent both the pitfalls and the pleasures of reading about the realities of imperial Roman city life. The book is exhibit A for scholars inveighing against the phenomenon of the “handbook” in which a coherent picture of ancient cultural institutions is assembled out of “sources” whose all-­important subtleties and context have been filtered out and in which exceptions are frequently taken as rules. Carcopino neglects central topics such as religion and the life course, understates social in­equality, and clings to old-­fashioned gender ste­reo­t ypes. In addition, the Hachette enterprise as a w ­ hole was l­ater criticized by Henri Lefebvre, who argues that Carcopino and o­ thers ­were misguided, since in premodern cultures “everyday life” was in a certain critical sense entirely absent.6 Then ­there is Carcopino’s own subsequent role as a minister in France’s Vichy regime in 1941–42, a subject, among ­others, to which I return. Carcopino’s book has by now been translated into some two dozen languages. and it may just be the world’s best-­selling work in classical studies.7 To some extent the author was in the right place at the right time. He was director of the French School at Rome in the late 1930s, when, as Mary Beard puts it, “it would have been impossible to live in Rome . . . ​without being struck by the way the ancient city was literally coming out of the ground again,” and he was able to draw upon a range of fresh epigraphic and archeological data that included his own studies of such sites as the Piazzale delle Corporazioni at Ostia.8 He collated this data with what he terms the other side of the evidentiary “coin”: imperial lit­er­a­ture, such as the writings of Petronius, Statius, Martial, Juvenal, and Pliny the Younger. The result is an arrestingly vivid, anecdote-­rich dramatization of second-­century Rome’s material form. Between Ludwig Friedlaender’s

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monumental Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms (1862–71) and Carcopino’s page-­turner, Carcopino’s friend Henri Marrou saw no comparison: “On one side, a series of index cards painstakingly and methodically arranged, on the other, a book crafted with gusto, constructed like a work of art, with its own structure.”9 La vie quotidienne à Rome had a felicitous entry into the Anglo-­A merican market, being translated immediately by E. O. Lorimer for Yale University Press as Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The P ­ eople and the City at the Height of the Empire (1940) with notes and illustrations supplied by Henry T. Rowell. Footnotes beginning “cf. Carcopino” are never hard to find in seemingly more scholarly works on the Roman world, even de­cades ­later.10 In a survey of resources for Roman social history, Susan Treggiari has lamented that the single-­volume treatment Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome (1969), by Oxford scholar J. P. V. D. Balsdon, which is more methodologically explicit and also more comprehensive than Carcopino’s work, “inexplicably never became a paperback.”11 Carcopino’s book was to be found on the desktop of Federico Fellini, whose screenplay for Fellini Satyricon (1969), likely inspired by Carcopino’s day-­oriented account, begins, “The vaults of the Circus Maximus. It is nearly dawn.”12 As if to mark Carcopino’s cult status, a new edition of the En­glish translation appeared in 2003 with an introduction and bibliographic essay by Beard, who even as she critiques the book’s method and focus implicitly also makes a bid to extend its shelf life, arguing that “it is difficult to read the book without feeling that the lid has somehow been lifted off the everyday life of Rome and of the Roman in the street” and that “no one has ever done it better.”13 To read Carcopino is to encounter Roman “everyday life” in multiple senses. He describes background life, the hidden, anonymous, ephemeral, repetitive, private, and domestic stories that reveal an under­lying real­ity, such as when the ­grand historical narrative of Domitian’s assassination can be made to yield a momentary glimpse of Romans’ relatively minimal habits for bodily self-­ grooming.14 He recounts the details of every­one’s life—­the “minimum of cares, occupations, and leisure which with few variations composed the daily life of e­ very inhabitant of the Urbs,” which sometimes involves extrapolating from elite sources to generalize about common experience but sometimes conversely involves highlighting the incon­ve­niences that leveled the relationship between the wealthy and the poor, as in the insula, Carcopino’s paradigmatic domestic space that “helps us to reconstruct in imagination the Rome of the Caesars where high and low, patrician and plebeian, rubbed shoulders everywhere

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without coming into conflict.”15 He paints a picture of protomodern city life—­a life alternately familiar and unfamiliar, a paradigm for urban studies in which Rome at one moment adumbrates the modern Western city in its rational organ­ization and, at the next, resembles the “swarming chaos” surviving, as he puts it, “in certain Moslem cities of ­today.”16 He provides a rec­ord of daily life—­life as it proceeds from one day to the next, with calendrical variations largely suppressed, and also life as it proceeds within each day, identifying the book’s primary focus as “the days of the Roman, subject of the first Antonines, whose successive moments we are proposing to follow.”17 It is the last of t­ hese, daily life, that is central and climactic within the structure of Carcopino’s book. As I have noted, the first part is presented simply as setting the scene for the second, which is entitled “L’emploi du temps,” translated by Lorimer as “The Day’s Routine.” Carcopino identifies his task in the second part as “to follow the development and mark the most impor­tant parts of the day,” and it comprises four chapters that follow the day from beginning to end (“The Morning,” “Occupations,” “Shows and Spectacles,” and “After­ noon and Eve­ning”).18 According to Carcopino’s book, then, the heart of Roman life resides within the day’s routine, and even topics not known to have belonged to a specific hour of the day are nevertheless located h ­ ere or t­here within the diurnal structure—­such as the barber, which Carcopino addresses at ­great length during the chapter on morning.19 So the modern reader’s encounter with Roman life takes the form of a day narrative, while all the other aspects of Roman everyday life—­background life, every­one’s life, protomodern city life—­are part of the mix within this narrative. The day pattern thus serves both as a definition of Roman everyday life and an ordering of knowledge thereof. Carcopino’s book was a unique feat, born in an intensive burst of creative composition and completed in ­little more than a year. Yet it did not emerge ex nihilo. It belongs to a modern habit of presenting Roman quotidian life in the shape of a day, a temporal cabinet of curiosities that converts scholarly research into fuel for the reader’s imagination. Since at least the sixteenth c­ entury, in fact, the structure of the Roman day has been developed to serve as a portal for readers seeking to observe Roman life as it was once lived. In this chapter, I situate Carcopino’s proj­ect within this larger discourse chronologically, tracing the evolution of books on Roman daily life from the sixteenth to the twenty-­first ­century. In the final chapter I look more closely at the motives and the techniques of ­these vari­ous books, as each exploited the rich narrative potential of Rome’s day pattern as a medium for ordering knowledge about Roman life.

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Five Centuries of Reassembling Roman Daily Life Carcopino was an ancient historian who produced several major historical works, but La vie quotidienne à Rome à l’apogée de l’empire was no history. In choosing to focus on a period he sometimes defines as that of “the first Antonines,” Carcopino perhaps sought to capitalize on Edward Gibbon’s idea that “Antoninus diffused order and tranquillity over the greatest part of the earth. His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history.”20 Carcopino’s book emplots “the ordinary daily routine of an ‘average Roman’ ” and its “successive moments,” which he sometimes narrates in stage-­ by-­stage accounts of microevents such as weddings, baths, and circus races.21 Historical chronology is invoked only occasionally, in forward glances to the decline of Rome and the beginnings of Chris­tian­ity or during brief retrospective passages that contrast the Trajanic-­Antonine period with ­earlier Rome, most notably his brief history of sundials and w ­ ater clocks up to the time of Trajan, which builds on Pliny the Elder’s account.22 With its structured analy­sis of Roman life in its spatial, moral, social, and temporal dimensions, Carcopino’s book has less in common with history and more with ethnology and urban studies. Systematic description of cultural institutions as practiced in the modern social sciences belongs to an extent within the tradition of ancient antiquarianism, of which the prime example is Varro’s ­Human Antiquities, arranged thematically into four parts (de hominibus, de locis, de temporibus, de rebus), with diachronic perspectives being only subordinate to t­ hese. Arnaldo Momigliano, however, in his classic 1950 essay “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” draws attention to the mediating role played by neoantiquarianism that began with such proj­ects as Flavio Biondo’s Rome in Triumph (1459), which examines public, private, military, and sacred antiquities (antiquitates publicae, privatae, sacrae, militares).23 This revival served as a staging area not only for methods that would one day be productive for modern ancient history (Momigliano’s ultimate concern) but also for the cluster of approaches that would become the social sciences. The neoantiquarian, like the ancient antiquarian, has often been belittled as a lover of trivialities, but Momigliano and ­others since have done much to recuperate their methods and intellectual toolkit. The neoantiquarian is a “student of ancient objects, customs, institutions, with a view to reconstructing ancient life,” someone who can find cultural importance in seemingly “trifling details,” who ­labors ­toward a “reassembly of a lost ­whole,” and who exercises

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“imagination,” not only in reconstruction but in “reaching a new and not necessarily learned audience, one whose imaginations would need to be sparked if they w ­ ere to be engaged with the material.”24 The notion that comes up most often in both negative and positive evaluations of antiquarian proj­ects is curiosity. In his 1552 lexicon, Robert Estienne defines the antiquarian as “a person curious to possess, or to know, ancient ­things,” while Momigliano observes that every­thing that lay beyond the field of po­liti­cal history was “the province of learned curiosity—­which the antiquarians could easily take over and explore systematically.”25 In its worst associations, curiosity involves an obsession with minutiae, ancient periergeia, and in modernity it is only a poor cousin of “research.”26 Momigliano even treats the antiquarian as a curiosity, someone “deeply mysterious in his ultimate aims, . . . ​ [and] the type of man who is interested in historical facts without being interested in history.”27 But curiosity in its more positive sense corresponds to what Pliny the Elder calls “a concern and diligence with regard to ­t hings ancient” (antiquorum cura diligentiaque) (HN 27.4.1) and encompasses variously the industriousness of the antiquarian, the fascination of the object, and, again, the imagination of the audience. Carcopino’s book belongs to the modern history of antiquarian curiosity. More specifically, it belongs to that subset of neoantiquarian books catering to the reader’s curiosity about “ ‘what it was like’ to live in the past”—­the “private life” and/or “daily life” experienced by an average person, a life separable from the public sphere, from history, and often also from biography and the life course.28 This topic has been circumscribed in multiple ways and has been presented in dif­fer­ent literary forms. But since virtually the beginning of the modern era, the day pattern has repeatedly been exploited for its distinctive potential as a point of entry to the subject for the curious reader. In its capacity to or­ga­nize knowledge of Roman life as an organic ­whole, a ­whole in which each object has its own place (better: its own time), the day pattern is somewhat akin to other neoantiquarian showcases with their carefully arranged rubrics and their frequent illustrations of sites or material objects.29 Yet as we also know from the ­earlier chapters of this book, day patterning has its own distinctive structure and dynamics, and indeed the neoantiquarian usage often builds explic­itly on the aspirations of specific ancient patterns, such as Martial’s Epigrams 4.8, as the basis for its own socioethical claims about the form of Roman life. In the following pages I offer a selective survey of this history, highlighting the works from each stage of the modern era that are most relevant for situat-

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ing Carcopino. To begin with, I focus on the “how” of the neoantiquarian discourse more than on the “why.” A broader intellectual and historical context for this discourse is sketched by Jean Starobinski, who argues that “the industrial age, from the time of its first onset . . . ​, coincides symptomatically with a lit­er­a­ture of the day.”30 In chapter 11 I go on to consider how modern revolutions in clock time, influenced by industrialism and other developments, may have informed the evolution of daily life discourse in reconstructions of Roman life.

Before Carcopino During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, information about how the Romans defined and divided the day w ­ ere generally encountered by modern readers in connection with descriptions of the public calendar. In Johannes Rosinus’s Antiquitatum Romanarum corpus absolutissimum (1583), which Momigliano describes as a “survey of the w ­ hole life of a nation,” the chapter dedicated to the differentiation of days among the Romans is contiguous with chapters on months, festivals, and the other calendrical topics that make up book 4 on the observation of years and days and festival days.31 In Thomas Goodwin’s school encyclopedia Romanae Historiae Anthologia: An En­glish Exposition of the Roman Antiquities (1614) the reader encounters day divisions only within the Roman calendar and this in turn u ­ nder the rubric “The State Po­liti­call.”32 During the same two centuries, however, we also find smaller-­scale treatises, less concerned with comprehensive coverage, in which time organ­ization occupies a more central position, being presented together with quotations and exegeses of many relevant ancient sources. The earliest of ­these is a 1546 volume by Petrus Viola of Vicenza entitled De veteri novaque Romanorum temporum ratione libellus (Booklet on the observation of Roman times, ancient and modern), which addresses the day as part of a historical analy­sis of the Roman calendar but devotes a ­whole chapter to the hours and provides a concise yet systematic exposition of topics and evidence, addressing specific philological and definitional questions along the way. Within just a few pages, Viola proceeds from a genealogy of the Horai in Homer to an investigation of ­whether the nocturnal hours in Cicero’s letter on the death of Marcellus (Fam. 4.12) are seasonal or equinoctial, and in between he assem­bles many of the texts that I have mentioned in ­earlier chapters of this book, such as the Plautine parasite fragment, the conclusion of book 7 of Pliny’s Natu­ral History, book 9 of Vitruvius’s On Architecture, Martial’s epigram 4.8, the ΖΗΘΙ epigram, the Hebrew Bible, and the Passion narratives. ­Here ­these relatively “historical” sources rub shoulders with etymologies and myths. Thus, Viola tells us that the hours may

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have been named for the Egyptian sun god Horus, and he rehearses an account of why ­there are twelve hours in the day: Hermes Trismegistus “noticed that [the cynocephalus, i.e., the baboon] was in the habit of urinating twelve times in the ­whole day, always ­after an equal interval of time” (duodecies in tota die pari semper temporis intervallo urinam facere solitum animadvertisset).33 Viola also mentions baboon statue w ­ ater clocks in Egypt that urinated hourly.34 A more detailed subsequent work is the 1605 Philomusus, sive De triplici anno Romanorum, mensibus, eorumque partibus, deque die civili et diversitate dierum libri quinque (Philomusus, or On the threefold year of the Romans, the months, and their parts, and on the civil day and the distinctions among days, in five books) by Petrus Morestellus (Pierre Morestel). Its fourth book, detailing “the civil day and its parts” (die civili eiusque partibus), is a series of miniature dialogues proceeding from the civil day’s definition through the individual parts as they are named by Censorinus, from “De gallicinio et conticinio” (“On Cockcrow and ­Silent Time”) to “De nocte intempesta” (“On Timeless Night”).35 Both ­these works, however, pre­sent such information primarily in connection with the question of how the Romans divided time. We find a striking shift of emphasis from time division to life ordering in the 1667 two-­book De rusticatione et villis veterum commentariolus (A short commentary on the country life and villas of the ancients) by Georg Greenius of Holstein. Invoking Roman practice as an example that may persuade the con­temporary reader that rustic leisure is both permissible and beneficial, Greenius devotes section 9 of chapter 1 to demonstrating how, both in the city and in the country, “the ancients arranged their day with order” (veteres . . . ​diem ordine disposuerunt) and how “it was the custom of the ancients to divide the spans of the day, and to live by sundials and w ­ ater clocks, so that they could assign certain pieces of business to individual hours and not live life without order” (mos erat Veterum, dividere diei spatia, atque ad solaria et clepsydras vivere, ut singulis horis negotia certa destinarent, et non sine ordine vitam agerent).36 The ancient data helping Greenius to reinforce this emphasis on day ordering and life ordering include the language of Pliny the Younger, the anecdotes about Xenocrates dividing his day, and Cassiodorus on the “confused order of life” (ordo vitae confusus) (Var. 1.46.2) that ensues when ­people lack clocks. The disproportionate role he gives to evidence from Sidonius’s hour references (including the clockwork messenger of Ep. 2.9.5) also helps him to proj­ect clock precision back onto the lives of ­earlier Romans and Greeks. ­A fter surveying timekeeping technologies and divisions, Greenius concludes his account with an hour-­by-­hour account of the day, first in the city

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and then in the country, which is framed as a portrait of how individual ­people might order their lives in ­these alternating contexts. Two Martial poems we considered in chapter 7 provide the organ­izing structure: epigram 4.8 for the city and then, for the country, the poem ascribed to Martial (epigram 4.91) that begins “Lingering in the countryside [and] asked ‘What do I do?’ ” (rure morans quid agam) (5.pr.).37 A remarkable further innovation came a ­century l­ater in a 1752 book by the Swiss Jean-­Rodolphe D’Arnay, entitled De la vie privée des Romains (The Private Life of the Romans). Whereas the treatises in Latin I have noted so far w ­ ere most likely to be encountered by a reader wading through Graevius’s massive compilation Thesaurus antiquitatum Romanarum (1694–99), D’Arnay’s ­little book had a much wide audience, as it was written in the vernacular and addressed a nonexpert audience; indeed, it went through three editions in French and was translated into at least half a dozen languages. D’Arnay’s book is built around the same basic sources and concepts to be found in the encyclopedic accounts of Roman day division and private life, but ­these are now synthesized so as to pre­sent day division as integral to how private life was lived. Greenius’s ­earlier essay is not dissimilar, but for D’Arnay the topic supplies the book’s very form: the first half of the book proceeds in order through the diurnal structure, from morning (ch. 1) to after­noon (ch. 2) to eve­ning (ch. 3), and is followed by three supplementary chapters on clothing, marriage, and ­family. D’Arnay credits the substance of chapters 1–3 to a collection of sources presented in the Mémoires de l’Académie royale des inscriptions et belles lettres, but his own pre­sen­ta­tion is light on citation and notes and heavy on moral portraiture.38 The book is distinctive for its selective focus on topics from private life that amount to a ­simple portrait of “the ordinary life of a citizen”—of “what the Romans . . . ​did, in common life, throughout the course of a day.”39 Perhaps b­ ecause of its suppression of historical narrative and its only glancing references to public activities, this rendering qualified the traditional Roman reputation for industriousness with an air of de­cadent leisure. D’Arnay’s account intrigued audiences but also was controversial. One review of the anonymous En­glish translation of the book remarks with guilty fascination that “Monsieur D’Arnay has chosen a subject rather of curiosity than of any real importance, but, it must be confessed, a subject of no inelegant curiosity”: it is “a kind of lesser history” in which “the warrior or the statesman” is encountered, if at all, “not in the assumed character of ­great men, but in their private capacity, as men with their robes of state thrown off, in their domestic enjoyments and private occupations.” 40 The reviewer is scandalized, however, by the

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lack of source citations in the original French edition and so appreciates that “the translator has taken pains to justify him by many useful quotations.” In the same spirit, Beard touts Henry Rowell’s “good sense” in adding supplementary notes to the En­glish translation of Carcopino’s La vie quotidienne.41 But in his highly readable emplotment of the day, D’Arnay puts a premium on engaging with the reader’s imagination rather than on exhaustive collection. ­W hether or not he could prove the historical authenticity of his picture, the picture itself is clearly effective, not least through its reliance on the day’s temporal flow to give the reader a sense of intimate contact with the Romans, no doubt experienced in the reader’s own private time. D’Arnay’s innovation, also, had an impact on more encyclopedic pre­sen­ta­tions of Roman life: in the Manual of Classical Lit­er­a­ture (1837) translated by American college professor N. W. Fiske from Johann Joachim Eschenburg’s Handbuch der klassischen Literatur (1783), we encounter a section entitled “Daily Routine of Employment: Bathing.” With due disclaimers concerning rules and exceptions, Fiske’s section opens with precisely the ele­ ment (a focus on religious observance) that D’Arnay emphasizes as the beginning of his Roman’s day: It is not easy to decide, what was certainly a uniform course of daily avocations, among a ­people presenting a ­great variety in pursuits, conduct and manner of life. T ­ here was, however, a sort of regular routine in the succession of daily employments among the Romans, particularly with the more respectable and orderly citizens. The morning hours w ­ ere appropriated to religious worship in 42 the ­temples, or their own h ­ ouses.

In the following generations, Roman daily life would be presented in a new genre even better suited to being consumed during the reader’s own private time: historical fiction. The most celebrated model for this in Hellenizing neoantiquarianism is Jean-­Jacques Barthélemy’s four-­volume Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce (1788), featuring a narrative well suited for presenting Greek culture to the eyes of an outsider along with an introduction and excurses supplying further historical details. Two subsequent works of antiquarian fiction devoted to the Roman world also met with an enthusiastic readership, both of which employ a diurnal structure. The first, from 1803, is entitled Sabina, oder, Morgenszenen im Putzzimmer einer reichen Römerin (Sabina, or morning scenes in the toilette of a wealthy Roman ­woman).43 In this book, archeologist and former schoolmaster Karl August Böttiger pre­sents a series of narrative tableaus featuring a noblewoman of Herculaneum, supplemented with engravings of antiquities (e.g., cosmetic instruments) and extensive notes and excurses.44 The

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fictional conceit, a series of interactions between Sabina and her chamber slaves, is slight, but it serves as a sufficient didactic framework for delivering rich historical data from ancient texts and objects, evidently for a broad readership that included ­women. The second work, a pedagogically oriented novel by the Dresden scholar W. Adolf Becker, openly draws on Böttiger’s work for its overall format—­a s­ imple main narrative accompanied by notes, excurses, and illustrations—as well as for the structure of its title, Gallus, oder Römische Scenen aus der Zeit Augusts zur genaueren Kenntnis des römischen Privatlebens (1838), translated in En­glish in 1844 as Gallus: Or Roman Scenes of the Time of Augustus; with Notes and Excursus Illustrative of the Manners and Customs of  the Romans. Becker also cites as a model M. l’Abbé Couture’s De la vie privée des Romains (the likely source of D’Arnay), and Gallus follows the course of a day even though Becker’s corresponding novel Charicles (1840), set in Athens at the time of Alexander, has an entirely dif­fer­ent, bildungsroman structure.45 Gallus narrates the last days—­ essentially, the last day—of the real poet Cornelius Gallus, whose elevation from plebeian to equestrian and sudden fall from ­favor with the emperor, followed by suicide in 26 BCE, had presented Becker with a power­ful tragic-­ romantic plot directly from Roman history, but equally, given the relatively fragmentary rec­ord about Gallus, left ample room to mold the narrative around Becker’s own spatial and temporal preferences and to pre­sent information about everyday Roman living gleaned from a variety of sources. Not all the “scenes” are defined in terms of daily time, but the first three, entitled “Nocturnal Return Home,” “The Morning,” and “Studies and Letters,” focus on a single morning, while ­others, such as “Lycoris” and “A Day in Baiae,” pre­sent the day ­under specific aspects. The last chapters proceed from a nocturnal scene in “The Banquet” and “The Drinkers” to Gallus’s death in “The Catastrophe” and “The Interment of the Dead.” Individual ele­ments in the main text are substantiated in the endnotes and excurses: Gallus’s progression from salutatio to studies is explic­itly sourced from Cicero’s morning in Letters to His Friends 9.20, while the mention of a time-­telling slave who announces the fourth hour at the end of that chapter is followed up by a lengthy excursus entitled “The Clocks”, which analyzes all the main testimonia on clocks and hours in the Roman world, from the Plautine parasite to Sidonius.46 Gallus and Charicles ­were translated into En­glish in 1844 and 1846, respectively, by Frederick Metcalfe, in abridged form and with modifications of format. The endnotes in Gallus, for example, became briefer footnotes, seemingly catering to a perceived desire for more vis­i­ble documentation. One British

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reviewer of the En­glish edition takes pains to clarify the authenticity of Becker’s novels, noting that “only so much fiction” has been “employed as to give a pleasant personal interest to details which, as isolated facts, would weary any but the most dogged antiquary.” 47 Yet the same reviewer also emphasizes the power of the fictional conceit and the focus on manners: “In ­these volumes we track the actors home—­get a pleasant peep into their retired values of life—­where ­every one is alike engaged in that round of small concerns which, with some curious modifications and va­ri­e­ties, constitute the every-­day existence of us all.” 48 A North American reviewer from the same year, however, while applauding Becker’s use of fiction not for pure invention but to perform “the humbler office of vivifying and adorning undisputed facts,” laments Becker’s choice to focus on insider characters such as Gallus and Charicles, thereby limiting the narrative to “the natu­ral routine of the life of one in his own condition” and compelling Becker to relegate much cultural information to the notes and appendices.49 Such information could have been included within the main text, observes the reviewer, if only Becker had assumed a device like Barthélemy’s Scythian traveler or the Persian emissary in the multiauthored Athenian Letters; or, The Epistolary Correspondence of an Agent of the King of Persia, Residing at Athens during the Peloponnesian War (1741–43).50 That alternative approach is taken up by the American novelist William Stearns Davis in the twentieth ­century. A further contrast for Becker’s last days of Gallus, at least for En­glish readers, was already available in Edward Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), a narrative in which the quotidian rhythm and diurnal structure are essential components but yield to the drama of the work’s models in painting and opera. As Lytton writes in his preface, “The ordinary habits of life, the feasts and the forum, the baths and the amphitheatre, the commonplace routine of the classic luxury” do not justify our recollection of the past u ­ nless they are accompanied by “the passions, the crimes, the misfortunes, and reverses that might have chanced to the shades we thus summon to life.”51 “­There is as much truth in the poetry of life,” Lytton observes, “as in its prose,” and he strived to avoid any whiff of the “scholastic.”52 The popularity he boasts of in his preface to the 1850 edition is arguably a dig at such works as Gallus.53 Gallus, however, also went into a second edition soon a­ fter Becker’s death in 1846, and within twenty years a British reviewer could reflect on how both Gallus and Charicles had “long been in use u ­ nder their En­glish form in the colleges and higher schools of this country,” joining other standard dictionaries of antiquities on the reference shelf.54 One other reference work that was soon to

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become indispensable was Friedlaender’s three-­volume Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit von August bis zum Ausgang der Antonine. Friedlaender’s epic treatment of a wide range of Roman social institutions, however, even though, like Becker’s book, it includes vivid descriptions and multiple appendices, does not give the diurnal framework a superordinate role nor does it even offer any continuous pre­sen­ta­tion of a daily routine. The day comes up only secondarily, such as when Friedlaender describes “morning receptions” as part of his analy­sis of court ceremonials.55 Yet Becker’s foregrounding of diurnal time was to remain influential within scholarship due to the fact that in 1843 Becker himself had begun work on an encyclopedic proj­ect, which ­after his death was taken over and published by Joachim Marquardt at virtually the same time as Friedlaender’s volumes began appearing.56 This was Marquardt’s Römische Privatalterthümer (other­wise known as volume 5, book 1, of Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer nach den Quellen bearbeitet), published in 1864, which was revised as Das Privatleben der Römer (volume 7, books 1–2, of Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer) and published between 1879 and 1882. Marquardt registers con­temporary interest “even in the small details of [a ­people’s] private life, in which we may often learn the under­lying reasons for influential outcomes.”57 His exhaustive treatment of “the ­house­hold,” proceeding in eight sections from “names” to “burial,” includes a substantial section on the subject of “daily life.”58 In this section Marquardt greatly expands the modern dossier of accumulated ancient testimony on the Roman day. He corrals evidence for all divisions and devices of diurnal time ordering and then addresses the schedules for specific activities of the day, both private and public, from salutatio to judicial pro­cess to banqueting. Marquardt acknowledges the pitfalls of defining “a general norm for the daily activities in a large city,” and at numerous points he distinguishes between archaic and imperial, rural and urban, elite and plebeian, f­ ree and slave.59 The overall impression, however, is of a precise urban schedule whose specific times in numerical hours ­were prominent in the life of e­ very Roman regardless of status. Although Friedlaender’s work was hugely popu­lar and was eventually made available in En­glish (1908–13), the numerous new shorter volumes on Roman private life that appeared in En­glish from the 1890s to the 1930s, targeted mostly at student readers, typically touted their reliance on the source-­grounded authority of Marquardt and in many cases emulated the narrative invention of Gallus.60 ­These volumes usually include an account of Romans’ daily routine, albeit in varying degrees of detail. In the 1893 American school-­oriented Private Life of the Romans, with Numerous Illustrations by New E ­ ngland novelist, scholar, and

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translator Harriet ­Waters Preston, coauthored with Louise Dodge (Preston’s niece), Becker in par­tic­u ­lar is credited for helping modern readers to form “a reasonably complete ­mental picture of the domestic life of classical antiquity,” and in their second chapter, “The House and Every-­day Life,” Preston and Dodge closely follow the structure and examples in Marquardt’s section “Daily Life.” 61 A work also entitled Private Life of the Romans and including sections titled “The Roman’s Day” and “Hours of the Day” was produced only a few years ­later, in 1903, by Harold Whetstone Johnston, a Latin professor at Indiana University. Johnston intended to “give more real­ity” to the “shadowy forms” encountered by slightly older students (up to college freshmen) in reading Latin lit­er­a­ture or Roman history, and while it may seem a fairly modest contribution, Johnston’s book is l­ater credited by Carcopino himself.62 William Warde Fowler sought to zero in on “the real­ity of life and character” in Rome’s sometimes “perplexing po­liti­cal history” in his 1909 Social Life in the Age of Cicero, a work pitched to a more general audience than his prior scholarly reference works such as The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (1899).63 “I firmly believe,” Fowler writes, “that the one ­great hope for classical learning and education lies in the interest which the unlearned public may be brought to feel in ancient life and thought.” 64 The chapter titled “The Daily Life of the Well-­To-­Do” once again replicates Marquardt, but Fowler animates the day with anecdotes from Cicero’s world, noting the midwinter day on which Caesar skipped a siesta (Fam. 13.52) and explaining that the eve­ning of fine dining Cicero describes to Paetus is the exception rather than the rule (Fam. 9.20).65 A shorter volume for first-­time Latin students entitled Everyday Life in Rome in the Time of Caesar and Cicero, packed with moralism and lacking in primary sources, was produced in 1930 by the En­glish schoolmasters H. A. Treble and K. M. King. Although they explic­itly draw on Fowler’s Social Life as their main source, the “everyday” of their title signals the appeal of day-­level time. Chapter 4, “A Typical Day in the Life of a Roman,” exploits the day’s finite time as a moral litmus test, even by drawing attention to what it lacks, as in this concluding remark: In this outline of a typical day’s occupations it w ­ ill be noticed that t­ here has been no mention of ­family life. The reason is that in the closing years of the Republic the ­family life which had been so valuable in building the character of the citizens was being undermined by public duties and outside interests. The f­ amily might meet at meal-­times, especially at dinner if ­there ­were no guests; but other­ wise the f­ ather of a f­ amily saw very l­ittle of his ­children.66

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In most of ­these British and American books the diurnal frame that looms large in D’Arnay and Becker is confined to a single chapter, as one among many equally impor­tant approaches to Roman life. Their authors forego the narrative impact of the total-­day pre­sen­ta­tion, but they also save themselves the trou­ble of justifying a specific place within the day for ­every topic discussed. ­A fter all, while much more time-­stamped data comes from Rome than from, say, Athens, even for Rome such information is l­imited. T ­ hese authors also seek to minimize the day pattern’s risk of conveying an oversimplified and homogenizing portrait of the lives of Romans—­the risk flagged by Marquardt when he admits to filtering out “the peculiarities that are no less rare in antiquity than in modern times.” 67 William Stearns Davis found a way to resolve t­ hese tensions while maximizing the impact of a whole-­day pre­sen­ta­tion. His 1925 A Day in Old Rome: A Picture of Roman Life is just what the title says: a vivid repre­sen­ta­tion of life in the ancient city that follows the course of a single day—in the spring of 134 CE, as it happens, a year when Davis observes that Rome was “architecturally nearly completed” and “the Empire seemed in its most prosperous state.” 68 While the focus on one day could have steered the book ­towards a fictive plot like Becker’s pivotal final day of Gallus, Davis offsets such singularity with the ingenious conceit of having the emperor Hadrian absent from Rome for most of the book’s duration, “in order that interest could be concentrated upon the life and ­doings of the ­great city itself, and upon its vast populace of slaves, plebeians, and nobles.” 69 Davis was, as it happens, also an author of historical fiction, but ­here he develops an ingenious documentary mode in which the day being described is essentially the day of the reader, who is i­ magined as a time-­traveling visitor: “This book tries to describe what an intelligent person would have witnessed in Ancient Rome if by some legerdemain he had been translated to the Second Christian ­Century, and conducted about the imperial city ­under competent guidance.”70 Davis’s entirely ordinary day begins with a walking itinerary during which our guide insists on showing us Rome’s most ­humble spaces first, such as “Mercury Street,” ghettos, and insulae. “One can never know Rome by merely visiting its ultra-­genteel quarters,” he asserts, though he shields his reader from some details of Roman street life that are too “disgusting, . . . ​revolting, [and] . . . ​ filthy” for the modern student to be exposed to.71 Even so, his device makes of the reader’s day a metapattern of the Roman day, through which the reader bears witness at ­every turn to the diversity of routines. He does not simply liberate the day pattern from the constraints of “typicality” but positively revels in the

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portrayal of dif­fer­ent lives and activities conditioned by differences in wealth, status, gender, and ethnicity across the urban space, deploying images from Juvenalian satire that resonate with segregation and social in­equality in the American city of his times.

Carcopino’s Moment (1939) Carcopino began writing La vie quotidienne à Rome in July 1937, and by December 1938 the work was complete.72 His book offered his French readers a vivid portrait of the ancient city that benefited equally from the neoantiquarian discourse on Roman daily life and from his perspective as a Roman historian with extensive firsthand experience that he gained first as a member and acting director of the French School at Rome and then as director in his own right (1937–40), at a time when Mussolini had been sponsoring numerous excavations. On the book’s original cover is a photo­graph of a scene excavated only two years prior: the Forum of Trajan surrounded by the Market of Trajan (fig. 13). The image of the market’s curving facade of identical win­dows is suggestive for the framework of social homogeneity that is central to Carcopino’s portrayal of the “Roman of Rome” beginning with the first chapter, “The Physical and Moral Background of Roman Life,” and that is reinforced by his focus on other spatial grids such as the domestic insula. On the book’s cover, the positioning of the title La vie quotidienne underpins this photo­graph as a virtual caption, the photo thereby providing a visual enticement to imagine the multiplication of Roman days. Carcopino’s juxtaposition of quotidian life with classical Roman monumentality was to make his book, in Beard’s phrase, “an almost instant classic.”73 But the book appealed to con­temporary readers not simply ­because of Carcopino’s lively writing or the up-­to-­date glimpse he offers of the rediscovered city but also ­because of the broader historical currents that enabled t­ hese. Hachette’s “La vie quotidienne” was symptomatic of a shift in intellectual focus in the 1930s away from event history, while the national cultures of the classical world w ­ ere gaining a heavi­ly loaded significance in fascist Italy and across Eu­rope more generally. For all of its success, La vie quotidenne à Rome was apparently never Carcopino’s favorite among his volumes, and the book makes only partial or problematic sense in the context of his ­c areer as a historian.74 His best-­k nown monographs thus far had been Sylla, ou La monarchie manquée (1931) and Jules César (1935). That focus on individual historical actors was more in keeping, as Pierre Grimal notes, with Carcopino’s oblique repudiation of the Annales school and its critique of histoire événementielle, as seen in this passage of his Passion et

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Figure 13. Front cover of Jérôme Carcopino’s La vie quotidienne à Rome à l’apogée de l’empire (1939)

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politique chez les Césars: “What chance is t­here of resuscitating the life of the masses without penetrating the psy­chol­ogy of the individuals who rally it, without recovering the thoughts and the motives of the elite by whose example they are led and by whose action they are roused?”75 Carcopino’s ­later work Les secrets de la correspondance de Cicéron (1947), which was also translated by Lorimer and published in 1951 as Cicero: The Secrets of His Correspondence, focuses, like La vie quotidienne à Rome, on letters that, as he points out in the preface, often allow us to follow events “from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour” and that “continue to evoke the illusion of a pre­sent real­ity and a con­temporary existence.”76 But ­there he goes out of his way to emphasize that what we are following is “the development of a crisis out of which ­there was destined ultimately to emerge the framework of the Roman Empire, tried and tested, to endure for centuries,” a crisis featuring numerous “dramatis personae”—­the latter being clearly more reflective of his historiographic predilections.77 Whereas La vie quotidienne à Rome focuses on an imperial longue durée whose only pivotal significance was its gradual decline and its eventual yielding to Chris­tian­ity, Secrets zooms in on the singular events that had sparked the imperial age itself. A more problematic ­factor for a reading of La vie quotidienne à Rome concerns Carcopino’s sudden elevation in 1941 to minister of national education and of youth in the Vichy regime. In that position he enforced state policies, such as the laws of exclusion targeted at Jews and freemasons in French universities; only in rare cases did he exercise discretionary powers to protect professors at certain institutions.78 Beard points out that La vie quotidienne à Rome, written two years ­earlier, emits “conflicting signals” as regards Carcopino’s po­liti­cal leanings, with the author one moment “hail[ing] the virtue of the native Italian stock and their moral and ideological values” and the next moment celebrating Rome for having been welcoming to immigrants—­“not a sentiment,” she suggests, “that would have found too many echoes among the top brass of Vichy.”79 Carcopino’s most precise reference in the book to con­temporary politics (unnoted by Beard) is his brief but stunning comparison of Roman spectacles to the events hosted by the Kraft durch Freude in Germany and the Dopolavoro in Italy, in which he observes that autocrats ­will need to “cater to men’s leisure” and that such attempts w ­ ere integral to the pax Romana.80 Carcopino was prosecuted in 1944 for his Vichy activities but was subsequently exculpated in 1947 on the basis of his contributions to the Re­sis­ tance, though his legacy continues to be contested. Reacting against Grimal’s recuperation of Carcopino (coauthored with Claude Carcopino and Paul Our-

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liac) subtitled “a historian at the ser­vice of humanism” (1981), Stéphanie Corcy-­ Debray argues, in her Jérôme Carcopino, un historien à Vichy (2001), that Carcopino’s attachment to great-­man history made him liable to the illusion that the sacrifice of liberties was sometimes justifiable.81 At the same time, in La vie quotidienne à Rome we find Carcopino writing what even Grimal confesses is anecdotal history, and while Grimal points out that this is due in part to the constraints of the genre in which he was writing, a useful real­ity check is to compare Ronald Syme’s contemporaneous volume The Roman Revolution (1939), which adopts a directly oppositional stance to fascist autocracy.82 ­These qualifications regarding the volume and its author, however, must not prevent us from assessing the book from the perspective of intellectual history, first in relation to the existing neoantiquarian discourse on Roman daily life and then in relation to the evolving methods of twentieth-­century historiography and social theory. It ­will already be clear that many features of Carcopino’s book are explicable as responses to, or refinements of, the daily life discourse we have surveyed thus far. Not e­ very feature, of course: we have seen that Carcopino brings a unique, on-­the-­ground perspective; in addition, the “essential contrast” he seeks to highlight between two modern city types that are equally relevant to Rome, the rational-­Western (e.g., New York) and the chaotic-­“Moslem” (e.g., Marrakesh), may owe some of its detail to Carcopino’s firsthand observation of the Islamic world during his tenure at the University of Algeria prior to the First World War, though it also reflects an emergent dichotomy that was to prevail in uses of Rome as a paradigm in twentieth-­century urban studies.83 Carcopino himself to some extent acknowledges the historiographic context in which his book arose. Foremost in his brief bibliography appended to the French first edition are the volumes by Fowler, Becker, Friedlaender, Marquardt, and Johnston. This list is clearly not exhaustive, since he almost certainly drew on Davis’s work and was very likely aware of D’Arnay’s as an early landmark in modern repre­sen­ta­tions of Roman life within French popu­lar lit­er­a­ture. Even as it stands, however, Carcopino’s list indicates that he was familiar with the established dossier of data on Roman daily life and the formats in which it had been presented, including to anglophone audiences. So Carcopino made conscious choices when it came to the focus and structure of this book, even as he innovated. In homing in on a specific historical period he was perhaps emulating, without duplicating, Fowler’s l­aser focus on the age of Cicero and Becker’s on the Augustan period. Only Davis before him, however, had chosen to focus on the second-­century CE, and Carcopino was the first to use the historiographic sleight of hand that

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licensed a felicitous alignment between his subject and the materials available for illustrating it. For on the one hand, ­t here was Gibbon’s upholding of the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus as “the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the ­human race was most happy and prosperous,” and, on the other, t­here was the vast and vivid array of literary and archeological evidence surviving from the Neronian to Antonine eras.84 By supporting his engaging narrative with hundreds of brief endnotes citing primary sources and sometimes recent scholarly books, articles, and excavation reports, Carcopino was sparing his readers the excurses and appendices of Becker and Friedlaender while maintaining his scholarly authority and providing sufficient direction if they should wish to explore primary sources. He adopts a looser form of Davis’s voice as a travel guide, who conducts the reader around imperial Romans’ days and lives and is preoccupied with the comparison of pre­sent and past. Carcopino stands out for weaving ancient texts into the fabric of his discussion, ­going much further than any previous author in exposing the reader to scenes that originate in ancient literary moments, such as in the Ausonius quotation I have discussed at the beginning of chapter 9. The scale and structure of Carcopino’s daily routine is less totalizing than in Becker’s and Davis’s work and closer to D’Arnay’s, except that Carcopino’s justification of his prefatory “framework” of spatial-­social-­moral milieus might be read as an implicit critique of D’Arnay’s more rapid plunge into the Roman day itself.85 Carcopino’s tripartite prefatory framework for Roman city life draws selectively on the topics and methods of ­earlier scholarly treatments of private life and Sittengeschichte (history of manners) as well as other more recent approaches to social history and demography, although the par­tic­u­lar emphasis on the insula and the “street scene” appear to come straight from Davis. The conclusion of Davis’s book, a section entitled “A Christian Gathering,” is likewise replicated in Carcopino’s final paragraph on the “serene ‘agapes.’ ”86 Carcopino, then, recycled many of Davis’s tricks for engaging the reader’s curiosity about Roman life but honed both the conceptual and the literary apparatus by which the reader would experience the day pattern. Carcopino’s explicit shift of focus from the predominant rubric of “private life” to “everyday life,” which is approximated only in Treble and King’s Everyday Life in Rome in the Time of Caesar and Cicero, was in many ways a sign of the times. His book sought to give readers access not only to the neoantiquarian vista of Roman life ordered around a diurnal structure but also to a more dynamic heuristic interface that was closely informed by recent scholarship as well as by con­temporary intellectual and social currents—­even if, in the end,

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Carcopino did not explic­itly theorize this heuristic framework. For in the course of the twentieth ­century, the associations of everyday life went far beyond the use of day patterning simply to portray forms of life, our main focus up to this point. Its new senses ­were elaborated in one or another branch of historiography or the social sciences. Fernand Braudel, for example, in a move reflecting this development, begins his Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th ­Century with a volume entitled The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Pos­si­ble (1967). H ­ ere he directs the reader’s gaze below the level of the historical event with a methodologically more subtle and explicit goal. When a historian focuses on short time periods, explains Braudel, we ­either have the event or the everyday happening. The event is, or is taken to be, unique; the everyday happening is repeated, and the more often it is repeated the more likely it is to become a generality or rather a structure. It pervades society at all levels, and characterises ways of being and behaving which are perpetuated through endless ages.87

Braudel thus finds an alternative to treating everyday life as trivial: his work defines the material conditions that take on their own historical substance in the form of the longue durée: “Ever-­present, all-­pervasive, repetitive, material life is run according to routine: p ­ eople go on sowing wheat as they always have done. . . . ​The obstinate presence of the past greedily and steadily swallows up the fragile lifetime of men.”88 Equally precise accounts could be given of the dif­ fer­ent roles played by the notion of the everyday in specific social theories, from “patterns of culture” (Ruth Benedict) to Alltagsgeschichte (vari­ous) to the “science of singularity” (Michel de Certeau).89 Carcopino’s conception of everyday life is strikingly inclusive, encompassing all the aspects I have mentioned—­background life, every­one’s life, protomodern urban life, and daily routine. Perhaps understandably, though, given the popularizing context and the persisting influence of the neoantiquarian tradition, the connections he makes between ancient Roman and twentieth-­century notions about everyday life are more suggestive than specific. A useful comparison for the entirety of Carcopino’s book is the famous second chapter of Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) entitled “A Day in Samoa,” which has frequently been excerpted and may well have been familiar to Carcopino. “The life of the day begins at dawn,” writes Mead, and she proceeds through a highly poeticized evocation of natu­ral and cultural rhythms that focuses on amorous liaisons among Samoan youth: “Day is the time for the councils of old

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men and the ­labours of youth, and night is the time for lighter ­things.”90 Mead is more concerned with the impression produced in the reader by the literary form of the day pattern than with laying bare her theory of culture, which she saves for elsewhere. In the preface to his book, Carcopino’s mention of “the elementary forms of everyday life” gestures tantalizingly ­toward Durkheim’s title Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse: Le système totémique en Australie (1912), translated into En­glish as The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.91 The allusion suggests that his method w ­ ill be anthropological or so­cio­log­i­cal, even if the absence of “religious” also makes us conscious of the secular focus of Carcopino’s book, Roman festive and ritual time being markedly absent throughout. In her introduction to Carcopino’s book, Beard sketches an admittedly cartoonish spectrum of “everyday life” conceptions that ranges between “­those historians who assume an essential continuity in the basic patterns of ­human existence across time and space” and “­those who see the patterns of daily life as themselves so bound up in the sheer otherness of past cultures that even the notion of a daily routine punctuated by eating and sleeping cannot be simply taken for granted.”92 She then firmly situates Carcopino closer to the first, while suggesting that more recent authors have moved ­toward the second.93 How Beard classifies Carcopino is understandable: in Carcopino’s preface, for example, we soon learn that by “elementary forms of everyday life” he is referring to minor variations in custom that can distinguish one stage from another in a culture’s history as well as, by implication, major, period-­defining technologies such as steam or the automobile, but he still does not explic­itly clarify his position on the ontology of cultural difference. Yet at the end of Carcopino’s preface ­t here is some indication that he has given thought to Durkheimian method. For in describing part 1’s account of Rome’s spatial, moral, and social milieus as a tracing of “the main lines of the framework” in which Romans lived and in arguing that Romans’ everyday life ­will be “more or less unintelligible” without this, he appropriates one of the key ideas of Durkheim’s work.94 Durkheim explains that the categories of time, space, number, cause, substance, and personality—­which he says constrain the form of “collective repre­sen­ta­tions” within a given society—­are “like the solid frame that encloses all thought.”95 So the reader of Carcopino’s book is being given contexts for understanding Roman everyday life that are analogous to the constraints within which, for Durkheim, social real­ity is determined in specific socie­ties. It is a loose adaptation of Durkheim’s idea, but it suggests that Car-

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copino is operating with a greater sense of cultural distinctiveness than Beard allows. It is also instructive to consider Carcopino’s proj­ect alongside the Marxist “critique of everyday life” that was hugely influential in social theory in the second half of the twentieth c­ entury.96 This phrase is most closely associated with Lefebvre, whose multivolume Critique de la vie quotidienne, published between 1947 and 1981, uses “everyday life,” or simply “the everyday,” to denote the worker’s depleted existence in the industrialized era of alienated time and ­labor, contrasting this with the condition of premodern socie­ties, where ­there was no “rift between private and public life.”97 Hence Lefebvre’s comments on the misguided (in his view) Hachette proj­ect: Some of the volumes of this series are remarkable, in that they illustrate the total absence of everyday life in a given community at a given time. With the Incas, the Aztecs, in Greece or in Rome, ­every detail (gestures, words, tools, utensils, costumes, e­ tc.) bears the imprint of a style; nothing had as yet become prosaic, not even the quotidian; the prose and the poetry of life w ­ ere still identical.98

For Lefebvre and ­others who would follow, the task was to confront everyday life in this loaded modern sense and not simply to study it but to transform it through tactics of re­sis­tance, creative acts of poiesis against “the prose of the world” (Hegel’s term for the dependencies and entanglements of everyday life), and other forms of quiet revolution such as emerged in the French protest movement of the 1960s.99 Pushing back against Lefebvre’s objections, the Hellenists Marcel Detienne and Giulia Sissa make the case for an ideologically sophisticated notion of everyday life evident in ancient contexts, pointing out that the Western literary tradition, all the way back to Homer, has “never desisted from exploring ‘everyday’ values and comparing dif­fer­ent ways of living reflected in the mirror of a single day.”100 Moreover, Detienne and Sissa see an essential kinship between the “Life must be changed” slogan of the Paris Commune of May 1968 and the revolutionary or transformative dimensions of ancient diurnal discourse, from the interruption of everyday time in the times of festival and ritual to the life-­ changing potential of daily philosophical self-­examination.101 As Lefebvre sees it, however, “The more we look back t­ owards archaic socie­ ties, the less the everyday life we are able to reconstruct is distinguishable from culture and historicity,” and a work such as Carcopino’s is at best useless and at worst an exercise in “ethnographic romanticism.”102 The only way we might

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bring Carcopino at least partly on board with the critique of everyday life would be to identify radical aspirations in his oblique and even sometimes direct use of Roman data to comment on con­temporary France. Grimal, for one, has the confidence to suggest that in May 1968 Carcopino’s sympathies would have been with the protesters—­this on the basis of Carcopino’s critique of quotidian monotony in the Roman practice of declamation, in which he takes Seneca the Younger’s “we learn not for life but for school” (non vitae sed scholae discimus) (Ep. 106.12) to mock declamation as alienating the student from life.103 Carcopino’s book does indeed strikingly allude to the recently legislated forty-­ hour working week in France, identifying it as a bad deal for workers that pales in comparison with Roman provisions for leisure.

Beyond Carcopino? During the rest of the twentieth c­ entury, Carcopino’s book and other handbooks and sourcebooks ­were frequently criticized for giving misleading impressions about Roman life. Nicholas Horsfall, in The Culture of the Urban Plebs (2003), draws attention to how such books depend on “a vast mass of discontinuous detail, literary and archaeological, detail preserved for the most varied reasons”—­the implication being that any semblance of order it has is misleading or at best accidental, even if valuable glimpses of plebeian culture may be gleaned.104 Gideon Nisbet points out that Martial’s “reporting of street-­level incident made him appear ideal for padding out school sourcebooks on daily life in ancient Rome” and ditto for Juvenal—­that is, u ­ ntil the 1980s, when their poems began to be read as creative repre­sen­ta­tions with complex relationships to social real­ity.105 Ray Laurence, in turn, has drawn attention to how Carcopino’s book is one of many contributions to the utopian-­dystopian pre­sen­ta­tions of the Roman metropolis that came to litter twentieth-­century accounts and that gave sway to ancient texts that referred to, for example, “Juvenal’s city of the imagination.”106 Handbooks have also been criticized for, on the one hand, pursuing trivialities without supplying any ethnological or historiographic narrative to bind them, and on the other, constructing an overly stable or simplistic narrative. In his preface to the multivolume A History of Private Life (1987) which begins with Paul Veyne’s experimental portrait of Roman civic life in the imperial period, Georges Duby voices his intention to not, for example, “us[e] bedrooms and beds as a springboard for speculation about the history of individualism, or worse, of intimacy” in the hope of avoiding “wandering off into yet another investigation of ‘daily life.’ ”107 Veyne himself mocks the historiography of Brau-

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del and ­others as lacking a narrative; indulging “mere curiosity,” they focus on “­things that would be as banal as our lives if they ­were not dif­fer­ent.”108 John Henderson also mocks the “bread of Everyday Life” buttered with vivid details gleaned from ancient sources.109 For Henderson, however, the prob­lem is not the absence of an overarching narrative but the tendency t­ oward a simplistic synopsis, and the remedy is not a new historiography of private life but a return to original literary textures. His essay “A Doo-­Dah-­Doo-­Dah-­Day at the Races: Ovid Amores 3.2 and the Personal Politics of the Circus Maximus” (2002) is a sustained assault on the handbooks for their quotidian and diurnal focus. Henderson offers up his own particularist reading of Ovid’s circus race episodes as a corrective to reductionist uses of this poetic material both in “the Sittengeschichte collage of excerpts raided from anywhere and everywhere” and in structuralist and poststructuralist accounts of “festive spectacle mapping the Roman order.”110 Ovid’s verses, Henderson asserts, are “instances, not analy­sis,” and he argues that we have more to learn from their “social theater” and their “popu­lar turns of mundane language alive and fizzing in its institutional context” than from the systematic accounts that modern scholars have presented: “Social order is not securely grounded by regulation or routinization.”111 A further liability of the handbooks is the very assumption that they can depict “Roman life” at all. As Andrea Giardina points out in the introduction to his multiauthored volume The Romans (1993), whose Italian title is L’uomo romano (1989), literally, “the Roman person,” “what­ever noun we place with the adjective ‘Roman’ (the Roman world, Roman man, ­etc.), the result is the same: what we are constructing is an abstract and totalizing, thus a partial, category.”112 Giardina’s goal in his volume is to analyze “the Romans” through a heterogeneous collection of roles—­the Roman citizen, priest, slave, bandit, and so forth. Roman life is an abstraction whose elite-­focused partiality has been consistently perpetuated by the handbooks, and while this concept has a basis in ancient day patterns with their explicit correlation of daily routines with a life or form of life, the partiality began t­ here. This is not to question the attempt, however: significant new perspectives are offered, for example, in Robert Knapp’s popu­lar yet fine-­grained account entitled Invisible Romans: Prostitutes, Outlaws, Slaves, Gladiators, Ordinary Men and W ­ omen . . . ​the Romans that History Forgot (2011). In his Leisure and Ancient Rome (1995) and Popu­lar Culture in Ancient Rome (2009) J. P. Toner does more than anyone to identify time uses and time perspectives distinctive to nonelite Romans, isolating “the background hiss above which the dramas of Roman life ­were heard.”113 In the pro­cess, he offers helpful critique of the mostly elite-­derived repre­sen­ta­tions of work-­leisure routines

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such as the day patterns that we have been studying: “­There is huge scope in ­these playful, often idealized, constructions of what life is and should be like. As with any man-­made construct or institution, they express beliefs about a desired order of ­ things, and si­ mul­ ta­ neously reflect the order as it actually stands.”114 Conversely, in his ­later volume Toner draws attention to an opposite function, in which a quotidianized time orientation might be wrongly imputed to lower-­class life but might also be a brute necessity: The elite prided themselves on being able to look to the long term, with the f­ amily acting as the focus of this social investment. The elite caricatured the poor as being fixated with daily issues such as bread and circuses. In fact some of the poor may also have aspired to longer-­term dynastic ambitions, as is seen in some gravestones of freedmen marking their success for perpetuity. But, for most of the lower ­orders, long-­term thinking was a luxury they could ill afford. More pressing prob­lems crowded in on them closer to home: finding the rent, which sometimes was paid by the day, buying the daily bread, getting work.115

When the rhe­toric of such ancient depictions of “life” is repurposed by the handbooks to represent an entire “Roman life,” w ­ hether of the elite or of the plebs, the ambition to imagine a meaningful order comes with it, but the problematic implications also multiply. Yet as new light was shone on the methodological flaws of the daily life discourse in the second half of the twentieth ­century, Carcopino-­style volumes did not dis­appear; instead, they adapted. As Kristina Sessa points out in the introduction to her excellent Daily Life in Late Antiquity, ­these books are increasingly careful to avoid the recognized flaws of the genre as it evolved in the late twentieth ­c entury—­for example, the tendency to describe rather than explain, to focus on the trivial, and to generalize in a way that obscures historical change. New methodological reflection on daily life studies, building on the Alltagsgeschichte school of the 1970s, has also identified a unique heuristic potential in the study of childhood, leisure time, the body, and underrepresented groups.116 As a result, argues Sessa, “the study of ordinary p ­ eople d ­ oing ordinary 117 ­t hings has become central to how we understand the past.” A sampling of more recent books on Roman daily life shows how authors have offered correctives or refinements without abandoning the familiar features of the daily life discourse, catering ever anew to a modern curiosity that has, indeed, proven “indefatigable.”118 The Oxford ancient historian J. P. V. D. Balsdon evidently appreciated the special appeal of the day pattern as a heuristic portal. His Life and Leisure in

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Ancient Rome (1969) does not have a total diurnal structure, but it begins with a substantial chapter titled “The Shape of the Day,” in which he invokes Marquardt and follows the structure of part 2 of Carcopino’s book, “The Day’s Routine,” with a few pointed deviations. The rest of Balsdon’s book remains time focused, even more than the other parts of Carcopino’s, since he goes on to outline the year in chapter 2 and then addresses successive areas of private life almost entirely ­under the temporal rubrics of holidays, the h ­ uman life course, and the alternation of work with leisure. In foregrounding leisure Balsdon explic­itly registers a recent focus of work in sociology.119 He theorizes the question of “what life was like in Roman times” both with re­spect to social diversity (“for whom?”) and with re­spect to private life as an area of study, foregrounding questions regarding “the lives which ­people actually led, in re­spect of work and leisure”: “How did the Romans spend their time? What was the shape of a Roman day? Was the nundinum anything like a modern week? How did the seven-­day week come into existence? What ­were the features of ­family life? How much did ­people work and how much did they relax, and how did they relax?”120 Balsdon also offers a more transparent methodology in his use of sources; he issues due cautions about literary evidence that Carcopino had taken more literally and also seeks to convey the excitement generated by newly discovered evidence. This new material comes not, as in Carcopino’s case, from the city being unearthed in the 1930s, but rather from inscriptions, papyri, and archeological finds, especially mosaics, that w ­ ere unavailable to Marquardt, Friedlaender, or Carcopino.121 Both Carcopino and Balsdon are frequent points of reference in Lionel Casson’s 1975 volume for the American market entitled Everyday Life in Ancient Rome. Casson replicates Carcopino’s combination of informality and scholarship while depicting a more heterogeneous Roman society. He downsizes the role of the daily routine in order to make room for alternating chapters devoted to specific social identities (“A Roman Gentleman,” “The Slave,” “The Soldier,” “The Engineer,” “The Emperor”), much as Giardina does. He includes a chapter titled “Two Resurrected Cities,” which refers to Ostia and Pompeii. This may have inspired the focus of Gregory Aldrete’s 2004 Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia, which shifts the emphasis decisively t­ oward Rome’s status as “the first megacity” while using the other cities to foreground questions of Romanization and also to access the “time capsule” impact of Pompeii in particular—­a data set Carcopino more or less completely ignores.122 Meanwhile, Hachette had been producing its own supplements to Carcopino’s work, beginning with a volume on Greece by Robert Flacelière titled Daily

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Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles that appeared in French in 1959 and in En­ glish in 1965, and another on the Etruscans by Jacques Heurgon called Daily Life of the Etruscans, published in French in 1961 and in En­glish in 1964. Both of ­these historical scenarios, however, with their dif­fer­ent literary rec­ords, offer slim pickings for details of diurnal timekeeping or day patterns and thereby perhaps contribute to the impression that Rome was the ancient quotidian culture par excellence. Heurgon, who dedicates his book to Carcopino, concedes that “the temporal framework of Etruscan life was in general the same as that of the Romans,” though he then pivots, asserting that the Romans “borrowed it for the most part from the Etruscans, or elaborated it together with them.”123 Subsequent Hachette volumes address other obvious gaps, such as Carcopino’s l­imited focus on w ­ omen that yields only ste­reo­t ypical scenes not far advanced from that offered by Böttiger in Sabina. Hence the need for a volume in the same series entitled La femme dans la Rome antique (2001), cowritten by Danielle Gourévitch and Marie-­Thérèse Raepsaet-­Charlier. No doubt due to ­limited precise data on ­women’s day patterns, this volume devotes only half a chapter to daily routines and instead surveys ­women’s life from multiple social ­angles such as law and bodily health. Then ­there was Carcopino’s pronounced secularism. He emphasizes superstition and mysticism but omits such scenes of daily ritual as feature in D’Arnay’s work and before him in Couture’s: before quoting the first line of Martial’s epigram 4.8 (prima salutantes), Couture excerpts a line from a narrative episode in Prudentius’s Crowns of Martyrdom, from the late fourth ­century CE, as if it described a general Roman religious habit: “In the morning t­ here is a rush to give the salutatio, and every­one worships” (mane salutatum concurritur, omnis adorat) (Perist. 11.189).124 Robert Turcan’s The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times, published in French in 1998 and in En­glish in 2000, revives the evidence for domestic and civic ritual routines and temporal strictures to which Carcopino’s survey affords “a somewhat l­imited place.”125 An in­ter­est­ing further contribution to the Hachette series is Detienne and Sissa’s The Daily Life of the Greek Gods, published in French in 1993 and in En­glish in 2000, which aims to vindicate everyday life as a focus of ancient studies by profiling the role of the everyday in the myth and thought of the Greek polis. They focus on the division between everyday mortal time and transcendent immortal time, a divide often creatively blurred or crossed within ancient literary and religious culture, ­whether through the anthropomorphization of the gods or through the integration of gods into the space of the city.

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One further Hachette volume on Rome that enjoyed wide circulation is Florence Dupont’s 1989 La vie quotidienne du citoyen sous la République, translated into En­glish in 1992 as Daily Life in Ancient Rome, which Beard praises as “the most stimulating attempt to replace Carcopino’s Daily Life.”126 In seeming opposition to Carcopino, Dupont devotes her book to the republican period, which she treats synchronically as a kind of Lévi-­Straussian cold society. Her approach is less so­cio­log­i­cal than anthropological, as she aims to describe the “web of institutions” that defines the homogeneous cultural identity of the citizen. She gives even less attention than Carcopino does to differentiation of social status, choosing from the outset to view the Roman cultural cosmology through the eyes of the citizen whose identity is established through abjection of the noncitizen “other.”127 Evidently riffing on Varro’s theme-­based organ­ization of his Antiquities into “who acts, where they act, when they act, what action they carry out” (qui agant, ubi agant, quando agant, quid agant) (August. De civ D. 6.3), Dupont pre­sents her book in four parts, “The City and its ­People,” “Places and Lives,” “Time and Action,” and “The Roman Body.” Dupont’s approach to Roman time within this structure, however, involves a fresh reparceling of the basic topics of the daily life discourse. “Time and the Romans” highlights the fact that ancient Romans did not have a time god and suggests that “­people did not experience time in its own right but only in so far as it marked beginnings,” a dynamic she diagnoses as a “sickness” bordering on superstition and that she locates equally at the level of the day and the year.128 When Dupont addresses the details of Roman day division it is with an emphasis on culture as ritual and on structural oppositions such as the alternation of work and relaxation experienced as “daily bodily rhythms,” followed by “seasonal bodily rhythms.”129 “The Roman citizen’s body,” she argues, “was a product of culture rather than of nature and obeyed a civic rather than biological rhythm. Depending on the time and place, it could be hard or soft, braced for action or languid in repose.”130 Her sketches of daily routine are miniature essays in a kind of binary world making anchored in the ­free Roman male’s body and soul, recalling Pierre Bourdieu’s “Kabyle House,” or the Madagascan ­house as sundial, in its totality and simplicity and echoing the lyricism of Mead’s “A Day in Samoa.”131 But it is symptomatic of Dupont’s essentializing approach that she (implausibly) treats the first sundial brought to Rome from Catania as exclusively marking equinoctial hours and therefore “exact” slices of time while treating the seasonal hour as a Roman creation: “What was impor­tant to the Romans was to set aside the same relative portions of each day for effort and for

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relaxation.”132 “The variable Roman hour,” she explains, “embodied a relationship with time that had nothing to do with stars and mathe­matics, and every­ thing to do with ­people. In Mediterranean countries, you can feel the ninth hour of the day on your skin.”133 Beard, in calling Dupont’s book a “stimulating attempt,” may be trying to defer the question of ­whether it is a power­ful exercise in defamiliarization and a salutary corrective to Carcopino or instead an instance of the “ethnographic romanticism” that Lefebvre warns against. Our survey concludes with three recent volumes, all quite dif­fer­ent from one another. First, ­there is Keith Hopkins’s A World Full of Gods: The Strange Triumph of Chris­tian­ity (1999), which opens by depicting a pair of modern time travelers who arrive in Pompeii on a day prior to the eruption, “just before dawn,” and provides time-­specific snapshots from the routines of forum, baths, and amphitheater—­a curious historiographic experiment that seems intent on reprising motifs from the Carcopino tradition and that features a cameo by Beard.134 Second is Vicki Léon’s Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns, and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World (2007), a brief, whimsical exploration of work and leisure, pitched for a popu­lar audience. Despite the anachronistic hour numerations of its title, Léon’s book trades in the cultural specificity of Roman diurnal time, for example, by profiling the role of the time-­telling slave, with “Clock-­Watcher: Got the time? My sundial s­ topped.”135 Third, and most prominently, is Alberto Angela’s Una giornata nell’antica Roma: Segreti e curiosità (2009), a Mondadori publication that appeared si­mul­ ta­neously in En­glish (A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome: Daily Life, Mysteries, and Curiosities) and has enjoyed a wide circulation. Angela adapts the genre, arguing that Rome’s “everyday modus vivendi, its way of life” was the “secret” to the eternal city’s longevity.136 Like Davis, whose title he calques without acknowl­ edgment, Angela organizes the ­whole book around an “ordinary day,” including the anachronistic idea that it is “a Tuesday,” and also as Davis does, he draws attention to the fact that ancient Rome is being accessed on the visitor’s own schedule, an effect that is heightened by his partitioning with modern hours (e.g., “6.00am—­The Domus: Home for the Wealthy”).137 The book’s En­glish title taps into the trend of such coffee ­table books as Rick Smolan, David Cohen, and Leslie Smolan’s A Day in the Life of Amer­i­ca: Photographed by 200 of the World’s Leading Photojournalists on One Day, May 2, 1986.138 Angela writes as a resident of Rome but also as a producer of tele­vi­sion documentaries who in the course of his work has enjoyed access to the “mysteries” of sites “almost never made accessible to ­people,” and he shapes his material with

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an eye t­ oward visual impact, as when he devotes one of his “curiosities” (i.e., excurses) to describing the colors of Rome.139 Angela chooses to locate his scenario in “the reign of Trajan, at the moment in which, in my opinion, Rome reached the height of its power and, perhaps, when it achieved the greatest expression of its beauty.”140 He justifies his choice of the diurnal format as follows: It seemed to me that the best way to pre­sent all of this information in an orderly fashion was to follow the gradual unfolding of a day in the city. Each hour of the day has its corresponding place in the Eternal City with its own special activities. And so, hour by hour, we ­will discover a day in the life of ancient Rome.141

We can smile at Angela’s disingenuous claim that he has in­ven­ted the conceit of the hour-­by-­hour account. The pose simply reminds us of the major dynamic of the daily life discourse that we have traced from the sixteenth c­ entury to the twenty-­first. For this has been and no doubt ­will continue to be a perpetual reiteration of a “first encounter” between the modern reader and the ancient Roman day in all its curiosity, with the day’s order serving as a temporalized device for ordering knowledge about Roman life.

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ch a pter 11

Reading Roman Days in Modern Times

What structures and devices did Jérôme Carcopino use for orienting readers to the Roman day and Roman life, and how does his technique compare with that of other neoantiquarians before and since? In this final chapter I analyze the narrative methods by which modern curiosity has been catered to. But this also requires us to recognize how this modern curiosity was fueled in part by developments in clock time.

Early Rising and Daylight Saving In his section entitled “The Roman Begins the Day,” Carcopino evokes the vari­ ous activities of a morning that began “at dawn, if not before” as well as the mea­sures taken by some, such as Pliny the Younger, to shield themselves from “the commotion of the morning.”1 Then Carcopino declares, “In general, however, the Romans ­were early risers.”2 Zeroing in on this assertion in her introduction to the 2003 edition, Mary Beard questions Carcopino’s method: We o­ ught to find ourselves prompted to reflect w ­ hether the term “early” can properly carry the kind of cross-­cultural meaning that he tries to give it. Not only does it depend on how “late” you go to bed, but the w ­ hole notion makes sense only within a shared structuring of time, shared priorities, . . . ​a nd assumptions about the ordering of the day.3

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But Beard is also quick to admit that the criticism may be misguided: “Carcopino would, I am sure, have been remarkably unruffled by any accusation that he was writing from a twentieth-­century standpoint.” 4 But while Carcopino and most of the other writers in the daily life discourse tradition treat Roman life and modern life as dif­fer­ent and yet as occupying a common domain whose temporal ontology is fundamentally the same, we nevertheless find him giving a distinctively Roman inflection to this ontology. Carcopino stops short of embracing a radically distinctive, Durkheimian or Whorfian, approach to the anthropology of time, yet as I noted in the previous chapter, he regards Roman life as having its own distinctive “framework,” without which Roman life would remain “more or less unintelligible.”5 In partially assimilating this to the framework of modern urban life, however, he seems to adhere to another Durkheimian assumption that I have not yet addressed, namely, the idea that one may better understand complex forms of life manifested in “the most modern” socie­ties by looking to “a society whose organ­ization is surpassed by no o­ thers in simplicity,” which speaks to the primary sense of “elementary” in his title The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912).6 Carcopino treats life in the city of Rome as an ­earlier instance of the social form manifested in the modern Western city, and in his account the modern Western city has more in common with the ancient Roman city than it does with the modern Western countryside.7 Crucial differences exist between Rome and the modern city, and in the area of daily time the scope for contrast remains vast. The contrast, however, serves an ultimately genealogical purpose, with modern urban time and Roman urban time sharing a close kinship. This diachronic comparative perspective subtends ­every aspect of everyday life as Carcopino understands it. But “The Morning”—­a title only partially translating Carcopino’s French chapter title “Les divisions de la journée, le lever et la toilette,” which amounts literally to “the divisions of the day, getting up and washing”—­foregrounds with par­tic­u­lar clarity his comparative sociology of time in the setting of urban Rome. The chapter begins with a section entitled “The Days and Hours of the Roman Calendar” that offers an extensive orientation to the particularities of Roman diurnal timekeeping. H ­ ere Carcopino first acknowledges the overlap of certain Roman and modern time arrangements such as the Julian calendar, the seven-­day week, and the civil day extending from midnight to midnight but then announces that “this ends the analogies between time as the ancients counted it and as we do; the Latin ‘hours,’ late intruders into the Roman day, though they bear the same name and ­were of the same number as ours, w ­ ere in real­ity very dif­fer­ent.” 8 ­A fter rehearsing the historical

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developments recounted by Pliny the Elder, he contrasts the time consciousness of Romans and moderns: “They ­were not yet like us the slaves of time, for they still lacked both perseverance and punctuality.”9 “Perseverance” and “punctuality” are Lorimer’s translations of “constance” and “précision,” respectively, but Carcopino’s French terms are perhaps better translated as “consistency” and “precision,” since he goes on to emphasize the lack of agreement among Roman clocks as well as the seasonal elasticity of Rome’s hours and their lack of internal division.10 In the ensuing section “The Roman Begins the Day,” Carcopino elaborates on the generalization about most Romans being “early risers.” Carcopino mentions f­ actors that made rising at or before dawn the norm, particularly the noises of street and h ­ ouse­hold and the paucity of artificial lighting that meant “the rich ­were as e­ ager as the poor to profit by the light of the day.”11 He also draws on anecdotes suggesting a moral imperative to rise e­ ither at dawn or e­ arlier, which help him to generalize the sentiments expressed in Seneca’s letter 122.1–3 and Pliny the Elder’s “Life is being awake” (vita vigilia est) (HN pr.18).12 He notes the gradations of laziness ascribed to rising at the sixth (Seneca), fifth (Persius), fourth (Horace), or third hour (Martial) and observes that “distinguished Romans vied with each other in ‘lucubrating’ ­every winter” despite “the flickering and indifferent light of the wick of tow and wax.”13 He describes how a­ fter rising early, Romans consumed minimal food and w ­ ater and engaged in l­imited self-­grooming, donning their clothing “in the twinkling of an eye,” their bedchambers containing “nothing seductive to tempt the occupant.”14 ­These minimalist details lend support to a broader ethnological claim: “The Romans of this period ­were thus ready to attend to the business of their public life within a few minutes of getting out of bed.”15 This hasty progression through personal grooming, mea­sured in modern minutes, and salutatio, which Carcopino calls a “brief merry-­go-­round of salaams,” finds its most principled explanation when Carcopino celebrates the Romans’ disciplined progression through work into leisure.16 Another way to appreciate the specificity of Carcopino’s account of Roman early rising, however, is to note, first, the ubiquity of the basic idea across the modern accounts, as in Harriet Preston and Louise Dodge’s “The Romans ­were for the most part early risers,” Harold Johnston’s “The Roman r­ ose at a very early hour” and “The Romans, like the Greeks, ­were busy much ­earlier in the morning than we are,” and H. A. Treble and K. M. King’s “the Romans r­ ose ­earlier than we do.”17 With this in mind, we can next compare the sketches of markedly dif­fer­ent civic worlds offered by vari­ous authors. For Preston and Dodge

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emphasize ­those sources that put salutatores on the streets before daylight and have “artisans and shop-­keepers” lucubrating no less than intellectuals, while William Stearns Davis gives due qualification to the meaning of “early” by pointing out that “all Rome, we ­shall discover, rises very early, and normally goes to bed correspondingly early.”18 Roman early rising is a rich if sometimes muddled palette for ethnological portraiture assembled from conflicting considerations of nature, compulsion, virtue, and practicality. But if Carcopino writes from a “twentieth-­century standpoint,” this should prompt us not simply to note the anachronisms in his sketch of Roman daily life but also to ask why he and other writers are so insistent about scrutinizing specific par­ameters of time practice.19 In the case of early rising, for example, it is relevant to note that t­ hese Roman daily life books appeared during the period when new policies relating to work schedules w ­ ere being enacted—­most notably, daylight saving time (or “summer time”), first a­ dopted by Eu­ro­pean countries and the United States (briefly) during the First World War, and the forty-­hour work week, with its long history from Robert Owen’s 1817 slogan “Eight hours’ l­abour, eight hours’ recreation, eight hours’ rest” through to the Matignon Agreements in France (1936) that granted a forty-­hour work-­week and banned overtime.20 ­These mea­sures w ­ ere often debated in terms of the history of civilization, though with competing claims being made on each side. Daylight saving time, for example, which became the subject of contention ­after the publication of William Willett’s The Waste of Daylight in 1907 and was first ­adopted in E ­ ngland in 1916, redistributes daylight to the end of the clock day during the summer months and brings waking closer to coinciding with dawn; it conserves power by avoiding redundancy of natu­ral light before ­people wake up, and it equally ensures abundance of natu­ral light in the eve­ning when ­people are, it is assumed, more likely awake and able to use it. But as Michael O’Malley observes, the mea­sure “contained a paradox, in that it used the key tool of a mechanized society—­t he clock—to create a sense of freedom from mechanization and clock time,” and it could be presented by proponents and opponents variously as “a way to use more daylight in the eve­ning” or as “a poor ruse to get p ­ eople out of bed e­ arlier.”21 Debates over the work week w ­ ere equally complex and contentious. To my knowledge ­there is no mention of modern daylight saving time in the Roman daily life books of this period; explicit con­temporary reference in t­ hese books is generally ­limited. Yet as mentioned in the previous chapter, Carcopino conspicuously pauses to compare the Roman working day favorably with France’s recently a­ dopted standard for the working day and week in an arresting

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discussion. Such moments allow us to glimpse a force that is likely ever pre­sent in the shaping of modern readers’ curiosity about the Roman day: the transformation of clock time and social time that got underway in the early modern period and then began to accelerate in the late nineteenth ­century.

Roman Time as a Component of Modern Times Modern nationalist discourses on time, as Vanessa Ogle has documented in The Global Transformation of Time, 1870–1950 (2015), are variously concerned with both connections and discontinuities between the time schemes of dif­fer­ent nations and of dif­fer­ent periods.22 Intellectual explorations of time concepts focus in part on relations between geographic centers and peripheries but also proceed in part along the historical axis of cultural evolution. Ogle begins her account by relating how, in the year 1891, the recently unified Germany a­ dopted a nationwide “uniform time”—­a key episode in the history of time standardization and, as she notes, a reform out of which “modern times” emerged.23 We may observe that it was precisely during this period that Gustav Bilfinger published Die Zeitmesser der antiken Volker (1886), Die Antiken Stundenangaben (1888), and Der bürgerliche Tag: Untersuchungen über den Beginn des Kalendertags im classischen Altertum und im christlichen Mittelalter (1888). In the third of ­these volumes, Rome is the historical paradigm par excellence for civil diurnal time reckoning, and indeed Roman timekeeping clearly serves Bilfinger as a relevant object of knowledge, w ­ hether for comparison, contrast, or both.24 Like Rome’s Julian calendar, so too the clock time and social time of ancient Rome—­more so than that of the Greeks, Egyptians, or Babylonians—­has long enjoyed the status of privileged ancient paradigm.25 In Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (1983), Johannes Fabian draws attention to the “denial of coevalness,” or “allochronism,” through which modern ethnography has frequently relegated specific cultures to primitive status even though they exist in the pre­sent time. In neoantiquarian discourse we sometimes see ancient Rome, too, treated allochronistically, due both to its historical distance and to specific differences in time reckoning. Yet Rome is perhaps more often treated “synchronistically”: its “coevalness” in relation to pre­sent times is embraced on the specious yet significant grounds that “we” recognize some of “our” temporalities ­there already. The establishment of a quasi-­intersubjective synchronism with Roman time, especially as facilitated through the portal of the shared daily routine, might be understood as a ruse for naturalizing and consolidating a shared Western temporality from which modern anthropology’s other is forcefully separated. For it is plausible that the

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allochronizing of non-­Western cultures is enabled by the extent to which Roman time serves as an appealing temporality with which we can synchronize or embodies certain lost ideals to which modern times can aspire. Thus, during the time when the Romans became an object of fascination as “early risers,” Ogle notes how, in the accounts of late nineteenth-­century Eu­ro­pean missionaries and businessmen, “non-­Westerners ­were collectively indicted as work-­shy and incapable of proper time management.”26 Modern incentives for reading ancient Roman daily life discourse include not simply daylight saving time and the forty-­hour working week but all the components of “modern times”—­Ogle’s handy term for describing the cluster of time technologies that are not just distinctive to but constitutive of the modern period.27 In his history of the hour, Gerhard Dohrn-­van Rossum asserts that “the use of everyday time and the possession and use of clocks are indicators of modernity.”28 To lend greater specificity to this idea, let us first briskly survey some of the distinctive features of modern clock time as it has evolved over Western history, especially in the past two centuries, using the subcategories I proposed in the introduction.29 With re­spect to divisions, the modern West has seen such developments as equinoctial (“equal”) hours counted off from midnight and from midday, replacing seasonal (“unequal”) hours counted off from sunrise and from sunset; hours subdivided into minutes and seconds, where previously hours w ­ ere mostly undivided; time defined through “fusion” of building blocks rather than “fission” of a w ­ hole; and social time regulated through official divisions of work, leisure, rest.30 In connection with schedules, innovations have included work shifts and time discipline standardized through precise factory schedules; the workday ­limited to an eight-­hour day; twenty-­four-­hour urban schedules enabled by artificial light and “colonization” of the night; and the crystallization of a seven-­day secular work week punctuated by the weekend.31 Regarding devices, modernity has seen sundials and ­water clocks succeeded by mechanical clocks; steeple clocks succeeded by secular public clocks; and a proliferation of personal time devices, including mass-­produced watches and smartphones, and diurnal and quotidian media (almanacs, novels, newspapers, e­ tc.). In the realm of time’s authorities, ­there has been a shift from solar (“apparent”) noon to the use of clock-­observed (“mean”) noon; standardization of mean times ­adopted over a single region and over global time zones; a shift from concrete time and task orientation to abstract time and time orientation; an increased control over the definition of time and time signaling by specific arbiters (observatories, corporations, ­etc.); and “the temporality of capitalism,” a phrase used by Ogle

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to point to such developments as perspectives on the relationship between pre­ sent and ­future in a modern global context.32 My sketch of ­these changes is, of course, overgeneral, outdated, and incomplete. For example, we might easily add to the device category (and to an extent also the ­others) the literary genres that accompanied the miniaturization of timekeeping devices, as Stuart Sherman outlines in his account of En­glish literary prose form: By the end of the eigh­teenth ­century the data of the minute hand had grown both familiar and effectual, structuring work and days. Diurnal form too had established something like omnipresence; it structured some of the most innovative, widely implemented prose genres that the period produced: not only diary [c. 1660] and newspaper [c. 1700], but also periodical essay, journal-­letter, and travel book. All ­these genres . . . ​deployed diurnal form as a means of enabling authors to write the time the new clocks told, and enabling readers to recognize, interpret, and inhabit the temporality by which the ­whole culture was learning to live and work.33

That period saw the publication of such works as the anonymous Low-­Life: Or, One Half of the World Knows Not How the Other Half Live (1750), which over the course of twenty-­four chapters “scans the activity of a range of Londoners at one hour of the day,” giving equal attention to the city’s lowliest. Christina Lupton, in Reading and the Making of Time in the Eigh­teenth C ­ entury (2018), explores the problematic of how Low-­Life’s represented day relates to the time of the reader and concludes that the book itself provides the reader with strategies for resisting time discipline even as it portrays “the shortage of hours for work, worship, and leisure.”34 This literary history, with its molding of narrative forms to the shape and scale of con­temporary time signaling and its dynamic encounter between represented time and reader’s time, is directly relevant to the literary evolution of the Roman daily life genre we have been tracing—­though perhaps most specifically to Jean-­Rodolphe D’Arnay’s widely popu­lar De la vie privée des Romains. Or, in the category of time authorities, a ­whole history of shifting connections between time and order might be traced. Lewis Mumford, in Technics and Civilization, connects changes in timekeeping to the more general shift from the personalized order of the monarch or monastery (the ordo monasterii) to the impersonalized order of science, nature, and the machine.35 O’Malley, in his Keeping Watch: A History of American Time (1990), shows how time signaling became symbolic of social and public order, from the commoditized standard

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time signals that observatories first provided to the railroad companies in the late nineteenth c­ entury to the personalized pocket watch that in the early twentieth c­ entury was “prob­ably the only example of a clearly industrial machine carried close to the body.”36 In referring to ­these modern times as incentives for reading ancient Roman daily life discourse, I mean to capture the obvious if often unmentioned relationships, ­whether similarities or differences, that we may observe in the Roman daily life volumes between the modern reader’s world and the Roman clock time being described. Within the neoantiquarian proj­ect, a disproportionate curiosity about Roman diurnal and quotidian time emerged in close conjunction with the introduction of modern clock time.37 But the neoantiquarian proj­ect must also be understood as itself a component of modern times. Ogle, in support of her argument that “time is what made the global imagination pos­si­ble in the first place,” observes that the study of history emerged in the late nineteenth ­century as a privileged “location device.”38 I would argue that a historical outlook that can use the Roman day as a way of ordering knowledge about Roman life is also—no less than a carefully adjusted mechanical clock—­a complex modern instrument that allows the curious reader to see “what time it is” in modernity and how the modern diurnal “now” relates to the ancient Roman “now” and all that that relationship might imply. ­There is no precise way, of course, to predict how a reader ensconced in modern times ­will respond to the experience of reading a repre­sen­ta­tion of Roman daily life that has been scaled to fit his or her own diurnal world; it is not even pos­si­ble to know ­whether the overall impression w ­ ill be one of similarity or difference. This very uncertainty, however, is due in part to the strikingly equivocal combination of similarity and difference that modern discourse on Roman daily life has actively cultivated. This equivocation contributes to modernity by giving modernity, in Rome, a form of life whose temporality the modern subject can recognize, revere, reject, transcend, and so on—­and this in ser­vice of defining one’s own modern time location.39

Six Revealing Tendencies of “Daily Life in Ancient Rome” In ­these final pages I sketch six distinct tendencies that recur in the handbooks as they seek to facilitate comparison and contrast with modern times. In each case I set Carcopino’s approach against a representative range of instances from throughout the tradition. The first is that the day-­shaped handbook, or even a day-­shaped chapter, manufactures a readerly experience of Roman life marked by diurnal and quotidian effects. At one level this is about giving the reader a direct and concrete

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exposure to Roman life. When Carcopino arranges the second part of his book according to the order of the day (fig.  14), he is following the pre­ce­dent of numerous prior handbooks ­going back at least as far as D’Arnay (fig. 15). But Carcopino offers us a useful theoretical perspective on this arrangement, since his proposal to follow the successive moments of the Roman day together with his claim that Roman everyday life is not comprehensible ­unless we understand its framework would seem to echo a thought experiment conducted by Durkheim about the category of time itself, which is intended to show that we cannot even think time “except on condition of distinguishing its dif­fer­ent moments” and that a form of time that is not “a succession of years, months, weeks, days, hours” would be something “nearly unthinkable.” 40 Certainly the

Figure 14. T ­ able of contents of part 2 of Jérôme Carcopino’s La vie quotidienne à Rome à l’apogée de l’empire (1939).

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Figure 15. Chapter outline of chapter 1 of Jean Rodolphe D’Arnay’s De la vie privée des romains (1760).

narrator of the day-­shaped book or chapter seeks to make Roman life intelligible by immersing the reader in the internal time of the Roman day as it is knowable from primary evidence. Specific events of a Roman day are experienced by the reader not only in the time locations and sequences in which they “belong,” such as salutatio in the morning and bathing in the after­noon but also through the internal temporality of the book that the modern author uses to dramatize aspects of time experience. Davis exploits the hazy light of the “gray morn” to defamiliarize

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“literally dozens of men, each with a heavy toga wrapped carelessly around him, hurrying frantically in ­every direction,” who are only ­later revealed to be salutatores.41 As D’Arnay transitions to his second chapter, he savors the feelings and motivations that are guiding his Roman subject: I have followed the citizen from the morning to mid-­day, to the t­ emples, the palaces of the g­ reat, the forum, e­ tc. and into all the places where religion, ambition, interest, civility, the connections of blood and of friendship, called him. I am g­ oing at pre­sent to accompany him where-­ever the care of his health, and the love of allowable plea­sure, w ­ ill conduct him.42

Georg Greenius marks his transition from morning to after­noon by saying “to a second day, as it ­were” (ad alterum quasi diem), which he explic­itly ties to Pliny the Elder’s doubling of the day in “as if having another day” (quasi alio die) (Ep. 3.5.11).43 ­There is a witty interplay between content and frame in Petrus Morestellus’s dialogue as he and his interlocutor proceed through quaestiones addressing each part of the day from dawn (diluculum) to the dead of night (nox intempesta) only to find that the conversation has taken them well beyond the “sixth hour” (hora . . . ​sexta)—­which for them is dinnertime.44 Carcopino concedes late in his book that “the sun is sloping t­ oward its setting and still we have not seen the Romans eat”—in this case allowing the reader to feel the force, once again, of the Roman’s morning devotion to work.45 Frequently, however, day-­shaped pre­sen­ta­tion goes beyond immersive time experience. By taking advantage of modern literary forms to milk the conceit of the eyewitness encounter and equally by exploiting the sequential and systematic dimensions of the diurnal structure and the iterative implications of a quotidian context, the narrator can have us “discover” general information about Roman life “in an orderly fashion,” even when the information is located at a specific time of day only arbitrarily.46 Davis knows that he w ­ ill be packing an abundance of everyday detail into his itinerary and so apologizes in advance that “the ‘day’ devoted to Rome ­will prob­ably seem therefore a somewhat lengthy one.” 47 In many cases the information is parasitic on the time of day involved, such as when Treble and King abruptly digress during the after­noon segment in their other­wise short description of the day’s routine with an entire history of Roman bathing practices.48 In other cases the scheduling of encounters is simply arbitrary, as when Alberto Angela promises us that “­we’ll have a chance, ­later this morning, to get to know the world of the slaves” and packs our appointment book to include “an encounter with Tacitus” at 12:20 p.m., though this is followed by an aptly timed account of the meridianum spectaculum at 12.30

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p.m. entitled “The Colosseum, Hour of Torment.” 49 Carcopino’s explicit placement of the Roman’s visit to the barber in the morning seems at first glance to make sense, but it may be simply a m ­ atter of contingency: Lionel Casson tentatively moves it to the after­noon, while J. P. V. D. Balsdon, conscious of the impression conveyed by Carcopino, points out that we simply do not know when the Romans shaved.50 As a rule, the handbook writers, Balsdon included, suppress ­matters of temporal uncertainty in order to exploit the vividness of the shared day as an intersubjective and intercultural encounter with Roman culture in its totality. The second tendency is that handbooks are typically quiet about direct connections between ancient and modern time practices, but when they break this silence, they do so with dramatic effect. I am not referring simply to the numerous implicit anachronisms that allow the Roman day to be molded to fit a specific modern template, such as the elision of festive or ritual dimensions in Carcopino’s starkly secularized day, but also to ­those moments at which the reader is explic­itly confronted with a juxtaposition that “shocks” through the sudden sense of ­either similarity or difference—as in Fellini Satyricon when a rudimentary double-­decker bus constructed out of wooden scaffolding passes by the win­dow outside the art gallery, perhaps prompting us to won­der about ancient Roman transit schedules. Carcopino’s chart that gives precise modern hour-­and-­minute conversions for Roman daylight hours in winter then summer is based on a long-­standing model from nineteenth-­century German versions in Ludwig Ideler’s Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie (1825–26), W. Adolph Becker’s Gallus (1838), and Joachim Marquardt’s Römische Privatalterthümer (1864) and Das Privatleben der Römer (1886).51 Marquardt’s 1864 chart (fig. 16) had perhaps given readers the impression that they ­were being given a highly precise almanac portal to ancient Rome, but Augustus Mau’s revision of Marquardt’s work in 1886 reflects the influence of Gustav Bilfinger’s assertive reanalysis of Roman hour indications in terms of what time the hour was completed rather than in terms of the duration of the hour (fig. 17).52 Carcopino’s chart is also misleading in the impression it conveys of a grid in which all hours have equal status and prominence and in its mathematical aspect; such conversion is arguably more an obstacle than an aid to understanding any specific Roman time signal we may encounter.53 ­Earlier handbooks do not aspire to such precision. Morestellus, following Johannes Rosinus’s Antiquitatum romanarum corpus absolutissimum (1583), s­ ettles for a diagram of the distinct qualitative sections of the day (fig. 18).54 That diagram, in turn, which Morestellus uses as the framework for structuring his dialogue, is equally

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Figure 16. Roman-­modern hour correlations. Marquardt 1864, 263.

problematic and a product of its times. All such charts and diagrams mark radical difference between ancient and modern while si­mul­ta­neously incorporating the Roman day in a modernizing visual synopsis. A similar balance of familiarity and strangeness comes in Davis’s anachronistic verbal sketch in the section titled “Daily Gazette (Acta Diurna): How Rome Gets Its News.”55 Difference is marked more starkly when writers turn abruptly from describing Roman sundials and ­water clocks to marvel at the “modern.” D’Arnay points out that wheel-­mechanism clocks would not be made ­until the eighth ­century and that steeple-­clocks would not be made ­until the thirteenth.56 Petrus Viola waxes lyrical about the miniature clock made by a con­temporary of his in sixteenth-­century Vicenza.57 Carcopino, however, brings ancient and modern devices into a closer conversation: he warns that “it would be an error to suppose that the Romans lived with their eyes glued to the n ­ eedles of their sun-­dials or the floats of their water-­clocks as ours are to the hands of our watches.”58 Yet precisely that image has already been planted in our minds by Carcopino referring on the previous page to the “miniature solaria or pocket dials that served

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Figure 17. Roman-­modern hour correlations. Marquardt 1886, 257.

the same purpose as our watches” and citing discoveries of pocket dials at Forbach and Aquileia.59 Carcopino was the first author to juxtapose ancient and modern technologies so frequently, and this no doubt contributed to the impact of his book. Several times he mentions controversial current affairs and shows how modern totalitarian institutions resemble the Roman ordering of time and leisure—­with all of its benefits and its menace. As I noted in the previous chapter, Carcopino compares the events sponsored by the German Kraft durch Freude and the Italian Dopolavoro to imperial Roman spectacles that, he argues, “guaranteed the good order of an overpopulated capital.” 60 A few pages l­ater, he refers to the Berlin Olympics of 1936, seemingly with greater ambivalence: “Like the Olympic Stadium at Berlin, the Circus Maximus when in use seemed a city in itself, ephemeral and monstrous, set down in the ­middle of the Eternal City.” 61 Carcopino’s seeming appreciation of fascist leisure institutions is possibly mitigated in

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Figure 18. Parts of the Roman day and night. Morestellus 1605, 67.

some small mea­sure by his inclusion, among his con­temporary examples, of the French Ministry of Leisure, an agency created in 1936 by the left-­wing Popu­lar Front.62 In his most extensive con­temporary discussion anywhere in the book Carcopino critiques the Popu­lar Front’s 1936 forty-­hour work-­week law for being insufficiently proletarian. This comes in the chapter entitled “Businessmen and Manual Laborers,” where he calculates that the Romans’ workday was shorter than the workday in modern France. His fascinating argument begins with the

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idea that the natu­ral limits of daylight had prevented the Romans from “extending the working day beyond eight of our hours in winter,” and he then treats this as the upper limit of permissible work hours even during summer and even for the “transport workers” whom Caesar’s law required to work by night.63 “It would have been unjust,” reasons Carcopino, if they “had had a heavier nocturnal task than their daytime fellow-­workers.” 64 He corrals vari­ous surviving time indications to suggest that Roman workers in dif­fer­ent professions ended their workday and began their leisure long before dusk. Quoting line 4  in Martial’s Epigrams 4.8, “sexta quies lassis, septima finis erit,” he creatively infers that “by far the greater number of Roman workers downed tools e­ ither at the sixth or the seventh hour; no doubt the sixth in summer and the seventh in winter” 65 This yields, in Carcopino’s equinoctial hour reckoning, a Roman working day of “about seven [modern] hours in summer and less than six [modern hours] in winter.” 66 Touting this almost universal limit on the Roman workday as evidence that “the Romans ­were wide awake and well organised” and “had learned to compress [their work] within limits which w ­ ere strictly observed,” Carcopino suggests that this became an official policy thanks to “vital professional ­unions”: “Summer and winter alike, Roman workmen enjoyed freedom during the w ­ hole or the greater part of the after­noon, and very prob­ably our forty-­hour week with its dif­fer­ent arrangement would have weighed heavi­ly on them rather than pleased them.” 67 As Pierre Grimal points out, Carcopino’s highlighting of the six-­or seven-­hour workday in Rome was no doubt a warning to French readers not to feel too smug about their newly regulated eight-­hour workday.68 But Carcopino’s fanciful reasoning is subsequently demolished by Balsdon. The section in Balsdon’s book titled “The Workers’ After­noon” appears at a conspicuously late moment in his day chapter, a­ fter dinner, and ­there he exposes Carcopino’s cherry-­picking of evidence, arguing that “not every­body’s daily life, particularly in the short days of winter, followed this leisurely course. A ­ fter lunch (and in summer a siesta) many p ­ eople, perhaps the majority, returned to work.” 69 The third tendency is the extent to which the somewhat simplistic and homogeneous time orientation that the handbooks construct for the Romans is derived from a fairly small number of anecdotes. Thus, Seneca’s letter 122 is a ubiquitous source both for the ideal of rising with or before the dawn and for the example that tests that rule—­the “young roisterers or the drunkards who ­were forced to sleep off their overnight excesses.”70 Their be­hav­ior is typically fleshed out with references to Persius’s lines on the shadow reaching the fifth

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hour on the sundial (3.1–7). ­Those same references are used to make the seemingly s­ imple naturalist claim that the Romans “lived by day and slept by night.71 Mentions of Roman nocturnal activity, or eve­nings at all, are severely ­limited: the rule is tested only by lucubration or by the dystopian experiences of Rome’s streets at night, extrapolated from Juvenal’s third satire. Other than this, “­after sundown the silence almost of the grave shuts down upon ave­nues which a few hours ­earlier w ­ ere simply swarming with life,” and “that’s the way it w ­ ill be for 72 centuries; it’s we who are the exception.” The quip from Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis, in turn, that “you ­will more easily get phi­los­o­phers to agree than clocks” ( facilius inter philosophos quam inter horologia conueniet) (2.2) becomes the standard point of reference for the imprecision of ancient time indications. Evidence for the basic structure of the day is provided ­either through Martial’s hour-­by-­hour schedule in Epigrams 4.8 or mentions of morning as the “better part of the day” (melior pars diei) (Virg. Aen. 9.156) often in combination with reference to the ΖΗΘΙ epigram. Sometimes the Plautine parasite fragment or a parasite poem from Martial is used to define all Romans’ premodern temporality as one in which “their stomachs w ­ ere their best clocks.”73 For the salutatio, the handbooks oscillate between references that suggest an archaic domestic institution such as is preserved by Galba (Suet. Galba 4.4) and ­those that satirize imperial indignities such as in Juvenal’s first and third satires. This oscillation corresponds to a clear ambivalence in the daily life discourse on how to reconcile the salutatio with traditional Roman ste­reo­t ypes. D’Arnay, for example, charts the salutatio’s decline from “an homage paid to rank and virtue” to the mercenary etiquette of “pride and vanity on the one side, adulation and servitude on the other.”74 Carcopino echoes this dichotomy but also seeks to minimize the institution’s overall significance, treating it as a mere interlude: “The role of the client played, every­one got busy with the day’s work.”75 Becker, in turn, has Gallus’s slaves reflect nostalgically on the more ­humble salutatores they had hosted before Gallus moved out of his upstairs apartment in an insula and into the vast mansion that he now calls home.76 Another recurring detail across the handbooks is the time-­telling slave, known from a handful of ancient allusions (e.g., Plin. HN 7.182 and Mart. ­Epigr. 8.67.1). This motif variously demonstrates the ­limited direct access to clocks, the dif­fer­ent kinds of ­labor assigned to automatons and ­human beings, and the integration of ancient time culture within the slave economy. For D’Arnay, however, the time-­telling slave is a symptom of moral de­cadence: “That ­every f­ ather of a ­family might know the hour, a slave was kept in the ­house with no other employment than to observe the hours, and report them to the mas-

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ter.”77 He takes this idea from Seneca’s critique of masters who rely on slaves to tell them when to do t­ hings.78 The per­sis­tence and prominence of such anecdote-­based ele­ments overall is explained by the defamiliarizing light they throw on specific features of modern time. But the interpretation of ­these ele­ments varies from one handbook to the next, and this results in divergent time orientations, each of which stands in its own relation of similarity or difference to modern times. Thus we see constant variation as each handbook explains the Romans’ seasonal hours. Carcopino describes the Roman hours as “in real­ity very dif­fer­ent” from modern hours and uses their elasticity and lack of precise internal division to develop the idea that the Romans “­were not yet like us the slaves of time”—an articulation of freedom that resonates in its own way with his account of the Romans’ compressed workday.79 Balsdon, in turn, is more focused on Romans’ relationship to the seasons, pointing out the “profound difference between summer life and winter life” that required specific temporal adaptations, such as the omission of siesta in winter and the completion of dinner long before dark in summer; by way of comparison he points to seasonal daylight hours persisting in Italy up ­until the early modern period.80 Florence Dupont, as noted in the previous chapter, makes the proportional hour a nativist Roman invention; more generally, she minimizes the role of hours altogether, marking only the halving and quartering of the day: “The Romans did not feel any need to cut the day into tiny slices.”81 The fourth tendency is that all of the handbooks also recognize heterogeneous forms of life coinciding in the Roman day. Of par­tic­u­lar interest is the kinds of difference they register and how they accommodate this difference within the diurnal framework, especially with increasing modern awareness of sociocultural diversity. A landmark moment in the tradition is Davis’s principled itinerary that takes him through multiple forms of life cohabiting in the city: “More helpful it is to examine at the outset certain typical streets first in a poor and next in a more aristocratic quarter, to enter the ­houses, and to penetrate the daily lives of the masses of the p ­ eople.”82 His references to slaves of varied race and ethnicity and his description of “a ­great colony of Jews and other Orientals exist[ing] in what is alleged to be extreme squalor” manifest early twentieth-­century awareness of urban segregation, even as he perpetuates racist ste­reo­t ypes.83 Davis’s privileging of social realism induces him to compensate for the notorious absence of evidence for the first meal of the day: “Early as the hour may be, workmen and o­ thers who have an active day before them are standing around and laying in a hearty breakfast.”84 Davis also chooses to make his day a montage of pagans and Christians occupying the same day si­mul­ta­neously

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by including a final section titled “A Christian Gathering.” Carcopino, however, in his similar pivot to the final Christian scene, also juxtaposes hedonistic pagan dinners with modest dinners such as ­those enjoyed by Pliny with Trajan at Centumcellae and a ­humble guild dinner among the ­brothers of Lanuvium: “While t­hese grotesque scenes w ­ ere taking place, many other Romans w ­ ere partaking of a discreet and charming meal at which the mind had as much play as the appetite, and the disciplined ser­vice excluded neither moderation nor simplicity.”85 As a rule, daily life lit­er­a­ture prior to Davis’s book invokes one or another princi­ple for privileging a specific normative routine while leaving ­others at the margins. D’Arnay suppresses variation along virtually e­ very axis of age and social position so as to focus on the diversity of concerns that the elite actor himself needed to juggle within his life: I ­shall consider only t­ hose, who, keeping a just mean between the recluse and the man of business, could fall in with the world without renouncing themselves; who, equally mindful of the affairs of their ­family, and of t­ hose of the state, attended to the cares of both; who, without living in idleness and dissipation, divided their time between business and plea­sure; such, in a word, who, one while in public assemblies, and another in domestic retirement, without being engrossed by ­either, discharged the claims of social intercourse, and what was due to the republic, to their relations, to their friends, and to their f­ amily.86

Harold Johnston puts his bias in more pragmatic terms: he focuses on “the ordinary routine of a man of the higher class” simply b­ ecause this is “the man of whom we read most frequently in Roman lit­er­a­ture.”87 Carcopino for his part adopts an itinerary not unlike that Davis adopts, and we have already noted his (qualified) championing of the Roman workman. He supports his proletarianism by mocking the diurnal and quotidian absurdity of the so-­called elite. While Roman workmen “allow themselves seventeen or eigh­teen of our twenty-­four hours for the luxury of repose,” the “monomaniac” Pliny the Elder “toiled over his writing for sheer love of it twenty hours out of the twenty-­four.”88 Carcopino not only treats declamation and literary recitation as time-­wasting activities but even criticizes statesmen who “entered the Curia at the first hour of the day, and did not escape till night was falling.”89 But Carcopino adheres much more closely to traditional ste­reo­t ypes than does Davis, especially when it comes to gender: “So much for the toilet of the Roman man,” he writes in a transition: “This covers, however, only half our subject. To tackle the other half and watch the Roman ­woman getting up, we

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must move over to her quarters and for the greater part of the time change the mise en scène.”90 Carcopino’s w ­ oman serves as a temporal opposite within the diurnal frame. The fact that Roman matrons “must have drawn out the time” in their cosmetic routine is “a m ­ atter of no account” given their supposed lack of participation in public life or ­labor outside of the home.91 ­Because Carcopino vociferously insists that Roman ­women did not work in public occupations, he is left to describe a domestic or leisurely ste­reo­t ype: In Trajan’s Rome w ­ omen spent most of their time indoors. If they w ­ ere poor they attended to the work of the h ­ ouse­hold, u ­ ntil the hour when they could go to the public baths which w ­ ere reserved for them. If they w ­ ere rich and had a large ­house­hold staff to relieve them of domestic cares, they had nothing to do but go out when the fancy took them, pay visits to their ­women friends, take a walk, attend public spectacles, or l­ater go out to dinner.92

Carcopino’s relegation of ­women to a distinct time orientation echoes Karl August Böttiger’s Sabina as well as a more extreme comment found in Johnston’s book regarding the time experience of nonelite Romans. For whereas Casson shows a sensitivity to slaves’ own time given that they must rise even e­ arlier than ­others in order to facilitate their early rising, Johnston writes, “The poorer citizens led a somewhat idle life; so time meant l­ittle to them. Slaves worked from before daylight till they ­were released from their tasks, and therefore had no need to reckon the passing of time.”93 The value of time, for Johnston, appears to depend on the conventional social value of the person involved. We have already noted in the previous chapter the attention to social diversity provided in l­ater volumes such as Balsdon’s Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome, Casson’s Everyday Life in Ancient Rome, and Danielle Gourévitch and Marie-­Thérèse Raepsaet-­Charlier’s La femme dans la Rome antique. Dupont, however, counteracts much of this effect with her dissimulation about work obligations: “Every­one worked hard till noon, when the least zealous would break off. One by one, as the after­noon progressed, every­one would stop working, depending on their strength and enthusiasm for the task.”94 At day’s end, in turn, Dupont stages a kind of festive time in which social diversity is a spectacle for consumption rather than a set of hard realities: “The eve­ning then got ­under way, a time for plea­sure and banqueting, a time to unwind physically, freeing the spirit which, with the help of a ­little wine, forgot all the worries of the day. . . . ​Every­one would wander and mingle: men, w ­ omen, citizens, slaves, courtesans in their togas, male prostitutes.”95 Once again, Dupont privileges anthropological fantasy over social analy­sis.

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The fifth tendency is that while each of the handbooks describes a more or less synchronic set of diurnal time practices for their chosen time period from imperial or republican Rome, they also typically narrate its evolution out of a more archaic scenario. This diachrony is chiefly built on the accounts of Pliny the Elder and Censorinus, yet it is inflected in markedly dif­fer­ent ways that influence how we are to understand the relationship between ancient and modern time practices. D’Arnay makes the division of the day into hours the culmination of a de­ cadence narrative. His archaic Romans live the rustic life known from Varro and ­others; their visits to the city for regular assemblies took place only “twice a month, the day of the calends, and that of the ides”—an infrequency seemingly even further removed from the quotidian than the nundinal rhythm idealized by Varro in On Agriculture (2.pr.1).96 But then, a­ fter offering up a Sallustian narrative of decline into laziness and luxury as evidenced by reliance on slaves, D’Arnay explains how Romans reached a state in which leisure now had a sanctioned place: “Not to live in idleness was no longer to live like a citizen. All the hours of the day, which w ­ ere formerly employed in some useful business, ­were divided between pleasures and the intercourse of civilities, between the agitations which the passions exact, and the repose which nature demands. Let us see how t­ hese hours w ­ ere distributed.”97 Marquardt’s account retains the same basic dichotomy between republican-­ rural and imperial-­urban, though without the de­cadence narrative. The prior period, however, has a pristine simplicity: “They arose with sunrise, sacrificed, and breakfasted; worked till noon, ate, and slept a l­ittle and went back to work ­until the eve­ning meal. So did the days pass one like another, except when ­there was a ­house­hold festival.”98 This was so only ­because the diversification of lives in the context of the city resulted in a situation where “the distribution of the day’s activities” differed as much from person to person as city life in general differed from rural life.99 Carcopino portrays a more dramatic and more recent modernizing trajectory that picked up speed only in the imperial period. The hours themselves are “late intruders into the Roman day,” and even ­a fter the introduction of Messalla’s sundial, the Romans “continued to govern their day in the old happy-­go-­lucky manner by the apparent course of the sun above the monuments of their public places, as if the horologium had never existed.”100 Whereas Pliny the Elder makes Scipio Nasica’s w ­ ater clock in the second ­c entury BCE the capstone of public time marking at Rome, Carcopino makes “the second ­century of our era” the time when new technologies ­were proliferating: “In the time of Trajan a

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water-­clock was as much a vis­i­ble symbol of its own­er’s distinction and social status as a piano is for certain strata of our m ­ iddle classes ­today.”101 Carcopino’s piano analogy, together with his repeated comparison of ­water clocks and portable sundials to modern watches, brings into clear focus the assimilation of two highly specific historical moments, with the early second c­ entury coming close to resembling the early twentieth. Although in his preface to his book, Carcopino makes it clear that Rome belongs to a distinct historical era that did not yet know “steam, electricity, railways, motorcars, and aeroplanes,” his focus on the sudden acceleration of changes in time technology allows the Roman era to adumbrate the pro­cesses of modernization, just as he describes Roman urban space as “an anticipation of orderliness” for the cities of the modern West.102 Yet the pivot point that is perhaps most prominent and most “modern” in Carcopino’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the history of diurnal time structures in the city of Rome is Julius Caesar’s law restricting wagon traffic from the streets during daylight hours. A ­ fter lamenting that Rome’s streets, like an “oriental bazaar,” “­were filled with a confusion that seems to us incompatible with the very idea of civilisation,” Carcopino writes: And suddenly in the twinkling of an eye they are transformed by a logical and imperious decree, swiftly imposed and maintained generation a­ fter generation, symbol of that social discipline which among the Romans compensated for their lack of techniques, and which the West ­today, oppressed by a multiplicity of discoveries and the complexities of pro­gress, is for its salvation striving to imitate.103

But if Carcopino’s Rome sets the bar higher than modern cities, Dupont is undoubtedly reacting against this idea and seeking to give a kind of contradictory mirror image of Carcopino’s imperial world in her pre­sen­ta­tion of life in the republic. For t­ here it is precisely with monarchy in Rome—­referring e­ ither to Julius Caesar or to Augustus—­that “every­thing came unravelled.”104 Her picture of Roman daily life in which ­there is “no such ­thing as time” lacks a backstory: the backstory is the story, since her citizens happily inhabit Pliny’s indiscreta lux (HN 7.215), and therein lies their distinction. The sixth tendency is that the handbooks use both diurnal framework and quotidian rhythm to gestate narratives that look forward in historical time, ­whether ­these culminate in Rome’s decline and the rise of Chris­tian­ity or conversely serve as highwater marks that Western history can subsequently potentially aspire to reach once again—as in the case of the Romans’ supposedly shorter workday. I have already touched on this “gestation” of f­ uture narratives in such examples as Caesar’s laws regulating daytime traffic, which

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346  Ordering Knowledge

points far ahead to the aspirations of modern urban planners. In Davis’s and Carcopino’s closing scenes featuring the Christian agapê ­there is an unsubtle gesturing forward to the time when Roman shadows w ­ ill yield to the long invisible but soon bright Christian dawn. One example given by Marquardt and reproduced in ­later handbooks is the anecdote that in 410 CE Alaric invaded Rome while the Romans ­were inattentive during siesta.105 An emblematic time of the Roman day thus becomes an Achilles’s heel. Casson emplots the end of pagan Rome as a long-­awaited “weekend”: the putative unceasing Roman quotidian grind, in which Roman “businessmen and workers put in not only a full day but a full week”—­a narrative that requires us to turn a blind eye to the Romans’ nundinal cycle and festive calendar with its in-­built vacations—is rescued by the arrival of the seven-­day week and Sunday in 321 CE.106 Carcopino, however, most comprehensively exploits both diurnal and quotidian dynamics for historical gestation in his pre­sen­ta­tion of many of the city’s events as so many instances of the “cruelty of daily life.”.107 In his sections titled “The Races” and “The Amphitheatre” he repeatedly uses the day itself as a mea­ sure of cruelty. In the “ephemeral and monstrous” Circus Maximus, “the number of races held in one day was increased in the early empire,” being doubled ­under Caligula, such that “when we remember the rest at noon and the pause which necessarily intervened between the missus [i.e., race events], the circus day was filled to overflowing. But the Romans could never have too much.”108 In the gladiatorial events of the amphitheater Carcopino laments a kind of whole-­day, quotidian pedagogy: “The thousands of Romans who day a­ fter day, from morning u ­ ntil night, could take plea­sure in this slaughter and not spare a tear for t­ hose whose sacrifice multiplied their stakes, ­were learning nothing but contempt for ­human life and dignity.”109 His climactic critique of the amphitheater precisely details their transgression of perceived bound­aries within the day: In vain we seek to find some shadow of extenuation in the fact that the amphitheatre had scarcely begun to fill in time for the dawn venatio, and that the hour assigned to the gladiatores meridiani was the moment when the theatre was three parts empty (dum vacabat arena) ­because the workers had not yet come to take their seats and the idlers had already gone to snatch a bite at home. If this arrangement of the program shows on the part of the Romans a sort of shamed apology for t­ hese nightmare scenes, t­ here w ­ ere among them too many connoisseurs of horror who would not for the world have missed them. Rather than lose a moment of ­either they preferred, like Claudius, to make a rule of arriving before dawn and g­ oing without midday lunch. Despite all the extenuations we may

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Reading Roman Days in Modern Times   347 urge, the Roman ­people remain guilty of deriving a public joy from their capital executions by turning the Colosseum into a torture-­chamber and a human-­ slaughter ­house.110

But if this habituation to everyday cruelty is virtually irredeemable, an opposite example, his account of the baths, “one of the fairest creations of the Roman Empire,” in which “the emperors put personal hygiene on the daily agenda of Rome and within reach of the humblest,” is anchored in the benefits of daily consistency.111 Only one or two examples are negative, such as the case of Commodus who “took up to eight baths a day”—­a quotidian excess that punctuates Carcopino’s orderly Rome of the early Antonines.112 Carcopino puzzles through the vari­ous data on bathing times to compose an idealized portrait of this publicly regulated form of life and leisure, which includes the gender-­ specific hours known from vari­ous inscriptions suggesting that ­women ­were permitted to occupy the baths starting at the sixth hour. “At the eighth or ninth hour,” he notes, “according to w ­ hether it was winter or summer, the bell sounded 113 again.” Although this is a plausible indication of when ­women’s bathing hours might end and men’s begin, we should note that Carcopino’s implicit source must be the familiar observation that “in winter it is the ninth, in summer the eighth” (est autem hieme nona, aestate octava) “when the hour for bathing is announced” (ubi hora balinei nuntiata est). Yes, that is Spurinna’s bath signal from the letter of Pliny with which we began this book (Ep. 3.1.8).114 Carcopino, then, quietly absorbs Spurinna’s rule into the idealized order of his everyday life for Rome as a ­whole.

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Epilogue

We have examined the role of the Roman day in ancient history and lit­er­a­ture as well as in several influential modern accounts, and I hope that my method has done justice to the complexities of the topic. I readily admit that I have given disproportionate attention to a set of self-­privileging documents that only occasionally let us glimpse the time experience of nonelite Romans. Even the elite experience itself has been neglected in certain impor­tant areas. One anonymous reviewer of my manuscript, for example, asked about episodes making reference to diurnal time in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, to which I threw my hands up, all too conscious of having largely sidelined Ovid, as well as many other authors. Beyond wishing to integrate a broader set of texts into the mix, I am now also intensely curious about two other topics. The first is disorder. Although I have sought to give a multifaceted account of what order is and the dif­fer­ent ways in which it is employed in the histories of Roman time, I have no doubt risked perpetuating a ste­reo­typical understanding of the Roman world and of the Roman imperial subject as embodiments of order. Such an understanding needs to be more actively interrogated through attending to resistant time tactics, queer temporalities, and counterexamples within ancient data—­that is, through remaining open to possibilities that may not line up with our at times teleological expectations.

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350   The Ordered Day

The second is space. It goes without saying, I hope, that space and time are the two most mutually entangled dimensions of social practice. I hope to have done justice to the Roman day as always also a lived space or itinerary, w ­ hether in the topography of the Roman world or in the imaginary of texts and bodies. But a more active exploration of ancient spaces for which t­ here is no explicit surviving signifier in textual or narrative form represents a vast opportunity for rethinking what we can know about ancient “lives” or for “peopling the past” (a phrase that was coined for an exciting archeology-­focused proj­ect in 2020; https://­peoplingthepast​.­com). To put it more simply: how can we use spaces (and objects) to tell stories that texts do not tell us? This is the kind of question to which archeologists have long given creative and satisfying answers, of course. I gesture to it ­here, however, as conspicuously relevant to quotidian time—­that unremarkable, unnarrated, iterative time that always eludes us and yet is so much a part of the forms of life that define a given culture.

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no t e s

Introduction 1. ​My proj­ect began during the surge of interest in time in the 1990s, but studies have intensified amid the latest “temporal turn”; see Gribetz and Kaye 2019, 363–68. To survey recent approaches to the social construction of time in the ancient Mediterranean world see, e.g., Färber and Gautschy 2020, Eidinow and Maurizio 2020, Miller and Symons 2019, Ben-­Dov and Doering 2017, Jones 2016, Stern 2012, and Hannah 2009a. 2. ​Translations are mine ­unless other­wise indicated. This and other letters of Pliny are discussed in detail in chapter 7. 3. ​Sherwin-­W hite 1966, 206. 4. ​On Pliny’s Spurinna letters see Gibson and Morello 2012, esp. 104–23, 220–21, Henderson 2002a, 58–66, and chapter 7, 218–21. 5. ​On vita combined with regula, see Agamben 2003, 65–72, and chapter 9, 275–76. 6. ​See in general Hannah 2009a, which uses Spurinna’s seasonally variable bathing hour to compare cultural perspectives (139). 7. ​See, e.g., Riggsby 2003. 8. ​Agamben (2013) and Henderson (2002c) begin to undertake this endeavor. 9. ​Kroh 2015, 85; Tamás 2015, 58. 10. ​Cited in connection with Spurinna in Mayor 1889, 41. 11. ​See Squire 2014, 361, which draws on Lausberg 1998, 209–14 (section on dispositio, including ordo naturalis and ordo artificialis). 12. ​Tamás 2015, 55; Kroh 2015, 85. 13. ​Leach 2003, 164. 14. ​“Distinctius” further indicates “variatio.” See Tamás 2015, 60–61, and Kroh 2015, 79; see also Mayor 1889, 41: “Distinguere is to dot, spangle, stud, set, mark at intervals, intersperse” and “[i]n Spurinna’s life every­thing was in its place.” Merrill (1903, 265) also refers to “more carefully ordered.” 15. ​For the sentiment see also Mart. Epigr. 4.78.9–10. Such an emphasis, argues Hannah (2009a, 138), may be counterintuitive for the modern reader, who expects flexibility in retirement, not regularity. 16. ​Henderson 2002a, 202n55. Whitton (2019, 385) traces the image to Quintilian, e.g., Inst. 1.10.46. 17. ​Joshel and Petersen 2014, 10–11. See also Miller 2022.

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352   Notes to Pages 3–6 18. ​On this reanalysis of “cursus,” see Kroh 2015, 82. 19. ​Starobinski 1984, 104, 103, 101. Starobinski’s essay is mentioned by Detienne and Sissa (2000, 2). 20. ​See Squire 2014, 372, on a comparable pivot between Homer’s ordering of plot and the poet’s ordering within the canon: “It is worth noting how the rhe­toric of order was itself used to ‘order’ Homer rhetorically within the rank and file of other epic poets.” 21. ​On the aesthetic, rhetorical, and narratological aspects of ordo, see Tamás 2015, Kroh 2015, and Squire 2014. For “time and cosmos,” see Jones 2016, esp. 34–42; on time, nature, and po­liti­cal order, see Sattler 2019. On ordo and ordinatio as key features of Roman rationalizing and antiquarian culture in the late republic, see Moatti 2015, esp. 168–80, 235–37. See also OLD s.v. “ordo” for such senses as “civil or social standing” (5a), “orderly form or arrangement” (13a), and “an established method or practice, a system, routine” (15a), and TLL s.v. “ordo” 1, citing August. De civ. D. 19.13: “ordo is an arranging of equal and unequal t­ hings that assigns to each its own place” (ordo est parium dispariumque rerum sua cuique loca tribuens dispositio). 22. ​König and Whitmarsh 2007, 4. 23. ​Östenberg 2015. 24. ​See Wolkenhauer 2011, esp. 1–12, which supplies a helpful review of modern scholarship; quotation on 1–2. 25. ​Gargola 2017, 21–25; quotation on 22–23. 26. ​Gargola 2017, 2, 11, 12. 27. ​Still unsurpassed on sociocultural time is Sorokin 1943, 158–225; see also Adam 1990 and Gell 1992. For its application to the Roman calendar, see Rüpke 2011, 1–5. 28. ​Sorokin 1943, 172. 29. ​See the lists of Sorokin 1943, 171 (duration, synchronicity, sequence, change), Moore 1963, 8 (synchronization, sequence, rate), and Zerubavel 1981, 1 (sequence, duration, time location, rate of recurrence). 30. ​Moore 1963, 8–9, 44. Zerubavel coined the term “sociotemporal order” (1981, 2; 1979, 105–30). 31. ​Moore 1963, 5, 7. 32. ​On the “work of time,” see Bourdieu 1990, 98–111. 33. ​See, e.g., Luckmann (1991, 151), who notes that personal identity is defined through the “interpenetration” of several “non-­identical diachronies,” and also Sorokin 1943, 172. 34. ​On circadian rhythms, see Wittmann 2017, 59–82, Aveni 2002, 13–31, and Zerubavel 1979, 116. On physiotemporal vs. biotemporal vs. sociotemporal, see Zerubavel 1981, 2. 35. ​Moore (1963, 6) characterizes the day as “perhaps the most nearly universal, and in a sense most ‘natu­ral,’ temporal unit”; compare Zerubavel 1985, 1–4, on the purely cultural construction of the week. 36. ​Moore 1963, 16. Zerubavel (1979, 30) notes that like other established social cycles, the day “constitutes a structurally unsegmentable entity with definite temporal bound­ aries” (30). 37. ​Berger and Luckmann 1966, 19–44; quotations on 21, 42. 38. ​See Fraenkel 1955b on “ephêmeros” in early Greek lit­er­a­ture, a term that captures several distinct dimensions of h ­ uman contingency; see also Detienne and Sissa 2000, ­Macleod 1982, 47–48, and Vivante 1979.

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Notes to Pages 7–10   353 39. ​Nilsson 1920, 11–44. 40. ​Evans-­Pritchard 1940, 101. 41. ​Hoskins 1993, 67. 42. ​E.g., Nilsson 1920, 43, and Fabian 1983, 31. 43. ​Whorf 1956, 148. 44. ​Fabian 1983, 35. 45. ​Fabian 1983, 23. 46. ​See esp. Gell 1992, 3–14. 47. ​Glennie and Thrift 2009, 10, 61; see also Birth 2017, 1–16. 48. ​On the us-­them relation with regard to timekeeping, see Feeney 2007, 116 with n. 41. 49. ​My breakdown of clock time is inspired by the pluralistic and descriptive approach of Glennie and Thrift 2009, though my par­a meters differ. See also Dohrn-­van Rossum 1996 and O’Malley 1990. 50. ​For “timescapes,” see Adam 2005, 10; see also Birth 2012, 31–33. Pro­gress is central in Elias 1992; for a classic decline narrative culminating in machine time, “whose rhythm does not follow the rhythm of life,” see Mukerjee 1943, 259. 51. ​The ­grand narrative approach and so-­called watersheds are critiqued and qualified by Glennie and Thrift (2009, esp. 47–53). “Order” and “orderliness” are leitmotifs in, e.g., O’Malley 1990 (24, 27). 52. ​E.g., Mumford 1934, 12–18, 326–33; see also Foucault 1995, 135–69 (esp. 141), cited in Giddens 1984, 147. On the monastery-­factory connection, see the critique in Dohrn-­ van Rossum 1996, 33–35. 53. ​See Bettini 1991 on the spatialization of time and Gardner 2013 on its gendering in love elegies. 54. ​Birth 2012, 3. 55. ​See also Hannah’s reflections on what devices can tell us about “what ordinary ­people thought on a daily basis about time” (2009b, 740–41). For basic accounts of Roman diurnal timekeeping, see Hannah 2009a, 68–95, Bickerman 1968, 13–16, and Marquardt 1864, 258–63. 56. ​Birth 2012, 67. But Sattler argues that the Greek concept of the hour already fused duration and position in time (2019, 171). 57. ​Heilen 2019, 243–49. 58. ​See, e.g., Bede De temporum ratione 5 with Wallis 1999, 270–71; and see TLL and OLD on the varying grammatical gender of “dies,” which initially corresponded to semantic distinctions (e.g., feminine for a date) but was increasingly determined by authorial preference and other ­factors (see Corbeill 2015, 49). 59. ​Cited also in Mayor 1889, 41, and Bonnin 2015, 206n1. 60. ​See Bilfinger 1888b. According to Jones (2019, 135), Greek and Roman imprecision “was not determined by limitations of easily available technology.” On the mistaken privileging of (im)precision as a pa­ram­e­ter for contrasting premodern with modern temporalities, see Hanss 2019. 61. ​On Roman night, see in general Chaniotis 2018, Ker and Wessels 2020, and Wolkenhauer 2015, 84–91, and 2011, 115–22. A useful critique of essentialist assumptions about night and day is provided by Beerden, who considers, for example, the evidence for “segmented sleep” and thus more activity during the night than is usually supposed (2020, 257, 262).

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354   Notes to Pages 10–14 62. ​On daily social traffic, see, e.g., Laurence 2011 and 2007, 154–66; also Laurence and Smith 1995–96, 141, 146. 63. ​On sunrise and sunset formulae, see Bardon 1964; on Virgil’s daytime markers, see van Sickle 1981. 64. ​On “double” time telling h ­ ere and elsewhere, see Weinreich 1937. 65. ​A modern instance is Bettini 1991, developed further in Short 2016. On ancient antiquarianism as anthropology, see Bettini 2010. 66. ​See Gratwick 1979, 320–21, and Feeney 2010, 885. 67. ​When Ovid, exiled in Tomis, observes that the summer and winter solstices do not shorten his nights or days, respectively (Tr. 5.10.7–8), he has lost a distinctive feature of Roman civil time; see Hinds 2005, 215. 68. ​On “short time” see Miller and Symons 2019. 69. ​Compare Geertz 1973, 391–96, on incommensurate overlays in the Balinese calendar that made each day unique. 70. ​On the seasons, see esp. Rossiter and Suksi 2003. 71. ​On calendrical categories and festivals, see esp. Rüpke 2011 and Michels 1967 as well as Bergmann 1984 and Laurence and Smith 1995–96; on eight-­and seven-­day cycles, see Ker 2010 and Salzman 2004; on birthdays, see Argetsinger 1992; on astrological cycles, see Barton 1994, 52; on pebbles, see Harvey 1981, 56, and chapter 7, 197. 72. ​Beard 1987, 10; Feeney 2007, 162. For diachronic time schemes incorporated into calendars, see Wallace-­Hadrill 2008, 239–48 and 1987 (in Augustan time), Hardie 2005 (Virgilian time), and Clarke 2008, 34 (Hellenistic). 73. ​See, e.g., Feeney 2007, esp. 202–211, Pasco-­Pranger 2006, Volk 1997, Newlands 1995, and early surveys in Fantham 1995 and Miller 1992. 74. ​Rüpke 2017, 55. 75. ​On the inscribed calendrical fasti (collected in Degrassi 1963), see esp. Rüpke 2011; on the Filocalus codex, see Salzman 1990. On ancient calendars in general, which emphasized po­liti­cal function, see Stern 2012. 76. ​See Otto 1890, s.vv. “dies,” “lux,” “tempus.” 77. ​See, e.g., Braund 1989, 34 (day in satire), van Sickle 1981 (pastoral), Schwindt 1994 (tragedy, citing Lloyd 2007, 293–94), Germany 2014 (comedy), Ker 2009a, 155–74 (epistolo­ graphy); Bardon 1964 (epic). On “chronotope,” see chapter 4, 123. 78. ​See Roche 2019, 101–2. 79. ​ LTUR, s.v. “Fortuna huiusce diei”; see also Sauron 1994, 135–37. 80. ​On the monument and its debated function, see esp. Bonnin 2015, 295–307, and Heslin 2007 as well as Schaldach 2016, 77, 80, and Haselberger 2014. For the ­earlier, “sundial” theory, see Wallace-­Hadrill 1987 and Buchner 1982. 81. ​Kondoleon 1999, 337. 82. ​See Feeney 2007, 213, which draws on Laurence and Smith 1995–96, 140–41. See also Feeney 2010, 885. 83. ​Feeney 2007, 214. 84. ​Compare esp. Hor. Serm. 2.6.25–26, where it is a season (bruma) that tightens (trahit) the day (diem), an idea I discuss further in chapter 6, 184. Reckford (1997, 608) sees at Carm. 4.7.9 hour, season, Horace, and connections to Hesiodic Horae (Seasons) (602–3). Like Feeney, Thomas (2011, 178) reads in “hora” only “the personified hour,” as does Putnam (1986, 136). For further insights, see Ancona 1994, 54–55.

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Notes to Pages 14–18   355 85. ​Feeney, 2007, 214; see also Thomas 2011, 179, citing Varr. Ling. 6.8. 86. ​E.g., Plaut. Pseud. 1304–5. See Mayor 1889, 44–46. 87. ​A favorite early modern sundial slogan is “pulvis et umbra sumus” (see Gatty 1900, e.g., 373, no. 1008, 419, no. 1294, and 424, no. 1332). 88. ​Feeney 2007, 215, citing, e.g., Ov. Fast. 2.683: “The extent of the city of Rome, and of the world, are one and the same” (Romanae spatium est urbis et orbis idem). On Roman time schemes in Horatian lyric, see also Feeney 1993. 89. ​Gardner 2013, esp. 33–56. 90. ​The term is Feeney’s (2007, 2). 91. ​Riggsby 2003, 178; see also Wolkenhauer on dif­fer­ent Roman chronotopes (2019, 225–36). 92. ​On the contrast with Spurinna’s urban salutatio, see Hoffer 1999, 78–80, and Merrill 1903, 265. 93. ​See also Ep. 2.7.3. On the context of the Spurinna letters, see Sherwin-­W hite 1966, 206. 94. ​On everyday as polyvalent, see Highmore 2002, esp. 4–8, along with Kaplan and Ross 1987. 95. ​Berger and Luckmann 1966, 27; Giddens 1984, 35. Adam (1990, 24–26) discusses connections between Giddens’s concept and Bergson’s durée and Heidegger’s Dasein. 96. ​Giddens 1984, 35; he is critiquing Hägerstrand 1975. 97. ​Zerubavel 1979, 26. 98. ​Zerubavel 1981, 19; see also Zerubavel 1979, 85 (standardization as basis of “intersubjective social real­ity”), 124–30 (“cognitive ‘normalcy’ of everyday life” [127]). Moore (1963, 43) notes that the absence of recurrence and predictability is “psychologically intolerable.” 99. ​For this subcategorization of “time discipline,” see Glennie and Thrift 2009, 45, which revisits E. P. Thompson’s classic essay “Time, Work-­Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism” (1967); see also Ogle 2019. 100. ​Glennie and Thrift 2009, 8. 101. ​Highmore 2002, 5. 102. ​Highmore 2002, 3. 103. ​On this aspect of salutatio, see Goldbeck 2010, 107–8. 104. ​Ker 2010, 369. On quotidianization as “greying,” see Rüpke 2011, 162n95, adapting Fraser 1987, 314; see also Sorokin 1943, 200: “bleaching” or “graying” effect of viewing time quantitatively rather than qualitatively. 105. ​Compare Philo’s ideal of making “­every day” (hêmera pasa) a festival in Spec. II.42, discussed by Gribetz (2018) and (2020, 36–37), who also compares Philo’s ideal with Seneca’s. On Carm. 3.30.8–9, see chapter 6, 191. 106. ​See Sattler 2019, 163. See also Seneca’s discussion of this Heraclitus fragment (Ep. 12.7) with Ker 2009a, 337. 107. ​For more on Seneca’s treatment of the festive in ascetic terms, see Ker 2009a, 147–48. 108. ​Lefebvre 1984, 29. 109. ​On time orientation and related concepts, see chapter 4, 121. 110. ​On dramatization, see chapter 4, 120. 111. ​Hanss 2019, 284.

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356   Notes to Pages 25–29 Chapter 1

•

In Search of Palamedes

1. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 334. 2. ​I follow Marshall’s Oxford Classical Texts edition. 3. ​Wolkenhauer begins from the same fragment (2011, 1; see 124–37 for her analy­sis). 4. ​See the foundational article by Gratwick (1979). 5. ​The terms come from Zerubavel 2003, 99, and Hannah 2009a, 84 with n. 53, which cites Turner 1990, 20. 6. ​Feeney 2007, 116–17 with n. 44, 118 with n. 50. 7. ​Feeney 2007, 116–17 with n. 44. 8. ​Cited in Gratwick 1979, 311. 9. ​The fullest Roman source is Plin. HN 7.192–93, 198, 202. On Palamedes (and Prometheus), see Kleingünther 1933, 78–84, and also Wolkenhauer 2011, 51, 59–61, on Palamedes as inventor of timekeeping and tools for regulation. 10. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 130. 11. ​Bhabha 1994. On the “differential history” of clock time, see Glennie and Thrift 2009, 57–62. 12. ​For detailed surveys, see Hannah 2009a, 68–95, Dohrn-­van Rossum 1996, esp. 17–28 (within the history of horology), Bickerman 1968, 14–16, and Kubitschek 1928, 178–87. 13. ​Gratwick 1979, 311, drawing partly on Alciphron’s Epistulae (Palamêdeion [3.1.2]). 14. ​An exception to this is the Horus etymology; see introduction, 9. 15. ​On Anaximander, see Diog. Laert. 2.1. On Anaximander’s gnomonics, see Couprie 2003, 183–94. 16. ​On the Herodotus passage see esp. Bonnin 2015, 51–54; see also the commentary in Lloyd 1975–88, 2:34–36. Herodotus attributes to the Egyptians the twelve months and twelve gods (2.4) (and some Egyptian ­water clocks with twelve hours bore depictions of twelve tutelary deities [von Lieven and Schomberg 2019, 59]). Scholars open to the idea of a Babylonian origin include Lloyd 1975–88, 2:36 (perhaps “via intermediaries”), Bonnin 2015, 50 (given other Greek debts to Babylonian science), Rochberg-­Halton 1989, 165, Smith 1969, 81, and Remijsen 2007 (though “­there must also have been a considerable Egyptian influence” [129], given the resulting Greek system that divided day and night into twelve hours each). Yet certain early Greek clock devices resemble surviving Egyptian models, observes Schaldach (2016, 63; see also 66, figs. 3.1 and 3.2; he also refers to Steele 2016, 51, fig. 2.2, and 53, fig.2.4). 17. ​See in general Steele 2016, 50–52. On Mesopotamia, see Bonnin 2015, 47–50; for Babylonian seasonal hours, see Rochberg-­Halton 1989; on the bêru as analogous to twelve months, see Steele 2019, 97. The classic explanation of the Egyptian division of night into twelve seasonal hours (applied l­ater to day) is Neugebauer 1957, 81–89; see also Clagett 1995, 48–98. On Egyptian seasonal hours and hourly rites, see von Lieven and Schomberg 2019, 53–57, von Lieven 2017, and Quirke 2001, 41–52. For Egyptian equinoctial hours, see Clagett 1995, 98–106. 18. ​Munn 2006, 197–201. 19. ​Munn rightly equivocates between translating “hôroskopeia” as “hour watches” or “season watches” (2006, 200n80). 20. ​See Hannah 2009a, 70–75. As Schaldach (2016, 63) notes, Herodotus wrote “before t­ here was a specific word for the unit.” Turner suggests that only usage “in

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Notes to Pages 29–31   357 learned circles” is meant (1993, 20). The first modern skeptic of early Greek usage was Salmasius 1629, 632–58 (see Gratwick 1979, 314–17). Yet the absence of evidence for early hour usage in Greece is not evidence of absence, argues Kubitschek 1928, 178–79, and ­there is more evidence for hour usage, at least in the fourth c­ entury, than was allowed in ­earlier scholarship; see Lloyd 1975–88, 2:34–36, and Langholf 1973. On the evolving Greek notion of hôra / hôrê, see Bonnin 2015, 55–56, and Sattler 2019, 171–80. For Homeric hôrê as the apt time to do a specific task, see Austin 1975, 87. 21. ​For “prehorological” (also “nonhorological”) see Birth 2012, 46, 49. Early day division is surveyed in Bonnin 2015, 29–39; see also Wolkenhauer 2011, 102–4, Dunn 2007, 13–17, Fritsch 1985, and Dissen 1839. For detail on the Roman parts, see chapter 3, 80 and 109–10. 22. ​See Fantuzzi 1988, 129–32. 23. ​See Kubitschek 1928, 187–88. 24. ​See Bickerman 1968, 14. But see Fries (2014, 328) on Rhesus 543, where ­there is mention of five watches. Homer’s world seems to imply three; Fries supplies further references (327–28). 25. ​On the canonical hours before Chris­tian­ity, see Bilfinger 1888b, 46–73. 26. ​See Kubitschek 1928, 187. In the Hippocratics, see, e.g., Epid. 7.25: “On the sixth day, at the same time [tên autên hôrên], around the time the market was full [ peri plêthousan agorên].” On “intraday” time indications in the Epidemics, see Miller 2018, 118–19. 27. ​On sun tracking, see Hannah 2009a, 75–81. 28. ​On t­ hese w ­ ater units of time see Hannah 2009a, 100, 102, Clarke 2008, 29–33, 296, and Dunn 2007, 13–17. On the divided day in par­tic­u ­lar, see Rhodes 1993, 719–23, on Ath. Pol. 67.iii–68.i. 29. ​On ancient definition and usage, see the surveys in Jones 2016, 23–29, and Bonnin 2015, 55–56; for more detail, see Bickerman 1968, 14–16, Kubitschek 1928, 178–82, and Bilfinger 1888b, 74–116. 30. ​Kubitschek 1928, 188. 31. ​Hipp. Epid. 4.V, 150, 17–18 Littré and De affectionibus interioribus VII, 238, 22–23 Littré, both cited in Langholf 1973, 383. 32. ​Sattler 2019, 170–80. 33. ​The Athenian Constitution and Pytheas are regularly cited, see, e.g., Lloyd 1975–88, 2:35, and Rehm 1896, 2418. But the hour specification of “Pytheas” may be ­later commentary by Geminus, cautions Schaldach (2016, 92 n.9). 34. ​On the postal archives, see Remijsen 2007; on historiography, see chapter 2, 58. 35. ​Gibbs 1976, 394, no. 8008 = IG XII.8.240. 36. ​Gratwick 1979, 320–21; Feeney 2010, 885. 37. ​This phrasing comes from the helpful account of Glennie and Thrift 2009, 25–26. For further nuance (e.g., regarding continuous and noncontinuous hours), see Miller and Symons 2019, 4, and Symons 2019, 48. 38. ​Glennie and Thrift 2009, 26. 39. ​Schaldach (2016, 68) is especially insightful on equinoctial hours on the Olympia and Oropos sundials; he suggests that the prevalence of seasonal hours reflected Egyptian influence. On the Oropos sundial, see Hannah 2009a, 73–74, and Schaldach 2004. 40. ​The perceived superior authority of sundial over ­water clock is discussed in Mehl 2006, 167.

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358   Notes to Pages 31–34 41. ​Von Lieven and Schomberg 2019, 58. 42. ​See Bonnin 2015, 56. Hannah keeps an open mind on equinoctial vs. seasonal (2009a, 74–75). 43. ​This passage from Pseudolus is also discussed in Wolkenhauer 2019, 220n19. 44. ​See also Schaldach 2016, 92n12. 45. ​On ancient use of horological devices, see Bonnin 2015, Winter 2013, 1:21–89, Hannah 2009a, 85–115 (Hannah 2009b, 746–54, also offers useful observations), Kubitschek 1928, 188–217, and Diels 1920, 155–232. 46. ​On self-­conscious play with the unity of time and day unit in Roman comedy, see Germany 2014. 47. ​For a detailed survey of Egyptian sundial types, see Symons 2019, Symons and Khurana 2016, and Bonnin 2015, 41–45. On Egyptian w ­ ater clocks, see von Lieven and Schomberg 2019, Schomberg 2018, Clagett 1995, 65–83, and Bonnin 2015, 45–57. On Egyptian star clocks, see Symons 2019, 24–47, and Clagett 1995, 48–65. On Egyptian devices in general, see Cotterell, Dickson, and Kamminga 1986. 48. ​On the possibility that the hôroskopeia may only have traced the year’s seasons, see Bonnin 2015, 51–52, Hannah 2009a, 69, and Gibbs 1976, 6–7, 94n12. On the idea that the twelve parts of the day, the gnomon, and the sundial w ­ ere not necessarily used together, see Lloyd 1975–88, 2:35: “We are . . . ​not obliged to treat H.’s polon kai gnômona as a compound phrase referring to a single instrument” (as some other commentators do). Bonnin (2015, 51) is also cautious. Couprie sees the polos as “an improved version of the gnomon” (2003, 185). Contra Winter 2013, 1:113–14: the day parts, polos, and gnômôn are a bundle. 49. ​Schaldach doubts that polos ­here is a “hemispherical dial”: “­There is no evidence that the Babylonians at that time had a s­ pherical conception of the sky” (2016, 63). Turner (1993, 311) likewise questions this: the gnômôn mentioned is likely “a shadow-­caster,” while polos is “a calendrical instrument”; neither is “a true sun-­dial.” 50. ​See de Solla Price 1975. 51. ​The seasonal/calendrical dimension of hour indication is vividly foregrounded in the digital models of Heath, Hershman, and Roughan 2018. 52. ​Gibbs 1976, 394, no. 8008 = IG XII.8.240. 53. ​Enumerated in Gibbs 1976, 86–87. 54. ​For the epigram, found both in the Palatine Anthology and on a sundial at Herculaneum, see Hannah 2009a, 137, and chapter 7, 206. For the convention of marking the number six with the obsolete alphabetic sign stigma (Ϛ / ϛ) see Emde Boas, Rijksbaron, Huitink, and de Bakker 2019, 104. 55. ​Gibbs 1976, 86, 89. 56. ​Quoted in Gibbs 1976, 6. 57. ​Le Boeuffle 1989, 12–14. See also Bonnin 2015, 33–34, on Eur. Rhes. 527–36, where the succession of nocturnal watches is timed by star observation. 58. ​See Kubitschek 1928, 180–81. Greek usage is mentioned by Pollux in the Onomasticon (1.71–72). In his Opus agriculturae (fourth ­century CE), Palladius concludes his book on each month by listing the shadow length (perhaps that cast by a standardized gnomon rather than by the body; see White 1970, 515n77) for each hour. For December and January, hour 1 = twenty-­nine feet (hora I pedes XXVIIII), 2 = 19, 3 = 15, 4 = 12, 5 = 10, 6 = 8,

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Notes to Pages 34–38   359 7 = 10, 8 = 12, 9 = 15, 10 = 19, 11 = 29. For June and July, hour 1 = 22, 2 = 12, 3 = 8, 4 = 5, 5 = 3, 6 = 2, 7 = 3, 8 = 5, 9 = 8, 10 = 12, 11 = 22. For Palladius in translation, see Fitch 2013. 59. ​On Greek and Roman ­water clocks and clepsydrae, see esp. Bonnin 2015, 56–61, Winter 2013, 1:22–38, Schaldach 2016, 63–65, Hannah 2009a, 99–115, and Schmidt 1912. Rhodes explains forensic usage and also clarifies that “stealing” relates to the initial pro­cess in which the vessel acquires ­water (1993, 719–20). 60. ​Birth 2012, 51. On Egyptian ­water clocks proper, see von Lieven and Schomberg 2019, 63–65. Other “ ‘egg-­timer’ strategies” (as opposed to “strategies for continuous time-­reckoning”) included “burning lamp oil at night” and might also include (hypothetically) using “the ­human pulse, perhaps, or the rhythms of ­music,” as Miller and Simons observe (2019, 3). 61. ​Wolkenhauer 2019, 226–29; Hannah 2009a, 103–5; Riggsby 2009; Ker 2009b. 62. ​Aeneas’s work is dated to 360–356 BCE in Hunter 1927. On the Greek outflow vessel, see Young 1939, Winter 2013, 1:27–30, and Schaldach 2016, 63–64. 63. ​On both outflow clocks, see Armstrong and Camp 1977 and Hannah 2009a, 109. Of the Amphiareion clock, Theodossiou and his colleagues remark that “in such a place, the mea­sure­ment of time was a necessity”; the clock drew from the same spring as the “sacred ­water” used for purification of visitors (2010, 159, 166). On the sundial also found at the Amphiareion, see Schaldach 2004. 64. ​On the Karnak clepsydra, the Vindolanda device, and ­others imported from Egypt and used in Egyptian sanctuaries in the Roman world, see Schomberg 2018, esp. 337, 339. (For an alternative analy­sis of the Vindolanda device, see Birth 2014.) 65. ​See Bonnin 2015, 230–31. 66. ​Jones 2016, 19. Jones focuses on the “Greek geometrical astronomy” (2016, 25) showcased in Greek and Roman sundials. It is likely, Schaldach asserts, that novel devices ­were accompanied by explanatory inscriptions (2016, 68). 67. ​Gibbs 1976, 373–75, no. 7001G = IG XII.5.2.891. I read “[Eudox]on” rather than “[Arat]on” and “[tech]nai” rather than “[graph]ai” (see Kienast 2014, 132). On the Tower of Winds, see Kienast 2014 (for the tentative date, 129–45), including an excursus on the sundials that cites Schaldach 2014, and also Bonnin 2015, 286–94. 68. ​Munn (2006, 200–203) rehearses evidence for the complex (referred to by Pausanias [3.12.10] as Skias, “the Sunshade”), draws parallels with Meton’s hêliotropion in the Athenian Agora, and argues for connections with the Assyrian “portable royal sunshade” (201) and Anaximander’s proj­ect of a world map. 69. ​Discussed in Robertson 1940, 181. 70. ​Gutzwiller 2005, 295–99. 71. ​Graßhoff et al. 2016. Bonnin 2015 offers an overview of terminology, types, components, ornamentation, e­ tc. (chs. 2 and 3, 73–195). On the Time and Cosmos exhibition see Jones 2016 and (for the digital models) Heath, Herschman, and Roughan 2018. See also Winter 2013, Schaldach 2006 (and more briefly Schaldach 1997), highlights in Schaldach 2016, 71–83, and selected examples in Hannah 2009a, 85–95. 72. ​See Bonnin 2015, 197–228 and 229–72, respectively. 73. ​Wolkenhauer 2019, 234n53, which references both Pompeii and Herculaneum. See the Pompeii map with sundial finds and sundial-­related inscriptions in Bonnin 2015, 203, fig. 78.

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360   Notes to Pages 38–42 74. ​Schaldach 2016, 77. 75. ​Dessau, ILS 5624 (Talloires); see also Dessau, ILS 5392 (Nola), 5619 (Pompeii), and 5620 (Nogare). For other inscriptions see Dessau, ILS 5617–23, 5657; for inscribed sundials, see Gibbs 1976, 391–94. 76. ​Gibbs 1976, 91. 77. ​Gibbs 1976, 201, 168, 164, nos. 2006G, 1054G, 1051G. Iconography on sundials is surveyed in Bonnin 2015, 149–52 and 309–49. 78. ​Schaldach 2016, 77, fig. 3.13. 79. ​Dessau, ILS 5625. 80. ​An alternative reading of “horologiar.” is suggested by Bonnin (2015, 83); on this reading, the dedicator himself is perhaps a horologiarius, or “clock minder,” in the military camp. 81. ​From the globe sundial from Prosymna in Greece, discussed in Jones 2016, 73–76; see Gibbs 1976, 376, no. 7002G. The inscription is dated to the second ­century CE, though the sundial dates to the second ­century BCE. 82. ​Further examples of site-­specific and foundational functions of clocks include the sundial dedicated by the Roman colonist Q. Iallius in a remote town (Civitas Igaeditanorum) in the province of Lusitania in 16 BCE, discussed in Etienne 1992, and a first-­ century BCE ­spherical sundial recently discovered in the Cambridge excavations at Interamna Lirenas that names a local plebeian tribune as dedicator (https://­w ww​.­classics​ .­cam​.­ac​.­uk ​/­research​/­projects​/­interamna​-­lirenas​/­the​-­inscribed​-­sundial). 83. ​For a survey, see Schaldach 2016, 83–87 with figs. 3.16–21 and t­ able 1. 84. ​On the ring sundial specifically, see Schaldach 2016, 84–87 and Talbert 2017, 76–81; the three rings are inscribed with Roman month names in Greek, names of canonical towns with their latitude, and seasonal hours. 85. ​Talbert 2017, 165. The first-­century cylindrical specimen found at Este in the “tomb of the physician” was among “surgical and chemical instruments, glass cups, ornaments, a spoon, and a l­ittle amber statue” (Arnaldi and Schaldach 1997, 109); Jones vividly evokes its pos­si­ble usefulness for the physician (2018, 235). 86. ​Talbert 2017, 137–70. 87. ​O’Malley 1990, 177. 88. ​Landes 2000, 14. 89. ​On such frameworks in ancient culture history, see in general Lovejoy and Boas 1935. 90. ​Reckford 1997, 587. 91. ​For astronomical analy­sis of this passage, in which the constellations do not budge beyond their configuration of the early eve­ning, see Hannah 1993, Hannah 2009a, 24, and Le Boeuffle 1989, 9–10. 92. ​See the discussion in Dunn 2007, 14, and the commentary in Hunter 1983, 217–19. 93. ​For speculation on the parasite’s place within the lost drama, see Wolkenhauer 2011, 129. On sundials as inspiration for this category of parasite humor, see Hannah 2009a, 82–83, and Wolkenhauer 2011, 132–35. 94. ​Gratwick 1979, 309. A broader “comic topos” on parasites and sundials (and possibly Palamedes) is suggested by Anderson (1997, 2192–93), who questions w ­ hether Alciphron draws on the same Menandrian play as Plautus and even ­whether the fragments quoted by Varro and Gellius both belong to the same Roman play.

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Notes to Pages 42–46   361 95. ​Damon (1997, 26) situates our sundial-­cursing parasite within the more general context of “the parasite’s painful eagerness for the arrival of the dinner hour.” On salutatio see Goldbeck 2010, esp. 106–18 on its temporal dimension, and Kroll 1933, 59–81. 96. ​On Martial, see chapter 7, 209. 97. ​Wolkenhauer sees the parasite as reacting against society’s broader temporal order (2011, 1, and 2005, 43). Reckford (1997, 587) discusses the parasite’s lament in relation to Hor. Serm. 2.6, Sen. Brev., and Mart. Epigr. 4.8—­a ll discussed ­here or in l­ater chapters. 98. ​See the excellent reproductions and discussion in Pamir and Sezgin 2016, 258–62, including the adjacent panel that depicts an African male, likely a bath slave subjected to ­labor such as “tending the furnace,” which offers a glimpse of the separate significance of the ninth hour for nonelite subjects. See also fig. 11. 99. ​Ammianus evidently knew the Plautus passage from Gellius—­see the commentary of Feraco 2004, 282–83. The Ammianus passage as well as the letters of Cassiodorus are frequently compared to the Plautine parasite fragment: e.g., Balsdon 1969, 356nn4–5 (with the Seneca passage), and Wolkenhauer 2011, 146–48, and 2005. 100. ​Wolkenhauer 2005, 46. 101. ​See the commentary in Schmeling 2011, 85, and the discussion in Bonnin 2015, 217–19, which emphasizes that Trimalchio’s clock lacks a normal social coordination function. On Trimalchio as “master of time,” see Barchiesi 1981; compare Rimell 2002, 176–202 and Toohey 2004, 197–221. On Trimalchio’s interests in astrology, see Eriksson 1956. 102. ​See Joshel and Petersen 2014, 11, 195–96, and also 37–68. 103. ​See the commentary in Schmeling 2011, 299–300, and the discussion in Bonnin 2015, 330–31. Parallels are described in Whitehead 1993, 314, and Dunbabin 1986, 206–8, and 2003, 136–37. See also Wiemer 1998 on a sundial epigram on a grave altar in Sillyon: “Stranger, once you have looked at both the time and the tomb [hôras . . . ​athrêsas kai ton taphon], say: ‘I, the wife of Kidramuos, would like to be remembered again’ ” (149–50). Compare the statuette from the Necropolis at Myrina of a slave who looks away from a sundial as if to grieve the end of the master’s lifetime in Jones 2016, 34 with fig. 1.11. 104. ​Schaldach 2016, 89. 105. ​For the funeral stele, see Gibbs 1976, 164–65, no. 1051G. On its range of symbolism, see esp. J. Evans 2016, 151–53, and Bonnin 2015, 311, 338. For a sundial symbolically juxtaposed with a tomb in Hellenistic-­era literary epitaph, see Puelma and Angiò 2005 and Gärtner 2007. For imperial-­era images of sundials in sarcophagus reliefs representing the deceased in connection with myth (muses, fates, Prometheus, e­ tc.), see Traversari 1991 and Bonnin 2020. The mosaic type representing the group of phi­los­o­phers can be found at the Villa Albani (Rome) and Torre Annunziata (Naples). See Jones 2016, 36–38 with fig. 1.12, J. Evans 2016, 143–44, and Brendel 1977, 1–40, pls. 1–7. If Brendel is correct in seeing the Seven Sages h ­ ere and an allusion to the riddle tradition, the presence of the sundial may resonate with their riddle item “What is the mightiest t­ hing? Time” (ti ischurotaton? chronos [Plut. Sept. 153c]). 106. ​Talbert 2017, 169–70. 107. ​On timekeeping in Athens in par­tic­u ­lar, see especially Clarke 2008, 27–46, 304–13, Dunn 2007, 14–17, and Hannah 2009a. 108. ​Gratwick 1979, 312. 109. ​Philochorus fr. 122. See Bonnin 2015, 52–53, which connects “-­tropion” with the observation of solstices (tropai), and also Winter 2013, 1:236, Wolkenhauer 2011, 85, and

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362   Notes to Pages 46–50 Hannah 2009b, 743. ­There is no clear reason to assume, as Clarke does (2008, 306), that the hêliotropion shows “interest in short-­term, everyday time.” 110. ​Dunn 2007, 15–16. Clarke (2008, 32n128) echoes Dunn, arguing that ­there is “no evidence for a systematic system of hours, indicated by the sundial, u ­ ntil the third ­century.” 111. ​Clarke 2008, esp. 30, 296, 300; see Ath. Pol. 67.iii–68.i with Rhodes 720–21. 112. ​On the “schedule of bound­a ries,” see Allen 1996, and on ­these correlations in general, Clarke 2008, 31–33, 300. 113. ​Robertson (1940) connects ­these dots to sketch a bigger picture of early hour reckoning in Athens. 114. ​See Dunn 2007, 13. 115. ​For the Athenian sundials, see Gibbs 1976, 395–96. 116. ​Winter 2013, 1:238–39. 117. ​See commentary in Sickinger 2016. 118. ​Clarke 2008, 304–13; quotations on 304, 307. 119. ​Clarke 2008, 305–6. 120. ​Noble and de Solla Price 1968, 346. Kienast (2014, 120–28) is skeptical that the ­water feature was a clock (though note that Scipio Nasica’s ­water clock was established in Rome in 159 BCE [Plin. HN 7.215]). 121. ​On the sundials in Olympia and Oropos, see Schaldach 2016, 63, 65–69, figs. 3.2, 3.5. On sundials found in Istropolis, see, e.g., Gibbs 1976, 158, no. 1044). 122. ​On Magna Graecia as the main source of Roman sundial knowledge, see Wolkenhauer 2011, 83–86. 123. ​For succinct overviews of sundials in the city of Rome that combine literary and archaeological evidence, see Bonnin 2015, 60–69, and Winter 2013, 1:239–49. 124. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 136. 125. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 79. 126. ​Gratwick 1979, 320–21. 127. ​By contrast, “venter” (“belly”) and “dies” (“day”) are, as Gratwick, citing the discussion in Wright 1974, 81–85, points out, familiar metonyms from the Plautine comic repertoire (1979, 313–14). 128. ​Gratwick 1979, 308–9. The accensi ­were “personal assistants of the consuls” (Beagon 2005, 469). 129. ​On its cultural distinctiveness, see Wolkenhauer 2011, 79n228. 130. ​Gratwick (1979, 319) observes that “the very notion of a quarterly division is in fact a direct function of a sundial, and it would not occur to anyone that such a division was of any use ­until sundials and seasonal hours w ­ ere well known.” 131. ​Bonnin (2015, 68–69) points to Rome’s public sundials in t­ hese accounts as the likely frame of reference for the parasite’s lament. 132. ​See n. 123 in this chapter. 133. ​On t­ hese letters of Cassiodorus, see the translation and notes in Barnish 1992 as well as Bjornlie 2019, 1–25, 2017, 433–48, and 2013. The historical situation and date are discussed in detail by Shanzer (1984); see also Bjornlie 2017, 436, and 2019, 1, and Arnold 2014, 46–48. On the clocks, see Bonnin 2015, 250–53. 134. ​E.g., Wolkenhauer 2005, 46–49; for a more cursory account, see Hannah 2009a, 82–84, Dohrn-­van Rossum 1996, 18, and Balsdon 1969, 17.

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Notes to Pages 51–56   363 135. ​Gundobad briefly served as a magister militum in Italy in the 470s (Bjornlie 2019, 77n47). For nuances and “condescension” in the phrase “civitate Romana,” see Arnold 2014, 134. 136. ​On Boethius, see McCluskey 2012, esp. 50–51 on Var. 1.45, Arnold 2014, 296–98, and Bjornlie 2013, 163–84. 137. ​For long-­standing connections between the cosmic sphere and the notion of time in ancient philosophy, see J. Evans 2016, 143–44. 138. ​Part of a more general pattern observed by O’Donnell in the book endings (1995, n31). 139. ​McCluskey 2012, 50n13. 140. ​McCluskey invokes Vitruvius and extant remnants of two imperial-­era anaphoric clocks (2012, 51n15). In the pair of devices, he sees two distinct favorite themes of ancient cosmology: “the orderly circular motions of the celestial realm” and “the dif­fer­ent natures of the ele­ments” (50). 141. ​E.g., in another letter pair featuring Boethius and the gift of a cithara and citharist to the Frankish king (Var. 2.40–41). See Arnold 2014, 133–34. and Bjornlie 2019, 74–75, 113–18. 142. ​Shanzer 1984, 244–45. 143. ​Wolkenhauer (2005, 48–49) offers medieval examples. T ­ hese specific themes are thrown into further relief in Lamma’s (1968) comparison of Cassiodorus’s account with Procopius’s roughly con­temporary ekphrasis of a domestic w ­ ater clock in Byzantium (Ecphrasis hôrologiou); in Procopius, the hours are associated with the twelve l­abors of an ever-­active Heracles, but t­ here is less of the broader cultural and imperial symbolism seen in Cassiodorus. 144. ​On Boethius and Cassiodorus as the two most prominent translators and epitomators of Greek writings at this time, see Arnold 2014, 149; on Cassiodorus’s displays of enkyklios paideia and reverentia antiquitatis, see Bjornlie 2017, 442.

Chapter 2

•

The Long-­Legged Fly?

1. ​Quoted in Allt and Alsprach 1957, 617–18, no. 370. 2. ​Gell 1992, 284. Sorokin (1943, 211) notes that a Julius Caesar can “carry on seven dif­fer­ent activities si­mul­ta­neously” and that such multitasking ability effectively extends “the ordinary span of life.” 3. ​See date correspondences in Bouvet 1949, 91–96. The dates indicated by Caesar are only accurate from January 1, 45 BCE onward (i.e., following his intercalation at the end of 46). 4. ​Rüpke 2011, 111–12. 5. ​Cic Att. 12.3.2; Plut. Caes. 59.6. See Rüpke 2011, 112, and Holleman 1978. 6. ​Hannah 2009a, 113. 7. ​De Solla Price 1975, 370. 8. ​Hannah 2009a, 113. 9. ​Hannah 2009a, 138–39. 10. ​Wolkenhauer (2019, 229) compares Augustus’s temporal precision with the precision in the lawcourts tracked by clepsydrae. 11. ​On Augustan rationalization, see Wallace-­Hadrill 1998.

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364   Notes to Pages 57–59 12. ​On times for accessing w ­ ater, see, e.g., CIL VI.1261 (Rome) and CIL VIII.4440 (Lamasba in Africa); the scheduling in Lamasba has been discussed in detail by Debidour (1996), and Shaw (1982) and more briefly by Bonnin (2015, 241–43), who suggests that equinoctial hours are in use, likely mea­sured out by clepsydra. Dohrn-­van Rossum (1996, 24nn28–29) discusses pioneering use of the Lamasba inscription, which was discovered in 1877, in Bilfinger 1888b. On per­for­mance times during the festival of the Ludi Saeculares, see CIL XVI.32323, discussed in Hannah 2009a, 136–37, and Beard, North, and Price 1998, 2:139–44. On time restrictions placed on undertakers for disposing of the corpse of a crucified slave and their use of public baths, see AE 1971.88.ii, from Puteoli. On gender-­specific schedules for bath use, see, e.g., Dessau, ILS 6891, which is cited with other sources in Balsdon 1969, 358n46. For all the evidence, see Fagan 1999, 2n35, 324–26 no. 282. 13. ​Statistics and generalizations h ­ ere and elsewhere w ­ ere arrived at using the PHI Latin database. 14. ​See esp. Winter 2013, 1:160, which points to archaeological evidence (the number of private sundials already in this period) as well as literary references. 15. ​But as Wolkenhauer points out, “the first half of the day predominates,” and in annalistic lit­er­a­ture “the four-­hour rhythm of the watch still shows through distinctly” (2019, 220). 16. ​Wolkenhauer (2019, 220) notes that “from about 70 BCE onwards, ­there is a lot of evidence for numbered hours occurring almost si­mul­ta­neously in Varro, Cicero, Caesar, and Catullus.” On numbered hour linguistic usage, see Fritsch 1985 and Eichenseer 1983. 17. ​On the traditional notion, see Fraenkel 1955a, 5–6, and Clarke 2008, 5n14. 18. ​Noted also by Remijsen (2007, 140). For commentary, see Gambetti 2016. 19. ​On ancient annalistic and day-­to-­day rec­ord keeping, see Frier 1979, 33–34, 94–95. 20. ​Marquardt suggests this is the explanation for anachronistic hour references in Roman writers (1864, 259), and Wolkenhauer argues it accounts for them in Livy (2011, 102). 21. ​Moatti 2015, 4, Feldherr 1998. As Wolkenhauer notes, the precision adds both drama and an air of authenticity (2011, 107). 22. ​See Grafton and Swerdlow 1985. 23. ​Greater likelihood of numbered hour indications in “historical works about military operations” is suggested by Remijsen (2007, 140), given their reliance on “military reports” (she gives the example of Josephus’s On the Jewish War). 24. ​See Wolkenhauer 2011, 102, on “hora.” 25. ​Boot reads “hiis” in the Tornesianus manuscript as “H. II S,” though the same manuscript in a dif­fer­ent hand shows “Hi-­iis” (Shackleton Bailey ad Att. 401 with app. crit., 1967, 6.120). Shackleton Bailey expands the abbreviation to “hora secunda semisse” (6.272). 26. ​Gibbs 1976, 226. I have not seen the example from Att. 15.24.1 discussed in this light. Wolkenhauer (2019, 224n32) notes Cicero’s rare reference to a half hour (semihora) of speaking time in Pro Rabirio (e.g., 6.3), which she explains as “clearly due to the chronotope of the forum”; she asserts that “all other (overall, rare) evidence originates from technical texts and didactic poetry.” 27. ​Wolkenhauer 2019, 214–17. 28. ​Jones 2019, 125–36.

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Notes to Pages 59–69   365 29. ​On t­ hese par­a meters, see the introduction. 30. ​Marshall 1985, 164, 46. 31. ​See Remijsen 2007 on the third-­century BCE daybook in PHib. I 110 from the Ptolemaic civil postal system as well as Remijsen 2020 and Cuvigny 2005 on the archive in the ostraca from Krokodilo, which offers evidence for the Roman military postal system during the Trajanic era. 32. ​E.g., compare In Verrem 2.2.41 (Verres rises uncharacteristically early, hoping to have an absent man condemned, despite a rule that prohibits this “before the tenth hour” [ante horam decimam]) with 2.1.25 (Cicero agrees “not to give up a single hour of t­ hose allowed [him] by law” for his speech [ne quam ego horam de meis legitimis horis remittam]). 33. ​E.g., Cic. Pro Rab. Perd. 9. 34. ​See Greenidge 1901, 139–40, for tentative standard hours of judicial activities in Cicero’s era. 35. ​Wolkenhauer 2019, 220; see also 2011, 108, on genre as a ­factor in Cicero’s time indications. 36. ​For a sensitive reading of time indications throughout On the Orator, see Wiedemann 2003, 127–31. 37. ​See Att. 7.8.4 (Formiae [ab hora octava ad vesperum]), Rosc. Am. 19.4 (Ameria [ post horam primam noctis]), Fam. 16.9.2 (hora IIII Brundisium venimus), and Verr. passim (Syracuse). 38. ​The weather reference is uncertain; see Bonnin 2015, 198. Cicero’s sundial is mentioned in Gatty 1900, 10. 39. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 40, explores the background to this notion in Plato’s Timaeus. 40. ​The anecdote (worded slightly differently in Val. Max. 1.4.6) is discussed by Wolkenhauer (2011, 144–45, and 2005, 44–45); see also Davis 1956, Bonnin 2015, 332, and Gatty 1900, 10. 41. ​On Pompey’s laws, see Hannah 2009a, 105; see also Ker 2009b, 287. 42. ​Wolkenhauer 2019, 219, and 2011, 102. 43. ​Bonnin 2015, 72. 44. ​“from the fourth hour ­until the setting of the sun” (cum ab hora fere quarta usque ad solis occasum pugnaretur) (Caes. BGall. 3.15.5). 45. ​For an example from The Civil War (1.66–70) in which Caesar evidently sets out “in full daylight” (albente coelo), a time of day l­ater than he would normally begin a march but also a full day ahead, see Stadter 1993. 46. ​ BAfr. 70.5; BGall. 8.35.3; BHisp. 3.3, 12.4, 19.1, 32.6; 9.1, 11.2, 16.3, 28.2, 36.5. On the absence of nocturnal hours in Caesar’s writings, see Oliphant 1927, although he does mention nocturnal hours in his enumeration in The Gallic War in specifying the three hours given to the army at night for rest (tribusque horis noctis exercitui ad quietem datis) (7.41). 47. ​On Caesar’s time indications in the commentarii, see Wolkenhauer 2011, 194–98. 48. ​Caes. BGall. 2.33.3. 49. ​See Joseph. BJ 3.86 on a typical Roman camp: “­There is absolutely nothing that happens without a signal.” 50. ​For journeys and attacks begun during a watch, see, e.g., Caes. BGall. 4.23.1 and BCiv. 3.75.2. 51. ​See Balsdon 1969, 358n54, 359n55, which cites such scathing descriptions as “But the e­ nemy, perfidious, look for a time and opportunity for deceit and trickery, . . . ​[and]

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366   Notes to Pages 69–73 suddenly burst out from the gates at noon” (at hostes sine fide tempus atque occasionem fraudis ac doli quaerunt, . . . ​subito meridiano tempore . . . ​portis se foras erumpunt) (BCiv. 2.14.1). 52. ​On the characterization of Caesar’s urgency with repraesentaturum ­here, see Ker 2007, 358n37. 53. ​OLD s.v. “longus” 14 (“remote”), 9 (“long”). 54. ​Krebs 2018, esp. 103–12. 55. ​On Caesar’s use of ­water clocks to mea­sure day length and determine latitude as part of his own geo­graph­i­cal research around Britain and its region, see Krebs 2018, 111–12. 56. ​Krebs 2011 and 2018, 110–11. 57. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 194. Caesar’s inquiry is not unrelated to Varro’s study of civil day definitions across cultures. 58. ​On time mea­sure­ment and military organ­ization in general, see Bonnin 2015, 267–72. 59. ​If Bonnin (2015, 83, 268–69) is correct in expanding the abbreviation “horologiar.” to “horologiarius” in a document dating to the late second c­ entury CE (Dessau, ILS 5625), that would support the idea of the existence of clock minders; see chapter 1, 38–39. 60. ​On portable sundials, see Talbert 2017 and chapter 1, 39–41. On the uncertainty surrounding Vitruvius’s claims in the preface to his On Architecture (1.pr.1), see Oksanish 2019, 33–34. 61. ​Riggsby 2006, 21–45. 62. ​Rambaud 1974, 120; see also Riggsby 2006, esp. 24–26. But Rambaud’s “strategic space” is also relevant: he situates Caesarean celeritas in “strategic space” (116; see also Krebs 2006, 125–26). The point is that even the day divided into hours, while quantitative, is already less neutral than merely “geographic” space-­time. 63. ​Riggsby 2006, 32–45; Hyg. Const. 135.5. On the influence of agrimensores in Caesar, see Krebs 2018, 100–101. On the use of hours for spatial orientation, see Kubitschek 1927, 186. One surviving portable sundial may have belonged to a set of surveyor’s instruments: see the tentative discussion in Schaldach 2016, 87 with fig. 3.21. 64. ​In invoking Yeats’s image of Caesar with a map, I do not mean to elide the impor­tant observation by Rambaud that “geographic” space is relatively rare in Caesar and confined to digressions (1974, 112–16). 65. ​Polybius uses the same idea at 10.43.2–4 to frame his discussion of instantaneous knowledge mediated by fire signals; see Hannah 2009a, 107. 66. ​On Vegetius in general, see Milner 1993. On daily rec­ords and rosters of military duties, see Davies 1974, 312. 67. ​Vegetius next distinguishes between the signals given for the start (trumpet [tuba]) and end (horn [cornu]) of each watch (Mil. 3.8); but Milner (1993, 79) suggests the signal may have been the bugle (bucina); see Mil. 2.22. 68. ​Milner (1993, 10n6) correlates the speed of the “soldier pace” (militaris gradus) with that of the iustum iter described (and doubled) by Caesar in The Civil War (3.76). Vegetius’s estimates of time and marching pace are used effectively by Oliphant (1927) to clarify some of Caesar’s time descriptions. 69. ​Krebs 2018, 118.

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Notes to Pages 73–82   367 70. ​On Caesar’s calendrical reform, see esp. Rüpke 2011, 109–21. Also useful is Rüpke 2017, 51–57, Moatti 2015, 3–4, 142–43, 172–73, Wolkenhauer 2011, 208–34, Feeney 2007, 193–201, and Wallace-­Hadrill 2008, 239–41. 71. ​Rüpke 2017, 54. On Caesar as an intellectual, see Fantham 2009. 72. ​See also Plut. Caes. 59.1–5. 73. ​On the meridian (not sundial) function of the obelisk and its complex, see references in the introduction, n. 80. On its contribution to the “cosmology” of the northern Campus Martius, see Rehak 2006, 142–46. 74. ​Winter discusses two surviving Egyptian water clocks that w ­ ere repurposed for use at Rome in the Augustan era in connection with the cult of Isis (2013, 1:248–49). On the Augustan appropriation of Egyptian culture, see Nasrallah 2019, 179–223, esp. 199–211, and Gribetz 2020, 225. 75. ​Gibbs 1976, 182–84, no. 1068G. 76. ​See Hannah 2009a, 104, which references the edition and commentary in Crawford 1996, 393–445. 77. ​Crawford 1996, 1:355–61; 2:56–67; discussed by Bonnin (2015, 243–45), Hartnett (2017, 37–44, and 2011) and Kaiser (2011). For citation in modern urban studies, see, e.g., Melbin 1978, 104. 78. ​The passage is contextualized within the tradition of Roman day-­oriented chronicles by Frier (1979, 96). 79. ​For the range of rec­ords described as acta, and Caesar’s likely innovation, see Gizewski 2006. 80. ​­These contrasts are discussed by Frier (1979, 33–34). See Tacitus’s programmatic statement in Annales (13.31.5). 81. ​See commentary by Schmeling (2011, 216–21). 82. ​On “land and sea” and for the translation “as they happened each day,” see Frier 1979, 90–91. 83. ​See Blümner 1911, 655–56. 84. ​On Flavius’s revelation, see Moatti 2015, 98–99, 136–37.

Chapter 3

•

Telling Roman Time

1. ​HN 7.212–15; Censorinus, DN 23–24. 2. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 48, 330. 3. ​See Riganti 1978 for commentary on book 6; see Spencer 2019 on the work as a whole—­“Varro’s Guide to Being Roman,” as the subtitle to the book has it. 4. ​Spencer 2019, 207. 5. ​On t­ hese night concepts, see Wolkenhauer 2015, 85–91, and 2011, 119–22, Gazzarri 2009, Rapisarda 1991, 276, and Ker 2004, 216–17. 6. ​Rawson cites this passage as an example of Varro’s use of autopsy (1985, 239 with n. 31). 7. ​See Gibbs 1976, 85. 8. ​Spencer 2019, 207; quotation on 328n89. 9. ​Added by Goetz and Schoell (1910), and retained in Kent’s 1938 Loeb edition. I am inclined to follow Riganti 1978 in adding only “vel” (22, 91–92). 10. ​E.g., Cic. Nat. D. 2.87: “a clock, w ­ hether a sundial or a water clock” (solarium vel descriptum vel ex aqua); see also Rocca-­Serra 1980, 69.

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368   Notes to Pages 82–88 11. ​Riganti writes “located in the shade” (“collocò all’ombra” in the Italian), suggesting also a playful opposition between shade and sun (1978, 23, 92). A “comic” effect is suggested by Bonnin 2015, 78. My reading is in broad agreement with Wolkenhauer’s (2011, 91–92). 12. ​Spencer 2019, 207. 13. ​On Varro’s aviary, see Green 1997, 440–44, and van Buren and Kennedy 1919. 14. ​Spencer 2010, 85. 15. ​Spencer 2010, 81, 85; see also Green 1993, 443. 16. ​On this clock in par­tic­u ­lar, see Bonnin 2015, 214–17, which emphasizes its symbolic rather than informational function. 17. ​On the comparison to Catulus’s ­temple and the aspirations of both buildings to model cosmic time, see Sauron 1994, 135–51; on Catulus’s t­ emple see also the introduction, 13. 18. ​On the Tower of Winds and Varro’s testimony, see Kienast 2014, 129–30; for the (disputed) theory that the Tower of Winds included a w ­ ater clock, see Noble and de Solla Price 1968. 19. ​Green 1997, 435. 20. ​On this passage, see Spencer 2010, 77–78, and Ker 2010, 369. 21. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 71 with n. 200; Cardauns 2001, 50–51; Rocca-­Serra 1980, 68; Mirsch 1882, 52–57, 121. On Varro and Roman antiquarianism see Rawson 1985, 233–49, Moatti 2015, 94–163, esp. 149–63 (on time), Volk 2021, 182–200, and Stevenson 2004, which observes that antiquarian study of day divisions was relevant to the elite, since ­these “governed the working hours of the senate” (147–48). 22. ​Rüpke 2017, 56. 23. ​Bilfinger 1888a, 5, 8. 24. ​Bilfinger 1888a, 206–7. 25. ​Compare Moatti’s alternative translation of “descriptiones temporum” as “the chronology of its history” (2015, 104), which appears to highlight Varro’s work on chronology and perhaps also the calendar (on which see Moatti 2015, 136–43). My understanding is closer to Volk, who translates the phrase as “the divisions of time reckoning” (2021, 183). 26. ​Moatti 2015, 6. 27. ​On Varro and other antiquarians explaining both spatial and temporal aspects of the “Roman order,” see Gargola 2017, 33–38. 28. ​The main surviving accounts of the vari­ous civil day definitions are collected in Reifferscheid 1860, 149–53; see also Rapisarda 1991, 269–70, and Bickerman 1968, 13–14. The main surviving accounts apart from Gellius are Plin. HN 2.188, Plut. Quaest. Rom. 84, Macrob. Sat. 1.2.19–1.3, Serv. Aen. 5.738, Censorinus, DN 23, Paul. Dig. 2.12.8, Isid. Orig. 5.30.1, Bede, De temporum ratione 5, 288–89 (see Wallis 1999, 272–73), and Lydus, Mens. 2.1–2. 29. ​On subdivision in Roman antiquarianism, see Stevenson 2004, 124–25. 30. ​Volk 2021, 189. 31. ​On Pliny’s overall proj­ect in Natu­ral History 7, see Beagon 2005. 32. ​For example, the sudden death of Cn. Baebius [T]amphilus occurred “when he had asked of a boy” (or alternatively “slave”) “what hour it was” (cum a puero quaesisset horas) (HN 7.182). 33. ​Beagon 2005, 56.

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Notes to Pages 88–92   369 34. ​On Pliny’s surprising choice to highlight t­ hese three developments, see Naas 2002, 321–24. As Wolkenhauer notes (2011, 125), Aulus Gellius refers to evidence that daily shaving was already widespread in the time of Scipio in the chapter a­ fter he mentions the Plautine parasite’s complaint about the observation of the hours (NA 3.3 and 3.4)—­perhaps a sign that the topics ­were already juxtaposed in an e­ arlier source, such as Varro. 35. ​For commentary, see Beagon 2005, 465–66, though the similarity to Herodotus is not noted. “By gift of the emperors” could also be “as a gift to the emperors.” In e­ ither case, imperial appropriation of the Delphic object is foregrounded. 36. ​On the Herodotus passage itself, see Kleingünther 1933, 60–62. 37. ​For a more in-­depth discussion of the history of shaving and beards in Rome and its cultural semiotics, see Warnock 2022. 38. ​See Ramosino 2004, 248. 39. ​See also Varr. Men. 186 = Non. 214m. 40. ​On primitivism in Roman antiquarianism, see Purcell 2003, 14. 41. ​On this passage, see Lovejoy and Boas 1935, 255–57. 42. ​The translation “now in this instance advancing by reason” is not certain; compare “this now being an addition made by theory” (Rackham 1952, 648) and “was on this occasion in keeping with scientific theory” (Beagon 2005, 106). 43. ​As Ando (2000, 6–7) notes, “As Romans had sought to found the order of Roman society on consensus, a unan­i­mous intersubjective agreement about social, religious, and po­liti­cal norms, so ­under the empire the Roman government encouraged its subjects to play an active role in empowering their rulers.” 44. ​Naas 2002, 322. 45. ​On the ascription to Anaximenes see chapter 1, 28, and Beagon 2005, 469. 46. ​Pliny’s account is discussed in detail by Wolkenhauer (2011, 70–101, and 2019, 221–24), Bonnin (2015, 61–62), Winter (2013, 1:239–42), Healy (1999, 360–70), Gratwick (1979, 317–19), Dorhn-­van Rossum (1996, 18–19), and Ando (2015, 81–84). For commentary, see Beagon 2005, 465–472. 47. ​Wolkenhauer 2019, 226. 48. ​Pliny is “plainly just wrong,” writes Crawford (1996, 2:593–94). Beagon suggests that “it may have been just the public announcement of midday which came l­ater” (2005, 469), while Wolkenhauer suggests that Pliny is referring to now-­lost ­earlier versions of the laws (2011, 75n214). Strikingly, Pliny elsewhere describes how the flowers of heliotrope (heliotropium) and lupine (lupinum), which follow the sun in the course of the day, facilitate observation of the hours (horarum) for rustics (18.252). 49. ​For “plupast,” see Grethlein and Krebs 2012. Pliny’s references to the Twelve ­Tables in general appear to relate to the fifth ­century BCE, argues Ramosino (2004, 181). 50. ​In On the Latin Language, Varro indicates that following the Lex Plaetoria the definition of “suprema” (or “supremum tempus”) was no longer simply sunset, as in the Twelve T ­ ables, but ­earlier, “at the time when the praetor in the Comitium has pronounced suprema to the ­people” (quo praetor in comitio supremam pronuntiavit populo) (6.2.5). 51. ​Beagon cautions that “several of the landmarks Pliny mentions ­were no longer vis­i­ble in his day” (2005, 470). 52. ​Coarelli 1983, 1:138–41; quotation on 140. See also Gargola 2017, 166–67, for the argument that this use likely began no e­ arlier than the fourth c­ entury and Sear 1982,

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370   Notes to Pages 92–97 14–15, for a discussion and map. The close connection between the Comitium and time reckoning is emphasized by Laurence and Smith 1995–96, 140–41. Regarding Coarelli’s account, Bonnin, for example, is uneasy with his use of the Italian term “orologio” to refer to prehorological time (2015, 66–67). 53. ​Hannah 2009a, 5–26. On sky pointing in other cultures, see Aveni 2002, 80, and Nilsson 1920, 18. 54. ​Gratwick (1979, 319) notes that “if [the accensus] had a relay of deputies in hailing-­distance of one another, they could take up his cry, or blow horns (cf. Luc. B.C. 2.684, Petronius 26) to proclaim ‘Roman standard time’ to a wider area than that of the forum”; he cites Bilfinger 1888b, 56–58. See also Feeney 2010, 885. A standard example of the use of the trumpet can be found in Seneca’s Thyestes (797–98)—­“Not yet has the third trumpet sent out its signal, day turning t­ oward night” (nondum in noctem vergente die / tertia misit bucina signum)—­cited, e.g., in Bilfinger 1888b, 57. 55. ​Gell. NA 14.7.8. 56. ​On the evolution of the Comitium area, see esp. Coarelli 1983, 2:19–27; also Coarelli in LTUR, s.v. “Comitium.” Russell (2016, 62–71) emphasizes the special status of the early Comitium over the Forum: “Only the Comitium was (at least theoretically) a purely po­liti­cal space” (65). 57. ​Feeney 2010, 885–86; see also Purcell 2003, 26–32, and Smith 2007, 164–65. 58. ​Winter 2013, 1:241; see also Gargola 2017, 162. 59. ​Morstein-­Marx 2004, 93; on the “primitive sundial,” see 97n131. 60. ​Compare modern variants of the phrase “(horas) non (numero) nisi serenas,” “(I count) (the hours) only on clear days,” as a popu­lar sundial inscription (Gatty 1900, 281–83, 341). 61. ​Naas 2002, 140. 62. ​On Pliny’s habit of dismissing incomplete sources, see Smith 2007, 160. 63. ​On the erection of the t­ emple, see Beagon 2005, 470, citing Livy 10.46.7, and Ziolkowski 1992, 139–44. On Pliny’s secular focus on clocks (rather than on the fasti, or festival calendar), see Wolkenhauer 2011, 78. 64. ​Ando 2015, 81–84; quotation on 84. 65. ​Morel 1989, 484. 66. ​Jones speculates that the sundial was ­either s­ pherical or conical, types that “could be read from the ground level when mounted high up” (2019, 238). 67. ​See chapter 1, 29. 68. ​See Jones 2019, 137n19: such a status was not merited for Papirius’s sundial mentioned by Vestalis, e­ ither b­ ecause of Vestalis’s incomplete information or b­ ecause it was dedicated at a t­ emple. 69. ​Coarelli (1983, 2:20) dates both dedications to Messala’s time as censor, in 252 BCE. The mural is noted also in Wolkenhauer 2011, 87. 70. ​Vitr. De arch. 9.1.1, 9.8.1; Plin. HN 2.180–88. 71. ​See the discussion of “displaced sundials” in Jones 2019, 137–43; see also Gibbs 1976, 78, 91, 215. 72. ​Jones 2019, 142. See also Bonnin 2015, 63–65, Gratwick 1979, 320, and Gibbs 1976, 96n25. 73. ​Hannah 2009a, 134, and 2009b, 750; Gratwick, 1979, 317. 74. ​Jones 2019, 143.

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Notes to Pages 97–102   371 75. ​Jones 2019, 143. 76. ​Gratwick 1979, 320. 77. ​Birth 2012, 27. 78. ​E.g., Pliny’s account is cited by Schomberg (2018, 322) as “exemplary of antiquity” (including ancient Egypt) in showing that with regard to daily life in general, t­ here was no premium on precision in clocks and also that “­people appreciated the clock as a singular gift” (322). 79. ​Winter 2013, 1:242. 80. ​Wolkenhauer 2019, 221–22 with n. 25. 81. ​Jones 2019, 138. 82. ​On the lasting “memorial” function of Messala’s sundial, see Morstein-­Marx 2004, 98n136. 83. ​Wolkenhauer 2019, 223. Wolkenhauer also compares the impact of Augustus’s obelisk in the Campus Martius, which “celebrated the elimination of a mea­sur­ing inaccuracy amounting to less than a minute per day” (224). 84. ​Wolkenhauer (2019, 222) suggests that during this period “inner-­city timekeeping” was a task analogous to the censors’ “other infrastructural duties.” 85. ​Ramosino 2004, 294–95. 86. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 121–22. For the “colonization” of night in modernity, see Melbin 1987. 87. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 92–93, 117. 88. ​Bonnin 2015, 60–61; Freyberger, Ertel, Lipps, and Bitterer 2007, 499 (discussed also by Winter 2013, 1:242). Freyberger and his coauthors invoke as a parallel the w ­ ater clock in the Tower of Winds in Athens (though the latter has been dated to ­later in the second c­ entury BCE, and the presence of a ­water clock ­t here is not certain; see Kienast 2014, 120–28). It is surprising that Varro should not have mentioned the Tower of the Winds when mentioning Scipio’s clock in On the Latin Language (6.4), despite mentioning the Tower of the Winds in connection with his aviary in On Agriculture (3.17). Scipio’s clock is presented by Pliny as distinctive and unique; but Winter (2013, 1:242–43) points to signs that clock building was all the rage in the same period in Rome, as evidenced by a sundial mentioned by Vitruvius in On Architecture (9.8.1) in the Circus Flaminius. 89. ​Gratwick 1979, 321. Beagon’s translation is ambiguous: “the equal hourly divisions of night as well as day” (2005, 106). 90. ​E.g., Hannah 2009a, 103, and Wolkenhauer 2011, 73. 91. ​See 81–82 in this chapter. 92. ​ Auct. ad Her. 4.14.5, Cic. Quinct. 18.59. But Damon sees a reference to “scruffy parts of Rome” (1997, 110). 93. ​Wolkenhauer 2019, 221, and 2011, 88n259; Bonnin 2015, 245. 94. ​The phrase “populo Romano” can also be translated as “by the Roman ­people”; this and other possibilities are explored in Wolkenhauer’s concluding analy­sis (2011, 334–36), though she does not consider connections to Varro. 95. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 93. 96. ​The sense of a long historical gestation is further enhanced if we also entertain the phrase “indiscreta lux” as connoting the long slow dawning of a single day, in an implicit contrast with a phrase such as “certior lux” (“daylight more certain”) (Livy 25.10.6) for a

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372   Notes to Pages 103–116 time of day l­ater and clearer than prima luce (at first light). So long, then, did it take the Romans to “wake up” at the “dawn” of time observation. 97. ​See Beagon 2005, 25. 98. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 73–74. 99. ​See Heslin 2007. 100. ​On Censorinus’s book overall, see Parker 2007. I use the Teubner text of Sallmann 1983. 101. ​On the pebble practice, see Harvey 1981, 56, on Pers. 2.1. 102. ​See Parker 2007, 57. 103. ​On the relationship to Varro’s ordering, see Mirsch 1882, 37. On Varro’s books on time, see 84 in this chapter. 104. ​Gellius (NA 3.2.7–11) does mention the parts of the day immediately following the civil day discussion, perhaps reflecting an original collocation of ­these topics in Varro’s Antiquities. 105. ​On Censorinus’s account of the day, see Bonnin 2015, 62–63, and Gratwick 1979, 319, and commentary in Fontanella 1992–93, 133–38, Rapisarda 1991, 269–76, and Rocca-­Serra 1980, 68–70. Useful ancient parallels are cited in Sallmann 1983, 57–60. 106. ​Pace Winter 2013, 1:241. 107. ​See Ziolkowski 1992, 148–49, on sol indiges. Bonnin points to associations between Janus Quirinus and the sun (2015, 62). On Quirinus’s role as the god of the citizen body, see Winter 2013, 1:241. On Quirinus’s wife, see Enn. Ann. 1.100 and Ov. Met. 14.851. 108. ​Vendittelli, LTUR s.v. “Diana Aventina, aedes”; Wolkenhauer 2011, 83n239. 109. ​On the religious contexts or associations of vari­ous Roman sundials, see Bonnin 2015, 254–60. 110. ​Wolkenhauer offers a dif­fer­ent interpretation (2019, 218n18): “The 300 years prob­ably refers to the time period between the foundation of the city [753 BCE] and The Law of the Twelve T ­ ables [c. 451–450 BCE].” But Censorinus’s point concerns the time span between the invention of hours and the adoption of hours in Rome, and t­ here is no mention of hours in the Twelve T ­ ables. 111. ​On the phrases distinguishing parts of day and night, see the references in chapter 1, n. 21. ­Actual instances from surviving poetry are collected by Rapisarda 1991, 273–76. 112. ​Censorinus treats the list as more precise than it likely ever was in practice, argues Fontanella (1992–93, 136–38), who includes references to other ancient versions of the list (e.g., Isid. Orig. 5.30.13–22 [day], 5.31.1–14 [night]). See also chapter 1, 29. 113. ​On this practice and its associations, see Ker 2004, 217n32. 114. ​Rocca-­Serra sees this “taste of a time when life did not yet proceed to the rhythm of the hours” as something sal­vaged by Varro’s “antiquarian curiosity” (1980, 69).

Chapter 4

•

Days in the Life

1. ​On Pliny the Elder’s time usage as described in Plin. Ep. 3.5, including more detailed analy­sis of his routine than is given ­here, see Kroh 2015, 86–92, Gibson and Morello 2012, 115–23, and Henderson 2002a, 69–102, and 2002b. On the reworking of Quintilian in Ep. 3.5, see Whitton 2019, 388–98, and on lucubration in par­tic­u­lar, see Ker 2004, 209, 232–36, and Dowden 2003, 152. Commentary can be found in Sherwin-­W hite 1966, 215–25.

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Notes to Pages 116–122   373 2. ​Blake 2012, 194–98; Moss 2021. 3. ​See chapter 1, 26, 28, on Philostr. Her. 10.1. 4. ​For a preliminary discussion that uses the term “diurnal patterns,” see Ker 2019. 5. ​Bender and Wellbery 1991, 1, 4; see also Miller and Symons 2019, 5, which emphasizes the chronotype’s focus on “form” or “pattern” as opposed to space, which is the province of the chronotope. 6. ​Cova treats the daily life snapshot and the equally popu­lar death scene portrait as two distinct options for ethical portraiture, though he argues that Pliny the Younger generally portrays his heroes “in a f­ ree man’s everyday time” (2001, 66). 7. ​Kondoleon 1999, 337, 332. Kroh, referencing Pliny’s letters, notes how the iterability of an exemplum is enhanced by its manifestation of order (2015, 80). 8. ​“diem . . . ​disponam” (9.36.1); “vita . . . ​disposita” (3.1.2); “vir . . . ​dispositus” (2.11.17) (see Mayor 1889, 41). See also Tamás’s formulation with re­spect to Pliny’s letters: “The well-­ordered day can function as a unity in which [the author] reflects the ideal rhythm of life and, through the dispositio of practices of the self that is realized in the ideal day, contributes to the dispositio of the self ” (2015, 56). 9. ​Bender and Wellbery 1991, 4. 10. ​Toner 1995, 7. 11. ​Wiedemann 2003, 125. 12. ​Wiedemann 2003, 139 (citing the opinion of Alfenus Varus), 129–30. The connection of siesta to f­ ree status is emphasized by Dossey 2013, 239. 13. ​Wiedemann 2003, 131–33. 14. ​Wiedemann 2003, 138. 15. ​On Camillus as “hero of Aurora,” see Dumézil 1995, esp. 1235. 16. ​On ego documents, see the Center for the Study of Egodocuments and History collaborative proj­ect, http://­w ww​.­egodocument​.­net​/­egodocument​/­controlling​-­time​.­html. 17. ​E.g., Pentland, Harvey, Lawton, and McColl 1999, 1–4. 18. ​Bender and Wellbery 1991, 4. 19. ​See Duret and Néraudau 2001, 317–18, cited by Larmour and Spencer 2007, 58n111. 20. ​Giddens 1984, 35–36. 21. ​Luckmann, 1991, 162. 22. ​Giddens 1984, 60. 23. ​On time orientations and perspectives, see Bergmann 1983, 465–73, and Adam 1990, 96–98. On the dichotomy between present-­time oriented and future-­time oriented, see Jones 1988. 24. ​See Hägerstrand 1975 and Carlstein, Parks, and Thrift 1978; see also Gell 1992, 190–98. 25. ​Gell 1992, 201. 26. ​Laurence 2007, 158, fig. 9.2. 27. ​Laurence 2007, 157–61; quotation on 157. For a gentle critique of Laurence’s relative neglect of enslaved persons h ­ ere, see Joshel and Petersen 2014, 69. 28. ​Laurence 2007, 161, fig. 9.3; quotation on 162. The interaction of space and time in Martial’s poems is explored further in Laurence 2011, esp. 87–88. 29. ​Laurence 2007, 166. 30. ​Riggsby 2003. 31. ​Riggsby 2003, 175.

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374   Notes to Pages 122–130 32. ​Riggsby 2003, 174, fig. 1c. 33. ​Laurence acknowledges (2011, 96n116) that in light of such critiques, between the first edition of his book (1994) and the second (2007), he “somewhat adjusted [his] view of the repre­sen­ta­tion of this societal aspect in Martial’s Epigrams as set out with reference to Pompeii.” 34. ​Riggsby 2003, 183, 184. Riggsby builds on the analy­sis of Caesar’s Gallic War in his Caesar in Gaul and Rome. 35. ​Translation by Riggbsy. For the dichotomy, see Riggsby 2003, 179–82. 36. ​Riggsby 2003, 180, 182. 37. ​Wolkenhauer 2019, 225–36. 38. ​Wolkenhauer 2019, 226. Wolkenhauer also compares the chronotopes of more specific institutions such as “medical practice, religious cults, or administration” (e.g., ­water management and postal delivery [229]). 39. ​I do challenge some of Riggsby’s explanations, however; see, e.g., chapter 7, n. 97. 40. ​Shapcott and Steadman (1978, 73) refer to this collective rhythm as the langue to which individual time use stands as parole. 41. ​Braudel (1982, 29) notes that “if we reduce the length of the time observed, we ­either have the event or the everyday happening. The event is, or is taken to be, unique; the everyday happening is repeated, and the more often it is repeated the more likely it is to become a generality or rather a structure. It pervades society at all levels, and characterises ways of being and behaving which are perpetuated through endless ages.” 42. ​See the detailed commentary in McKeown 1987, 2:337–63; see also Gransden 1979 and Pinotti 1996, esp. 128–39. Hatto 1965 outlines the broader context for Ovid’s version. 43. ​McKeown 1987, 2:348. 44. ​For commentary, including discussion of Seneca’s model in Euripides’s Phaethon, see Billerbeck 1999, 241–73, and Fitch 1989, 158–82. See also Jouan 1992. As Rose (1985, 107) observes, in its context Seneca’s dawn-­labor cata­logue “evokes the Herculean labores.” 45. ​Bender and Wellbery 1991, 4. 46. ​On the Oeconomicus and its Roman readers, see Pomeroy 1994, 69–73. My discussion h ­ ere expands on Ker 2019, 194–96. 47. ​See the commentary in Pomeroy 1994. 48. ​Riggsby 2003, 179–80. 49. ​Referencing Oec. 7.2, Murnaghan (1988, 12) observes that “Ischomachus explains that he d ­ oesn’t need to spend time indoors b­ ecause he has a wife capable of looking ­a fter his ­house.” 50. ​Morgan (2007, 372) notes that the “iterative” dimension of Ischomachus’s day pattern and the “tales of princi­ple and practice” to which it belongs correspond to “the exemplary status of [his] narrated actions and conversations,” which are framed in turn by the “iterative narrative” (380) of Socrates’s exemplary life and conversations in the Memorabilia. 51. ​By “subtle criticisms” I mean mostly that the nephew’s praise of his u ­ ncle is accompanied by implications about his own dif­fer­ent preferences, his social commitments, and his personal autonomy. See also the persuasive reading by Keeline (2018, esp. 175–85), who sees Pliny the Younger as “directly call[ing] into question [his u ­ ncle’s] summa uigilantia” (178) and as undermining his other supposed temporal virtues. For

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Notes to Pages 132–139   375 contrastive dimensions in the portrait, see Gibson and Morello 2012, 115–23, and Cova 2001, 65–66.

Chapter 5

•

Three Patterns to Live By

1. ​For the phrase “virilem vitam,” see Columella, Rust 1.pr.15. 2. ​On Columella in general, see Reitz 2013, and Diederich 2007, esp. 53–68. 3. ​Bender and Wellbery 1991, 4. 4. ​As Reitz points out (2013, 279), books 11 and 12 ­were prob­ably added as supplements to an original ten-­book work. 5. ​This passage is the most detailed surviving description of a Roman agricultural routine; as White emphasizes in his epic volume Roman Farming (1970, 362–63), the workday on the farm for f­ ree laborers is already distinctive for its length (nine to fifteen hours), compared with a putative urban workday (five to nine hours). 6. ​Columella says he read Xenophon’s work in Cicero’s Latin translation (now lost); see Rust. 11.1.5, 12.pr.7, 12.2.6, and 12.pr.1. For the characterization of Xenophon’s work as an ideological fantasy of elite masculinity, see Murnaghan 1988, 9–11. 7. ​Joshel and Petersen 2014, 11–12, 195–96; quotations on 196, 12. 8. ​On Palladius, see chapter 1, n. 58. 9. ​Ker 2004, esp. 218; Dowden 2003, 150–54. 10. ​White (1970, 363) points out that lucubration was sometimes used during “reaping and haymaking” in summer so as to take advantage of nocturnal dew in the morning and eve­ning (Virg. G. 1.289–90), with a longer rest in the m ­ iddle of the day. 11. ​Degrassi 1963, 284–98, nos. 47–48; one of ­these, the Vallense, has been lost and is only known through drawings. For discussion of their likely origin, date, and function, see Broughton 1936, and for insights on their iconography and framing of time, see Short 2016, 406–7. Lehoux uses ­these devices as evidence for the significance of astronomy, astrology, and “methods of time reckoning” to ancient farming (2007, 30–35; quotation on 31); see also Lehoux 2016, 102–3. 12. ​Compare Pliny’s eulogy of roosters, the nocturni vigiles whom nature has equipped to recognize the fourth watch: not only do they “know the stars” (norunt sidera) but “during the day, they sing and mark off the hours in threes” (ternas distinguunt horas interdiu cantu) (HN 10.46.1). 13. ​Xen. Oec.12.4. 14. ​The focus on scientia imperandi goes with Columella’s emphasis on use of slaves, notes Diderich (2007, 64). On the implications of repraesentare see Ker 2007, 343–49; the overseer conveys the master’s presence, and this accelerates production from ­f uture into pre­sent. 15. ​Reay 2005 is an in-­depth study of proxy agency and other technologies that facilitate a “quotidian experience” (339) of the paterfamilias in which he is (as it w ­ ere) pre­sent on the farm and the Roman res publica is pre­sent again; see also Reay 1998. 16. ​In a further parallel between farm and city, the one step in the pro­cess of inspecting the shackled slaves each day (cotidie) is “calling [them] out by name” (per nomina . . . ​citare) (Columella, Rust. 11.1.22)—an echo, perhaps, of the nomenclator (name caller) announcing clients at the urban salutatio (1.pr.9). 17. ​For commentary, see Kenney 1984. T ­ here are obvious affiliations between Moretum and Columella’s On Agriculture: to the extent that Moretum hints at the section

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376   Notes to Pages 140–150 on gardening that Virgil postpones in Georgics 4, it forms an in­ter­est­ing pair with Columella’s poetic book 10 on gardening, which explic­itly seeks to fill the gap in Virgil. 18. ​On the author’s description of Scybale’s physical appearance and silence about her status, age, and sexuality, see esp. Haley 1993, 1, and 2009, 41–46, 48–49. 19. ​Fitzgerald 1996, 390, 396. 20. ​As Bardon observes, hour indications w ­ ere generally regarded as “not worthy of poetry” (1964, 83). 21. ​Fitzgerald 1996, 390. 22. ​Miller 2018, 114–24; see also Miller 2019, Rosen 2020. 23. ​On this sundial, see also chapter 1, n. 85. 24. ​Gleason 1995, 84–87; quotation on 84. 25. ​On Galen’s attention to such variations and his criticism of the constraints that poverty and slavery impose on freedom for self-­care, see Schlange-­Schoningen 2003, 208–9, 263–71. 26. ​For text and translation, see van der Eijk 2000–2001, 1: 296–311; for commentary, see 2:347–52. On his methods, milieu, and influence, see Nutton 2012, 121–26, and Wöhrle 1990, 179–89. I thank Ralph Rosen for first bringing Diocles to my attention. 27. ​I follow van der Eijk in understanding the stadion as a unit of time equivalent to two minutes (2000–2001, 2:348–9). 28. ​On Celsus and his views of Greek medicine, see Nutton 2012, 169–71. 29. ​Compare Diocles frag. 182.11. 30. ​Dossey 2013, 220–21, 233–34. 31. ​On Galen’s approach to regimen, see Nutton 2012, 246–48; on Galen’s satirizing of urban social routines—­a foil for the “intellectual elite” (e.g., De methodo medendi 1.1)—­see Johnson 2010, 75–80. 32. ​While Diocles is mostly content to use the basic term “zên” (“to be alive”), Galen frequently uses the verb “bioun” (“to live a life”), which evokes “bioi” (“lives,” “lifestyles”). 33. ​On Galen’s audience, see Schlange-­Schoningen 2003, 155–56n77. 34. ​On the case of Antiochus, see Nutton 2012, 248. This passage is cited in Balsdon 1969, 20, in a discussion on meal routines for older men. 35. ​Nutton 2012, 24. 36. ​“Pantôs” could also be translated as “over his w ­ hole body.” 37. ​Johnson 2010, 92. 38. ​Compare Plin. Ep. 3.1.10 on Spurinna: “This is how, ­a fter his seventy-­seventh year, his ears and eyes retain their power [aurium oculorum vigor integer] and his body remains agile and lively.” 39. ​Galen’s discussion is quoted at length in Mayor 1889, 45–56, with reference to Spurinna’s bath hour at Plin. Ep. 3.1.8. 40. ​The passage is quoted in Schlange-­Schöningen 2003, 194n84, in connection with a discussion of the therapy Galen supplied to the Antonines. 41. ​In a further consideration, Galen next admits that “it must be considered [episkepteon] ­whether such a servant had the custom of exercising in his previous life [kata ton emprosthen bion] [i.e., when still ­free] or of bathing without having exercised” (San. 6.5, p. 406)—­a remarkable comment that reveals him to be conscious of the diachronic (biographic) shift in the lives of t­ hese captives, who have gone from being autonomous to being constrained.

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Notes to Pages 151–157   377 42. ​See Fagan 1999 on daily bathing (32, 22n28) and sundial inscriptions from bathing complexes (5n49, 238–39 no. 21); on walking, see O’­Sullivan 2011; on military exercise, see Davies 1974. 43. ​Hoffer 1999, 115. Millar emphasizes how the be­hav­ior of the princeps was in general modeled on the already performative “social patterns of late republican senatorial life” (1977, 15). Specific anecdotes from emperor’s days are collected in Balsdon 1969 (e.g., 356) and Marquardt 1864 (e.g., 264). 44. ​Wallace-­Hadrill 1996, 291. 45. ​“Dies” in this passage is classified by TLL (s.v. “dies” 1.A.2.c.) as having the sense “animi habitus diei alicui proprius” (“condition of mind specific to a given day”). 46. ​On Suetonius’s use of everyday detail to define the time discipline of the imperial day, see Wolkenhauer 2011, 113; on his use of specific formal topics and rubrics as “camouflage” for assembling his critique of autocracy, see Hanson 2021. 47. ​Sen. Ep. 7.3. On t­ hese morning and noon spectacles, see Coleman 1990, 55–56; on Seneca’s letter, see Ker 2009a, 119. 48. ​Champlin 2003, 126–27. 49. ​Martial’s epigram provides a stark contrast to Ovid’s complaint about Dawn’s hasty arrival in Amores 1.13; see chapter 4, 125–26. 50. ​Millar 1977, 21 with n. 25. On the topics of waiting and admission at the salutatio, see Goldbeck 2010, 106–7. 51. ​Gell. NA 19.13.1, 20.1.1–2. The salutatio setting contributes much to the sense of occasion and supplements the scene of solitary lucubration in which Gellius’s work as a ­whole is situated. On the “accidental meeting” in NA 20.1 as context for knowledge production, see Howley 2018, 7–8. 52. ​See also Julius Caesar’s timing error on the Ides of March, discussed in chapter 2, 78. 53. ​On the Roman misconception that Jews fasted on the Sabbath (they simply abstained from cooking), see Gribetz 2020, 121; as Gribetz also notes (120, 123), the Augustus anecdote hovers around a popu­lar Jewish narrative tradition of the imperial era featuring an emperor who finds Sabbath food strangely appealing (despite its being cold). 54. ​Wiedemann 2003, 134. 55. ​The phrasing “completed all or most of what remained of the day’s business” (residua diurni actus aut omnia aut ex maxima parte conficeret) (Aug. 78.1) may recall the diurna acta that ­were regularized by Julius Caesar (Suet. Iul. 20.1); see chapter 2, 75–77. On Augustus’s lucubration, see Ker 2004, 218. 56. ​On Vitellius’s early morning drinking, see Suet. Vit. 7.3; on his unconventional meals, see Balsdon 1969, 357nn17–18. 57. ​Millar 1977, 209. 58. ​Compare the informality of the salutatio of Marcus Aurelius, “dressed as a private citizen, and t­ here in the very bedchamber where he had been sleeping” (Dio Cass. 71.35.4). 59. ​Wiedemann 2003, 135. 60. ​For an account of Vespasian as lucubrator that contrasts him with Vitellius, see Dowden 2003, 152–53. 61. ​Cited in Balsdon 1969, 356n13. 62. ​Millar 1977, 209–10. 63. ​Millar 1977, 209–10, 241–42.

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378   Notes to Pages 157–164 64. ​On bioschemes, see Pelling 1997. 65. ​On the lack of mention of judging in Suetonius’s sketch of Vespasian’s day, see Millar 1977, 210. 66. ​See Millar 1977, 210, on Dio’s criticism of the son. 67. ​On Hadrian’s tetrafarmicum (composed of pheasant, sow udder, ham, pastry), see SHA Hadr. 21.4. 68. ​The attribution to Alexander appears purposeful, given that the commonplace Ammianus next relates had been ascribed to a range of ascetics in antiquity, including Aristotle (Diog. Laert. 5.16); see Galletier 1968, 269n292. 69. ​Ammianus transitions from nights to days (diebus) and proposes to parcel out his account of Julian’s daytime habits across individual episodes of his history and thereby describe “each t­ hing in its own place” (suo quaeque loco) (16.5.9). 70. ​On Sidonius’s letters and Pliny, see chapter 10, 287–90. The letter discussed h ­ ere (Epist. 1.2) is included the Anthology of Latin Prose by Russell (1990, 238–41), who notes that it was “paraphrased by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxxvi” (238). Köhler (1995, 122–23) traces its influence in medieval imperial biography. 71. ​In her detailed commentary, Köhler (1995) situates the letter within the traditions of imperial biography and panegyric and also in relation to Plinian letters such Ep. 3.1 on Spurinna (119–24); she also cites Suet. Vesp. 21 and other passages I discuss h ­ ere (137–38). 72. ​See Harries 1994, 13–14, 127–29, on Sidonius’s portrayal of his dealings with the Gothic court. 73. ​Harries 1994, 128. 74. ​Sivan 1989, 85, 94. 75. ​See Anderson 1936, 317n1. Compare Sidon. Epist. 4.8: “Now two second hours had easily passed” (iam duae secundae facile processerant), cited in Greenius 1667, 720. 76. ​See chapter 10, 270–71.

Chapter 6

•

Epicurean Days? Cicero and Horace

1. ​Lejay 1911, 201. 2. ​Lejay 1911, 513. 3. ​Guillemin 1929, 132. 4. ​Dionisotti 1982, 124n84. 5. ​See more recent commentaries on Horace’s Satires 1.6 and 2.6 including Gowers 2012, 244–45, and Muecke 1993, 199. 6. ​Foucault 1997, 217–20; quotation on 217. See also Martha 1866, 176. 7. ​The bilingual exercises in day narration that survive in the colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana (Dionisotti 1982, 124n84). 8. ​Lejay 1911, 512, 513. 9. ​Muecke 1993, 199. Muecke adds that the theme would be “fully developed” in Parini’s “mock-­didactic satire” Il Giorno (1763–1802) (199). 10. ​Sherwin-­W hite 1966, 517. Compare Dietsche’s term “everyday program” (2014, 85) with reference to Sen. Ep. 83 and Plin. Ep. 9.36. 11. ​Zehnacker 2009, 184. Bodel 2015, 83, also uses the phrase. 12. ​Foucault 1997, 217. 13. ​Starobinski 1983, 103, 101. 14. ​Starobinski 1983, 102, 104.

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Notes to Pages 164–170   379 15. ​Foucault 1977. We see h ­ ere an “ideology of authorship,” as Joseph Farrell has suggested to me. Compare Currey’s blog “Daily Routines” (https://­dailyroutines​.­t ypepad​ .­com), and his two volumes drawn from it, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (2013) and Daily Rituals: W ­ omen at Work (2019). 16. ​For “chronotope,” see Bakhtin 1981, 84: “We w ­ ill give the name chronotope (literally, ‘time space’) to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in lit­er­a­ture.” See also Miller and Symons 2019, 5. For what it is worth, Lejay (1911, 522) emphasizes the epistolary tendencies of the Horatian satires concerned (1.6, 2.6). 17. ​Muecke 1993, 199. 18. ​André 1966, 462. 19. ​Such notions are helpfully distinguished in Woolf 2015, 135, 137, with reference to “self ” in Pliny. 20. ​Foucault 1997, 218. Foucault’s “everyday” theme is taken up by Tamás 2015, 52–53. 21. ​Foucault 1997, 214. 22. ​Graver 2014, 270. 23. ​Starobinski 1983, 104. 24. ​Lejay 1911, 512; Oliensis 1998, 35. 25. ​Highmore 2001, 28. 26. ​E.g., Plin. Ep. 1.9.3. 27. ​But elsewhere (Arr. Epict. diss. 4.1.47–50) the phi­los­o­pher mocks the “friend of Caesar” who must wake early and whose day is servile at e­ very stage (bath, exercise, dinner, sleep, e­ tc.). 28. ​Armstrong 2014, 123–24. See, e.g., Plato’s seventh letter, describing what he encountered on his arrival in Sicily: “The life t­ here . . . ​called happy [ho tautêi legomenos au bios eudaimôn], full of the banquets of the Italians and the Syracusans, did not please me in any way at all—to live being satiated twice each day and never sleeping alone at night [dis te tês hêmeras empimplamenon zên kai mêdepote koimômenon monon nuktôr], and all the occupations that accompany this life [kai hosa toutôi epitêdeumata tôi biôi]. For from t­ hese ways, no ­human being ­under the sun, being occupied from a young age, could ever become wise” (Ep. 7, 326bc). 29. ​Armstrong 2014, 123; see also 1986, 278. 30. ​Lejay 1911, 201. 31. ​The principal Paetus letters are Fam. 9.15–20, 9.23–24, and 9.26. For commentary, see Shackleton Bailey 1977, and for discussion, see Leach 1999. See also Ker 2019, 197–98. 32. ​On his gradual entry to writing on philosophy, see Baraz 2012. 33. ​Bakhtin 1981, 143. 34. ​See Hutchinson 1998, 139–71 (deliberation) and McConnell 2014 (moral-­ philosophical self-­portraiture). 35. ​Armstrong 1986, 279. For ­these traits in Paetus, see esp. Fam. 9.15.1, 9.16.1, and 9.20.1. 36. ​Leach 1999, 152–53. 37. ​For commentary on Fam. 9.20, see Shackleton Bailey 1977, 343–46. 38. ​Compare Seneca browsing the works of Epicurus “not as a deserter but as a scout” (non tamquam transfuga, sed tamquam explorator) (Ep. 2.5). 39. ​Regarding how many Caesareans ­were Epicureans, see McConnell 2014, 21–22.

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380   Notes to Pages 171–179 40. ​Lejay 1911, 201., 41. ​On admissiones see Sen. Ben. 6.33.4 and Goldbeck 2010, 152–55. 42. ​The idea that “tristis” conveys a criticism of Stoicism depends on “tristis” describing the “bonos viros” (acc.) and not Cicero (nom.)—­the latter possibility having been suggested to me by William Tortorelli. 43. ​­L aser (2001, 153–54) notes the importance of procuring daily support from the ­people for making an impression and clarifies the categories of supporters. 44. ​Morstein-­Marx 1998, 271. 45. ​Östenberg 2015, 20. 46. ​Suet. Iul. 20.1, discussed in chapter 2. See also Leach (1999, 154), who paraphrases Fam. 9.16.4 as “daily intelligence reports.” 47. ​Goldbeck 2010, 107. The episode illustrates how a senator’s visit could “disrupt the normal space-­time patterning” in a town, suggests Laurence (1994, 130). 48. ​Feldherr 1998, 13. 49. ​O’­Sullivan 2011, 6, 83. 50. ​See Armstrong 1986, 279, on “painful joking.” 51. ​On this socializing with books, see Baraz 2012, 81; on related socializing through books, see Damon 2008. 52. ​Baraz 2012, 78–86; quotation on 73. 53. ​Baraz 2012, 1. As for the combination of verbs, Damon (2008, 176) notes that for Cicero in par­tic­u­lar “reading and writing go hand in hand” (citing Att. 12.40.2 [ea lego, ea scribo]). 54. ​On lucubration in Cicero, see Ker 2004, 228–29. 55. ​Leach 1999, 170. 56. ​The Quintilian passage is adduced by both Kroh (2015, 84) and Hoffer (1999, 8) as a comparison for Pliny’s Spurinna letter (Ep. 3.1). 57. ​The letter may also allude to Philodemus’s poem, which features a real-­time ninth-­hour opening—­“tomorrow . . . ​from the ninth hour” (aurion . . . ​ex enatês) (Epigr. 27 Sider)—­a nd imagines a ­simple Epicurean gathering, centering on conversation rather than extravagant eating; see Armstrong 2014, 93. 58. ​On the etiquette-­testing be­hav­ior seen ­here and writing during dinner party or salutatio (with Cicero and Caesar the best-­attested culprits), see Hall 2017, esp. 167–68, 175. 59. ​This letter is cited in Baraz 2012, 1n1, as a parallel for Fam. 9.20. 60. ​Paetus mirrors the “appealing” (suavis) and “pleasant” (iucundus) friend (Ann. 8.280), being characterized with the terms “suavitas” (Fam. 9.18.1) and “iucundus” (9.15.1). 61. ​On consolation in Cicero’s letters, see, e.g., Wilcox 2012, 40–63, and Hutchinson 1998, 49–77. 62. ​On this and the previous letter in the progression of Cicero’s grief therapy, see Treggiari 1998, 18. Treggiari takes “silva” (“wood,” “forest”) literally, but Walters offers a persuasive reinterpretation: “silva” refers meta­phor­ically to both “the mass of consolatory lit­er­a­ture” Cicero was reading and “the hastily drafted Consolatio that he was then writing (and would go on writing) as a result” (2013, 430). On the Consolation to Himself, see Baltussen 2013. 63. ​On Cicero’s familiarity with To Menoeceus demonstrated through his comments on another topic (­simple dining), see Armstrong 2014, 125. Epictetus takes a decidedly negative view of the ending of To Menoeceus: the lapsed Stoic ­will, like the Epicureans

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Notes to Pages 179–185   381 themselves, be “distressed by day and by night, startled through his dreams” (meth’ hêmeran, nuktos dia tôn enupniôn ekpêdôn, tarassomenos) (Arr. Epict. diss. 3.24.24). 64. ​Gowers 2003, 80; quotation on 58. For commentary on Serm. 1.6 see Gowers 2012, 214–50, and Brown 1993, 150–65. 65. ​See Dufallo 2015, 323–24, on how Horace cajoles readers into identifying with Augustus’s new monarchy. 66. ​Armstrong 1986, 260. 67. ​Rudd 1966, 45. 68. ​I translate and quote from the Teubner text of Klingner. DuQuesnay (2009, 90) adduces an echo of Lucretius 2.1–4 (suave . . . ​suavest) and contrasts Horace’s self-­ consolation with the less convincing attempts of “disgruntled aristocrats” such as Cicero and Sallust. 69. ​For comparison of the Horace and Cicero passages, see esp. Armstrong 1986 and also Gowers 2012, 244–45, 249, Muecke 1993, 194, and Lejay 1911, 201. 70. ​On the phrase “triangle game” being a figure for the Second Triumvirate, see Gowers 2012, 248–49. 71. ​Brown 1993, 163–65. 72. ​Brown 1993, 162. 73. ​Gowers 2012, 246. On divini, see Pomponius Porphyry on Hor. Serm. 1.6.113–20, cited by Lejay 1911, 196. On the echo of the Eclogues, see Reckford 1997, 588. 74. ​Oliensis 1998, 36. 75. ​Gowers 2012, 218, and 2003, 80. 76. ​O’­Sullivan 2011, 7. 77. ​Oliensis 1998, 35. 78. ​Rudd 1966, 45, citing Fraenkel 1957, 104–5, who nostalgically correlates Horace’s eve­ning stroll with his own modern experience of the city. 79. ​Gowers 2012, 248; Brown 1993, 164. 80. ​Gowers 2003, 80. 81. ​Gowers 2012, 219. 82. ​“Meditans” self-­deprecatingly implies a literary composition, as Brown notes (1993, 176). On Serm. 1.9, see the commentary of Gowers 2012, 280–304, and Brown 1993, 175–82. 83. ​On lying in ­until the fourth hour, see Brown 1993, 176. 84. ​On Serm. 2.6, see esp. Labate 2009, 117–20, Oliensis 1998 46–48, Reckford 1997, 583–93, Armstrong 1986, 277–82, and Rudd 1966, 244–45, along with commentary by Muecke 1993, 193–212, and Lejay 1911, 512–18. 85. ​On the gift of the Sabine farm as configured in Satires 2.6, see Bowditch 2001, 142–54. 86. ​Rudd 1966, 252; see also 244–45 on Satires 2.6. 87. ​Lejay (1911, 513) and Oliensis (1998, 48) note how the single day throws into relief the spatial contrast, while Reckford (1997, 590–91) discusses how the fable of the mice (Serm. 2.6.79–117) replays ­these spaces and times. 88. ​Regarding ­whether it is a question asked of an enslaved person, see Reckford 1997, 583. 89. ​Reckford 1997, 583, 586. “We may,” Reckford notes, “appropriately call him a Man for All Seasons” (610). 90. ​Reckford 1997, 589. Armstrong (2014, 91–96) spells out the Epicurean ethical associations of Horace’s rustic dinners.

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382   Notes to Pages 186–193 91. ​The Latin comes from Warmington’s Loeb edition. Braund (1989, 36–37) cites the passage as a model for Juv. 3. 92. ​­Unless the phrase is Seneca’s: Lactantius h ­ ere discusses a lost Senecan moralizing passage alongside the Lucilius fragment. I thank Cynthia Damon for drawing attention to this possibility. 93. ​ Serm. 2.6 is considered in close conjunction with Juvenal’s repre­sen­ta­tion of urban “everyday time” in Braund 1996, 34. 94. ​Braund 1996, 34. See also Braund 1989, 32–34. Moodie (2014, 35–36) shows how the third satire represents a dystopian syntaktikon, “encompassing” Rome in multiple time dimensions (Rome’s history, Umbricius’s life course, day and night), as well as “socially” and “physically.” 95. ​See Cloud 1989 on Juvenal’s fictive intensification of the salutatio scene. 96. ​Brown 1993, 163. 97. ​Oliensis 1998, 35. 98. ​This passage is adduced with reference to Serm. 1.6.122–23 by Brown 1993, 163. 99. ​My understanding of the implications of “otior” has benefited from suggestions by William Tortorelli. 100. ​On Ep. 2.1 and its approach to literary history, see Feeney 2002. 101. ​The repetition “vigilare . . . ​vigil” (Ep. 2.1.104, 113) is likely intentional, suggests Rudd (1990, 93). 102. ​Rudd 1990, 93. 103. ​See the useful exploration of time in the Odes in C. Evans 2016. 104. ​Feeney 1993, 58. 105. ​Barchiesi 2007, 154. 106. ​Barchiesi 2007, 154; see also Traina 1973. 107. ​For “solidus” see Carm. 1.1.19–21, which refers to the person who “does not scorn to take away a part from the solid day [ partem solido demere de die]”; on “integer”, see Carm. 4.5.38–40: “We talk in the morning, dry, the day intact [integro / sicci mane die]; we talk, soaked [uvidi], when the sun is beneath the ocean.” 108. ​“Hora” is put to comparable uses at Carm. 2.13.13–14 and 3.29.48. 109. ​Lowrie 1997, 50–51. Ancona (1994, 18) shows how the erotic poet’s self-­ immortalization undercuts the beloved’s time. 110. ​Lydus, Mens. 4.36, cited by Shorey and Laing 1910, 412. 111. ​Putnam 2000, 60, 147. For commentary, see Thomas 2011, 65–66. 112. ​On Apollo and Augustus, see Miller 2009, 251. Putnam 2000, 159n21. T ­ hese dynamics recur together in the praises of Augustus in Carm. 4.15, which mentions both the “majesty of an empire that stretches to the sun’s rising from the Hesperian resting place (ad ortus / solis ab Hesperio cubili)” (14–15) and Horace’s f­ uture song “on profane and sacred days alike” (et profestis lucibus et sacris) (25). 113. ​Reckford 1997, 601–2; quotation on 602. 114. ​Reckford 1997, 602. See introduction, 13–14.

Chapter 7

•

Literary Days: Martial and Pliny the Younger

1. ​My comparison of Martial and Pliny’s approaches to time builds on Ker 2009b, 289–300.

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Notes to Pages 194–201   383 2. ​My focus includes temporal dimensions of the “circulation” of texts highlighted by Starr 1987, as well as specific occasions such as the recitatio (see Dupont 1999). 3. ​Kaster groups with t­ hese alternations the ­later mention of Antonius Gnipho who taught “on a daily basis” (cotidie) but declaimed “only . . . ​on market-­days” (non nonnisi nundinis) (Gram. et Rhet. 7.3)—­t he latter a school holiday (1995, 104, 121); a contrast is M. Valerius Probus, who lectured to a select few students, from a reclining position, “in the after­noon hours” (postmeridianis horis, 24.4), likely at his home (Kaster 1995, 188). 4. ​This writing pro­cess is connected to the famous image comparing Virgil to a she-­bear licking her cubs into shape. 5. ​Ker 2004, 240–41. 6. ​Ferriss-­Hill (2020) discusses Persius’s experiment with reference especially to Hor. Serm. 2.3 and 2.1.1–12. She also makes the case for Pers. 3 as a w ­ hole “describing the cycle of a day for Persius iunior” (329). 7. ​Ker 2004, 241. 8. ​See Hoffer (1999, 30), who adds that letter 1.3 thus also “anticipates . . . ​the ‘daily routine’ letters (especially 3.1, 3.5, 9.36, 9.40)” (32n6). As Johnson observes (2010, 36), Pliny’s capacious notion of literary culture includes “the ways one does (or does not) incorporate texts into daily life.” 9. ​On the Silius portrait, see Gibson and Morello 2012, 123–26. 10. ​Riggsby 2003, 182. 11. ​Each clepsydra thus ran for ­either nineteen minutes (if the hours mentioned are equinoctial), twenty-­four minutes (if summer hours are meant), or fourteen minutes (if winter hours), according to Schmidt 1912, 60. 12. ​­These dimensions of the clepsydra for Pliny are the focus of Riggsby 2009 (esp. 271–73 on 1.23) and Ker 2009b (esp. 292–93 on 2.11). 13. ​Pliny’s anecdotes are our major source for Roman recitatio; see Dupont 1999. 14. ​Since the speech itself survives, we may further note that it sketches the daily routine of Trajan as an ordered princeps, the opposite of Domitian (Paneg. 48.1–3, 49.4–8). At the end of his day spent in both serious and relaxed contact with his elite circle, Trajan’s nightly sleep is “sparing and brief ” (parcus et brevis): “Given your devotion to us, no time is shorter than the time you spend without us” (nullumque amore nostri tempus angustius, quam quod sine nobis agis) (49.8). 15. ​Other pebble day poems include Epigr. 9.52, 10.38, 11.36, and 12.34. 16. ​See Ker 2009b. 17. ​On the dates of publication, see Russotti 2019; Damschen and Heil 2004, 3–5. 18. ​Russotti 2019, 59–63; quotation on 63. 19. ​For detailed readings of Epigr. 10.20, see Roman 2010, 105–6 as well as the lit­er­a­ture on Pliny’s Ep. 21. 20. ​Russotti 2019, 63. 21. ​See especially the readings by Fitzgerald (2007, 153), Henderson (2001 and 2002a, 47–58), and Pitcher (1999), who argues that Pliny is more complimentary t­ oward Martial than is sometimes claimed. See also Gibson and Morello 2012, 88–89, 204. 22. ​Henderson 2001, 153. 23. ​Fitzgerald 2007, 153.

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384   Notes to Pages 201–205 24. ​Marchesi (2008, 66) observes that “Pliny’s ethically felicitous partitioning of time barely hides a crucial paradox in his poetics: ­either activity, w ­ hether oratorical or poetic, requires a hundred-­percent dedication—at least in theory.” 25. ​Fitzgerald 2007, 153. 26. ​See Gibson and Morello 2012, 204. 27. ​For commentary on book 4, see Moreno Soldev­ila 2006. On Epigrams 4.8 specifically, see Moreno Soldev­ila 138–48, Badura 2020, Wolkenhauer 2019, 230–31, and 2011, 109–114, Friedrich 1913, and Friedlaender 1886, 338–40. 28. ​Lorenz (2002, 120–125) gives a persuasive, detailed comparison of Epigr. 4.1 and 4.8, which together constitute Martial’s first foray into comparing Domitian to Jupiter. 29. ​The manuscript variant “continent” (“contains”) is defended by Wolkenhauer 2011, 110n328. 30. ​Rimell 2008, 95; Moreno Soldev­ila 2006, 20. 31. ​­There are plausible verbal echoes ­here of the poetic recusationes of both Tibullus (­labor [1.1.3]) and Propertius (rauco [3.3.42]). On t­ hese recusatio priamels see Race 1982, 130, and on priamels in Martial more generally, 153–56. 32. ​Moreno Soldev­ila 2006, 146. On ioci and the convivium, see Nauta 2002, 167–68. On Martial’s (and Juvenal’s) creative approaches to representing salutatio, see Cloud 1989. 33. ​On w ­ hether Roman numbered hour references denote the span of the hour or its completion, see Bilfinger 1888b, 117–30 and Wolkenhauer’s critique 2011, 105–6. The question also comes up in the commentary of Friedlaender 1886, 338–40. See Hannah 2009a, 137, on the increase in the use of sundials during Martial’s time (but the sense of a sudden shift, as Wolkenhauer [2011, 114] suggests, may be due simply to Martial’s writing epigrams, a genre more given to representing prosaic detail than other poetic genres). On Martial’s march of numbered hours as paradigmatic, see, for example, Sherwin-­W hite’s discussion of Plin. Ep. 3.5, in which he treats lines 1–5 as “the clearest guide to [Pliny] the Elder’s time-­table,” with two hours of salutatio, three of labores, and the sixth and seventh devoted to siesta, the eighth to exercise, and the ninth and tenth to dinner (1966, 224). For critique of reductionist approaches treating Martial’s poem as a document of Roman everyday history rather than as a literary text, see Wolkenhauer 2011, 109. 34. ​Friedrich 1913, 257. Friedrich notes that “it seems that the hours given ­here are sometimes to be understood as time period, sometimes as endpoint.” Differences regarding interpretation of the seventh hour are reflected in Moreno Soldev­ila’s (2006) translation of the line as “the sixth ­will give rest to the weary, the seventh put an end to it [that is, to the rest/fiesta],” which Wolkenhauer (2011, 110), Bilfinger (1888b, 126), and Friedlaender (1886, 339) accept but which Hannah (2009a, 137) paraphrases with “a rest at the sixth, and a complete end to work at the seventh,” an idea also developed by White (“the sixth hour brings rest to the weary, the seventh an end (to the day)” [1970, 362]) and Reckford (“Business quiets down at the sixth hora, ends reliably by the seventh” [1997, 587]). See also Carcopino’s more creative interpretation treating the sixth and the seventh as seasonal variants (1941, 184), discussed in chapter 10. 35. ​Laurence (2011, 96) extrapolates from 10.48 “a sense of urban transformation within the time-­geography specifically of Rome—at the eighth hour, when the shifts of the praetorian guard change, the ­Temple of Isis shuts and thermae of Nero have cooled to a perfect temperature” (96). But each such poetic glimpse is inevitably partial, and as

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Notes to Pages 205–208   385 Fagan (1999, 31–32) points out, Martial “rarely makes it explicit . . . ​that he regards baths as a key ele­ment in daily life” (31). 36. ​See Bonnin 2015, 263–65. 37. ​See the useful remarks in Badura 2020. 38. ​Moreno Soldev­ila (2006, 139) notes that “semantic roles are inverted,” as for example in line 1, where conterit diverts what we see elsewhere expressed as “you wear down ­every threshold as a greeter” (omne limen conteris salutator) (8.44.3). 39. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 112. 40. ​Moreno Soldev­ila 2006, 138; on admissiones, see Sen. Ben. 6.33. 41. ​Martial’s pivot is sadly elided when scholars quote only lines 1–6—as in Ker 2009b and in Shelton 1998, 124–25, no. 162. 42. ​Badura (2020, 552) compares Solon fr. 27 West (discussed in the same volume by Walter 2020, 323–29), where the heptads of an idealized h ­ uman life are cata­logued; note that Solon’s poem also culminates in the tenth (heptad). 43. ​Similarly, a broken clock in a dream can be “bad news and deadly,” given that “­people accomplish [ prassousin] all t­ hings while looking at the hour [ pros tas hôras apoblepontes]” (3.66). Artemidorus is cited by Bonnin 2015, 332, and Hannah 2009a, 138. Harris-­McCoy 2012, 295 is useful for comprehension of the passage. 44. ​The couplet was also inscribed on a sundial found in Herculaneum (CIL 13.5682; Kaibel 1878, no. 1122), which means the poem dates to ­earlier than 79 CE. Its pun is explained by Eusta. Il. 554.46. But Page suggests that the correspondence between pun and real­ity is inexact: for the letter corresponding to Z, “the sixth would have been more suitable” (1981, 393–94). 45. ​Moreno Soldev­ila 2006, 142. 46. ​On the etymology of “ambrosias,” see Moreno Soldev­ila 2006, 144. 47. ​This connection between Martial 4.8 and the Antioch mosaics is also made by Pamir and Sezgin 2016, 259n42. 48. ​Kondoleon 1999, 323–24, fig. 6; see also Jones 2016, 5, fig. 1.1. Jones evidently sees ­here not a time teller but a client or parasite: “a strolling man . . . ​realizes that he had better hurry if he does not want to be late for an invitation to dine” (19). This interpretation may make the best sense in light of figure 4. 49. ​Lorenz 2002, 125. 50. ​Friedrich 1913, 259–60. Friedrich compares the list of the patron’s (i.e., Pliny’s) ­labors in Epigr. 10.20. 51. ​Moreno Soldev­ila 2006, 138. 52. ​“Day song” is Holzberg’s term for the poem (2002, 72). See also Epigr. 9.1.8–9—­ “The lofty splendor of the Flavian f­ amily ­will last together with the sun and stars and Roman light” (manebit altum Flaviae decus gentis / cum sole et astris cumque luce Romana)—­with Roman 2010, 111–12. 53. ​According to Laurence (2011, 96), however, the tenth hour is “when all duties are performed and, coincidentally (but not included in the Epigrams), the hour at which vehicles are allowed back into the city.” 54. ​Moreno Soldev­ila 2006, 143–44. 55. ​Moreno Soldev­ila 2006, 144. 56. ​Isid. Orig. 5.35.1: “The times [tempora] [that is, the seasons of the year] are so-­called . . . ​­because they blend themselves [se . . . ​temperent] from moisture, dryness,

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386   Notes to Pages 208–212 heat, and cold”; see Maltby 1991 s.v. “tempus.” On Temperantia as a l­ater allegorical figure connected with time and mixture and moderation (especially via liquid and the clepsydra), see Dohrn-­van Rossum 1996, 5–7. 57. ​On the similarity of Epigr. 10.20 to 4.8, see Nauta 2002, 345, and Lorenz 2002, 225. 58. ​For the term and the type, though without explicit reference to 4.8, see Roman 2001, 138–39; see also Leberl 2004, 122, 124–25. On the role of Euphemus as “broker” and on the possibility that 4.8, coming early in the book, may be a “pre­sen­ta­tion” poem, see Nauta 2002, 345, 365. 59. ​On Ovid’s exile poetry, see Roman 2001, 124–25; see also Hinds 2007, 129, 131. 60. ​Fowler 1995, 43. 61. ​Wolkenhauer 2011, 113n339. Pliny, for his part, ­later praises Trajan by telling him that, unlike Domitian, “you do not gorge yourself on a solitary dinner before the ­middle of the day [ante medium diem] and loom over your guests as an observer making notes” (Paneg. 49.6). 62. ​Moreno Soldev­ila 2006, 146; see also S­ ullivan 1991, 121–22. 63. ​Moreno Soldev­ila 2006, 138. 64. ​Connors 2000, 498. 65. ​Fitzgerald 2007, 100; see also Hinds 2007, 132, and White 1982, 59 (“Poets, t­ hose acknowledged masters of otium, ­were able to improve the leisure of the rich”). 66. ​Hinds 2007, 132. Roman (2001, 115) notes that “the literary work, if it hews to the pattern of ordinary gift-­exchange, risks becoming associated with ephemeral, social motivations and rewards.” 67. ​For more on this poem, see Roman 2010, 107–9. 68. ​See Boehringer 2007, 289–94, on Philaenis in Epigr. 7.67 (and 7.70), especially on the satirizing of her daily “body practices” (291) and in general on Philaenis as courtesan/pornographer (275–314). See also Williams 1999, 203, on the mockery of cunnilingus as even less manly than fellatio. 69. ​In the preface to book 12 Martial briefly grumbles about petty provincial politics, “against which it is difficult to maintain an even temper day to day [cotidie]” (12.pr.), which perhaps suggests that a genuine escape has eluded him. But such misgivings are mostly suppressed in book 12’s poems. 70. ​Uden 2015, 221–25; quotations on 225. See also Kelly (2018, 172), who argues for connections to Juvenal book 1 but especially to Umbricius’s withdrawal from Rome in Satires 3. 71. ​Kelly (2018, 167) connects this last line to Horatian final lines extolling otium, including the end of Serm. 1.6, and also sees in perire “an implied reference to sexual climax” (171) along with other sexual dimensions in the Bilbilis routine. 72. ​Riese 1869, 1:82–83; Shackleton Bailey 1982, 47 (who notes that the poem is variously attributed to Avienus, Avianus, Cato, Horace, Ovid). The poem is cited by Green 1991, 245 in connection with Ausonius’s Ephemeris. 73. ​I follow the text of Shackleton Bailey 1982, 47, including his suggestion of “dat” in the sense of “missa” in “­these [words ­were] dispatched.” 74. ​E.g., Epigr. 12.5: “Life is denied [negant vitam] by schoolmasters in the morning [mane], at night [nocte] by bakers, and blacksmiths’ hammers all day long [die toto]” (4–6); the sole exception to this, he says, is the urban villa of Sparsus, in which “­there is no day u ­ nless it has been allowed in” (nec dies nisi admissus) (25).

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Notes to Pages 212–217   387 75. ​Shackleton Bailey (1982, 47) notes dif­fer­ent ordering of line 7’s verbs in the vari­ous manuscripts and selects the most plausible. 76. ​Lindsay 1903, 8–9; quotation on 9. 77. ​On the exact parallels between the opening questions of Ep. 9.36 and 7.9 and, with 9.40, a “falling tricolon,” see Whitton 2019, 338–39. 78. ​On the relationship between the ­earlier villa letters and Ep. 9.36 and 9.40, see Gibson and Morello 2012, 206–7, 238. 79. ​On the ideal and its embodiment for Pliny in the example of Spurinna, see Parkin 2003, 73–74; also Syme 1991, 541. 80. ​See Gibson and Morello 2012, 27 (on Domitianic vagueness). Gibson and Morello point out that Pliny draws on epistolary and poetic effects to “convey a loose chronology for the work, a vague sense both of quasi-­historical rec­ord and of forward movement through a life” (250). 81. ​Bodel (2015) notes correlations between books 1 and 9; he notes that letters in the ­later book revisit themes from the first, presenting Pliny in a state of comparative self-­satisfaction. Leach notes how the otium theme of book 1 culminates in book 9, 9.36 and 9.40 serving as an “elaborated reprise” (2003, 162). Gibson (2015) documents a shift from light to dark, culminating in book 9. 82. ​Gibson 2015, 4. On the meta-­a llusion, see Barchiesi 2005, 331. 83. ​See Salzman 2017, 22; Gibson and Morello 2012, 238, and Gibson 2015, 4, which refers especially to Marchesi 2008, 249–50, and Barchiesi 2005, 330–31. 84. ​Gibson and Morello 2012, 104; see also Leach 2003, 164. The reanalysis of “temporis ordo” is noted by Tamás 2015, 58, and Kroh 2015, 89. 85. ​Whitton 2010, 130n74. The parallel between the two letters may be heightened by the similar semantics of the recipients’ names, Clarus and Lucilius. 86. ​Riggsby 2003, 182, 180. 87. ​See esp. Gibson and Morello 2012, 172–76, Riggsby 2003, 181–82, Leach 2003, 157–58, and Hoffer, 1999, 111–18. Details on specific rituals alluded to (e.g., assumption of toga virilis) can be found in Sherwin-­W hite 1966, 106–7, and Merrill 1903, 182–83. 88. ​Hoffer 1999, 111, 113–14. 89. ​Gibson and Morello 2012, 21–22, 34–35. 90. ​Leach 2003, 157. 91. ​See, e.g., Gibson and Morello 2012, 175. To this text we may add Sen. Ep. 1 and 83. 92. ​On Ep. 1.9 and Hor. Serm. 2.6, see Whitton 2019, 8n23, and 2014, 152. Pliny elsewhere echoes the same Horatian satire when describing his nightly routine a­ fter the daily ­trials in the presence of Trajan at Centumcellae: “You see how honorable, how austere our days w ­ ere [quam honesti, quam severi dies]. T ­ hese w ­ ere followed by the most pleasant relaxations. Each day we w ­ ere admitted to dinner [cenae]. It was moderate, if you factored in that this was a princeps. Sometimes we listened to out-­loud readings. Sometimes the night was drawn out by the most pleasant conversations [iucundissimis sermonibus nox ducebatur] (Ep. 6.31.13). See Lefèvre 1987, 249, citing esp. Hor. Serm. 2.6.65 (o noctes cenaeque deum) and 2.6.71 (sermo oritur). 93. ​Leach 2003, 158. 94. ​Gibson and Morello 2012, 176–79. 95. ​Compare the looser translation of “salvo iam et composito die” in Radice 1969, 75: “without having cut short or hurried the day’s work.”

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388   Notes to Pages 217–220 96. ​Riggsby 2003, 172. On Pliny’s villa as site of an idealized daily routine, see Mielsch 1987, 128–33. 97. ​Note that “aliquanto maturius,” pace Riggsby (2003, 179–80 with n. 240), means “a ­little ­earlier” not “a ­little ­later.” In winter the sun would shine into the (south-­facing) villa sooner ­a fter sunrise; in summer, the more northerly position of sunrise means the sun takes longer to reach that point. 98. ​The term “invitat” (“welcomes”) is not the only instance of a word evoking a quasiurban atmosphere: e.g., elsewhere a win­dow can “usher in” (admittit) and “detain” (retinet) the sunlight (2.17.6). 99. ​On Ep. 3.1 in general, see esp. Kroh 2015, 77–85, Tamás 2015, 57–65, Gibson and Morello 2012, 104–8, 115–25, 220–21, Johnson 2010, 36–42, Hannah 2009a, 138–39, Leach 2003, Henderson 2002a, 58–66, and Hoffer 1999, 78–80. The letter has been the subject of a rich series of commentaries, esp. Sherwin-­W hite 1966, 206–10, Merrill 1903, 264–69, and Mayor 1889, 40–52. Henderson observes that “Pliny ­will have known how well the routine of ‘A Day in the Life of . . .’ suits epistolography” (2002a, 63–64) and notes connections with Sen. Ep. 83 (see chapter 8, 231–46). 100. ​On allusions to Cicero and Quintilian, see Whitton 2019, 383, with reference to Cato in Cic. Sen. and the retired orator in Quint. Inst. 12.11.1–7. Gibson and Morello (2012, 118) provide the most detailed synopsis of the correspondences. Correspondences and contrasts between 3.1 and 9.36 are foregrounded in Tamás 2015 and Lefèvre 1987, 258–62. On Sherwin-­W hite’s description of Ep. 9.36 as an ordinatio diurna (1966, 517), see chapter 6, 163. 101. ​Sherwin-­W hite (1966, 517) maintains that the younger Pliny’s routine “corresponds to neither exactly, but is naturally nearer Spurinna’s”; see also Cova 2001, esp. 66: Spurinna provides more material for the “modern” heroism to which Pliny the Younger aspires. Similarity to Spurinna and difference from U ­ ncle Pliny are demonstrated also in the readings of Keeline 2018, 175–85, 199, and Kroh 2015. On Spurinna’s “balanced rotation of physical, intellectual, and social exercises,” see Johnson 2010, 36–42; quotation on 37 and helpful t­ able on 38. 102. ​Gibson and Morello 2012, 122, 221. On the differences, see, e.g., Johnson (2010, 37), who notes that Spurinna’s “literary pursuits” are “not ends in themselves” as they are for Pliny, and Leach (2003, 161), who maintains that “Spurinna’s rationale is self-­ maintenance and Pliny’s self-­improvement.” 103. ​Gibson and Morello 2012, 121. 104. ​Gibson and Morello 2012, 220. But Merrill does usefully surmise, e.g., that Spurinna’s walk and drive take place on “a mea­sured ambulatio or gestatio” (1903, 265). 105. ​Noting this equivocation in Pliny’s account, Wiedemann (2003, 137) points out that “even el­derly Romans of high status are not allowed to take an after­noon nap for granted.” 106. ​A poem attributed to Spurinna celebrates his mens composita in retirement—­one of several preserved in Anth. Lat. 918–21 Riese. T ­ hese are likely all spurious (Lefèvre 1987, 260n42; Merrill 1903, 264; Mayor 1889, 44). Teuffel (1873, §318, 5) pins the forgery on Caspar Barth, the first to publish the poems (1613), but see also the discussion in Pighi 1945. 107. ​Spurinna’s exemplification of virtues is emphasized by Kroh 2015, 81. 108. ​Hannah points out that while “in Spurinna’s mind the bath-­related activities took place a ­whole hour ­earlier or ­later at the seasonal extremes . . . ​, to our minds they

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Notes to Pages 220–223   389 would occur at much the same time, more or less two-­a nd-­a-­half (60-­minute) hours a­ fter midday” (2009a, 139). In his commentary, Mayor makes the same point, drawing on the time conversion t­ ables in Becker 1838 (1889, 44–46). But he also quotes Galen San. 6.5 on Marcus Aurelius’s ­earlier bath time during summer days (on which see chapter 5): this points us to the possibility that Spurinna, like Marcus, ended at an e­ arlier seasonal hour in summer so as to prevent the day’s tasks from extending more than a l­ittle (aliquid [Ep. 3.1.9]) beyond nightfall, given the brevity of summer nights and the need to preserve time for sleeping (45). Although Hannah does not take up this consideration, it is compatible with the “under­lying, biological sensitivity to light and heat—­a circadian rhythm of sorts,” which he posits as possibly “controlling Spurinna’s daily physical activity (or lack of it)” (2009a, 139). 109. ​See Wöhrle 1990, 201–2 with nn. 26–27, and Merrill 1903, citing Celsus Med. 1.2 on “the proper order”: exercitatio involving lectio, arma, pila, cursus, ambulatio, followed by unctio / balneum, then conquiescere, then cibus (267). See also Whitton 2019, 343, and Lefèvre 1987, 260, on Celsus’s recommendations for out-­loud reading. 110. ​The dietetic benefits of Spurinna’s consistent but flexible sequence w ­ ere also to be recognized in modern times by Sir Thomas Bernard, who in 1816 published a wisdom anthology with the title Spurinna, or The Comforts of Old Age; see esp. 57–58 on the old man’s “uninterrupted regularity.” 111. ​On Pliny’s letter itself as the embodiment of the routine, see Kroh 2015, 83. 112. ​On Ep. 9.36 and 9.40 in general, see Gibson and Morello 2012, 117–18, 171–72, 205–7, 219, 238–39; see also the commentary in Sherwin-­W hite 1966, 516–18, 524. 113. ​Whitton 2019, 14, citing Hor. Serm. 1.6.122 (ad quartam iaceo). Note also that “libuit” may echo Serm. 1.6.111 (quacumque libido est). 114. ​See this use of “evigilo” in, e.g., Ov. Tr. 1.1.108. 115. ​On Pliny’s hour equivocations, see Riggsby 2003, 179–80. 116. ​The terms in Ep. 5.6 include “xystus” (“open walkway”) (16), “ambulatio” (“walkway”) (17), “balineum” (“bath”) (25), and “cryptoporticus aestiva” (“covered walkway for use in summer”) (29). On t­ hese spatial references, see Gibson and Morello 2012, 122, 220–21. 117. ​This ayndetic series is arguably the model for line 7 in Anth. Lat. 26. 118. ​“Conditur” (“is put to rest”) is likely “condo” OLD 8 (used with “diem” as object in the idiomatic sense of “see the day out”) rather than “condio” (“season,” “preserve”). But it also echoes “ut voluptates quoque studiis condiantur” (3.1.9), Pliny’s comment on Spurinna’s dinner comedies, which I translate as “so that the pleasures may be seasoned with studies”; the use of “condio” may additionally suggest the ingredients that ­will make for a good closure, as if the day ­were being bottled. 119. ​9.36.3–5: “ambulans . . . ​dein ambulo . . . ​iterum ambulo . . . ​mox . . . ​ambulo.” On the theme of walking in both Ep. 9.36 and 3.1, see O’­Sullivan 2011, 81–83, and Tamás 2015, 67–69. 120. ​On his routine being more flexible than Spurinna’s, see Tamás 2015, 66. 121. ​Hoffer 1999, 43–44. 122. ​On 5.6–9.36, see Gibson and Morello 2021, 207; on the contrast with Spurrina’s sociality, see Zehnacker 2012, 185. 123. ​Sherwin-­W hite 1966, 518; see also Cic. Fam. 9.20.3: “They also come who . . .” (veniunt etiam qui . . .).

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390   Notes to Pages 224–228 124. ​Sherwin-­W hite 1966, 518. 125. ​As Whitton (2019, 346) notes, “We exit with a sour joke: . . . ​Pliny’s control of his regimen is revealed as partial, the Umbrian idyll as distant.” 126. ​See the essential discussion by Leach, who maps the routines of Ep. 9.36 and 9.40 and the literary activities of 7.9 in two separate appendices (2003, 161–62, 165). 127. ​­These stages include inventing (cogito [Ep. 9.36.2]), composing (componi [9.36.2]; pugillaribus [9.36.6]), thinking over (meditor [9.36.3]), dictating (dicto [9.36.2–3]; dictavi [9.40.2]), writing (scribenti) ([9.36.2]), revising (emendanti [9.36.2]; retractantur [9.40.2]; emendatione [9.40.2]), memorizing (teneri [9.36.2]; memoriae [9.40.2]), reciting (lego [9.36.3]), and delivering (agendi [9.40.2]). The portrait also draws together details from ­earlier letters, such as the anecdote about ­going on a hunt equipped cum pugillaribus (9.36.6), which resonates with the famous hunting foray in book 1 (1.6.1, 3); see Whitton 2019, 15, and Henderson 2002a, 147–48. 128. ​Whitton 2019, 11–19, 337–52. 129. ​Compare this sleeping chamber with the cubiculum in the Laurentine villa that “does not even perceive daylight, except when the win­dows are open” (ne diem quidem sentit, nisi fenestris apertis) (2.17.22). 130. ​The phrase Pliny uses to describe the end of the scene, “welcoming the day in” (die admisso) (2), simply draws attention to the fact that Pliny on ­these mornings is not admitting salutatores. Martial uses the same phrase to characterize a dark h ­ ouse: “Nor is ­there daylight u ­ nless it is allowed in” (nec dies nisi admissus) (Epigr. 12.57.25). 131. ​Blake 2012, 199–200. 132. ​Sherwin-­W hite 1966, 517, cited approvingly in Lefèvre 1987, 259n38. 133. ​Zehnacker 2012, 184. 134. ​E.g., Tac. Dial. 19.5. 135. ​Whitton 2019, 11–19, 339–40; quotation on 15. Whitton also argues for a close connection between Tacitus and both Ep. 9.36 and 1.6, which together make up “a comprehensive reply to Quintilian on dictation and country composition” (15). 136. ​Hinds 1998, 83–91. 137. ​In translating “perdunt” with “lose” I treat it as parallel to “eximitur,” “is removed,” in 40.1. But Radice may be right to understand “perdunt” in the sense “waste” with Pliny as the implied h ­ uman agent: “You can add spring and autumn, the intermediate seasons, during which none of the day is wasted and so very ­little is stolen from the night” (1969, 259). On this reading, I suggest, “ut” could point to an adaptive routine, in which time wasting on a given day might necessitate more extensive lucubration. 138. ​Barchiesi 2005, 331–32. But Whitton (2013, 53) also emphasizes a lack of closure: the letter leaves us “in the happy middle-­ground of spring and autumn, when neither day nor night is too long: the seasonal and diurnal reflex of his all-­encompassing moderation.” 139. ​Barchiesi 2005, 331. 140. ​Barchiesi 2005, 331; Lefèvre 1987, 262n48. For a caution on the “mosaic” analogy, see Henderson 2002a, 195n5. 141. ​Kondoleon 1999. 142. ​Kondoleon 1999, 332. 143. ​Kondoleon 1999, 329, 328 fig. 11, quotation on 329.

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Notes to Pages 228–236   391 144. ​Marino Barchiesi’s classic essay “L’orologio di Trimalcione” (1981) on Trimalchio’s performative time mastery resonates with the discussion of his son on Pliny. 145. ​Barchiesi 2005, 332. 146. ​Woolf 2015, esp. 132. 147. ​Whitton (2019, 348) points out the “in­ter­est­ing pattern across Fuscus’ three letters”: “Pliny works through [Quintilian’s] Institutio 10.5 on writing (Ep. 7.9), 10.6 on cogitatio (Ep. 9.36) and now 10.7 on extemporising.” 148. ​On this point, see Gibson and Morello 2012, 206.

Chapter 8

•

­Today in Retrospect: Seneca and Marcus Aurelius

1. ​Foucault 1997, 209, 220. 2. ​On Ep. 83 in general see Foucault 1997, Henderson 2002a, 58–66 (as model for Plin. Ep. 3.1), and Starobinski 1983, 104–5. Misch argues that the letter illustrates “the rationalization of life by devoting time to taking account e­ very now and then of one’s objectives” (1950, 2:424). 3. ​Gagliardi 1998, 69, 71. 4. ​On the progression from Lucilius’s use of time to his reading practices, see Ker 2009a, 155–61, 312–14. Connections between Ep. 2 and 84 are noted by Dietsche 2014, 84, and Graver 2014, 273–74. 5. ​Foucault 1997, 217. The pairing of letters 83 with 84 is central also in the more recent treatment in Graver 2014. Seneca’s thematic pairing of time and reading was arguably not lost on Pliny ­either, who has Fuscus echoing Lucilius in asking Pliny about how he should study (Ep. 7.9.1) and how he spends his time (9.36.1)—­the same themes, in reverse order. 6. ​Rimell 2015, 113–56; quotation on 114. 7. ​Foucault 1997, 219. Martha made this connection in the nineteenth c­ entury, applauding a conscientious pagan practice despite its lacking “the religious terror of a soul that is held accountable to God” (1866, 75). On Foucault’s reading of the On Anger passage, see Ker 2009c, esp. 165–67. Edwards cites Ep. 83 as an example of “self-­scrutiny” in the letters functioning as “a ritualized daily activity” (1997, 28), invoking On Anger as support. 8. ​E.g., Epictetus in Arr. Epict. diss. 3.10. On Seneca’s use of the lines, see Ker 2009c, 174–75. 9. ​Cic. Fam. 9.20.3 refers to the Caesarean salutatores “who visit me” (qui me . . . ​ observant). On speculator as scout, see Ker 2009d, 270–71. 10. ​Foucault 1997, 219. 11. ​Ker 2009c, 182–86. 12. ​Didaskaliai §§111, 13; 117, 7 = pp. 170, 175 Wheeler; cited by Hadot 1995, 135. Christian self-­examination must also be understood within the context of the Christian liturgical day, discussed in chapter 9. 13. ​See Ker 2009c. 14. ​For common emphasis on the day unit in Seneca and Philo, see Gribetz 2018, 374–77. 15. ​For “roam freely,” see the commentary of Williams 2003, 181. 16. ​Starobinski 1983, 104. See chapter 6, 164. 17. ​Ker 2009a, 162–65. 18. ​Ker 2009a, 168–74.

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392   Notes to Pages 237–244 19. ​On this idea in Seneca, see Ker 2009a, 171; see also Petron. Sat. 99.1 and M. Aur. Med. 7.69. 20. ​On Ep. 12, see Ker 2009a, 333–41. For a complementary reading of the same letter from a primarily spatial perspective, see Rimell 2015, 118–20. 21. ​Foucault 2005, 478. 22. ​Discussed by, e.g., Wolkenhauer 2011, 143–44, and Schmidt 1912, 61. 23. ​See also Ep. 101.5, 102.24, 104.12, and 120.18. 24. ​On this episode, see Ker 2009a, 165–66. 25. ​“Solidus” is also used with “hora” in the clause “although a ­whole hour [solida hora] remains u ­ ntil the sixth” (Juv. 11.205–6), which draws attention to an unusually early visit to the public baths, with “annus” in Livy’s explanation of how the length of a lunar year is a few days shorter than the “full year [solido anno] that rotates on a solar cycle” (1.19.6), and with “nox” or (more likely) “pars” in “according to Varro, t­ hese are the parts of the solid night [solidae noctis partes]” (or alternatively “the solid parts of the night”), which are “vespera, conticinium” (Serv. Aen. 2.268 [= Varr. Antiqu. 15, fr. 4 Mirsch]). The term “solidus” also has associations with coinage, and so invites us to conceive of the time unit in terms of value (as Jeremy McInerney has suggested to me). 26. ​In Ep. 8.1, Seneca writes, “I have buried myself away and closed the doors, so that I could be helpful to a greater number of ­people. None of my days concludes amid leisure [nullus mihi per otium dies exit]: I reclaim part of the nights for my studies [ partem noctium studiis vindico].” 27. ​ Ep. 83.4–5: “progymnastas [trainers] . . . ​Pharius . . . ​crisin [stage of life] . . . ​hieran [a tied race] . . . ​psychrolutes [cold-­water bather] . . . ​euripum [canal].” 28. ​This pattern lends further weight to Joshel and Petersen’s observation (2014, 11) about heightened attention to slave movements as a luxury item, seen in the writing of Seneca and his contemporaries (including Petronius and Columella). On the Felicio episode in Ep. 12, see Watson and Watson 2009 and Ker 2009a, 334–35. 29. ​E.g., Ep. 40.14, where exercitatio cotidiana is about manifesting moral habit in one’s use of language. 30. ​Ker 2009a, 172, 275. 31. ​For “unharness” as a translation of “interiungo,” see OLD s.v. “interiungo” 2; Tranq. 17.7 evinces a similar use. 32. ​Ker 2009a, 147–49. 33. ​Henderson (2002a, 64) notes that “Seneca’s monastery routine w ­ ill lead from solo self-­ribbing to misanthropic flaying of all humanity—­just one sozzled colony of 100% proof alcoholics!” 34. ​For more extensive discussion of both Tranq. 17 and Ep. 122, see Ker 2019. 35. ​For Pollio’s habit as relatively exceptional among Roman statesmen who w ­ ere ready to write letters or conduct administrative tasks while dining, see Hall 2017, 176–77. 36. ​Scipio, for example, had a daily habit of visiting the Capitolium alone “at night’s end, before day’s dawning” (noctis extremo, priusquam dilucularet), and would silently consult with Jupiter (Gell. NA 6.1.6). On Xenocrates’s daily s­ ilent times, see Diog. Laert. 4.11 and Stob. Flor. 33.33.11. Quintilian mentions Asinius Pollio’s reputation for being always open to the serious and the humorous, and for being a man “of all hours” (omnium horarum) (Inst. 6.3.111). 37. ​Ker 2004, 219–21, and 2019, 198–210.

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Notes to Pages 244–254   393 38. ​Compare Galen’s lament over day sleep at In Hip. prog. 3.10, where custom has superseded nature: “In our times now, custom has greater authority than nature, and not in the case of wealthy w ­ omen only, but even indeed quite a few men”; see Ker 2019, 209–10. 39. ​On the theory that Petronius is Seneca’s target, see, e.g., ­Sullivan 1985. 40. ​On the survival and discovery of the manuscript palimpsest, see Fleury 2012, 65, and Richlin 2012, 497. 41. ​Foucault 1997, 220, 233–34. 42. ​Foucault 1997, 220. 43. ​I follow the text in van den Hout 1975. For commentary on the letter, see van den Hout 1999, 172–75, and Richlin 2006, 134–36. For the sense of “untangle my yarn load,” see Richlin 2006, 134, 136. 44. ​On Pius’s carefree attitude ­toward salutatio, see van den Hout 1999, 10; on his only using a proxy for sacrifices when he ­wasn’t well, see van den Hout 1999, 173; on his regular bathing, see van den Hout 1999, 175. 45. ​See chapter 5, 150. 46. ​I follow Richlin 2006, 135, in assuming it is Marcus’s bedchamber. 47. ​One event that created friction for Fronto was the Herodes Atticus affair; see Birley 2012, 147. On Fronto’s concern over Marcus’s interest in philosophy, see Fleury 2012, 72. Champlin (1980, 121) vehemently treats it as a non-­issue. 48. ​On salutatio as a daily obligation h ­ ere and in other Roman texts, see Goldbeck 2010, 108n4. 49. ​In a letter from 163 CE, Fronto traces his affection for Marcus growing progressively in the course of an ­imagined ­great day: “You are calling me back to that original mea­sure of your love as it began to show light—­a nd you order the morning dawn to shine at midday [iubes matutina dilucula lucere meridie]!” (Ep. 1.5.3). 50. ​On t­ hese tendencies in the correspondence, see Fleury 2012, 65, 72. 51. ​Van den Hout (1999, 14) defends the reading “horam decimam” over other scholars’ preferred readings, such as “hora decimam tangit.” 52. ​See van den Hout 1999, 14, on Marcus’s time indications. 53. ​For more on sleep, see De fer. Als. 3.9. On the sleep and lucubration theme, see Ker 2004, 218n36. On Fronto’s contubernium, see Johnson 2010, 48n33, 150–53, and Champlin 1980, 50. 54. ​Fleury 2012, 72. 55. ​Fleury 2012, 73. 56. ​On reassessment of Marcus in light of the letters, see esp. Richlin 2012. 57. ​Martha 1866, 176. 58. ​Richlin 2012, 506. 59. ​Farrar 1868, 273, quoted in Richlin 2012, 506. 60. ​Richlin 2012, 506. 61. ​Richlin 2012, 497. 62. ​An obvious limit case, which Hadot (1998, 250–60) has persuasively discredited, is the appeal to historical anecdotes about Marcus’s insomnia and daily use of theriac—­ which we might have supported with mentions of insomnia in the letters—to account for passages in the Meditations that evoke opium dreams. 63. ​Farrar 1868, 316–17, quoted by Richlin 2012, 505.

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394   Notes to Pages 254–260 64. ​Sellars (2012, 461), for example, describes the letters as “the philosophical equivalent of a schoolboy writing out his lines in order to embed an idea in his mind,” while Brunt describes them as being “written out, if necessary again and again, with all the power and pungency that his ­mental energy and literary talent allowed” (1974, 4). See also Pater 1970, 48. 65. ​Ruftherford 1989, x. 66. ​Rutherford’s citations (1989, 14–17) include the philosophically inflected nightly self-­examinations of Pythagoras (Diog. Laert. 8.22), Seneca (Ira 3.36), Epictetus (Arr. Epict. diss. 3.10.2, 4.6.32), and Horace (Serm. 1.4.133–39). 67. ​See Brunt 1974, 8n13, and Hadot 1998, 275. Brunt refers to Med. 5.1, 2.1, 6.2, and 8.12. To this tally we may add 6.32, 10.13, and 11.27. 68. ​Marcus knew Epictetus’s writings intimately, and they are a constant resource for the Meditations. See Hadot 1998 and Rutherford 1989, 159–60. 69. ​For context, see Hadot 1995, 217–37. 70. ​Fleury 2012, 74. For an account of vari­ous attempts to bring the pieces together without neglecting their differences, see Richlin 2012, 512, and Hard and Gill 2011, 125. 71. ​The letter is quoted and discussed in the context of Marcus’s early life in Birley 2012, 146–47. 72. ​Since it seems evident that letter 4.5 was written on the previous day, it is a surprise to find t­ hese two letters in reverse order in Hard and Gill 2011, 129 (nos. 6–7). 73. ​Richlin (2006, 132) credits Jeffrey Henderson for suggesting to her that this is a choliambic verse garbled by the swapping of the first two words. Perhaps Marcus has deliberately garbled the verse to make his point? 74. ​While t­ here is no explicit reference in letter 4.5 to the day review account (diei ratio) seen in 4.6.2, ­there may be a playful allusion to it: one of the two Cato orations Marcus has been reading is “the one in which he stipulated a day for the tribune” (qua tribuno diem dixit) (4.5.2). Though “diem dicere” (“say the day”) is ­legal idiom, it is tempting to think that its more literal meaning is h ­ ere a playful dig at the homework task. 75. ​See Dickey 2012, Bloomer 1997, 72–74, Bradley 1984, 26, and Dionisotti 1982. They are also used, cautiously, for evidence on ancient bathing practices in Fagan 1999, 12. Bonnin mentions the colloquia in connection with Martial’s Epigrams 4.8, as evidence for continuity in daily habits (2015, 208–10). 76. ​My translations are based on the Latin text given by Dickey 2012; sometimes a slightly dif­fer­ent sense is conveyed by the facing Greek text. For example, “before daylight” translates as “ante lucem,” whereas the Greek “orthrou” means “at dawn.” 77. ​Dickey 2012, 2:197. 78. ​Dickey 2012, 1:51. 79. ​Dickey 2012, 2:197. 80. ​Dionisotti 1982; quotation on 124. Dionisotti is also the first to list together all five of the texts by Cicero, Horace, Martial, Pliny, and Seneca discussed in this and the two preceding chapters (124n84), but ­there is no mention of Marcus. 81. ​The mention of plural imperatores situates the colloquia firmly in the world of the second c­ entury CE or ­later—­the earliest pos­si­ble instance being 161–169 (rule by Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, as it happens)—­but, as Dickey points out (2012, 1:50 and 2:59), ­there ­were many such regimes in ­later imperial history.

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Notes to Pages 260–271   395 82. ​The exceptional inclusion of girls h ­ ere is noted by Dickey (2012: 2.197). Despite this hint that a girl might have been in the classroom, Bloomer (1997, 75) points out that “we have no evidence she was given an exercise which ­imagined her daily routine.” 83. ​Bloomer 1997, 74. 84. ​Bloomer 1997, 72, 58. 85. ​On the uncertain sense of “bonas horas,” see Dickey 2012, 2:61. 86. ​See chapter 3, 110. 87. ​Van den Hout (1999, 84) cites a mention of Masurius in Gell. NA 14.2.1 as having written about dierum diffisiones. 88. ​The analogy from weight units is discussed by Horsfall (2003, 17), who draws on Duncan-­Jones 1982, 269–70. The analogy was perhaps suggested by the use of twelve as a divider in both time (twelve hours) and weight (288 = 2 × 12 × 12). “Scripula” (we also see the plurals “scripulae,” “scripuli”) are mentioned by Bede along with other subdivisions of the hour in De tempore ratione 3–4 (with Wallis 2004). See also Bilfinger 1888b, 93. 89. ​The passage’s epideictic qualities may well have been inspired by the Greek encomiographers that Marcus says he has been listening to and marveling at (2.8.2). Birley (2012, 150–51) contextualizes 2.8 with reference to Marcus’s education ­under Fronto. 90. ​See the text and commentary in Peri 2004. 91. ​Champlin 1980, 129. 92. ​For the reading of Ennius as referring to Quintus Ennius, see van den Hout 1999, 511. 93. ​Champlin 1980, 129. 94. ​Champlin 1980, 121.

Chapter 9

•

Christian Roman Days

1. ​See chapter 8, 258. 2. ​On writers from outside Rome documenting Roman daily life, see Duret and Néraudau 2001, 317–18, along with Larmour and Spencer 2007, 58n111. 3. ​Gribetz 2020, 7. 4. ​Dionisotti 1982, 125. Green (1991, 246), approving of the comparison, sees “striking similarities,” especially in Eph. 2, 4, 5, 6. 5. ​I follow the text and the numbering in Dickey 2012. 6. ​Carcopino 1940, 156; Henderson 2002, 43. 7. ​Carcopino 1940, 156–57. 8. ​Carcopino 1940, 140. 9. ​Carcopino 1940, 276. Carcopino is likely referring to Eph. 2.19–21: “And behold, now I begin my prayers, and my thinking perceives in awe the presence of divinity” (et ecce iam vota ordior / et cogitatio numinis / praesentiam sentit pavens). 10. ​The revision and publication of the letters in the Variae, however, came possibly ­a fter 540; see Bjornlie 2013, 19–26. 11. ​The echo is pointed out by Bonnin (2015, 252), McCluskey (2012, 51n15), Barnish 1992, 23n28), and Wolkenhauer (2005, 48). For notes on Inst. see Halporn and Vessey 2004. For discussion of both Cassiodorus’s monastery and the Rule of Benedict in the context of Ostrogothic Italy, see Testa 2016, 492–97. 12. ​Halporn and Vessey 2004, 42.

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396   Notes to Pages 271–277 13. ​See, e.g., Dorhn-­van Rossum (1996, 31–33), who critiques Weber, Mumford, and o­ thers for treating the monastery as a protofactory, their descriptions replete with “machine meta­phors” (28). See also chapter 11, 330. On the medieval developments, see North 2005, esp. 145–218, and see Landes 2000, 48–62, and North 1975 on the Church as driver of anaphoric clock development and on timekeeping as what North refers to as “a necessary ingredient in ritual” (382). 14. ​McCluskey 1998, 113. 15. ​For the Rule of St. Benedict, I follow the edition of Venarde 2011. 16. ​Cited in Mayor 1889, 45. 17. ​Wiedemann 2003, 138. 18. ​“It is the hour now, for us to rise from sleep” is Romans 13:11; “­Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” is Psalms 95:7. 19. ​Kardong 1996, 11. 20. ​Bardon 1964, 103. 21. ​Trans. Wallis 1999. 22. ​Helms 2004, 181; see 1 Thess. 5:17. 23. ​Dossey 2013, 211, 232–33. 24. ​On the debate over this chapter, see, e.g., Brooke 2003, 72. 25. ​On Cic. Off. 3.1, see Ker 2009a, 349–50. On the humaneness of the Rule of St. Benedict as illustrated in rule 48, see Kardong 1996, 396–98. 26. ​Kardong 1996, 396. 27. ​Quoted in Agamben 2013, 20; on the Psalms as a clock, see McCluskey 1998, 111, and North 2005, 148. 28. ​Agamben 2013, 22, 24. 29. ​Agamben 2013, 4–5, 69. 30. ​Pliny uses regula ­there “almost in the sense of the Regula Benedicti,” notes Tamás (2015, 65). 31. ​“Seven times in the day I uttered praise to you” is Psalm 119:164; “In the m ­ iddle of the night I arose to confess to you” Psalm 119:62. 32. ​Most of the relevant texts are collected in volume 1 of the excellent anthology of Johnson 2009. 33. ​Dunn 2000, 14. 34. ​On sundials in Jerusalem and other locations in Judaea, see Bonnin 2015, 265–67. 35. ​Gribetz 2020, 8–17; quotation on 17. On the Shema, see Gribetz 2020, 135–87. See also Beckwith 2005, 171–212, for a more specific tracing of the daily times and scriptural reference points of Jewish worship (in synagogue and individual prayer as well as in the ­temple) and subsequent development in Christian practice. 36. ​Gribetz 2020, 135–87, 188–89. Detienne and Sissa 2000 provides a useful point of connection with Greco-­Roman theology, but the differences remain stark. A next step in light of Gribetz’s study would be to compare the rabbinic sources and early Christian discourse regarding the gender-­specific and theological dimensions of diurnal time, which I am unable to do ­here owing to limits of space. 37. ​Gribetz 2020, 38. 38. ​See Gribetz 2020, 35–91 (year), 92–134 (week); see also Salzman 2004 and 1990. 39. ​Taft 1986, 6–7. But the need for further study of Jewish quotidian time is noted by Gribetz and Kaye 2019, 369–70.

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Notes to Pages 278–284   397 40. ​On the command to always pray, see Taft 1986, 5. 41. ​See Bilfinger 1888b, 110–16. 42. ​Quoted and discussed in Taft 1986, 13–14; translation mine. 43. ​See Taft 1986, 18, and Kubitschek 1928, 188. 44. ​This exegetical practice is not without parallel in rabbinic texts, where, for example, a day in Creation is retold in an “hour-­by-­hour schedule,” in which “God and ­people share hourly, annual, cosmic, and historical time” (Gribetz 2020, 196–202, citing Leviticus Rabbah; quotations on 196) or where we are told “God’s daily schedule” (Gribetz 2020, 206–13). 45. ​ Apostolic Tradition 41. The translations h ­ ere (from a surviving Sahidic text) are from Taft 1986, 22. 46. ​Bowes 2005, 197. “We should not expect,” Bowes points out, “the numerous daily rituals of Christian life to have excited literary description any more than we can expect to excavate the physical detritus of prayers from the ancient h ­ ouse” (191). 47. ​On the evolution of the rules, see Brooke 2003 (esp. 70–77, “The Daily Round”), and Dunn 2000. 48. ​See Wieck 1988, 27–32. 49. ​O’Daly 2012, 19. 50. ​See Bardon 1964, 103. 51. ​See chapter 4, 125. 52. ​O’Daly 2012, 75, 79. Van Assendelft (1976, 21) argues that the biblical passage in each of the hymns lifts the pattern of meta­phor “beyond the everyday level.” 53. ​Hardie 2019, 216–222; quotation on 218. 54. ​See in general Cain 2003 (esp. 101–2) and the commentary in Adkin 2003. I thank Kristina Sessa for directing me to this letter. Byrne situates Jerome’s portrait of the cenobitic “life-­form” within his broader program of ascetism and virginity as “evangelical virtues in themselves and . . . ​preparations for martyrdom” (1987, 281). 55. ​On the echo of Tert. De oratione 25.1–5, see Adkin (2003, 347), who notes, however, that Jerome does not mention the biblical significance of specific hours. 56. ​See also Jerome’s other sketches of the six prayer times in, for example, Ep. 22.37, 108.20. 57. ​The passage evokes Seneca’s advice on internalizing an exemplary role model (e.g., Ep. 11.8–10). 58. ​Sessa 2007, 182–83. 59. ​Sessa 2007, 203. 60. ​Dionisotti 1982, 125. 61. ​The mime theory is reviewed in Green 1991, 245–46. On pagan and Christian references, see Green 1991, 248. On the oratio, including its influence on Prudentius, see Green 1991, 250. On the dif­fer­ent time indications and time perspectives in the oratio, see Green 1991, 245. 62. ​Green 1991, 245. 63. ​Green 1991, 245. 64. ​Green (1991, 246–47) notes the echo of Persius’s third satire and Horatian lyric, citing Pers. 3.1–2 and Hor. Carm. 3.11.37–38. 65. ​Green 1991, 248. 66. ​On the reference to the private Christian chapel, see Green 1991, 248.

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398   Notes to Pages 285–295 67. ​Bowes 2005, 196. See also Sessa 2007, 189, on the “material conversion” of the traditional cubiculum. 68. ​Green 1991, 257. 69. ​On Pers. 3.4, see chapter 6, 194–95. 70. ​On this ancient topos See, e.g., Mart. Epigr. 14.208 with Moss 2021. On the pre­sent instance, see Green 1991, 261. 71. ​Dickey 2012, 44. 72. ​For an overview of the letters, see Mratschek 2017. 73. ​Gibson 2013, 338–40, 354. On the late-­a ntique reception of Pliny, see Gibson and Rees 2013. 74. ​Bonnin (2015, 86) notes that Sidonius’s use of clepsydra to describe a w ­ ater clock in a nonjuridical context is novel—­even “stunning”—­a nd perhaps intentionally poetic. 75. ​See esp. Salzman 2004. 76. ​Rabelais 2003, 104–5. On the innovative routine of the Thelemites, see Agamben 2013, 5–7, and Starobinski 1987, 106–16. 77. ​Rabelais 2003, 128. 78. ​Rabelais 2003, 137. 79. ​Agamben 2013, 7. 80. ​Rabelais 2003, 137. 81. ​Agamben 2013, 7. 82. ​Starobinski 1983, 114. 83. ​See chapter 6, 166–68. 84. ​Rabelais 2003, 51. 85. ​Rabelais 2003, 51–52, 59. 86. ​Rabelais 2003, 66. 87. ​Starobinski 1983, 109. 88. ​Starobinski 1983, 140. 89. ​Franklin 2010, 70–71. For t­ hese and further examples, see Jackson 2007, 214, and Starobinski 1983, 117. 90. ​Bennett 1910, 35. I thank Heather Love for introducing me to this curious book. 91. ​Bennett 1910, 62.

Chapter 10

•

La vie quotidienne à Rome

1. ​Carcopino 1940, ix. 2. ​Carcopino 1940, x. 3. ​Carcopino 1940, x–xi. 4. ​Carcopino 1940, x. 5. ​Carcopino 1940, xi. 6. ​Lefebvre 1984, 29. 7. ​See the copious bibliography in Tomasson 1977. 8. ​Beard 2003, x; Carcopino 1940, 174, 23. 9. ​Marrou 1977, 214. 10. ​E.g., Sherwin-­W hite (1966) uses Carcopino’s chart as a decoder for Pliny the Elder’s routine in Plin. Ep. 3.5 (223) and cites Carcopino and Friedlaender as background for the everyday activities in Plin. Ep. 1.9.1 (106). 11. ​Treggiari 2002, 48.

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Notes to Pages 295–300   399 12. ​Zanelli 1970, 3–4, 47. 13. ​Beard 2003, xii, xv. 14. ​Carcopino 1940, 156. 15. ​Carcopino 1940, 143, 27. 16. ​Carcopino 1940, 2. 17. ​Carcopino 1939, 11. This is my translation of “les journées du Romain, sujet des premiers Antonins, dont nous nous proposons de suivre les moments successifs.” 18. ​Carcopino 1940, 143. 19. ​Carcopino 1940, 157–63. 20. ​Carcopino 1940, ix; Gibbon 1910, 77. 21. ​Carcopino 1940, 143. “Successive moments” is my translation of “moments successifs” (Carcopino 1939, 11). 22. ​Carcopino 1940, 144–47. 23. ​Momigliano 1966, 5 with n. 14. On the ramifications of Momigliano’s essay, see esp. Miller 2014 and 2007, Burke 2007, Herklotz 2007, and Cornell 1995. For text and translation of Roma Triumphans, see Biondo 2016. 24. ​Momigliano 1990, 71 (cited in Miller 2007, 23); Burke 2007, 231; Miller 2007, 69 and 73. 25. ​Sten­house 2014, 296; Momigliano 1966, 4. Estienne, writing in French, specifically uses the word “curieux.” 26. ​See Rawson (1985, 243) on how Varro’s antiquarianism was defended by Cicero as “worthy of ingeniosi, not mere curiosi” (with n. 56, citing Cic. Fin. 5.49). For more on Roman antiquarianism and curiosity, see Moatti 2015, 152–54, and Peter 1967, esp. 145–55, on periergeia and Stevenson 2004 on “antiquarianism for plea­sure” and serving elite interests (149, 151–55). 27. ​Momigliano 1990, 54 (cited in Miller 2007, 22). 28. ​Miller 2014, 72. 29. ​See, e.g., Bernard de Montfaucon’s L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures (1719–24), discussed in Ceserani 2014, 320. 30. ​Starobinski 1983, 116. His examples include the French educational theorist Antoine Jullien, whose 1808 Essai sur une méthode qui a pour objet de bien régler l’emploi du temps drew heavi­ly on classical models such as Seneca (Starobinski 1983, 117) but was motivated by modern concerns with maximizing profit. 31. ​Momigliano 1966, 5–6. 32. ​Goodwin 1614, 128–34. 33. ​Viola 1546, 181–82. The reference is clearly to equinoctial hours, since it is on the equinox that this supposed won­der can be observed. For the idea, appearing as early as the Hieroglyphica (1.16) of Horapollo Nilous (c. fourth to fifth ­century CE), see the text, translation, and discussion in McDermott 1938, 40–48. Another folkloristic account of hour signaling relates how e­ ither a baboon (Hierogl. 1.16) or a wild ass (onager) (Physiologus Latinus B, CPL 1154 g (A), ch. 21) bellows twelve times a night and twelve times a day, at the equinox. On the sun god Horus, see the introduction to this book, 9. 34. ​For surviving Egyptian w ­ ater clocks that feature a baboon at the hole to give the impression of “urinating” the outflow (constantly, not hourly), see Clagett 1995, 67, with fig. 3.23, and 148–49n84. Clagett notes that the baboon is associated with Thoth perhaps in the role of “patron of time” (67). Von Lieven and Schomberg also discuss baboon w ­ ater

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400   Notes to Pages 300–306 clocks (2019, 60–61), although they do not emphasize urination, as do Cotterell, Dickson, and Kamminga (1986, 39). 35. ​Also published during this period was Salmasius’s Plinianae exercitationes in Caji Julii Solini “Polyhistora” (1629), which includes detailed discussion of horological history; see Gratwick 1979. 36. ​Greenius 1667, 121. 37. ​Greenius 1667, 131, 137. 38. ​Mentioned in the “avertissement” to the French edition. D’Arnay’s reference is evidently to M. l’Abbé Couture’s “De la vie privée des Romains, c’est-­à-­dire: Ce qu’un particulier, menant une vie commune, faisoit dans le cours d’une journée,” a series of “dissertations” that I have found reprinted in Choix des mémoires de L’Academie royale des inscriptions et belles-­lettres, vol. 2 (London, 1777), 124–66. I have not been able to track down Couture’s original work or its date of publication, but the 1777 edition parallels both the form and the rhe­toric of D’Arnay, often word for word, though with more numerous citations of ancient sources. 39. ​D’Arnay 1761, 69, 32. 40. ​ Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politicks, and Lit­er­a­ture, of the Year 1761 (London, 1762), 291–92. 41. ​Beard 2003, 279. The difference is overstated. 42. ​Fiske 1837, 235. 43. ​The subtitle is Ein Beytrag zur richtigen Beurtheilung des Privatlebens der Römer und zum bessern Verständniss der römischen Schriftsteller, which translates as “a contribution to richer understanding of the private life of the Romans and t­ oward better comprehension of Roman authors.” 44. ​Sandys 1908, 74. 45. ​On Becker’s Charicles (with a brief discussion of Gallus) see Brown 2013. 46. ​Becker 1844, 28n1 with Plin. Ep. 9.36, 1.9. 47. ​ Quarterly Review 79, no. 158 (1848): 337. 48. ​ Quarterly Review 79, no. 158 (1848): 336. 49. ​ North American Review 66, no. 139 (1848): 401–2, 403. 50. ​Yorke et al. 1741–43. 51. ​Lytton 1903, xii. 52. ​Lytton 1903, xii–­xiii, 53. ​Lytton 1903, xvii–­x viii. 54. ​London Quarterly Review 29, no. 57 (1867): 242–43. 55. ​Friedlaender 1862–71, 1.2, §5. 56. ​On Becker’s proj­ect, see Sandys 1908, 67, 236–37. 57. ​Marquardt 1864, vi. 58. ​Marquardt 1864, 255–352. 59. ​Marquardt 1864, 255. 60. ​An updated and equally comprehensive version of Marquardt’s subject is available in Blümner 1911, esp. 372–85. 61. ​Preston and Dodge 1893, v. 62. ​Johnston 1903; quotations on 5. The relevant section is 308–11. See Carcopino 1939, 319. 63. ​Fowler 1909, viii.

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Notes to Pages 306–315   401 64. ​Fowler 1909, viii. 65. ​Fowler 1909, 275, 283. 66. ​Treble and King 1930, 49. 67. ​Marquardt 1864, 255. 68. ​Davis 1925, iii. 69. ​Davis 1925, iii. 70. ​Davis 1925, iii. On Davis’s historical fiction, see Krosch 2000. 71. ​Davis 1925, 16 and 21n1. 72. ​Carcopino 1953, 34. 73. ​Beard 2003, ix. 74. ​Grimal 1981, 295. 75. ​Carcopino 1958, 7, quoted in Grimal 1981, 313. 76. ​Carcopino 1969, 2. 77. ​Carcopino 1969, 2. 78. ​See Corcy-­Debray 2002 and 2001, esp. 439–67. 79. ​Beard 2003, xiii. 80. ​Carcopino 1940, 212. 81. ​Corcy-­Debray 2001, 466–67. 82. ​Grimal 1981, 304. For evidence of the methodological tensions between Syme and Carcopino, see Rey 2010. 83. ​Carcopino 1940, 2, 21, 51. On Algeria as a formative experience for Carcopino, see Grimal 1981, 300–301. On utopian vs. dystopian profiles for ancient Rome in modern historiography, see Laurence 1997. 84. ​Gibbon 1910, 78. 85. ​Carcopino 1940, xi. 86. ​Davis 1925, 473–74; Carcopino 1940, 276. 87. ​Braudel 1982, 29. In his methodological essay “History and the Social Sciences” originally published in Annales in 1958, Braudel explic­itly credits his focus on the longue durée to “the history of institutions, of religions, of civilizations, and (thanks to archeology with its need for vast chronological expanses) the ground-­breaking role of the studies devoted to classical antiquities” (1980, 29). See Clark 2004, 66 with nn. 34 and 35, for a discussion. 88. ​Braudel 1982, 28. 89. ​Benedict 1934; Clark 2004, 77 (on Alltagsgeschichte); de Certeau 1984, ix. 90. ​Mead 1928, 14, 18. 91. ​Carcopino 1940, ix. 92. ​Beard 2003, xiv. 93. ​Beard 2003, xiv. 94. ​Carcopino 1940, ix. 95. ​Durkheim 2008a, 19. The phrase in French is “comme les cadres solides qui enserrent la pensée” (Durkheim 2008b, 20). 96. ​See in general Highmore 2002 and Kaplan and Ross 1987. 97. ​Lefebvre 2008, 21, quoting Marx. 98. ​Lefebvre 1984, 29. I first encountered this discussion in Detienne and Sissa 2000. 99. ​Hegel 1975, 149 (“in this world of prose and everyday”) and 150 (“this is the prose of the world . . . :—­a world of finitude and mutability, of entanglement in the relative, of the pressure of necessity from which the individual is in no position to withdraw”). On

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402   Notes to Pages 315–322 Hegel’s distinction between the age of poetry and the age of prose (emblematized respectively by ancient epic and the modern novel), see Heller 1984, 3–4. 100. ​Detienne and Sissa 2000, 2. See, e.g., the classic essays by Fraenkel (1955a, 1955b) showing the day to be central to the articulation of h ­ uman experience in early Greek poetry. 101. ​Detienne and Sissa 2000, 1–3. 102. ​Lefebvre 1984, 20–21. 103. ​Grimal 1981, 307, commenting on Carcopino 1939, 146. (The En­glish translation of the Latin given ­here is from Carcopino 1940, 120). 104. ​Horsfall 2003, 22. 105. ​Nisbet and Livingstone 2010, 20. Nisbet (2006, 160n3) refers to the sourcebooks as “(para)academic publications.” Rimell (2008, 4) comments that “[Martial] is, and has been, brilliant fodder for all ­those ‘everyday life’ books about ancient Rome.” 106. ​Laurence 1997, 17. 107. ​Duby 1987, viii; he could very well have pointed to passages in Carcopino 1940 (e.g., 164–65). 108. ​Veyne 1971, 72. 109. ​Henderson 2002c, 43. 110. ​Henderson 2002c, 43, 44. 111. ​Henderson 2002c, 49, 46. 112. ​Giardina 1993, 5. 113. ​Toner 1995, 10. 114. ​Toner 1995, 7. 115. ​Toner 2009, 15–16. “Quotidianized time orientation” is my phrase. 116. ​See Stearns 2006. I thank Kristina Sessa for making me aware of this volume. 117. ​Sessa 2018, 3–6; quotation on 4. 118. ​“Indefatigable” is Henderson’s word (2002c, 43). 119. ​Baldson 1969, 15. 120. ​Baldson 1969, 11, 14, 12. 121. ​Baldson 1969, 12–14. 122. ​Aldrete 2004, 4. 123. ​Heurgon 1964, 183. 124. ​Ancient evidence for morning observance exists (e.g., the morning prayers of Alexander Severus mentioned in chapter 5, 159; see Köhler 1995, 138), but it is more l­imited than is usually suggested. 125. ​Turcan 2000, 1. 126. ​Beard 2003, 285. 127. ​Dupont 1992, 1. 128. ​Dupont 1992, 7. 129. ​Dupont 1992, 247–50. 130. ​Dupont 1992, 247. 131. ​Bourdieu 1990, 271–83; Nilsson 1920, 33; Mead 1928, 14–19. 132. ​Dupont 1992, 189. 133. ​Dupont 1992, 189–90. 134. ​Hopkins 1999, 10. Grethlein (2013, 360–61) sees in Hopkins’s experiment “not po­liti­cal, but sociocultural, history”; the scholar “employs fictional ele­ments in a way that

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Notes to Pages 322–328   403 is si­mul­ta­neously more extensive and more controlled than what we find in ancient historiography.” 135. ​Léon 2007, 6. 136. ​Angela 2009, 17. 137. ​Angela 2009, 21, 16. 138. ​Continuations include the Life in a Day montage-­movie series on YouTube that began airing in 2010 (https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/­user​/­lifeinaday). 139. ​Angela 2009, 16. 140. ​Angela 2009, 18. 141. ​Angela 2009, 17.

Chapter 11

•

Reading Roman Days in Modern Times

1. ​Carcopino 1940, 150, 151; in French, “En général, d’ailleurs, les Romains étaient des lève-­tôt, (Carcopino 1939, 180). Carcopino is citing Plin. Ep. 2.17.9. 2. ​Carcopino 1940, 151. 3. ​Beard 2003, xiv. 4. ​Beard 2003, xv. 5. ​Carcopino 1940, xi. 6. ​Durkheim 2008a, 7. 7. ​Carcopino 1940, x. 8. ​Carcopino 1940, 144. 9. ​Carcopino 1940, 148. 10. ​Carcopino 1940, 149. 11. ​Carcopino 1940, 151. 12. ​Carcopino 1940, 151. 13. ​Carcopino 1940, 151–52. 14. ​Carcopino 1940, 155, 152. 15. ​Carcopino 1940, 152. 16. ​Carcopino 1940, 173. 17. ​Preston and Dodge 1893, 45; Johnston 1903, 308; Fowler 1909, 266; Treble and King 1930, 44. 18. ​Preston and Dodge 1893, 45–46; Davis 1925, 17. 19. ​Beard 2003, xv. 20. ​On daylight saving in general, see Ogle 2015, 47–97, Bartky 2007, 161–200, and O’Malley 1990, 263–95; on Owen, see Karsten 2012, 145–49. For the longer tradition of “early rising” as a moral imperative in eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Protestantism, see Thompson 1967, 88. 21. ​O’Malley 1990, 294, 270; see also Ogle 2015, 47–74. 22. ​See esp. Ogle 2015, 6. In Ogle’s “modern globality,” increasing uniformity is paired with “a pluralization of already variegated landscapes of time” (2013, 1401). 23. ​Ogle 2015, 1–4; quotations on 1. 24. ​­W hether Bilfinger’s investigations w ­ ere directly influential in con­temporary debates is beside the point, though Bilfinger’s influence on twentieth-­century so­cio­log­i­cal analy­sis of timekeeping practices was extensive, as demonstrated in Dohrn-­van Rossum’s History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal O ­ rders (1996), 11–14. On Bilfinger’s role

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404   Notes to Pages 328–335 as a “pioneering” figure in the comparison of premodern and modern timekeeping, see Champion 2019, 248–49. 25. ​Such conceptions of “ancient times,” belonging as they do to the “antiquarian” branch of Momigliano’s dichotomy, are invested in an entirely dif­fer­ent set of historiographic questions that are explored, e.g., in Lianeri 2011, u ­ nder the umbrella topic of the “Western Time of Ancient History,” which is largely excluded from consideration h ­ ere. 26. ​Ogle 2015, 8. 27. ​Ogle 2015, 1. 28. ​Dohrn-­van Rossum 1996, 3. But see also Champion 2019 for critique of periodizing approaches to the history of time and temporalities. 29. ​The developments I list are standard in historical accounts of timekeeping; see esp. Ogle 2015, Glennie and Thrift 2009, Aveni 2002, Landes 2000, Dohrn-­van Rossum 1996, O’Malley 1990, Kern 1983, Le Goff 1980, and Thompson 1967. 30. ​On the regulation of social time, see esp. Ogle 2015, 8. 31. ​On the week and weekend, see Zerubavel 1985. On the “colonization” of the night, see Melbin 1978. 32. ​Ogle 2019, 325–26. 33. ​Sherman 1996, xi. 34. ​Lupton 2018, 12. 35. ​Mumford 1934, 326–33. 36. ​O’Malley 1990, 177. 37. ​A useful comparison is how the latest “temporal turn” in the humanities has been motivated by specific technological, environmental, and po­liti­cal developments; see Gribetz and Kaye 2019, 363–68. 38. ​Ogle 2015, 7–8. 39. ​A relevant example is Feeney who reflects on how Re­nais­sance observers perceived their common cause with Rome: “the Romans’ special obsession with time had itself also been the product of encounters with new parts of the world and with new technologies. The work they performed to assimilate t­ hese novelties transformed their world in the pro­cess and turned them into something close to the first modern society” (2008, 215). 40. ​Carcopino 1940, x; Durkheim 2008a, 20. 41. ​Davis 1925, 22, 149. 42. ​D’Arnay 1761, 68. 43. ​Greenius 1667, 148. 44. ​Morestellus 1605, 767. He may be referring to lunch, but more likely the time is in fact 6 p.m. 45. ​Carcopino 1940, 263. 46. ​Angela 2009, 17. 47. ​Davis 1925, iv. 48. ​Treble and King 1930, 43–50, 45–47. For the juxtaposition between the after­noon and bathing, see Fiske 1837, 235, §328. 49. ​Angela 2009, 248, 253. 50. ​Carcopino 157–64 (but see 184n62, which notes that the barber was open till the eighth hour); Casson 1998, 33; Balsdon 1969, 20 with n. 15. 51. ​Carcopino 1940, 149–50.

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Notes to Pages 335–343   405 52. ​Marquardt 1864, 262–63; Marquardt 1886, 257n5. 53. ​On misunderstandings introduced by time conversions, see Glennie and Thrift 2009, 10. 54. ​See also book 4, dialogue 1, in Morestellus 1605 and Goodwin 1614, 132. 55. ​Davis 1925, 282–85. 56. ​D’Arnay 1761, 23–24. 57. ​Viola 1546, 184. 58. ​Carcopino 1940, 148. 59. ​Carcopino 1940, 147. 60. ​Carcopino 1940, 212. 61. ​Carcopino 1940, 215; the French text corresponding to “a city in itself, ephemeral and monstrous” is “tout seul comme une ville éphémère et monstrueuse” (Carcopino 1939, 248). 62. ​Carcopino 1940, 212. See Jackson 1987, 131–38, on the French Ministry of Leisure. 63. ​Carcopino 1940, 183. 64. ​Carcopino 1940, 183. 65. ​Carcopino 1940, 184. For more standard interpretations of Epigr. 4.8.4, see chapter 7. 66. ​Carcopino 1940, 184. 67. ​Carcopino 1940, 183, 184. 68. ​Grimal 1981, 311–12. This putative Roman ideal was more closely approximated by the institution of the thirty-­five-­hour work-­week in France in 2000. 69. ​Balsdon 1969, 54–55; quotation on 54. 70. ​Carcopino 1940, 151 with nn. 24–25. 71. ​Balsdon 1969, 18. 72. ​Davis 1925, 32; Angela 2009, 43. 73. ​Treble and King 1930, 44. 74. ​D’Arnay 1761 47, 45. 75. ​Carcopino 1940, 173. 76. ​Becker 1844, 4. 77. ​D’Arnay 1761, 25. 78. ​D’Arnay 1761, 26, citing Sen. Brev. 12. 79. ​Carcopino 1940, 144, 148–49. 80. ​Balsdon 1969, 19, 18. 81. ​Dupont 1992, 189. 82. ​Davis 1925, 14. 83. ​Davis 1925, 15, 23. 84. ​Davis 1925, 23. 85. ​Davis 1925, 175, citing Ep. 6.31.13, 273; see also Carcopino 1940, 275, citing CIL XIV.2112. 86. ​D’Arnay 1761, 32–33. 87. ​Johnston 1903, 308. 88. ​Carcopino 1940, 184, 185. 89. ​Carcopino 1940, 192 with n. 90; citing Sen. Prov. 5.4. 90. ​Carcopino 1940, 164.

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406   Notes to Pages 343–347 91. ​Carcopino 1940, 170. 92. ​Carcopino 1940, 171. For his claim that ­woman did not work public jobs, see 180–83. On ­women’s bath time, see 258–60. 93. ​Casson 1998, 34; Johnston 1903, 44. 94. ​Dupont 1992, 180. 95. ​Dupont 1992, 180–81. 96. ​D’Arnay 1761, 5. 97. ​D’Arnay 1761, 18. 98. ​Marquardt 1864, 255. 99. ​Marquardt 1864, 258. 100. ​Carcopino 1940, 144, 146. 101. ​Carcopino 1940, 147. 102. ​Carcopino 1940, ix, 23. 103. ​Carcopino 1940, 51. 104. ​Dupont 1992, ix. 105. ​Marquardt 1864, 276 with n. 1735, quoting Procopius; see also Preston and Dodge 1893, 47–48. 106. ​Casson 1998, 34. 107. ​Carcopino 1940, 87; in French, “cruauté de la vie journalière” (Carcopino 1939, 109). 108. ​Carcopino 1940, 215, 216. 109. ​Carcopino 1940, 243. 110. ​Carcopino 1940, 240. On arriving before dawn and ­going without midday lunch, see 240n93, which cites SHA Commodus 11.5. 111. ​Carcopino 1940, 254. 112. ​Carcopino 1940, 263. 113. ​Carcopino 1940, 259. 114. ​True, Carcopino’s prose gives the impression of eighth in winter, ninth in summer, but that is ­either an inadvertent switch due to a misconception, or is perhaps informed by the same logic as he applied on Martial’s Epigr. 4.8.4. On Spurinna’s bath hour, see also the discussion in chapter 7.

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bi bl io g r a ph y

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I n de x of Pa s s ag e s

Acts 2:15 278 Aeneas Tacticus 22.1–29 35–36 Aeschylus fr. 182  30–31, 43 Alciphron, Letters 3.1  42, 356n13 Ambrose, Hymns 7.25–28 280 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae 16.5.4–9 159 16.5.9 378n69 23.6.77 44 Anonymous, Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana passim  258–62, 268 Anonymous, The Third Syrian War BNJ 160 F1  58 Anonymous Periegete FGrH 369 F1  47 Apuleius, Metamorphoses 1.15.1 119 11.20 119 Aristophanes Gerytades fr. 5  47 Wasps 858 41–42 [Aristotle], Constitution of the Athenians 30.vi 30 67.iii–68.1 362n111 Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus 3.10  234–35, 391n8

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3.24  166–67, 175, 180–81, 255, 381n63 4.1.47–50 379n27 Artemidorus, On the Interpretation of Dreams 3.66 385n43 [Asconius], On the Verrines 175 Baiter  76 Athanasius, Life of Antony 19.2–3 277 Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists 4.174 36 Augustine, On the City of God 6.3  84, 321 6.4 86 19.13 352n21 Ausonius, Ephemeris 1  162, 284 2  268, 395n9 3–8 passim  285–87 Bede, On the Reckoning of Time 3–4 395n88 5  87, 273, 353n58, 368n28 Benedict. See Rule of St. Benedict [Caesar] The African War 1.3  54, 66 3.5 66 19.4 66 37.1–39.3 67 70.5 365n46 78.9 66 The Spanish War passim 365n46

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438   Index of Passages Caesar The Civil War 1.80.4 69 2.14.1 366n51 2.30.3 70 3.76 366n68 3.80.7 69 The Gallic War 1.40.14 69 2.33.3 365n48 3.12.1 70 3.15.5  70, 365n44 3.75.2 365n50 4.23  70, 365n50 5.13.4 70 5.35.5 69 5.51.4 69 6.18 70 7.24 67–68 7.41 365n46 7.58.2 69 8.35.3 365n46 Callimachus, Hymns 5.73  31, 56 Cassiodorus Institutes of Divine and Secular Learning 1.30.4–5 270–71 1.32.3 271 Variae 1.45–46  50–53, 100–101, 102, 300 2.40–41 363n141 Cato, On Agriculture 2.1 137 Catullus, Poems 80.3–4 64 99.3 64 Celsus, On Medicine 1.pr. 145 1.1 145 1.2  144, 145–47, 239, 389n109 1.3.1 147 1.3.21 144 3.1–6 1 Censorinus, On Your Birthday 2.1–22.1 104–5 23 368n28 23.1–5 105 23.6 49

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23.6–9 105–8 23.7–8  65, 81, 107–9 24.1  29, 261 24.1–6  105, 109–11 24.6 29 [Cicero] Handbook of Electioneering 34 172 Ad Herennium 4.14.5 371n92 Cicero Academica 1.9 85 Against Catiline 1.29.9 64 Against Piso 13.2 62 Against Verres 2.1–2 365n32 Letters to Atticus 1.18.1 173 2.10.1 62 2.14.2  62, 169, 173 4.3.3 61 7.8.4  62, 365n37 12.3.2 363n5 12.5a.1 64 12.5c.1 64 12.14.3 177 12.15 177 13.52  77–78, 177 14.20.4 64 15.4.1 62 15.24.1  59, 364n26 Letters to His ­Brother Quintus 2.3.3 62 Letters to His Friends 4.4 174 7.28  169, 172, 174, 177 7.33.2 174 9.1.2 173–74 9.15.1–2  176, 379n35, 380n60 9.16.1 379n35 9.16.3–5  171–73, 380n46 9.16.7–8  169, 175 9.17 170–71 9.18  168–69, 171, 175, 178, 380n60 9.19 169

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Index of Passages   439 9.20.1  169–70, 178, 379n35 9.20.3  162–64, 166, 170–79, 180, 223, 239, 271, 389n123, 391n9 9.23.1 169 9.24 177–78 9.26  62, 171, 173, 175–76 14.12.2 61 15.16.1 63 16.9.2  61, 365n37 16.18.3 63 In Defense of Marcellus 1.1 168 In Defense of Milo 27–29 60–61 48.10 62 In Defense of Murena 25.14 77 69.4 60 In Defense of Quinctius 18.59 371n92 53.8–9 61 In Defense of Rabirius 6.3 364n26 9 365n33 In Defense of Roscius of Ameria 19.4 365n37 In Defense of Roscius the Comedian 2.5–7 76 On Divination 2.144 119 On Duties 1.142 3 3.1 274 On His House 41 63 On the Nature of the Gods 2.87  63, 367n10 On Old Age 69.9 64 On the Orator 2.12.1 63 Philippics 2.104.10 60 3.2.4 63 5.25.6 64 Tusculan Disputations 1.30 90 Columella, On Agriculture

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1.pr.9  138–39, 375n16 1.pr.12 137 1.pr.15–16 132–33 11.1.5 137 11.1.6  135, 137–38 11.1.14–20 133–35 11.1.18 137 11.1.22  138, 375n16 11.1.25 138 11.1.29–30 135 11.2 136 11.5.1 375n6 11.8.11 138 12.pr. 375n6 12.1 139 12.2  139, 375n6 1 Corinthians 15:31 277 40:1–2 278 Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) VI.1261 364n12 VIII.4440 364n12 XIII.5682 385n44 XIV.2112 405n85 XVI.32323 364n12 Daniel 6:10  278, 279 Dicta Catonis 4.48 119 Dio Cassius, History 39.34.2–3 65 40.52.2 64 71.35.4 377n58 76.17.1–3 157–58 77.17.3–5 158 Diocles of Carystus fr. 182  142–44 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Phi­los­o­phers 2.1  29, 37, 356n15 4.11  233–34, 392n36 5.16 378n68 6.104 43 Donatus, Life of Virgil 22 194 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai 111, 13  391n12 117, 7  391n12

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440   Index of Passages Ennius, Annals 1.100 372n107 8.268–74 176 Ephesians 6:18 278 Epictetus. See Arrian Epicurus, Letter to Menoecus 135 178–79 Eubulus fr. 119  42 Euripides, Rhesus 5 29 527–36 358n57 543 357n24 Eustathius, On the Iliad 554.46 385n44 Festus 348.29–31 111 Fronto De feriis Alsiensibus 3.1 263–64 3.7–13 264 3.9 393n53 Letters 1.3.12 251 1.4.1 251 1.5.3 393n49 1.5.5 249 2.4 251 2.8 262–63 2.10 252 2.13 251 2.14 251 3.12.2 252 3.17 252 3.14.2 250 4.3 249 4.5  246, 256–62 4.6 246–62 4.6.1  163, 164 4.6.2  230, 271 5.28 251 5.59 252 On Eloquence 1.4 118

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Galen In Hip. prog. 3.10 393n38 Hygiene 1.1 141–42 1.12 142 1.15 142 2.1  142, 147 5.1 150 5.4 148–49 6.5  149–50, 249, 376n41 6.7  144, 148 De methodo medendi 1.1 376n31 Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 3.2  84–86, 105, 372n104 3.3 369n34 3.3.4  49, 79 3.3.5  25–26, 102 3.3.9 79 3.4 369n34 4.1.1 153 6.1.6 392n36 10.15  10–11, 17 12.40.2 30n53 19.13.1 377n51 20.1 377n51 Geminus fr. 9  30 Gorgias DK 76 B11a.30  26 Herodotus, History 2.4 356n16 2.109.3  28–29, 31, 32 4.181.3 29–30 5.58 89 Hesiod, Works and Days 573–79 134 [Hippocrates] De affectionibus interioribus VII, 238, 22–23 Littré  357n31 Epidemics 4.V, 150, 17–18 Littré  357n31 7.25  30, 357n26 Hippolytus of Rome, Apostolic Tradition 41 279

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Index of Passages   441 Homer Iliad 21.111 29 Odyssey 12.440 29 Horace Carmen saeculare 9–12 191–92 Epistles 1.1.10 189 1.2.30–37  188, 272–73 1.7 183–84 2.1.103–13 188–89 2.2.65–80 189 Epodes 13.3–4 190 Odes 1.1.19–21 382n107 1.1.20–21 238 1.11.7–8 190 2.7.5–7 190 2.13.13–14 382n108 3.8.27 190–91 3.11.37–38 397n64 3.29.48 382n108 3.30.8–9  17, 191, 355n105 4.1.25–28 191 4.5.38–40 382n107 4.6.44 192 4.7  13–14, 191–92, 199, 354n84 4.13.14–16 190 4.15 382n112 Satires 1.4.133–39 188 1.6 14 1.6.22 162 1.6.45 182 1.6.60–105 179 1.6.110–11  179, 182, 389n113 1.6.111–31 180–83 1.6.122–23  166, 187–88, 195, 389n113 1.6.128–31  165, 179 1.9  182–84, 187–88 2.6  184–85, 216, 387n92 2.6.17 189 2.6.20 210 2.6.20–22 162 2.6.25–26 354n84

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Horapollo Nilous, Hieroglyphica 1.16  300, 399n33 Hyginus, Constitutio limitum 135.5 366n63 Inscriptiones Graecae (IG) XII.5.2.891  37, 359n67 XII.8.240  32–33, 357n35, 358n52 Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (ILS) 5050 119 5617–23 360n75 5624  38, 360n75 5657 360n75 5625  38–39, 360n79, 366n59 6891  119, 364n12 Isidore On the Genres of History 44.1–3 76 Origines 5.29.2 9 5.30.1 368n28 5.30–31 372n112 5.35.1 385n56 Jerome, Letters 22 281–82 100.10 272 107.9–10 282 108.19 282 Josephus Jewish Antiquities 14.65 277 The Jewish War 3.73–75 17 3.86  43, 365n49 3.87 119–20 Justinian, Digest 50.16.2 9 Juvenal, Satires 1.4–5 186 1.127–28 186 3.232–308 186–87 3.315–16 187 11.205–6 392n25 Lactantius, Divine Institutes 5.9 186

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442   Index of Passages Latin Anthology 26 Riese, 13 SB  211–13, 301, 389n117 918–21 Riese  388n106 Livy, From the Foundation of the City 1.19.6 392n25 2.64.9 57 3.69.8 57 5.19.6 119 9.46.5 94 23.35.16 57–58 23.44.6 58 25.10.6 371n96 30.30.19 58 45.2.3 58 Lucan, Civil War 7 passim  12–13 Lucian, Hippias 8 36 Lucilius fr. 1145–47  185–86 Lucretius, On the Nature of T ­ hings 1.142–46 186 3.1060–74 186 Luke 9:32 272 18:1 277 Lydus, De mensibus 2.1–2 368n28 4.36 382n110 Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.2  74, 86 1.2.19–1.3 368n28 1.3.11 11 1.12.16 98 1.21.13 9 3.16.14 65 Marcus Aurelius Letters. See Fronto, Letters Meditations 1.11 252 1.16 248–49 2.1 254 3.1 255 4.35 255 5.1 254–55 6.23 255

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6.30 253 7.29 255 9.3 255 9.13 254 Mark 15:33–34 278 [Martial], Epigrams 4.91  211–13, 301, 389n117 Martial, Epigrams 1.70 209 1.108.9–10 209 2.1  198, 208 3.36.3–6 209 4.1  202–3, 384n28 4.2–4.7 202–3 4.8  10, 43, 197, 200, 203–11, 213, 298, 299, 301, 340 4.8.1 162–63 4.8.1–3 218 4.8.4  405n65, 406n114 4.8.7 193 4.8.12 164 4.14 202–3 4.19 202 4.46 202 4.78.9–10 351n15 5.6.7–11 208 5.20.1–4 199 6.35.1 197–98 7.51 209 7.67 210 8.pr.1–3 208 8.20.1–2 197 8.21  152–53, 208 8.44  210, 385n38 8.45.2 197 8.67  43, 340 9.1.8–9  103, 385n52 9.52 383n15 10.20  199–202, 209, 210, 229, 385n50 10.38 383n15 10.48  208, 384n35 10.58  199, 211 10.70 198–99 11.1.1–2 197 11.36 383n15 12.pr. 386n69

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Index of Passages   443 12.1.3–4 198 12.5 386n74 12.18 211 12.29.1 209 12.34 383n15 12.57.25 390n130 12.68 210–11 14.208 398n70 Menander fr. 1015  31 Nepotianus, Epitome of Valerius Maximus 1.4.6 64 Ovid Amores 1.13  125–27, 377n49 Fasti 1.7–8 12 1.45 11 2.1 205 2.683 355n88 Metamorphoses 14.851 372n107 Tristia 1.1.108 389n114 5.10.7–8 354n67 Palatine Anthology 10.43  33, 206, 299 Palladius, The Work of Farming passim 358–59n58 Paulus, Digest 2.12.8 368n28 Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.12.10 359n68 Persius, Satires 2.1 12 3.1–15 passim  194, 397n64 Petronius, Satyrica 26.9 45 30.3 45 53.2  45, 76 71.11–12 45 77.2 45 Philodemus Epigrams 27 Sider  380n57

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Philostratus Heroicus 33.1  26, 28 Life of Apollonius 5.29, 31  156 Plato Laws 784a 30 Seventh Letter 326bc 379n28 Plautus Amphitruo 273–75 42 Boeotia fr. 1  25–29, 32, 36, 41–50, 102 fr. 2  49 Persa 114–15 119 Pseudolus 1304  32, 48, 355n86 Pliny the Elder, Natu­ral History pr.18  116, 326 2.12 3 2.180–88  90, 370n70 2.187  28, 90 2.188  85, 105, 368n28 3.45 71 7.182  340, 368n32 7.192–93  88, 356n9 7.198 356n9 7.202 356n9 7.210–212  88–90, 106 7.212  28, 90–94 7.212–215 105 7.213 94–95 7.213–215 49 7.214 95–99 7.215  65, 81, 88, 91, 99–103, 116, 345, 362n120 10.46.1 375n12 18.211 103 18.251 137 18.252 369n48 27.3 102–3 36.71–73 103 Pliny the Younger Letters

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444   Index of Passages Pliny the Younger (cont.) 1.3.1 195 1.5.8–9 15 1.9  1, 14, 15, 187, 215–16, 379n26, 398n10 1.10  14, 216–17 1.13 197 1.16.7 196 1.23.2 196 2.7.3 355n93 2.11  123, 158, 196, 373n8 2.17  195, 213, 217, 388n98, 390n129 3.1  1–3, 14–15, 56, 162–163, 218–22, 271, 287, 347, 378n71 3.1.2 373n8 3.1.3  161, 276 3.1.8 376n39 3.1.9  389n108, 389n118 3.1.10 376n38 3.1.11 214 3.5  116–17, 130–31, 156, 162, 214, 219, 224, 273, 291, 334, 398n10 3.7.4 196 3.10  15, 219 3.18.6 197 3.21  199–202, 214 4.9.9–14 196 4.23 214 5.6  213, 217, 222–23, 225, 389n116 6.31.13  387n92, 405n85 7.9  213, 287, 390n126, 391n147, 391n5 9.36  193, 218, 221–28 9.36.1  123, 162, 164, 213, 271, 287–88, 373n8, 391n5 9.36.3–5 389n119 9.40  162, 193, 213, 214, 217, 218, 226–229, 287–88 10.96.7 278 Panegyric 48  157, 383n14 49  286n61, 383n14  Plutarch Banquet of the Seven Sages 153c 361 Dion 29 37 Julius Caesar 59  74, 363n5, 367n72  Roman Questions

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84  10, 86–87, 368n28 Pollux, Onomastikon 1.68 29 1.71  31, 358n58 Polybius, Histories 9.14.8–9 71 9.15 71–72 10.12 58 10.43.2–4 366n65 Posidippus AB 52  37–38 Propertius 3.3.42 384n31 4.1a.69 12 Prudentius, Cathemerinon pr.35–37 280 1 280–81 5.1–4 281 [Pythagoras], Golden Verses 40–44 Thom  233 Psalms 94  272, 275 95:7 396n18 119 396n31 Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory 1.10.46 351n16 6.3.49 61 6.3.111 392n36 12.11.1–7  175, 388n100 Romans 13:11 396n18 Rule of St. Benedict pr.8–10 272 1–3 271 1.2 275 1.6 290 4.47 272 8–9 272–74 16–19, passim  276–77 24–48, passim  274–75 Sallust, The Jugurthine War 68.2 59 Seneca Apocolocyntosis 2.2 10

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Index of Passages   445 Hercules furens 125–201 126–27 Moral Letters 1  214–15, 231, 387n91 2  231, 379n38 7.3 377n47 8.1 392n26 12.6–8  237, 272 18 17 24.20 237 26.4–5 236 40.14 392n29 49.2–4 240 56 241 58.37 236 61.1 237 65.1–2 238 83  230–43, 246, 387n91, 388n99 83.1  215, 272 83.2 164 83.3 163 83.4–5 392n27 84.2 231 87.3 241 101  237, 255, 392n23 102.24 392n23 104.12 392n23 120.18 392n23 122  242, 244–45, 271, 326 122.10 151 122.11 194 Natu­ral Questions 3.pr.3 238 On Anger 2.10.7 234 3.19  152, 154 3.36  232–34, 280 On Benefits 6.33.4  380n41, 385n40 On the Brevity of Life 3.3 216 4.4 218 7.9 236–37 10 236 12  43–44, 405n78 18.3 236 On Clemency 1.8.4 152

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On the Constancy of the Wise Man 2.5 238 On Providence 5.4 405n89 On Superstition fr. 36  107 On Tranquility of Mind 14.5 152 17  243–44, 274 Thyestes 797–98 370n54 Sidonius Apollinaris Letters 1.2 159–60 2.9  287–90, 300 2.13.4 161 4.8 378n75 9.16 287 Poems 2.488–501 159–160 Servius On the Aeneid 1.373  58, 76 2.268 392n25 5.738 368n28 SHA (Scriptores Historiae Augustae) Alexander Severus 29–30 159 Antoninus Pius 11.5 249 Commodus 11.5 406n110 Hadrian 21.4 378n67 Marcus 2.6 253 7.2 248 8.13 254 Stobaeus, Florilegium 33.33.11  234, 392n36 Suetonius The Deified Augustus 31.2 74 44.3 57 50.1 56 60 16 64.2 76 76.2 154

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446   Index of Passages Suetonius (cont.) 78.1–2  154, 377n55 The Deified Claudius 34.2  119, 152, 346 The Deified Julius 20  75, 77, 377n55 40.1–2 55 81.4 78 82.1 78 Domitian 3.1 156–57 16.2 153 Galba 4.4  152, 340 On Grammarians and Rhetoricians 4.6 194 7.3 383n3 24.4 383n3 Otho 6.2  151, 153 Tiberius 34.2 151 Titus 8.1 152 Vespasian 21–22  155–56, 378n71 Vitellius 7.3 377n56 13.1 155 Tacitus Annals 6.20 151 14.56 238 Dialogue on Orators 6.1–4 195 7.1 195 9.3–4 195 19.5 390n134 Histories 1.62.2 155 Tertullian, On Prayer 20 [25]  31 25.1–5 278–79 1 Thessalonians 5:17 277

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Tibullus 1.1.3 384n31 Gaius Titius fr. 2 Malcovati  65 Twelve ­Tables 1.7, 9  91 Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 1.4.6 365n40 Varro Menippean Satires 186  17, 369n39 On Agriculture 2.pr.1  83, 132, 344 2.11.10 89 3.1  87, 203 3.17  82–84, 371n88 On the Latin Language 5.43 107 5.66  10, 80 5.155 93 6.3–11  80–82, 101, 105, 371n88 6.8 355n85 6.12–35 80 6.89  49, 79–80, 91, 96 Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science 1.9 73 2.19 76 2.22 366n67 3.8  72, 366n67 4.27 72 [Virgil], Moretum passim 140 Virgil Aeneid 5.738 85 6.539 11 8.407–15 11 8.454–66 11 9.156 340 Georgics 1.289–90 375n10 3.284 135 Vitruvius, On Architecture 1.pr.1 366n60

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Index of Passages   447 6.4.1 119 9.1.1  37, 87, 370n70 9.7.7 34 9.8  36–37, 39, 70–71, 370n70, 371n88 Xenophon Memorabilia 4.3.4 30 Oeconomicus

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7  129, 374n49 8 139 11–20 128–30 12.4 375n13 20.18 135 Yeats “The Long-­L egged Fly” lines 5–10  54

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G e n e r a l I n de x

accensus. See time signaling acta diurna, 75–77, 172, 336 Agamben, Giorgio, 275–76, 290 agricultural discourse, 57, 87, 127–31, 133–41 Aldrete, Gregory, 319 Ambrose, 280, 282, 283 Ammianus Marcellinus, 44, 159 Anaximander, 28–29, 32, 37, 90, 108 Anaximenes, 28, 90 Ando, Clifford, 90, 95 Andronicus of Cyrrhus, 36–37, 82–83 Angela, Alberto, 322–23, 334 Annales school, 308 antiquarianism: ancient, 10–11, 20, 29, 49, 53, 82, 86, 89, 108–11, 261–63, 291, 297, 321; modern, 8, 21, 269, 297–99, 302, 308, 311–13, 324, 328, 331. See also curiosity; discretio Antonine era, 294, 296, 297, 304, 312 Antoninus Pius, 39, 246, 248–50, 253 Antony, St., 277 Armstrong, David, 167–68, 179 astrology, 9, 12, 45, 58. See also horoscopes; zodiac Athens: diurnal timekeeping, 46–48; Tower of Winds, 36, 47, 82–83. See also clepsydrae; clock time; hours; sundials; w ­ ater clocks Augustus: Augustan era, 12, 14, 21, 56, 57, 168, 192, 311; daily habits, 153–56, 161; deferred retirement, 218; obelisk, 13, 74, 103; revival of Julian calendar, 75; time stamps on letters, 56

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Ausonius: in Carcopino, 268–69, 312; Ephemeris, 162–64, 166, 258, 283–87, 289–90; and school colloquia, 267–68 autobiography, 164–66, 179, 211, 236, 240 Babylonians. See hours; timekeeping Bakhtin, Mikhail, 168. See also chronotope Balsdon, J. P. V. D., 295, 335, 339, 341, 343 Baraz, Yelena, 174 Barchiesi, Alessandro, 190, 227–28 Barthélemy, Jean-­Jacques, 302 bathing, 2, 10, 57, 119, 122, 132, 144, 204–5, 259, 289, 346–47 Beagon, Mary, 88 Beard, Mary, 294–95, 302, 308, 310, 314–15, 321–22, 324–25 Becker, W. Adolf, 303–7, 311–12, 335, 340 Bender, John, 117–18, 120, 127, 133 Benedict, Ruth, 313 Benedict, St. See Rule of St. Benedict Berger, Peter, 15 Bilfinger, Gustav, 85, 328, 335, 403n24 biography, imperial, 151–61 Biondo, Flavio, 297 Birth, Kevin, 9, 35, 98 birthdays, 12, 86, 104–5, 111, 202 Bloomer, W. Martin, 261 body, as clock, 41–44. See also body-­shadow clock; dietetics; schedules; slaves body-­shadow clock, 32, 34, 42, 136 Bonnin, Jérôme, 38, 66, 100–101 Book of Hours, 279 Böttiger, Karl August, 302–3, 320, 343 Bourdieu, Pierre, 5, 321

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450  General Index Braudel, Fernand, 313, 316–7 Braund, Susanna Morton, 186 Brown, Michael, 187 Brunt, P. A., 254 Caesar, Julius: acta diurna, 75–77; assassination, 78; calendar reform, 55, 73–75; and Cicero, 55, 77–78, 168–79; daily routine, 77–78; as “Palamedes,” 55; time-­regulating laws, 75; time strategy in commentarii, 66–73; traffic restrictions, 75, 339, 345; and Yeats, 54–55 calendar: agricultural, 135–37; Julian, 55, 73–75, 328; Roman, 11–12, 33. See also seasons; zodiac Caligula, 151–52, 346 Callimachus, 31, 56 canonical hours, 272, 279–80. See also Christians; hours Carcopino, Jérôme: and Ausonius, 268–69; Beard on, 294–95, 302, 308, 310, 314–15, 324–25; and Chris­tian­ity, 269, 297, 307, 310, 312, 342, 345–46; conception of everyday, 295–96; and con­temporary social sciences, 312–14; criticism of, 295, 310–11, 315; and Durkheim, 314, 325, 332; and ­earlier “daily life” lit­er­a­ture, 294–95, 311; and excavation of Rome, 294, 308; and fascism, 294, 310–11, 337–38; focus on high empire, 293–94, 297; and forty-­hour working week, 316, 327, 329, 338–39; La vie quotidienne à Rome, 293–97, 308–16; and Lefebvre, 294; narrative technique, 302, 312, 324–27, 331–50; realism and specificity, 293–94; on Rome as archaic/modern paradigm, 296, 311, 325, 344–47; secular emphasis, 314, 320, 335; temporal focus, 296–97, 324–26; translation and influence, 295, 302; on ­women, 320, 342–43. See also “daily life in ancient Rome” Cassiodorus: on clocks and civilization, 27, 43, 50–53, 102, 300; on monastery clocks, 270–72 Casson, Lionel, 319, 335, 343, 346 Cato the Elder, 57, 132, 137, 140, 249–51, 257, 262, 272 Cato the Younger, 168, 171, 178 Celsus, 141, 144–47, 239, 274

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Censorinus: on clocks and hours, 105–8, 344; parts of day and night, 108–11; proj­ect, 104–5; and school exercises, 261; and Varro, 104–5 Champlin, Edward, 263–64 Christians: ascetism, 277, 281–83; in Carcopino, 297, 307, 310, 312, 342, 345–46; day hymns, 280; definition of civil day, 87, 273; hours in Passion narrative, 279, 299; hours of prayer, 276–79; insiders to Roman day, 267–70; and Jewish day, 277; liturgy, 276–79; parodied in Gargantua, 290–92; and virginity, 281–83. See also Ausonius; canonical hours; Jerome; Rule of St. Benedict; Sidonius Apollinaris chronotope, 12, 63, 123, 164, 168 chronotype, 117–18, 120, 127, 133 Cicero: and Caesar, 55, 77–78, 168–79; on death of Cato the Younger, 168, 171, 178; describing his day, 162–66, 170–71; and “Epicurean day,” 166–67, 171, Epicureanism, 168–79; 175, 291; hour indications, 59–64, 299; letters to Paetus, 168–79; salutationes, 170–76; sundial omen, 64; and Tiro, 61, 63; translator of Oeconomicus, 375n6; writing activities, 166, 173–74, 177 circadian rhythms, 6, 30, 141–42, 262 civil. See day; time Clarke, Katherine, 47 clepsydrae: Athenian, 35–36, 47; Egyptian, 205; marking hours, 160; in Roman courts, 34–35; as timers, 10, 34–35, 46–47; used as chamber pot, 41. See also ­water clocks clocks. See body-­shadow clock; clepsydrae; clock time; star clocks; sundials; sun tracking; ­water clocks; watches clock time: in Athens, 47; and civilizing pro­cess, 8, 26, 127; defined, 8–9, 11, 16; modern developments in, 270, 299, 324, 327–29, 331; Roman “civilization,” 20, 43, 50, 52–53, 90, 102–3, 270, 327; in Rome, 2, 5, 20–21, 26–28, 44, 56, 65, 79, 81, 88, 105, 116, 124, 140; and social power, 45–46. See also clocks; hours; schedules; technology colloquia of Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana, 258–62, 267–68 Columella, 57, 132–41

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General Index  451 Comitium, 13, 65, 81, 90–97, 101, 107. See also forum Cosconius, 49–50, 80, 91, 96 Couture, M. l’Abbé, 303, 320 curiosity, 1, 8, 86, 269–70, 296, 298, 301, 317, 318, 322–24, 331 “daily life in ancient Rome”: before nineteenth c­ entury, 299–302; fueled by modern time awareness, 328–31; genre criticized, 316–18; ninteenth c­ entury, 302–5; twentieth ­century before Carcopino, 302–8; in wake of Carcopino, 316–23; and w ­ omen, 320, 342–43. See also Carcopino Damon, Cynthia, 42 D’Arnay, Jean-­R odolphe, 301–3, 307, 311–12, 320, 330, 332, 334, 336, 340, 342, 344 Davis, William Stearns, 304, 307, 311–12, 322, 327, 333–34, 336, 341–42, 346 dawn, 29, 42, 119, 134; l­abors topos, 125–27. See also early rising; Matins; salutatio day: basic features, 6–8; civil, 10, 84–87, 104–5, 110, 273, 300, 325; daily coercion, 137–41; “day in the life,” 322; and life, 164–65; marked with “pebble,” 12, 104; modern “day lit­er­a­ture,” 163–64, 329–31; parts (Greece), 29–30; parts (Rome), 9, 29, 80, 108–11, 261–63, 300, 334–35; quartering, 10, 29, 31, 34, 50, 57, 91, 94, 183, 278–79, 282; theorized, 120–24. See also birthdays; circadian rhythms; clock time; “daily life in ancient Rome”; daylight; day patterns; dies; everyday; hours; lux; night; order; sun tracking; time; timekeeping; time signaling daylight, 6, 9, 10; length at dif­fer­ent latitutes, 149. See also lux daylight saving time, 327–28 day patterns: collective and individual, 118, 124; defined, 117; exemplary, 117; and forms of life, 117–20, 123, 127; as portals into Roman life, 267; and social hierarchy, 20, 317–18; synchronic, 124–25; textualized, 19, 118, 162–66. See also everyday; form of life de Certeau, Michel, 313 Detienne, Marcel, 315, 320 diachrony, 19, 27, 50, 97, 111, 115, 124–25, 127; in Carcopino: 325, 344. See also order; synchrony

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dies, 9; as condition of mind, 151; grammatical gender, 353n58; “solidus,” 190, 217, 238. See also day dietetics, 141–51 Dickey, Eleanor, 258, 286 dining, 10, 26; ­a fter bathing, 248, 259; Christian, 275, 281, 289, 342; and Cicero’s Epicureanism, 170–71, 177–78; dietetics on, 143; emperor, 152, 154–56, 158, 160; Horace, 180, 182–83, 185–86; institution of mealtimes, 26, 43; invitation to dinner, 261; in Martial, 210; “the ninth hour has passed,” 43, 206; nocturnal, 244, 334; and parasite humor, 41–46; Persians, 44; in Pliny, 195, 221–22, 226, 228; at tenth hour, 206; timing of, 206, 341. See also parasite Dio, Cassius, 64–65, 157–58 Diocles of Carystus, 142–45 Dionisotti, A. C., 162–63, 258, 268, 283 Discretio: and clock time, 50, 53; lux indiscreta, 49, 88, 101–3, 108–9, 345; Varronian, 80, 87–88 dispositio, 2–3, 118, 139, 216–17, 223–24, 245, 274. See also order Dodge, Louise, 306, 326 Dohrn-­van Rossum, Gerhard, 329 Domitian: assassination, 153, 295, 312; criticism of, 156–57; in Martial, 152, 199–203, 206–10; and meridian of Augustus, 103; and Pliny, 157, 214, 216 Dossey, Leslie, 274 “dramatization,” 120, 165, 283 dreams: disturbed, 167; interpreter, 119; about time, 206 Duby, Georges, 316 Dunn, Francis, 46–47 Dupont, Florence, 321–22, 341, 343, 345 Durkheim, 5, 7, 314, 325, 332 early rising, 324–28. See also dawn; daylight saving time; salutatio Egyptians. See clepsydrae; hours; sundials; timekeeping; ­water clocks emperor. See order ephemeral. See time Epictetus: on daily self-­examination, 234–35, 254–55; on “Epicurean day,” 166–67, 171, 175, 180–81, 291; in reception, 292

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452  General Index Epicureanism: and Cicero, 168–79; “Epicurean day,” 166–67, 171, 175, 180–81, 291 epigram. See Martial; sundials; “ZETHI” epigram epistolography, 12, 56, 63, 164–65 Eschenberg, Johann Joachim, 302 Evans-­Pritchard, Edward, 7 everyday: clothing, 260; common, communal, and contrastive time, 17–18; versus festive time, 17–18, 185, 195, 241, 272, 335; mythic beginnings of, 126; and narrative, 17–18; quotidianization, 17, 152, 318; quotidian time, 14–19; sermo cotidianus, 16. See also day patterns; everyday life; ­labors; schedules everyday life, 18, 43, 102, 139, 261; “absent” in Greece and Rome, 17, 294, 315–16; Alltagsgeschichte, 313, 318; “critique” of, 315–16; and Durkheim, 314, 332; and epistolography, 165, 246; and longue durée, 16, 120, 124, 310, 313; modern books on, 269, 295, 306, 312–13, 317, 319, 320, 325, 343, 347; and “ordinary p ­ eople,” 318; “prose of the world,” 315; “science of singularity,” 313; Sittengeschichte, 312, 317; theorized, 165. See also Highmore, Ben; Lefebvre, Henri examination of self: daily, 21, 163, 230–35, 242, 246, 248, 253–56; Christian, 277, 280, 285, 292; parodied in Gargantua, 291–92 exercise: literary and rhetorical, 213, 222, 246, 250–53, 256–64, 268; military, 17, 129, 151; physical, 10, 78, 143–51, 158, 181, 220, 222, 224, 238–39, 243–44, 289, 291; spiritual 21, 224, 240, 253, 292. See also dietetics; examination of self; military discourse Fabian, Johannes, 7, 328–29 factory, 8, 271, 275, 330. See also modern times farming. See agricultural discourse; oeconomics Farrar, F. W., 253–54 Feeney, Denis, 13–14, 26, 93, 190 Fellini, Federico, 295, 335 Fiske, N. W., 302 Fitzgerald, William, 140, 202, 209 Flacelière, Robert, 319 Fleury, Pascale, 251, 255 forms of life, 2, 117–20, 125, 164, 166; “biôn eidê,” 147; “forma vivendi,” 275; “usus

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vivendi,” 159; “vitae genus,” 145. See also day patterns; regula Fortuna huiusce diei, ­temple of, 13, 83 forum, 13, 62, 63, 78, 91, 94, 148, 175, 210, 286, 304, 308, 322, 334; “ad solarium,” 101; as chronotope, 123; deductio, 78, 122, 172–73; Forum of Appius, 62; Forum of Trajan, 308; in Horace and other satirists, 180–81, 183, 185–86; Roman Forum, 65, 91, 148, 175; as space of Roman timekeeping, 93, 95, 101, 107. See also Comitium Foucault: on Marcus Aurelius, 163, 246–48, 252; on order, 4; on self-­writing 163, 165, 230–31; on Seneca, 163, 230–33, 237 Fowler, William Warde, 306, 311 Franklin, Benjamin, 292 Freyberger, Klaus Stefan, 100 Friedlaender, Ludwig, 294–95, 305, 311–12, 319 Friedrich, Gustav, 204 Fronto: correspondence, 246, 250–52; on diverse social schedules, 118; and Marcus Aurelius, 230, 246–57, 262–64; pedagogy, 21, 246, 251–52, 256, 258 Gagliardi, Donato, 231 Galba, 151–53 Galen, 141–42, 147–51 Gallus. See Becker, W. Adolf Gardner, Hunter, 14 Gargantua, 290–92 Gargola, Daniel, 4 Gell, Alfred, 8, 55, 71, 121–22 Gellius, Aulus: on the civil day, 84–86, 105; on flamen dialis, 10–11; on lucubration, 194; on Plautus, 25, 79; on waiting for salutatio, 153 Giardina, Andrea, 317 Gibbon, Edward, 297, 312 Gibbs, Sharon, 38 Gibson, Roy, 214, 216, 219, 287 Giddens, Anthony, 15, 120–21 Gleason, Maud, 141 Glennie, Paul, 8, 16 Goodwin, Thomas, 299 Gourévitch, Danielle, 320 Gowers, Emily, 179, 181–82 Graevius, 301 Gratwick, A. S., 28, 42, 48, 92, 97–98, 100

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General Index  453 Graver, Margaret, 165 Green, Carin, 83 Greenius, Georg, 300–301, 334 Gribetz, Sarit Kattan, 267, 277 Grimal, Pierre, 308, 310–11, 316, 339 Guillemin, A. M., 162–63 Hachette publishers, 293–94, 308, 315, 319–21 Hadot, Pierre, 254 handbooks. See Carcopino; “daily life in ancient Rome” Hannah, Robert, 56, 97 Hanss, Stefan, 18 Hardie, Philip, 281 Hegel, 315 Henderson, John, 268, 317 Hermes Trismegistus, 300 Herodotus, 28–32, 89 Heurgon, Jacques, 320 Highmore, Ben, 16, 165 Hinds, Stephen, 225 historiography, 12, 57–59, 66–73; and acta diurna, 76 Hoffer, Stanley, 151, 195, 223 Homer, 29, 299, 315 Hopkins, Keith, 322 hora (Lat.): etymologies, 9, 281; and “Horace” wordplay, 185, 192. See also hours hôra (Gk.): ambiguous, 32, 255; as hour, 9; as season or time, 9, 29. See also hours; seasons Horace: lyric, 13–14, 190–92; and Maecenas, 179, 182–84, 187, 190; sleeps in till fourth hour, 162, 181, 183, 188, 195, 326; describes his day, 162–66, 179–85; and “Epicurean day,” 166–67, 179–81, 291; plays on “hora,” 185, 192; and Sabine farm, 184, 190, 210, 216; on salutatio, 179–83; writing routine, 187–90 horoscopes, 9, 45, 58, 104 Horsfall, Nicholas, 316 Horus, 9, 300 Hoskins, Janet, 7 hours: a­ dopted in Greece, 28–32; ­adopted in Rome, 48–50, 94–95, 108; a­ dopted universally, 88–90; in Babylonia and Egypt, 28–29; canonical, 272, 279–80; in centuriation, 71;

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equinoctial versus seasonal, 9, 11, 29, 30, 31–32, 36, 100–101, 136–37, 150, 172, 272, 299, 321, 329, 339; forty-­hour week, 316, 327, 329, 338–39; half-­hour precision, 59; “the ninth hour has passed,” 43, 206; nocturnal, 9, 63, 65, 67, 72, 83, 100, 140, 271, 299; numbered, 56–66, 255; in Ptolemaic postal ser­vice, 30, 56, 62; seasonal, 14, 18, 30, 34, 36, 64, 69, 71–73, 75, 140, 144, 190–91, 326, 341; tenth hour, 206–9; third, sixth, and ninth, 29, 31, 34, 57, 91, 94, 278–79, 282; “twelve parts of the day,” 28–29, 31–32; unnumbered, 63–64; “winter hour,” 14, 32, 48, 71, 140. See also Christians; day; clock time; Jews; sundials; timekeeping; w ­ ater clocks; “ZETHI” epigram Ideler, Ludwig, 335 Ignatius of Loyola, St., 292 inscriptions. See sundials Jerome, 281–83 Jews: hours of prayer, 277; and Roman time, 267 Johnson, William, 148 Johnston, Harold Whetstone, 306, 311, 326, 342–43 Jones, Alexander, 36, 59, 97–98 Joshel, Sandra, 3, 18, 135 Juvenal, 9, 186–87, 211, 293, 294; in reception, 316, 340 Jupiter, 10–11, 39, 42, 80, 94, 107 King, K. M., 306, 312, 326, 334 Knapp, Robert, 317 Kondoleon, Christine, 13, 117, 206, 227 König, Jason, 4 Krebs, Christopher, 70, 73 ­labors, 10, 125–26, 203–4, 206, 212, 218, 255, 291. See also everyday; officia; otium; scholê Landes, David, 41 Laurence, Ray, 122–23, 316 law courts. See clepsydrae; oratory laws: forty-­hour week, 338; Lex Plaetoria, 81, 111; on l­egal t­ rials, 64, 75; of nature, 91; on traffic, 75, 339, 345; Twelve T ­ ables, 80–81, 91, 109–11

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454  General Index Leach, Eleanor, 3, 169, 175, 216 Lefebvre, Henri, 17, 294, 315, 322 leisure. See otium; scholê Lejay, Paul, 162–63, 165, 167, 171 Léon, Vicky, 322 letters. See epistolography Lévi-­Strauss, 321 life. See day; forms of life Lindsay, W. M., 213 lit­er­a­ture: author function, 164; “of the day,” 163–64; as time technology, 11, 164–66. See also epigram; epistolography, historiography; satire; tragedy; writing Livy, 57–59 Lorimer, E. O., 295 Low-­Life, 330 Lucan, 12–13 Lucilius, 185–86 Luckmann, Thomas, 15, 120 Lucretius, 186 lucubration, 119, 131, 136, 144, 150, 154, 161, 245, 262, 272, 326–27, 340; for writing and study: 103, 110, 116, 130, 174, 186–87, 194–95, 212, 225, 227, 248–52, 254, 257, 291, 343. See also night Lund School. See time geography Lupton, Christina, 330 lustrum, 99–100, 104, 203 lux, 9; “indiscreta,” 49, 88, 101–3, 108–9, 345; “Romana,” 101–4 Lytton, Edward, 304 Marcus Aurelius: and Antoninus Pius, 246, 248, 250, 253; and Chris­tian­ity, 254; describing his day, 163–66, 230–31, 246–48, 256–57; and Fronto, 230, 246–57, 262–64; Meditations, 235, 252–56; ­mother, 246–49, 253; in reception, 253–54, 292; and rhetorical exercises, 258–62; “sanctified,” 253; treatment of slaves, 150–51 Marquardt, Joachim, 305–7, 311, 319, 335, 344, 346 Marrou, Henri, 295 Martha, Constant, 163, 252–53 Martial: in Bilbilis, 210–11; and Domitian, 198–200, 202–3, 207–9; on the hours, 10, 162–66, 202–11; and Juvenal, 211; literary activities, 193, 197–99; in modern

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handbooks, 298–99, 301, 320, 339–40; and Pliny, 199–202; pseudo-­, 211–13; on salutatio, 204, 208–9 Matins, 274, 276 Mead, Margaret, 313–14, 321 medicine. See dietetics Menander, 26, 31, 46–48 Meton, 46, 55 military discourse, 17, 35–36, 43, 66–73 Millar, Fergus, 153, 157 Moatti, Claudia, 58, 86 modern times, 328–31. See also antiquarianism; clock time; “daily life in ancient Rome” Momigliano, Arnaldo, 297–99 monastery, as proto-­factory, 8, 271, 275, 330. See also Christians; Rule of St. Benedict Moore, Wilbert E., 5–6 Morello, Ruth, 214, 216, 219 Moreno Soldev­ila, Rosario, 204, 208–9 Morestellus, Petrus, 300, 334–35 Moretum, 139–40 Morstein-­Marx, Robert, 172 Muecke, Frances, 163–64 Mumford, Lewis, 330 night: and Christian agapes, 312, 246; colonization of, 100–101, 116, 329; and fevers, 141; midnight rising, 100–111; nocturnalism, 242, 244–46, 339–40; nox intempesta, 80–81, 100, 110, 262, 300, 334; parts of, 80–82, 109–10, 300; unsafe streets, 187. See also lucubration; sleep; Vigils; watches (vigiliae) Nilsson, Martin, 7 Nisbet, Gideon, 316 Nisbet, Robin, 162 nundinae, 12, 17, 344, 346 O’Daly, Gerald, 280–81 oeconomics, 127–31 officia, 9–10. See also salutatio Ogle, Vanessa, 328–29, 331 old age, 3, 148–49, 238–41 Oliensis, Ellen, 165, 181–82, 187 O’Malley, Michael, 327, 330–31 oratory, 62–63, 65, 175, 195–96, 198, 200–201, 213–14, 224

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General Index  455 order, 2–4; in the body, 141–51; and clocks, 50, 53, 300; and coordination, 5; of the day, 3–4, 9; on the farm, 133–41; and knowledge of Roman life, 4–5, 21, 267–70; “order of work,” 135–37; ordinariness, 16; “ordinatio diurna,” 163, 388n100; ordo lectionis, 271; ordo monasterii, 275–76, 279, 282; Palamedes, 26–27; and the princeps, 151–61; and Roman history, 5, 19–20, 25–27; and Rome, 4, 349; social rank (ordo), 5, 20–21, 117–20; sociotemporal, 6, 8, 16, 27, 39, 229. See also discretio; dispositio Östenberg, Ida, 172 O’­Sullivan, Timothy, 173, 181 otium, 9, 63, 118, 135, 141, 157, 164, 174, 181, 190, 198, 211, 213–18, 223–24, 243–44, 274. See also scholê Ovid, 11–12, 125–27, 208, 317, 350 Owen, Robert, 327

agency, 19; and Horace, 216; letters, 63; literary activities, 193, 195–97, 224–29; and Martial, 199–202; repre­sen­ta­tion of time and space, 122–23; satirizes time wasting, 1, 187, 215–17; and Seneca, 216; and Spurinna, 1–3, 15–16, 150, 161, 163, 202, 214, 218–23, 287, 347; and Trajan, 157–58, 196–97, 214, 228; and U ­ ncle Pliny, 115–17 Polybius, 58, 71–72 Pompeii, 38, 304, 319, 322 Pompey, 62, 64, 75, 277 Preston, Harriet W ­ aters, 306, 326 Price, Derek de Solla, 56 princeps. See order Prometheus, 26 prôtos heuretês, 26–27, 126. See also Palamedes; technology Prudentius, 280–81 Pytheas of Massilia, 30

Palamedes, 26–28, 43, 50, 55, 73, 88, 117 parasite: humor, 42; lament on clock time, 25–29, 32, 36, 41–50, 102; and salutatio, 42–43 Pater, Walter, 254 patronage. See parasite; salutatio Persians, 44 Persius: 104, 194–95, 284–85, 326, 339 Petersen, Lauren, 3, 18, 135 philosophy. See Epicureanism; examination of self; Stoicism Plato, 30, 36, 47, 167, 233 Plautus: and early Roman clocks, 49–50; and Menander, 26, 46–48; parasite fragment, 25–29, 32, 36, 41–50, 102; and Varro, 79 Pliny the Elder: on antiquarianism, 298; on Augustus’s meridian, 103; on civil day, 85; on clock time in Rome, 90–104, 297, 299, 325–26, 344–45; in Gargantua, 291; on gentium consensus tacitus, 88–90, 106; on gnomonics, 90; lucubration and time habits, 115–17, 326, 334, 343; and Varro, 95–96, 103, 105, 109, 111, 116 Pliny the Younger: on Christians, 278; and Cicero, 223; describes his day, 122–23, 162–66, 221–24; and dietetics, 148, 150; and Domitian, 157, 214, 216; elides

Quintilian, 175, 218, 224–25 quotidian. See everyday

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Rabelais, 290–92 Raepsaet-­Charlier, Marie-­Thérèse, 320, 343 Rambaud, Michel, 71 Reckford, Kenneth, 185, 192 regula: monastic, 271, 275–76; Spurinna, 2, 221, 223, 271, 276. See also Rule of St. Benedict; schedules religion. See ritual Richlin, Amy, 253–54 Riggsby, Andrew, 71, 122–23, 129, 196, 215, 217 Rimell, Victoria, 204, 232 ritual: auspicium, 110–11, 130–31; Christian, 273, 278, 282–83, 285–86; Jewish, 277; ritualization, 7, 17, 190, 321; Roman religion, 10, 12, 17, 83, 102, 103, 107, 135, 191, 284; and secularization of Roman day, 314–15, 320, 335; social rituals, 16, 122, 153, 198, 208, 320. See also Christians; Jews Rome: imperial versus republican, 344–45; as privileged ancient paradigm, 328; Roman time as modern “location device,” 331. See also Carcopino; day; forum; Varro Rosinus, Johannes, 299

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456  General Index routine. See day patterns; dietetics; everyday; oeconomics; order; routinization; schedules; Spurinna, Vestricius; synchrony; writing routinization, 121. See everyday; order Rowell, Henry T., 295, 302 Rudd, Niall, 179, 189 Rule of St. Benedict, 2, 151; on hours of prayer, 276; Roman terminology in, 271–72; on temporal order, 275; on Vigils, 272–74 Rüpke, Jörg, 55 Rutherford, R. B., 254 saeculum, 104–5, 203 salutatio, 10, 15–16, 62–63, 119, 122, 167, 176, 195, 198, 281, 283; admission into, 172, 205; avoidance and critique, 42–43, 138–39, 179–83, 186–87, 209–10; and emperor, 151, 153, 156–59, 248, 340; humor, 42–43; lengthy, 62, 138, 170, 172–75; modern reception, 303, 305, 320, 326, 333, 340; “nocturnal,” 204, 209; and parasitism, 42–43; waiting, 153 satire, 12, 164, 179–87, 308 Schaldach, Karlheinz, 38 schedules: agricultural, 135, 139; baths, 57; city, 75, 123, 144, 190, 202–8; dining, 27; of emperor, 157, 160, 248, 251; freedom from, 181; gender-­specific, 57; heterogeneous, 19, 118; of literary activities, 166, 192–93, 195, 224; for Ludi Saeculares, 119; messy versus orderly, 2; monastic, 276; nocturnal, 244–46; personal, 3, 115, 119, 233–34, 242–44; precision, 8; “schedule of bound­aries,” 47; social, 9–10, 28, 41, 50; subjection to, 27–28, 41–46, 184; and time discipline, 16. See also day patterns; officia; order; routine; salutatio scholê, 129, 143, 146, 147, 158, 239. See also otium Scipio Africanus, 243, 392n36 Scipio Nasica. See ­water clocks seasons, 12–14; and the body, 142, 146, 321; and calendar, 55, 74–75, 97–98; invention, 28; rising of Pleiades, 33, 72, 137; shift to fall, 116, 183, 214, 248; solstices, 14, 34; as time of life, 29, 255; tracked on sundials, 32, 34, 99; variation of activities, 136, 273; variation of days and nights, 14, 18, 64, 69,

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72, 118, 130; variation of natu­ral w ­ ater flow, 47; variation of sun’s course, 92; winter, 14, 78, 101, 140, 226–29. See also hôra (Gk.); hours; lucubration; sundials; sun tracking self. See examination of self; writing Seneca: on alienation from life, 316; on daily self-­examination, 230–35; dawn l­abors topos, 125–27; day as life, 235–38; describes his day, 163–66, 238–41; on drunkenness, 241–42; letters, 63; on nocturnalism, 242, 244–46; on private schedules, 242–44; satirization of time wasting, 187 Sessa, Kristina, 282, 318 Severan emperors, 157–59 Sherman, Stuart, 330 Sherwin-­W hite, A. N., 163, 223, 225 Sidonius Apollinaris: on emperors, 159–61; on his own time habits, 166, 269, 283, 287–90 siesta, 6, 64, 116, 339; in Ausonius, 289; in dietetics, 143, 146; as historiographic case study, 118; Marcus Aurelius, 249, 252; in Martial, 204; minimal, 220; monastic, 274; Seneca, 239, 241; skipped, 77, 227–28, 306, 341; as time to attack, 69, 346; Vespasian, 156 Silius Italicus, 196, 203 Sissa, Giulia, 315, 320 slaves: bodily health, 149–50, 249; crucified, 57; exercise partners, 239–40; on the farm, 133–35, 138–40; secretaries, 76, 117, 198, 225, 228, 263, 286; time and agency elided, 3, 18–19, 117, 182, 240; timed movements, 45, 135; as time tellers, 3, 10, 303, 340–41; voluntary “servitude,” 147, 149 sleep. See dreams; early rising; lucubration; night; siesta Spencer, Diana, 80–81 spectacles, 58; Claudius’ attendance, 119, 152; in reception, 310, 337, 343, 346–47 Spurinna, Vestricius, 1–3, 15–16, 148, 150, 161, 163, 202, 214, 218–23, 287, 347 star clocks, 26, 30, 32, 34, 271 Starobinski, Jean, 3–4, 163, 165, 236, 291–92, 299 Stoicism, 166–67, 169, 171–72, 242, 246, 275 Suetonius: on emperors: 151–58; on Julius Caesar: 55–56, 59, 74–75, 77–78; on rhetoricians, 194

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General Index  457 sundials: Anaximander, 29; ancient epigrams and inscriptions, 32–33, 38–39, 57, 81, 299, 340; in Athens, 46–48; versus body time, 41; calendrical function, 56, 74; discrepant, 97–98, 107–8; early, 28, 31; in Egypt, 32; equinoctial, 31; gnomon, 32, 37, 90; in Herodotus, 32; imagery in Horace, 14; and “invention,” 36–37; versus meridian, 13, 32, 74, 103; Messala’s Catanian, 95–98, 107–8, 321; modern cata­logues, 38; modern inscriptions, 14, 370n60; numbering in Greek letters, 33, 206; paired with a w ­ ater clock, 36, 52–53, 270; panhellenic phenomenon, 48; Philippus’s more accurate, 98–99, 107–8; polos, 28, 32, 47; portable, 39–41, 45; in Praeneste, 81; as “ritual objects,” 56; in Rome, 10, 48–50, 93–99, 105–8; Rome’s first, 49, 94–95, 100, 106, 108; “shadow chaser,” 37; and Sicilian tyrants, 37; site-­ specific, 36–39; in Sparta, 37, 48, 90; at ­temples, 94–95, 106–7; Theoderic, 51–52; tracking day and year, 32–33; Trimalchio, 45. See also clock time; hours; “ZETHI” epigram sun tracking, 10, 30, 92 Syme, Ronald, 311 synchrony, 115, 124–25, 344 Talbert, Richard, 39, 45 technology: history of, 26–27, 88–90, 330–31; Ionic alphabet, 88–89; shaving, 89–90, 102; “systematization,” 99; “unspoken global agreements” on, 88–90. See also clock time; Palamedes; Pliny the Elder; prôtos heuretês; timekeeping Tertullian, 31, 278–79, 281 Theoderic (Ostrogoth), 50–53 Thompson, E. P., 355n99 Thrift, Nigel, 8, 16 Tiberius, 151–52, 154 time: and anthropology, 7, 9; biotemporal, 6; civil, 104–5; coordinating function, 5, 16; discipline, 4, 16, 163; ephemeral, 1, 6, 38–39, 76, 255, 295, 337, 346; festive, 17–18, 185, 195, 241, 314, 317, 335, 343, 346; and gender, 9, 57, 118, 147, 277, 282, 294, 308, 342, 347; iterative, 1, 15, 68, 117, 124, 182, 284, 334, 350; iusta tempora, 139; longue durée, 16,

Ker_Day_int_3pgs.indd 457

120, 124, 310, 313; main par­a meters, 5, 59–62, 68–70; mastery of, 44, 228; military strategy, 71–73; modern historiography, 18; physiotemporal, 6; prehorological, 29, 92; Roman, 9–14; social traffic, 10, 12, 29–30, 171, 177, 208; sociocultural, 5; “sources of,” 8; standardization, 16, 328–29; time economics, 121, 127; time orientation, 18, 121, 318, 329, 339, 341, 343; time and the other, 7, 328; time perspective, 121; time schemes, 2, 11, 13–14, 18, 120, 134, 191–92, 229, 248–49, 284, 328; time sense, 46, 121, 224; timing, 5, 142; “the work of time,” 5. See also calendar; circadian rhythms; clock time; day; daylight saving time; everyday; hours; lustrum; modern times; otium; ritual; saeculum; seasons; synchrony; time geography; timekeeping; timescapes; time signaling time geography, 15, 121 timekeeping, 8, 10; Babylonian, 28–29, 85, 105, 328; Egyptian, 9, 28–29, 31, 32, 56, 300, 328; and precision, 8, 10, 56–57. See also body-­shadow clock; calendar; clock time; star clocks; sundials; sun tracking; ­water clocks timescapes, 8 time signaling, 220, 275, 347; by accensus, 49, 79–80, 91–92, 96; bell or gong, 10, 247, 249; “meridies,” 49, 79, 91–92; slave time tellers, 3, 10, 303; “suprema,” 80–81, 91–92, 96, 101; third, sixth, and ninth, 29, 31, 91, 94; trumpet, 92. See also watches (vigiliae) Toner, J. P., 118, 317–18 tragedy, 12 Trajan: Forum and Market of, 308; and Pliny, 56, 157–58, 196–97, 228; Rome at its height, 297, 323 Treble, H. A., 306, 312, 326, 334 Treggiari, Susan, 295 Trimalchio, 44–46, 76 Turcan, Robert, 320 Varro: On Agriculture, 57; Antiquities, 20, 84–87, 297, 321; aviary clock, 82–84; on calling of midday, 49, 79–80; and Cicero, 85, 87–88; on civil day, 84–87; discernere,

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458  General Index Varro (cont.) 53, 80, 87–88, 103, 109; and Plautus, 48–49, 79; Roman nationalism, 20, 86; on Roman timekeeping, 20; on shaving, 17, 89; on time terms in Latin, 80–82, 110 Vegetius, 72–73 Vespasian, 100, 131, 155–58 Vessey, Mark, 271 Veyne, Paul, 316 Vigils, 271, 272–76, 282. See also Christians; Rule of St. Benedict Viola, Petrus, 299–300, 336 Virgil: on time, 85, 135, 181; writing routine, 194 Vitellius, 155–56 Vitruvius: and Caesar, 70–71; on sundials, 34, 36–37, 39, 87, 119, 299 Wallace-­Hadrill, Andrew, 151 watches (personal clocks), 41, 329–31, 336–37, 345 watches (vigiliae), 9, 26, 29, 36, 43, 57–58, 66–73, 109, 243 ­water clocks: in Athens, 47; in Egypt, 31–32, 36, 205, 300; Greek, 36; Isis ­temple in Rome, 205; paired with sundials, 36, 52–53; Plato, 36; Scipio Nasica, 65, 81, 89, 99–103, 107–8, 116–17, 344; in Sidonius, 289; as “solarium,” 81–82, 101, 107–8; Roman, 36; Theoderic, 52; Trimalchio, 45; Varro, 82–84. See also clepsydrae ­water usage, 10, 57 week, 6, 272, 276–77, 290, 319, 325, 327, 329, 346. See also nundinae

Ker_Day_int_3pgs.indd 458

Wellbery, David, 117–18, 120, 127, 133 Whitmarsh, Tim, 4 Whitton, Christopher, 214, 221, 224–25 Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 7, 325 Wiedemann, Thomas, 118, 154, 156, 272 Willett, William, 327 Winter, Eva, 94 Wolkenhauer, Anja, 4, 27, 44, 53, 59, 63, 65, 91, 98–103, 123, 205 ­women: in Carcopino, 320, 342–43; in Celsus, 47; hours restricted in theater, 57; Ischomachus’s wife, 130; ­labors of, 125; Marcus Aurelius’s ­mother, 246–49, 253; new attention in Hachette series, 320; overseer’s wife in Columella, 135, 139–40; Pliny’s wife, 222–23; Sabina (1803), 302–3; Seneca’s wife, 249; separate bathing hours, 119, 347; Spurinna’s wife, 15, 18, 219; time in domestic space, 122; virgins in Jerome, 281–83 Woolf, Greg, 228 writing: routines, 115–17, 187–90, 193–99; “writing the self,” 162–66, 230. See also lit­er­a­ture; lucubration Xenocrates, 233–34, 243, 300 Xenophon, 30, 127–31, 134–35, 137, 139 Yeats, W. B., 54–55 Zehnacker, Hubert, 163, 225 Zerubavel, Eviatar, 16 “ZETHI” epigram, 33, 206, 299, 340 zodiac, 12, 33, 51, 56, 72, 137. See also astrology; horoscopes

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