Plagiarism in Latin Literature 1107019370, 9781107019379

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PLAGIARISM IN LATIN LITERATURE

In response to critics who charged him with plagiarism, Virgil is said to have responded that it was easier to steal Hercules’ club than a line from Homer. This was to deny the allegations by implying that Virgil was no plagiarist at all, but an author who had done the hard work of making Homer’s material his own. Several other texts and passages in Latin literature provide further evidence for accusations and denials of plagiarism. Plagiarism in Latin Literature explores how Roman writers and speakers define the practice and how the accusations and denials of it function in their historical and textual settings. Scott McGill moves between varied sources, including Terence, Martial, Seneca the Elder, and Macrobius’ Virgil criticism, to explore these topics. In the process, he offers new insights into the history of plagiarism and related issues, including Roman notions of literary property, authorship, and textual reuse. scott m c gill is currently Interim Director of the Humanities Research Center at Rice University. He is the author of Virgil Recomposed: The Mythological and Secular Virgilian Centos in Antiquity (2005) and co-editor of From the Tetrarchs to the Theodosians: Later Roman History and Culture, 284–450 ce (Cambridge, 2010).

PLAGIARISM IN LATIN LITERATURE SCOTT M C GILL

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107019379 © Scott McGill 2012 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data McGill, Scott, 1968– Plagiarism in Latin literature / Scott McGill. p. cm. isbn 978-1-107-65703-8 (pbk.) 1. Latin literature – History and criticism. 2. Plagiarism. 3. Imitation in literature. I. Title. PA6141.Z5M34 2013 870.9’001–dc23 2011049116 isbn 978-1-107-01937-9 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For my sons, Charlie, Alexander, and Julian

Contents

page ix

Preface Acknowledgments List of abbreviations 1

xi xiii

The ancient and the modern: approaching plagiarism in Latin literature

part i

accusations of plagiarism

1 31

2 Blame and praise: plagiarism and self-promotion in Latin prefaces

33

3 Playing the victim: Martial on the plagiarism of his poetry

74

part ii

113

denials of plagiarism

4 Plagiarism on the stage: Terence, literary controversy, and the theater

115

5 A spectrum of innocence: denying plagiarism in Seneca the Elder

146

6 Saving the hero: Virgil, plagiarism, and canonicity

178

Conclusion

210

Bibliography Index

223 235

vii

Preface

Contemporary modes of remixing texts, like mashups, verbal sampling, and collage, are further iterations of the ancient impulse in writing toward creative reuse.1 Of course, the methods of production and consumption have changed over time, as have the politics of repetition, the laws governing it, and the materials that are open to it. But the drive to make something new out of the old by adapting conventional themes and stories, by recasting specific models, and even by creating new texts out of the reordered fragments of earlier ones has a history that stretches back to ancient Greece and Rome. The Romans, in fact, traced the origins of their literature to adaptation, identifying in Livius Andronicus’ translation of a Greek play in 240 bce the first text of their literary tradition. For them, even the beginning of their literature had a past. As writing then developed in Roman verse and prose genres, reuse was fundamental to composition. The words of Lewis Hyde, recycled by Jonathan Lethem in his centolike essay “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism,” can be applied to the Latin context to capture that state of things:2 Finding one’s voice isn’t just emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. . . . Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.

Whether artist or dabbler, poet, rhetorician, historian or technical writer, Latin authors looked to conventional discourses and to past texts, both Greek and Roman, as sources of new literary life. Creation was ex alteris, a process in which making could not be separated from remaking. 1

2

An example of a mashup is Grahame-Smith 2009. Examples of sampling and collage are Lethem (see the next note), Shields 2010, and (according to the author) Hegemann 2010. Lethem 2007: 61. Arguing that art should lie open, giftlike, to creative reuse (and arguing against stringent copyright laws), Lethem metatextually makes his point by cobbling together passages taken from earlier writers.

ix

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Preface

The open-source nature of literature in Latin antiquity, however, did not preclude criticism of textual reuse. Just as there are those today who reject forms of literary remixing and set limits to acceptable borrowing, despite the widespread acknowledgment that writers take from their common cultural codes and from their predecessors as a matter of course, so in ancient Rome there were those who questioned the legitimacy of certain instances of adaptation. One of the ways this manifested itself was in charges of plagiarism. Because Latin literature was so imitative, it is natural to suppose that there was no cultural room for critics who might allege that an author was plagiarizing, not imitating, when he adapted a model. But such critics did exist, as did others who accused authors of plagiarizing instead of translating, of plagiarizing in their scholarship, and of plagiarizing entire compositions by simply attaching their names to them. Latin sources also survive who deny that they or another author committed plagiarism. This was to try to demonstrate that a writer stood on the right side of the divide between acceptable and culpable reuse and, consequently, to recognize both categories. What did it mean to plagiarize in Latin antiquity? What functions did charges and denials of plagiarism have in Roman society? How did accusers and apologists use plagiarism rhetorically – i.e., what did they use their charges and denials to say? To explore these questions, as this book will do, is not only to firm up our understanding of the Roman history of plagiarism but also to complicate accepted truths about how freely Latin authors could draw from the past. At the same time, it is to come to recognize that the contemporary debates we sometimes find over whether remixing texts constitutes plagiarism turn on a concept of culpable copying that itself goes back to the ancient world.

Acknowledgments

To produce a book requires solitude and the resources of a community. An author must spend countless hours alone reading, thinking, and writing. But he also gets ideas and inspiration from those around him, as well as support on the bad days, when the pages seem just a bunch of wandering words. Writing is, indeed, a lonely pursuit; but no one can do it on his own. In the years I have spent on this book, I have benefited enormously from my interactions with friends and colleagues at Rice University. Christopher Kelty deserves pride of place. Before he moved on to UCLA, he and I taught a course on ancient and modern concepts of intellectual property. Chris led me to think in new ways about reuse and remixing, as well as about their limits, and was an early enthusiast for my project. Without him, this book would not exist. If I did not agree with him that Los Angeles is an apocalyptic paradise, I would demand that he return to Houston (which is merely apocalyptic) so that I could continue to enjoy his intellectual fellowship and friendship. Others at Rice have done much to help me to complete this project. Chief among them are the members of the Classics department: Michael Maas, Hilary Mackie, Don Morrison, Ted Somerville, and especially Harvey Yunis. I must also thank Terry Munisteri for editing the manuscript ad unguem as well as the Deans Gary Wihl and Nick Shumway for the institutional support they provided. Finally, a number of people in the academic community outside of Rice gave me useful feedback on my work. They include audiences at Bard College, Brown University, Columbia University, UC–Irvine and UC–Santa Barbara, the American Philological Association and the Classical Association of the Middle West and South conferences, and the Pacific Rim Latin Literature Seminar at the University of British Columbia. At Cambridge University Press, the anonymous readers worked hard to overcome my fallibility (homo enim sum) and to make this a better book. I appreciate as well all that Michael Sharp, Josephine Lane, Thomas O’Reilly, and Anna Hodson did to bring the book to press. xi

xii

Acknowledgments

A section of chapter 1 appeared as “The Right of Authorship in Symmachus’ Epistulae 1.31,” in Classical Philology 104.2 (2009) 229–32, © 2009 The University of Chicago; a section of chapter 5 as “Plagiarism or Imitation? The Case of Abronius Silo in Seneca the Elder’s Suasoriae 2.19–20,” in Arethusa 43.1 (2010) 113–31; and much of the conclusion as “The Plagiarized Virgil in Donatus, Servius, and the Anthologia Latina,” in HSCP, forthcoming. It has been a joy to see my friendship only deepen with Joseph Luzzi over the course of this project. I am also indebted to my parents, Bonnye and Bob, to my brother, Sean, to my grandparents, particularly the memory of Bob Card, and to my in-laws, Harry and Judy Ellenzweig, for everything that a family gives to a person. I owe most to my wife, Sarah, optima optimarum, and to my sons, Charlie, Alexander, and Julian. This book was written deep inside the happy crucible of parenting: I began it just a few days after Alexander was born. I dedicate it to the boys as a token of these years full of midday intensity and love.

Abbreviations

books AL ANRW GL OLD RE

Anthologia Latina, ed. D.R. Shackleton Bailey. Stuttgart, 1982. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Berlin and New York, 1972–. Grammatici Latini, 7 vols., ed. H. Keil. Leipzig, 1855–80. Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P.G.W. Glare. Oxford, 1982. Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart, 1893–1972. journals

AAntHung AJP Anc. Soc. BAGB BICS CJ CP CQ CR CRAI CSCA EMC/CV G&R GIF GRBS HSCP IJCT JRS MD

Acta antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae American Journal of Philology Ancient Society Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Classical Journal Classical Philology Classical Quarterly Classical Review Comptes rendus/Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres California Studies in Classical Antiquity Échos du monde classique = Classical Views Greece and Rome Giornale italiano di filologia Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies Harvard Studies in Classical Philology International Journal of the Classical Tradition Journal of Roman Studies Materiali e discussioni xiii

xiv NJKlPh PhQ QUCC REL RhM SIFC

List of abbreviations Neue Jahrbu¨cher fu¨r klassische Philologie Philological Quarterly Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica Revue des études latines Rheinisches Museum fu¨r Philologie Studi italiani di filologia classica

chapter 1

The ancient and the modern: approaching plagiarism in Latin literature

A letter in 60 bce from Cicero to Atticus opens with a literary topic and a joke (Att. 2.1.1): Kal. Iun. eunti mihi Antium et gladiatores M. Metelli cupide relinquenti venit obviam tuus puer. is mihi litteras abs te et commentarium consulatus mei Graece scriptum reddidit. in quo laetatus sum me aliquanto ante de isdem rebus Graece item scriptum librum L. Cossinio ad te perferendum dedisse; nam si ego tuum ante legissem, furatum me abs te esse diceres. On the Kalends of June: Your boy met me as I was going to Antium, eager to leave the gladiators of Marcus Metellus behind me. He gave me a letter from you and your sketch in Greek of my consulship. When I read it, I was happy that I had given my piece, on the same topic and also written in Greek, to Lucius Cossinius to take to you. For if I had read yours first, you would be charging me with stealing from you.1

When he facetiously remarks nam si ego tuum ante legissem, furatum me abs te esse diceres, Cicero demonstrates his familiarity with what we today call plagiarism. Both Atticus and Cicero had written sketches (commentarii) in Greek on Cicero’s consulship; and Cicero suggests that the similarities between the works could have given Atticus reason to accuse his friend of stealing (furari) from him, if Cicero had not anticipated Atticus in sending his own account.2 Implicit is the idea that the theft would have been a matter of deliberately passing off another’s text as one’s own in order to win credit for having produced it – a way of thinking consistent with modern 1 2

All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. Cicero goes on to observe, though, that the sketches were in fact dissimilar, as Atticus’ was a bit rough while Cicero dressed his up with rhetorical ornament (Att. 2.1.1). This shows all the more that the opening of the letter was jocular. After mentioning plagiarism, Cicero continues in a light vein, distinguishing between his and Atticus’ texts in order to deprecate humorously how elaborate his own treatment was (and the reference to Atticus’ roughness exaggerates to bring out the point).

1

2

The ancient and the modern

definitions of plagiarizing.3 Cicero supposes that, given the closeness between the Greek sketches, Atticus might have concluded that his friend had wrongfully assumed authorship of what Atticus had, in fact, produced by repeating him while presenting himself as the originator of the work. The joke rests upon a mutual understanding that a person could stigmatize textual similarities as evidence of such fraudulent reuse. A passage in Cicero’s Brutus shows him again thinking of plagiarism. Drawing an analogy between Cato the Elder’s oratory (his principal subject) and early Latin poetry, Cicero discusses the poets Naevius and Ennius (Brut. 75–6): Tamen illius, quem in vatibus et Faunis adnumerat Ennius, bellum Punicum quasi Myronis opus delectat.4 sit Ennius sane, ut est certe, perfectior; qui si illum, ut simulat, contemneret, non omnia bella persequens primum illud Punicum acerrimum bellum reliquisset. “scripsere,” inquit, “alii rem vorsibus” – et luculente quidem scripserunt, etiam si minus quam tu polite. nec vero tibi aliter videri debet, qui a Naevio vel sumpsisti multa, si fateris, vel, si negas, surripuisti. Still, the Bellum Punicum of that one [Naevius], whom Ennius places among the primitive singers and Fauns, delights like the works of Myron. Grant that Ennius is more polished, as he surely is. But if he really disdained Naevius, as he pretends, he would not have omitted the very bitter first Punic War, while otherwise going through all our wars. “Others have treated the subject in poetry,” he says. And indeed, they have written excellently, even if in a less refined way than you. Nor should it seem any different to you, who have borrowed much from Naevius, if you admit to your debts, or have stolen much from him, if you deny them.

Cicero’s approach is to defend Naevius as an admirable author and, by extension, to advocate for the equally archaic Cato the Elder.5 To that end, he contends that the gap in quality between Naevius and Ennius is narrower than it might seem, and that Ennius’ polemical stance toward Naevius should not disguise how he respected and depended upon that predecessor. In Cicero’s formulation, the debts to Naevius amount either to legitimate imitation (sumere) or to stealing (surripere). The difference lies in whether Ennius admits to borrowing from his model or tries to hide his activities. In offering the second alternative, Cicero conceptualizes textual reuse in terms that, again, match up with our contemporary understanding of plagiarism. Ennius would engage in an activity that is distinct from imitatio and that involves the intent 3

4

5

For several modern definitions of plagiarism, upon which I rely here, see St. Onge 1988: 52–8. Ricks 2002: 220 is also an influence. One of Cicero’s other comparanda to oratory had been sculpture; and he mentions Myron as an example of more primitive but still excellent work (Brut. 70). Hinds 1998: 63–8 is insightful on Cicero’s purposes.

Approaching plagiarism in Latin literature

3

to deceive readers, so that they consider him the originating author of what he took from another.6 This would be to connive to lay exclusive claim to producing the “many things” (multa) that he drew from Naevius, so that he won authorial credit he did not deserve. As this book will demonstrate, several other classical Latin authors join with Cicero in showing that the history of plagiarism extends back to ancient Rome. To be clear, by “plagiarism” I mean the culpable reuse of earlier texts, customarily described in terms of stealing, in which a person wins false credit by presenting another’s work as his own.7 Nearly all the sources limit plagiarism to literary compositions and understand it to consist in misappropriating wholly or in part others’ work: it is not ideas and content in themselves that the plagiarist steals but a predecessor’s particular expression of ideas and content.8 The evidence stretches from the second century bce through late antiquity and spans a range of forms, from poetry to history, declamation, and technical and other specialist treatises.9 Plagiarism joins with forgery as a recognized mode of falsifying authorship in ancient Rome. But there is a fundamental difference between them that justifies examining plagiarism on its own: the forger presents his own work under another’s name, while the plagiarist presents another’s work under his own name.10 This makes plagiarism analogous to identity 6 7

8

9

10

I echo Ricks 2002: 220. Ricks 2002: 240 discusses well and succinctly the central role that winning fraudulent credit plays in plagiarism. In De fin. 5.74, Cicero has M. Pupius Piso accuse the Stoics of acting like thieves (fures) and taking their ideas from the Peripatetics but then modifying the philosophical terms in order to pass off the material as their own. This is clearly to plagiarize: but Cicero is the only Latin source I have discovered who discusses the plagiarism of ideas. My expository language here echoes that of Ker 2004: 210. I thus use the terms “literature” and “literary” broadly. This is common in Classical Studies, as Janson 1964: 10 notes. Conte 1994: 4 is worth citing too: “Yet we all know that between literary and nonliterary texts there is a wide band of intermediate forms, and indeed it is a particular feature of ancient culture that it does not make sharp distinctions between these categories.” Gunderson 2003: 5 discusses the application of the word “literature” to one of the forms I examine, declamation. To begin his discussion of the Eclogues, which follows upon his biography of Virgil, the fourth-century ce Aelius Donatus groups examples of forgery and of plagiarism together under the term ψευδεπίγραφα (VSD 48; see the conclusion to this book [p. 210]). But this is the sole instance I have found where a Roman source so conflates the two. Anyway, Donatus fails to take into account the clear differences between them, differences that permit me to focus upon plagiarism alone. Speyer 1971: 29, Dutton 1998: 507–10, and Saint-Amour 2003: 100 call attention to the same differences between forgery and plagiarism that I do. For more on forgery (including its relation to “imposture”), see Syme 1972: 3–17. Irene Peirano’s book on Roman pseudepigrapha, which is forthcoming from Cambridge at the time of this writing, deserves mention as well. I should add here that I also distinguish plagiarism from piracy, i.e., the circulation of a text without the author’s permission, but with the author’s name attached. Ancient references to that practice include Symmachus, Ep. 1.31 (which I will examine below) and 1.32; Cicero, Att. 3.12.2 and 13.21.4 and De or. 1.94; Quintilian, Inst. praef. 7–8 and 3.6.68; and Julius Solinus, praef. 1–7. De la Durantaye 2007: 60–5 examines this subject.

The ancient and the modern

4

theft. Plagiarists create second, false lives for preexisting texts and, in the process, acquire (or try to acquire) fraudulent identities as the authors of that material. Even as the ancient concept of literary theft has significant similarities to the modern one, so that we can reasonably apply the term “plagiarism” to it,11 writing about its Roman history naturally requires historicizing it, i.e., situating the evidence for it in its particular historical and textual settings. To do this is to work to avoid anachronism and to make room for discovering the features of plagiarism in Rome that differ from those that we give it today. A study that explores those cultural differences and examines the distinctly Roman contours of the practice, as this one will do, reveals a literary concept that is both familiar and distant, both like and unlike the modern idea it anticipates. It needs to be said here at the outset that no clear and verifiable cases of plagiarism survive from Latin antiquity. Rather, the phenomenon exists for us through its representation in texts; and I am much less concerned with what our sources suggest about the actual pursuit of plagiarism in Rome than I am with how they depicted that pursuit. Most of the evidence breaks down into accusations and denials of plagiarism, a situation reflected in the organization of this book. I have no interest myself in formulating arguments for whether or not a Latin writer stole from a predecessor. The purpose is, instead, to recover the Roman cultural content of plagiarism by examining closely the charges and defenses that individual authors and/or the people they quote formulate. The accusations and denials of plagiarism allow us to explore what constituted cases of plagiarism in Latin antiquity. What kinds and examples of repetition stood as theft? How do the sources conceptualize and identify the activity, both in itself and in contrast to legitimate modes of reuse? It would be wrong to think that we can arrive at how the Romans understood plagiarism, i.e., that we can ignore the historical specificity and the rhetorical interests of the individual texts in which the subject appears and can instead generalize in broad strokes. What I do maintain is that we can recover how individual Romans understood and represented plagiarizing in particular cultural and literary contexts, as well as how they wanted or expected their audiences to think about it. Because several of the sources attribute the same or similar traits to plagiarism, moreover, it is possible to identify consistent ways of defining it in Latin culture, even as we stop short of baggy generalizations. To do this is to show that plagiarism was a 11

See also n. 28.

Approaching plagiarism in Latin literature

5

coherent and fully realized concept across different texts and periods in ancient Rome. To reconstruct the history of plagiarism in ancient Rome, it is also vital to recognize that it was a pragmatic phenomenon, just as it is today.12 By this I mean two things. One is that plagiarism was understood to accomplish something for its practitioners, namely, to win them credit they did not deserve. A concern will be to investigate how, according to our sources, stealing authorial credit benefited specific plagiarists, or, put differently, to look into what they gained from the credit they stole. The other thing I mean by “pragmatic” is that individuals constructed plagiarism through acts of reception, particularly in the form of accusations and denials, in order to do things practically and rhetorically with it. Plagiarism stands not simply as a literary concept but as a tool of communication in a range of historical settings and in a range of texts. To explore these sociorhetorical dimensions of plagiarism in Rome is to see how accusations and denials of it operated in specific Latin literary communities; to discover how authors fitted its representation to certain genres and to the wider rhetorical aims of texts; and to identify ways that individuals used it to project ideas about themselves, other authors and works, and literature and literary criticism more broadly. An examination of plagiarism in Latin literature not only adds to the recent scholarship in other disciplines on the history of the idea, but it also fills a gap in classical studies.13 While overviews (often brief) of the topic exist within larger books or in articles, and while scholars have treated individual authors and passages, there is no book-length examination covering plagiarism in ancient Rome across time and literary genre.14 To be comprehensive, I follow up this introductory chapter, in which I establish general parameters for examining plagiarism in ancient Rome, by taking a case-study approach and devoting each subsequent chapter to a particular author or set of related texts. My aim is to deal with the significant sources on plagiarism and the significant issues around it, with emphases on its conceptualization and its pragmatics. The book does not have a chronological arc, for the simple reason that the treatment of plagiarism does not 12 13

14

My understanding of the pragmatics of plagiarism derives from Randall 2001: esp. vii–viii. Several titles I have been citing, Randall 2001, Macfarlane 2007, Mazzeo 2007, and Hall 2008, illustrate the recent interest in the history of plagiarism. See, too, Ricks 2002: 225–32 on the history of the idea and scholarship on that history. Examples of work on plagiarism in Latin antiquity are Ziegler, 1950; Hosius 1913: 176–93; Kroll 1964: 144–50; Russell 1979: 11–12; and Breitzigheimer 2005: 150–3. Mülke 2008: 194–200, meanwhile, deals with some references to plagiarism among Latin Christian writers. I limit this study to the classical tradition, for the sake of coherence and manageability.

6

The ancient and the modern

develop in a particular thread over time.15 In the course of the study, I offer readings of a broad array of individual passages and texts, investigate issues in the reception of individual authors, and explore broader topics in Latin literary culture. These include the circulation of texts, both oral and written; the nature of literary property; notions of authorship and authorial identity; the working lives of writers; and the theory and practice of imitation. This last subject has been dominant in Latin literary studies for decades now. My book deals with it because understanding plagiarism in its Roman context requires explaining how it could have existed alongside the cultural norm of imitatio. Crucial to that undertaking are the sources who, like Cicero, contrast those two forms of textual reuse. They not only demonstrate that conceptual space was made in ancient Rome for borrowings that lay outside of and, indeed, were opposed to imitation, but they also offer glimpses into the criteria that Latin critics used to differentiate between imitatio and furtum. plagiarism from greece to rome The history of plagiarism stretches back in classical antiquity not just to Rome, but to Greece as well.16 Κλοπή, “theft,” commonly designated the practice of culpably passing off others’ ideas and textual material as one’s own in Greek culture, with the related words κλέπτης, “thief,” and κλέπτειν, “to steal,” also prevalent. Several other terms, including ὑφαιρεῖσθαι, “to steal,” ὑφαίρεσις, “theft,” and λῃστής, “thief,” also appear; and neutral words like μετατιθέναι (often “to adopt” or “to change for one’s own”) and μεταφέρειν (often “to transfer” or “to translate”) could acquire a negative coloring through context and signify “to plagiarize.”17 A wide range of evidence reveals Greek authors accusing their counterparts of plagiarizing or relating that they themselves had been the targets of such allegations. The material spans Old and New Comedy, Hellenistic poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, history, and scholarly/technical writing. In addition, we hear of critics, and particularly grammarians, from the Hellenistic Age into the imperial period who charge writers with plagiarism: the accusations function as literary criticism and as tools of personal attack. An important source for this development is the third- and early fourth-century ce 15

16

17

The chapters in Part ii, however, do proceed in chronological order. This is for ease of organization, not because I want to make an argument about how anything developed over time. On plagiarism in the Greek context, see Stemplinger 1912 – whose title, Das Plagiat in der griechischen Literatur, mine echoes – Ziegler 1950, and Roscalla 2006: 69–102. Ziegler 1950 covers thoroughly the Greek terms for plagiarism/plagiarizing.

Approaching plagiarism in Latin literature

7

Porphyry. In a passage from the φιλόλογος ἀκρόασις, which survives through Eusebius (Pr. Ev. 464a–468b), Porphyry presents a fictionalized symposium in which his interlocutors, led by the grammarian Apollonius, discuss many examples of κλοπαί-literature. These works made the case that certain authors, Herodotus and Menander conspicuous among them, were plagiarists and laid out the parallels to prove the point.18 It is uncertain how much of the fictional content reflects real conversations with which Porphyry was familiar or in which he participated. But whatever the historical foundations of the passage, Porphyry appears to advocate through it a particular type of community behavior, in which symposiasts demonstrate their culture and learning by dealing with the subject of literary κλοπαί.19 The model conversation that Porphyry constructs preserves a significant amount of evidence for plagiarism hunting in Greek culture that would otherwise be lost to us. It is prima facie evident that the concept of plagiarism migrated from the Greek world to Latin literature, in yet another expression of Horace’s famous dictum: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit (captured Greece captured its rude conqueror [Ep. 2.1.156]). The channels through which this movement occurred cannot be known for certain. We might speculate, however, that with the growth of Roman literary culture in the late third and very early second centuries bce, in which Greek influence was paramount, Romans grew familiar with the idea of κλοπή and adopted it to apply to their own texts. To be more precise, it is possible that Latin comic poets originally imported the concept. References to it first appear in the prologues to Terence’s comedies in the 160s bce, in passages describing plagiarism accusations made against him by his rivals.20 This development could well stem from Greek Old Comedy, whose playwrights likewise leveled plagiarism charges against one another as “ritualized insults” and sources of comic entertainment, but may well respond to other sources as well.21 18 19

20 21

Stemplinger 1912: 40–57 gives the text and analyzes its content. I echo W. Johnson 2009: 329, on the construction of a reading community in Aulus Gellius. Eusebius, meanwhile, cites Porphyry as part of a Christian polemic against Greek culture. To follow A. Johnson 2006: 130–2, the point was to stigmatize that culture by showing how it had produced nothing of value of its own, particularly in the area of philosophy. This is to lay the ground for the argument that Greek literature and philosophy stole much from Jewish writings: Eusebius demonstrates the Greek propensity for stealing to make more plausible the idea that they took the concepts of monotheism and other philosophical ideas from the Hebrews. See chapter 4 on Terence. I quote Heath 1990: 152, on plagiarism allegations in Greek Old Comedy. Poets in Middle and New Comedy also appear to have accused one another of being plagiarists. Sharrock 2009: 77–83 explores different antecedents that Terence might have looked to when dealing with (and, Sharrock believes, fabricating) the plagiarism charges lodged against him.

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The ancient and the modern

What became of the concept of plagiarism once it had arrived in Latin literature has received less attention than has the Greek history of the subject.22 This is one of the reasons that I focus on the Roman side of things (while referring to Greek precedents and parallels where relevant). Another reason to limit my study as I do is to give myself sufficient room to deal thoroughly, and so adequately, with the Latin existence of plagiarism, with the features it took on and the varied roles it played in different Roman texts and cultural settings. To build upon an earlier point, plagiarism enjoyed a long life in ancient Rome. After Terence, references to it reached their peak from the last years of the republic through the first century ce, but they still appear sporadically into late antiquity up to the sixth-century Venantius Fortunatus, the so-called last Latin poet of the ancient world.23 A notable late example is Macrobius’ fifth-century ce Saturnalia, where the interlocutor Rufius Albinus defends Virgil against those who might call him a plagiarist (Sat. 6.1.2–6).24 Macrobius takes his material from an earlier tract that probably dates to the first century ce, when books documenting Virgil’s furta, or showing that he had plagiarized, were noteworthy enough to attract the attention of the important critic Asconius Pedianus. According to the Suetonian–Donatan biography of the poet (VSD 46), Asconius felt compelled to answer the accusers in his work “against the detractors of Virgil” (contra obtrectatores Vergilii).25 It seems clear that the detractors’ method of stigmatizing Virgil had its roots in κλοπαί-literature, and thus that the charges against Virgil are a vivid example of how Greek approaches to plagiarism were reborn in Rome.26 Like ancient Greek, Latin does not have a separate word for plagiarism. Furtum is the most prevalent term,27 just as κλοπή is in Greek, though “to plagiarize” is more often surripere, “to steal,” than furari. English gets its 22

23

24 25 26

27

See Heath 1990: 143–58 and the texts cited in n. 16 for examinations of plagiarism in the Greek context. The Fortunatus passage is Carm. 3.18.13–16, to the bishop Bertram of Bordeaux. Fortunatus is playfully exaggerating when he tells Bertram that he has detected carmine de veteri furta novella (new thefts from an old poem [3.18.14]) in Bertram’s work; but the point is that the concept of plagiarism, i.e., of culpably passing off another’s work as one’s own so as to win credit for it, is still operative. I examine in detail this passage in chapter 6. See chapter 6, p. 178 and pp. 205–6, on VSD 44–6. Cameron 2004: 85 calls attention to the link between this method of criticizing Virgil and “the extensive Hellenistic polemical literature on plagiarism.” Whether furtum was the terminus technicus for plagiarism, as Mülke 2008: 195 n. 602 believes, is uncertain; it could have instead been just a common word for it, without being recognized as the technical term. The important point, however, is that Romans used furtum (and other words) to render literary reuse culpable, by describing it as theft. The task is then to figure out what exactly they meant by this as well as what they were doing rhetorically with their discussions.

Approaching plagiarism in Latin literature

9

word for the transgression, meanwhile, ultimately from Martial, who uses plagiarius, “kidnapper (of free citizens, children, or slaves)” to describe a literary thief (Ep. 1.52.9), rather than the more common fur.28 This is an example of the broader descriptive vocabulary that develops around plagiarism. Others are the fourth-century ce poet Ausonius’ use of Laverna, “goddess of thieves,” for a plagiarist (Epist. 13.104 [Green]),29 and Macrobius’ of alieni usurpatio, a legal term for the theft of property, as a metaphor for plagiarism (Sat. 6.1.2).30 Less vividly, authors sometimes have no term for “theft” or “stealing” and refer to plagiarism through the use of possessive adjectives, with the idea that a person is presenting another’s work pro suo, “as his own.”31 Context determines the content, as it does when the verbs sumere and transferre designate plagiarizing, even though they commonly signify “to imitate” and “to translate.”32 The absence of a distinct word for plagiarism does not imply that the Romans any more than the Greeks lacked the concept of it, which corresponds to ours in ways that allow us to use the modern term for it. On the contrary, the evidence shows Latin sources, like their Greek counterparts, expanding the semantic range of existing words to signify the act of winning illegitimate credit by presenting another’s work as one’s own – a practice that they understood as a distinct form of stealing.33 28

29

30

31

32

33

For insights into the figure of the plagiarius in Roman society, see the Lex Fabia de plagiariis (Ulpian, Coll. 14.2–3, and Justinian, Inst. 4.18.10, with Cicero, Pro Rab. 8) and Spahlinger 2004: 482–3. As Howell 1980: 230 relates, the next author after Martial to use plagiarius to describe a person who steals textual material is the fifteenth-century Lorenzo Valla, who took the term from Martial when accusing someone of plagiarizing his work in the preface to book 2 of his Elegantiarum latinae linguae. The word “plagiarism,” along with “plagiary,” was then introduced into English in the early seventeenth century: the first attested use of it is by Bishop Richard Montagu, in 1621. The second-century bce satirist Lucilius might also use Laverna in this way, although the fragmentary nature of the evidence makes it difficult to tell (and ghostwriting-for-hire is another plausible subject): Musas si vendis Lavernae (if you sell your Muses to Laverna [fr. 549]). Horace (Ep. 1.3.18–20) provides another well-known image for plagiarism, that of “stolen feathers.” I will return to this passage below. This is common in Martial: see Ep. 1.29, 1.38, and 2.10, as well as 1.52.1–3, 1.53.1–3 and 11–12, and 10.100.1 for a mix of possessives to play on the idea of how the plagiarist mixes the ownership of texts. See also Seneca the Elder, Con. 1 praef. 10. See VSD 46 (for sumere) and Seneca the Elder, Con. 9.1.13 (for transferre). These terms thus function like our “take” sometimes does, as well as like the Greek neutral terms identified above. The observations of Greenwood 1998: 280 on Latin terms for “gossip” are applicable here: “The Latin language . . . takes advantage of the availability of other words whose meanings are flexible, versatile, and wide-ranging enough to be able to relay the sense conveyed by the English terms appropriately in a given context.” See also Garland 2006: 5–6 on how Roman antiquity did not have a word for celebrity but was still familiar with our notion of the concept and “the extroverted attention-seeking which frequently nurtures it.” In connection with the Latin words furtum and the like, it might be useful to consider by way of comparison how we in English use the work “piracy” in the literary context.

10

The ancient and the modern plagiarism before copyright and capitalism

The word furtum and related terms for theft and stealing give plagiarism an air of criminality. But this just worked to stigmatize the act as a wrongful one and to make it vividly culpable. In fact, to plagiarize in ancient Rome was never to break the law. This is because Latin antiquity lacked copyright or any law giving an author statutory right over his work’s copying, circulation, and adaptation.34 It remains the case today in the United States and elsewhere that no law criminalizes plagiarism.35 In civil law, meanwhile, a plagiarist can be prosecuted for copyright infringement. But the two offenses are still distinct – “there are cases of plagiarism that do not constitute copyright infringement, and vice versa”36 – and only on rare occasions is an accused plagiarist brought to civil court. (This means that the penalties for plagiarism are customarily informal social stigmas or formally sanctioned, institutionally enforced but still extralegal punishments like firings and suspensions.)37 In addition, the identification of plagiarism usually has nothing to do with the copyright status of the original. Rather, it hinges upon how and for what purposes the alleged plagiarist has reused his source. The defining issues are textuo-aesthetic and moral: plagiarism is fundamentally a matter of staying too close to a model and of personal dishonesty, in that the plagiarist tries to hide a model in order to trick an audience into giving him credit for writing something he did not.38 The distance between plagiarism and copyright undercuts the claim made by some that the former could exist as a recognized transgression only with the advent of the latter, which critics commonly identify with the

34

35

36

37 38

The only Roman law dealing with textual ownership has to do with the possession of the material text. The law states that what someone has written on paper or parchment belongs to the person who owns the paper or parchment (Gaius 2.77; see, too, Dig. 41). This does not mean, of course, that the content comes to belong to the owner of the material text; and see n. 59. From what I understand, plagiarism is a criminal offense in Germany, over and apart from copyright infringement. In 2010, moreover, an Argentinian politician, Gerónimo Vargas Aignasse, proposed a law making plagiarism a crime punishable by three to eight years in prison. But in a turn of events that makes the proposal seem like performance art, much of the language of the bill was plagiarized from Wikipedia. S. Green 2002: 200. Posner 2007: 12–17 is useful on the relationship between plagiarism and copyright. See as well Lindey 1952: 2; Goldstein 1994: 12; Randall 2001: 76; and Saint-Amour 2003: 19. Another relevant discussion is Ricks 2002: 223–6, who on p. 223 quotes Goldstein 1994: 12: “Plagiarism, which many people think has to do with copyright, is not in fact a legal doctrine.” S. Green 2002: 195–200 identifies and discusses these penalties. Macfarlane 2007: 44 notes that plagiarism “is both an ethical infringement, and an aesthetic one.”

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11

appearance of the Statute of Anne in 1709.39 Since the two are separate things, there is no reason to suppose any such necessary connection between them. So, too, it would be misguided to suppose that the idea of plagiarism emerged with the development of the modern commercial book trade. That position overestimates how much commercial interests enter into the identification of the offense today, seeing that only a few cases go to court and carry financial penalties connected to copyright infringement. It also obscures the fundamentally aesthetic and moral character of plagiarism, which is not bound to the capitalist marketplace, and the way that plagiarists are understood to steal intangible authorial credit and, with it, the esteem that may or may not yield monetary rewards.40 The recognition of such a practice, extracommercial, artistic, and ethical in nature as it is, could certainly predate the modern age of print capitalism – and evidence from early modern Europe as much as from ancient Greece and Rome indeed shows that it is unhistorical to trace plagiarism back only to the development of the commercial book industry, or to that of copyright.41 The important distinction to make when considering how plagiarism could have existed before copyright and the modern book trade is the one between ownership as a category of legal and commercial property rights and ownership as a symbolic and moral category.42 The latter inheres in acknowledged authorship, i.e., in that person’s identity as the thing’s creator. With such possession comes the possibility of plagiarism, in which a person violates a norm without violating a law and lays false claim to having written what another person has produced, thereby making the work his own in authorial terms. This form of ownership is at issue in the plagiarism of copyrighted material, even when legal and commercial considerations are added on. Likewise, to plagiarize in Latin antiquity was to acquire wrongfully the ownership that inheres in authorship. No doubt the concept of plagiarism acquired new contours with the emergence of copyright and the publishing business, as well as with the development of 39

40

41

42

Constable 1983: 26 and 39 and Love 2002: 41 are two critics who connect the development of plagiarism to the appearance of copyright. Ricks 2002: 226–31 spiritedly counters several others who confine plagiarism to the modern age. Howard 1999: 58 and 64 also argues forcefully for the premodern existence of plagiarism. Commercial authors can, of course, receive royalties for what they plagiarize, while journalists can sell articles with plagiarized material (or continue to draw a salary from their employers). But these things happen as a result of an offense that is aesthetic and moral in character. For other pre-copyright evidence for plagiarism, see Rosenthal 1996; Randall 2001: 60–73 and 102–5; Ricks 2002: 227–8 and 229–31; Posner 2007: 49–54; and Hall 2008. See also n. 92. I am indebted to Randall 2001: 77 for this distinction. S. Green 2002: 205–7, on the doctrine of moral rights, is also a strong influence.

12

The ancient and the modern

“Romantic” notions of originality. But for the ancient Romans and us moderns alike, plagiarists take authorial possession of texts as pseudocreators who under their own names assume false literary identities.

wholesale plagiarism Wholesale plagiarism, or presenting another’s entire text as one’s own without making changes to it (or when changing it very minimally), was one of the recognized forms of textual stealing in ancient Rome. Illustrating the point is a letter from the fourth-century ce Roman senator Symmachus to the aforementioned poet Ausonius.43 Symmachus devotes a good portion of the letter to answering Ausonius’ complaint, now lost, that he shared with others a poem of Ausonius’ that the author did not want to circulate: in Symmachus’ words, libelli tui arguis proditorem (you charge me as a traitor to your book [Ep. 1.31.1]).44 One of Symmachus’ responses is that Ausonius forfeited all rights to his poem upon sending it out, meaning that his complaints are without merit. For when released to the public, Symmachus continues, a text is a free thing: cum semel a te profectum carmen est, ius omne posuisti. oratio publicata libera est (Ep. 1.31.2). By these remarks he means that authors have no control over or say in how their material circulates once they have published it. As was commonly the case in Latin antiquity, the publication of a written text is here a matter of giving it to members of one’s circle, who then produce and disseminate further copies.45 While bookstores and libraries helped to make works publicly available particularly in the imperial period (at least, of course, where they existed), circulation commonly occurred in a kind of viral fashion, with 43

44

45

On the relationship between these important fourth-century figures, see Bowersock 1986: 1–12 and Sogno 2006: 6–8 and 69–70. The actual seriousness and depth of Ausonius’ pique are lost to us, as are the historical circumstances that sparked the controversy (on which see also Ausonius’ reply to Symmachus’ letter in Symm., Ep. 1.32.6). Which poem lay at the center of the dispute is also uncertain. Bruggisser 1993: 268–71, however, argues for the Protrepticus ad Nepotem, on the basis of Symmachus’ exhortation to Ausonius to assign also (quoque) to his name a didascalium seu protrepticus, a “didactic or hortatory” poem (Ep. 1.31.2). The idea is that the poem Symmachus circulated was the hortatory poem to Ausonius’ grandson, and that Symmachus asks Ausonius to write the same kind of poem to him. Starr 1987: 215 discusses this means of publishing texts in antiquity. (Starr avoids using the word “publish,” because, as he writes [215 n. 18], it “unavoidably bears a burden of modern implications.” I feel freer to use the term, although Starr is right to point out the dangers of anachronism.) On the circulation of Latin texts, see as well Fedeli 1989: 343–78 and Parker 2009: 225 n. 158. Authors also circulated private, pre-publication copies of works. White 1974: 44–50 examines this practice in connection with Martial and Statius. Of course, the misunderstanding between Symmachus and Ausonius appears to have been that Ausonius had not wanted to publish his poem but had expected that it would be kept private and stay within a select circle. See Symmachus, Ep. 1.32.6.

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copies passing from those who had initially received a work to other individuals, and then on from there.46 Not only were royalties unknown, but it was also impossible for an author to determine how many copies of his book had been made and how far it had circulated.47 Critics have noted that Symmachus’ comments in Ep. 1.31.2 offer a glimpse into a literary culture before copyright, where authors released control over the dissemination of their texts after they published them and had no possession of the material copies that were produced, and where audience members copied and shared work without any legal constraints.48 But the concluding passage in Symmachus’ letter carries a second message about an author’s proprietary relationship to his circulating text (Ep. 1.31.3): Ergo tali negotio expende otium tuum et novis voluminibus ieiunia nostra sustenta. quod si iactantiae fugax garrulum indicem pertimescis, praesta etiam tu silentium mihi, ut tuto simulem nostra esse, quae scripseris. Thus expend your leisure in such business and relieve my hunger with new books. But if you, fleeing from display, are terrified of a blabbing informer, then give me your silence as well, so that I may safely pretend that the things you have written are mine.

Symmachus here proposes a way that Ausonius might overcome his modesty, which earlier in the letter he cited as a possible cause of the poet’s displeasure at the circulation of his work,49 and continue to send him new compositions. According to Symmachus, Ausonius’ aversion to fanfare should not stop him from dispatching nova volumina, since he could conceal that he wrote his poetry by allowing Symmachus to pretend that he composed it. The understood result would be that Symmachus, embracing iactantia, would garner the renown due Ausonius.50 If things were to unfold as Symmachus recommended, he would be conducting himself as a plagiarist: he would present another person’s work as his own to unsuspecting audience members in order to win 46

47

48

49

50

On the role of bookstores and libraries in the publication process, see Winsbury 2009: 57–75 and White 2009: 268–87 (on bookstores alone). Winsbury 2009: 129 captures well how little an author would know about (and how little he could manage) the circulation of his work. Dziatzko 1894: 573; Adam 1906: 7; Kleberg 1969: 56; and Kenney 1982: 19. This means that Symmachus’ ius in ius omne posuisti must signify a moral right, rather than a legal one, as Kenney (p. 19) notes. Authors, however, did ostensibly maintain control (symbolic, not legal) over the circulation of unpublished texts and drafts. See Ep. 1.31.1: sed in eo mihi verecundus nimio plus videre, quod libelli tui arguis proditorem (but in this you seem to me overly modest, that you accuse me of playing traitor to your book). Symmachus consistently treats Ausonius as a poet worthy of acclaim in Ep. 1.31. Amherdt 2004: 30 notes that the praise of an addressee’s literary ability is a commonplace in late-antique letters.

14

The ancient and the modern

bogus acclaim from them. Seeing that Symmachus’ fakery dovetails so tightly with plagiarism, a recognized transgression in his historical era (including by Ausonius) and throughout Latin antiquity, it seems safe to suppose that he equated his imagined behavior with that offense.51 Underscoring Symmachus’ belief that his false claim of authorship would constitute wrongdoing is his appeal for silence, so that he might securely pass himself off as the writer of Ausonius’ work (praesta etiam tu silentium mihi, ut tuto simulem nostra esse, quae scripseris). Symmachus here seeks cover from the one person who could reveal him, so that the concealment of his fraud might be absolute. Escaping detection would enable him to receive credit for Ausonius’ poetry. But the bid for silence so that Symmachus might safely (tuto) bring off his masquerade also supposes as a default position that the bluff would be risky, and that exposure would damage him. The tacit but unmistakable point is that he will set out to veil things because claiming as one’s own another’s literary property (note the mea/tua [in scripseris] dichotomy) stands as an act of deception (simulare) upon which people would look askance, and thus as a practice that falls into the category of the culpable. By honoring Symmachus’ request, Ausonius would become something like a ghostwriter. But this is not really a request to agree to ghostwrite: instead, Symmachus simply asks Ausonius to allow him to get away with defrauding his audience in the manner of a plagiarist, to prevent the discovery of the deed. As is the case elsewhere in Latin antiquity, including in passages sharing terms with Symmachus’ letter, successful plagiarism is a matter not just of winning undeserved credit but also of escaping blame for misconduct.52 In the absence of anything like copyright and, therefore, of any statutory restraints on falsely claiming authorship of another’s work, we can suppose that Symmachus considered the restriction on what he proposed to do with 51

52

Other roughly contemporary examples to Symmachus come from Jerome, Contr. Ruf. 2.21, and from Rufinus, Contr. Hier. 2.18 and 2.28. See Jerome as well on plagiarism charges against Virgil (Hebraicae quaestiones in libro Geneseos praef. 1.7–8). See Martial, Ep. 1.66.13–14: aliena quisquis recitat et petit famam, / non emere librum sed silentium debet (whoever recites others’ material and seeks fame ought to buy not a book, but [the author’s] silence). Martial’s explicit concern is with how the plagiarist might secure bogus credit; but it seems clear that he was also thinking of how silence would allow the thief to escape censure of the sort that Martial voices to start the poem, where he labels his nemesis meorum fur avare librorum (greedy thief of my books [Ep. 1.66.1]). See, too, Seneca the Elder’s Suas. 2.19, where Seneca contrasts getting caught plagiarizing with plagiarizing tuto: at nunc quilibet orationes in Verrem tuto dicet pro suo (but now anyone can recite Cicero’s Verrines as his own). Seneca’s message is that plagiarists would not only receive credit for Cicero’s work, but would also escape the disapproval that came with accusations of theft – a reaction implied by maligni in the description of past plagiarism-hunters in Suas. 2.19 (tam diligentes tunc auditores erant, ne dicam tam maligni [so assiduous were audiences then, not to mention so mean-spirited]).

Approaching plagiarism in Latin literature

15

Ausonius’ poetry to be conventional and moral.53 The snapshot is of how legal restrictions provide only one way for a culture to distinguish between rightful and wrongful conduct, and of how custom, or understood agreement about what is and is not done, can also draw that line. Since there were no juridical sanctions for making off with another’s text, Symmachus presumably imagined as well that the punishment for the discovery of his misdeed would consist in private, informal shaming penalties.54 This would align him with other Latin writers, including Ausonius, who identified disapproval and censure, and with them personal embarrassment and disgrace, as the potential costs of plagiarism.55 The seriousness with which literary theft was taken could naturally vary in ancient Rome, depending upon the authors and texts involved, as well as upon who was responding to it and in what context. Yet the default position was that a plagiarist, in transgressing accepted ideas about right and wrong, was subject to blame of some kind, which individuals then administered with everything from severity to a light touch.56 Symmachus’ proposal to engage in such illegitimate behavior is, of course, a facetious one, which he expects Ausonius to dismiss as absurd.57 The apparent purpose was not only to amuse his addressee by suggesting an outrageous course of action but also to end the letter by once more deflecting the charge that he was a proditor of Ausonius’ poetry. For in the logic of Symmachus’ sportive special pleading, Ausonius’ assumed rejection of the overture proves that there were limits to his modesty and to how much he cared to keep his artistic efforts hidden from the world. This in turn blunts the annoyance that Ausonius expressed at how 53

54 55 56

57

De la Durantaye 2007: esp. 38 and 58–76 examines how authorial claims to their circulating texts were recognized and protected in Latin antiquity, despite the absence of laws to guard them. My language echoes Posner 2007: 35 and 38. Ausonius, Epist. 13.102–4 (Green). Other examples are spread throughout the chapters to come. The suggestion, therefore, is that in ancient Rome, as today, plagiarism was “a socially significant category that [meant] different things to different people at different times” (so Marsh 2007: 147, cited by Griffiths 2011: 351). It bears noting that the permissive attitude toward plagiarism that we sometimes find today, i.e., claims that it does not really matter if a person presented someone else’s textual material as his own – often with the accompanying idea that all expression is repetition anyway – does not appear in the ancient Roman evidence. (For examples of this way of thinking today, see Ricks 2002: 221–7 and 232–9. S. Green 2002: 178–80, on post-modern critiques of plagiarism, is also relevant.) This does not prove the absence of that attitude in Latin antiquity. But it does contribute to the sense that plagiarism was indeed held to be a transgression, however variously individuals then reacted to it. Nothing in Ausonius suggests that he permitted others to assume authorship of his work. The one potential challenge to this claim comes in a prefatory letter to the Bissula, where Ausonius exhorts Paulus to “use the poem as his own” (utere igitur ut tuis). But as R. Green 1991: 515 contends, rightly in my view, Ausonius is simply inviting Paulus to circulate the Bissula as he pleases.

16

The ancient and the modern

Symmachus had displayed his work. The poet emerges as someone who, in not wanting another to hide his authorship of his texts, shows that he ultimately wrote for and aspired to public acknowledgment, which is precisely what Symmachus had provided. It is axiomatic that jokes can reveal much about cultural assumptions in how they play off them.58 In this case, Symmachus’ tongue-in-cheek proposal discloses the standard of correct behavior from which he imagined himself straying. Because an individual normally maintained the conventional, moral right to have his authorship of his texts recognized and protected after sending out his work, rather than taken by someone else, Symmachus’ offer stands out as deviant and laughable. Like Seneca the Younger, who notes that Cicero owned the content of his work as its author, while Dorus, the bookseller, only owned the material text of Cicero, over which he had the right of usus or usufruct (De ben. 7.6.1), Symmachus recognizes authorship as a form of ownership and property (however symbolic and intangible), which should hold firm as the text circulates and, in material terms, becomes someone else’s.59 By working from the starting point that a writer owns his unique expression of content – no matter how conventional or imitative it is60 – to the extent that his identity as his work’s creator is to be honored and preserved, Symmachus presents a different perspective on textual possession from the one he offered earlier when he asserted that writers lose all rights to a carmen profectum, and that an oratio publicata is a “free thing.” While audiences could circulate a work as they wished, they were also to respect an author’s proprietary claim to having written it. This made a text libera on one level but possessa on another. Other examples to come in this book will fill out the picture of how Latin antiquity recognized the moral offense of wholesale plagiarism and, in the 58 59

60

A point also demonstrated in Cicero’s Att. 2.1.1, with which we began. In omnibus istis, quae modo rettuli, uterque eiusdem rei dominus est. quo modo? quia alter rei dominus est, alter usus. libros dicimus esse Ciceronis; eosdem Dorus librarius suos vocat, et utrumque verum est. alter illos tamquam auctor sibi, alter tamquam emptor adserit; ac recte utriusque dicuntur esse, utriusque enim sunt, sed non eodem modo (in all those cases, which I have just now given, there are two owners of the same things. How is this? Because one is the owner of the thing, while the other is the owner of the thing’s use. We say that books are Cicero’s; and Dorus, the bookseller, calls the same books his. Each is a true statement. One asserts that the books are his as their author, the other as their buyer; and rightly they are said to belong to both of them, for they indeed do, only not in the same way). My summary of the passage follows Winsbury 2009: 193 n. 29. It should be clear that authors treat even the most conventional material at least a bit differently, through selection, organization, and emphasis. So, too, it should be clear that the openness of a text to imitation in ancient Rome is a different matter from what I am describing; for the imitator does not take over an earlier text wholesale.

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process, recognized the author’s symbolic ownership of the text he had produced. Theft, after all, implies property that has been stolen. The examples cover published and unpublished works in several genres as well as written and oral cases of theft. Roman literary culture was marked both by the circulation of written texts and by the oral presentation of works to the public, whether at a formal recitation, a party, or a public venue.61 Likewise, plagiarism takes different forms in our sources: plagiarists publish written texts or deliver works verbally, and they steal material that is itself at times written and at times oral. Texts stood as objects and property whether they were read or heard in performance and were subject to the plagiarist’s misuse and misappropriation across media. We cannot know how widespread wholesale plagiarism was in Latin literary culture. Certainly, though, sources recognized that fakers could and did exploit the ease with which a person could present himself as the author of another’s text in a world of de-centered, unsystematic circulation.62 Those sources demonstrate a broader recognition beyond Symmachus of how such theft violated the symbolic right of proprietary attribution – and no countervailing evidence suggests that the plagiarists themselves would have thought any differently and supposed that theirs was legitimate behavior.63 Attributed works were the norm in Latin literary culture from the third century bce onward. Not only did writers themselves lay claim to what they had produced through, for instance, prefaces, opening or closing poems in collections, and the sphragis, but there was also a dominant drive to attribute authorship in the circulation of literature. Texts were, of course, generally less than stable once made public, being 61

62

63

I do not feel that it is necessary or even advisable to declare Rome a predominantly textual literary culture or a predominantly oral one, i.e., one in which literary works were experienced more through live performance than through reading a written text (whether silent or aloud). As I see it, the matter is not reducible to either position. Anyway, for my purposes, I need only to note that texts circulated both as written works and in performance –and the same text could circulate in both ways, at different stages of dissemination and in different reception settings – and that plagiarism encompassed the two. On the oral v. written debate, see Quinn 1982: 75–180 and Parker 2009: 186–229, along with W. Johnson 2010: 4–9 and 17–31. See, e.g., Martial’s plagiarism poems (which I will examine in chapter 3), Pliny the Younger, Ep. 2.10.3–4, and the examples in Kaster 1995: 109 (three of which I cover in chapter 2). Indeed, even in scholarly and technical treatises, where extensive repetition of sources was allowed, it was still not the case that a person would simply reissue a text wholesale and give himself as its author. Relevant here is Hanson 1998: 22–53, who discusses the ancient circulation of Galen’s medical treatises, with a reference on p. 29 to a section of On His Own Books (De libr. prop. ii.97.23–98.6) in which Galen accuses another of plagiarizing his work. Other forms of secondary authorship in Latin antiquity, like imitation, translation, epitomes, and even centos do not involve claiming authorship of the original. (Public, authorless material like rhetorical loci communes also obviously falls outside the stricture I am describing.)

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The ancient and the modern

subject to scribal error and to interpolation (and, in the case of plays, to changes for different productions). Yet the dominant impulse was to preserve the identities of authors: thus an interpolator would partly recreate a work, but under the name of its creator.64 Confirming the drive to attribute circulating texts is the citation of writers by name in Roman texts, as well as the identification of authors in ancient books, including through tituli on rolls, which give the title and author.65 (It also bears observing that even anonymous texts display that drive, since anonymity in Latin antiquity implies that a work comes from a single unnamed person, rather than from a guild or a folk/oral tradition. So, too, when texts stayed anonymous in circulation, they implied audience members who honored another’s claim to authorship, whoever that person might have been, rather than taking it for themselves.66) Wholesale plagiarism disturbs this order of things and confounds the proper recognition of authorship and ownership by falsifying whose text was whose. This makes it both a threat to the original author, whose identity the plagiarist aimed to efface, and an opportunity for the thief to appear to be more than he really was. plagiarism, imitation, research Wholesale plagiarism is only one form the offense took in Latin antiquity. As we saw with Cicero, sources also identified it in the reuse of some limited amount of material within an earlier work, material that the later author redeployed and usually adapted in an otherwise discrete composition. (In fact, descriptions of wholesale plagiarism are sometimes exaggerations for 64

65

66

S. Green 2002: 174 discusses the cultural norm today of attributing a work to its author, whether explicitly or simply by not claiming authorship of that work oneself, which a plagiarist fails to observe. Green uses the phrase “norm of attribution” to describe this. Kenney 1982: 16 and 31–2 is a good introduction to tituli in antiquity. As Kenney notes, there were inaccurate citations in ancient Rome; and tituli presumably at times fell off, making identification more difficult. But the point is that the impulse to attribute texts to authors was in place. This impulse also extended to orally delivered material, as we will see, particularly, with Seneca the Elder. There was a possible guild or collegium of poets at least in the Roman republic; Horsfall 1976: 79–95 remains an important source on the topic. By all appearances, poems would have been ascribed to individual authors who belonged to that guild, assuming it existed (or perhaps in the case of formal verse elogia [Horsfall p. 91], to unnamed but assumed individual authors who belonged to it). Forgery, meanwhile, demonstrates a unique approach to authorship. On the one hand, Latin forgers ascribed texts to writers, thereby demonstrating the drive to attribution. On the other hand, they showed that they, the actual authors, did not care to have their own identities preserved. But there were a number of possible reasons for their reticence – for example, that it would be controversial or dangerous if the author were known, that the author wished to give his text greater authority and a large audience by linking it to another writer, that the author wished to ascribe potentially damning and damaging material to another person, or that the author was having fun with role-playing. Anyway, those texts were, of course, not at all the norm in Latin literary culture.

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moments of localized theft.) A unique case is that of the aforementioned comic playwright Terence, who relates in his Eunuchus and Adelphoe that his critics accused him of plagiarizing because he reused material already treated by his Latin predecessors. The issue, it would appear, is that Terence gives a false impression of a particular kind of originality: he claims to be presenting a comedy for the first time on the Roman stage, but includes in his plays things that an earlier Latin playwright has handled.67 Rather than stigmatizing Latin repetition as such and exclusively in the way we find in Terence, other sources locate plagiarism based on other criteria. The evidence encompasses the perceived reuse of both Latin and Greek predecessors in a variety of genres, both poetry and prose. A good many of those examples resemble Cicero’s Brutus 76 in raising the issue of how one could spot plagiarism in ancient Rome when it was equally possible to think of a parallel as the product of imitation. The fundamental role that imitation played in Latin literature is a wellestablished fact of ancient literary history. From the Republic through late antiquity, authors, including poets, historians, and rhetoricians, held it as a vital aspect of composition. Probably around the middle of the first century bce, moreover, imitatio became a crucial part of Latin pedagogy and literary criticism, categories that often overlap in antiquity.68 A Greek or Latin source’s treatment of a plot and characters, as well as his passages, particular lines and phrases, style, and even scale and tone – all were considered available for imitation.69 In the Roman conception of imitatio, the process was firmly author-centric: later writers deliberately drew from earlier ones, not from an authorless tradition, from abstract cultural discourse, or from a generic code.70 A turn to a model was simultaneously a turn to his 67 68

69

70

Again, see chapter 4 for a full treatment of Terence. For the first century bce date, see Vardi 1996: 500. Greene 1982: 55 observes that pedagogic and artistic doctrine cannot be distinguished throughout most of antiquity. So much of the evidence for Latin imitation can be found in the practices of Latin authors. For critical sources, though, see Quintilian, Inst. 10.2.1–28 (after his survey of authors to imitate in 10.1.20–130). In that passage he discusses imitating style (10.2.14–21, 23–6) and notes that imitation should not be limited to words (10.2.27) but should extend to such things as tone, judgment, arrangement, and affective force. In books 5 and 6 of the Saturnalia, meanwhile, Macrobius examines how Virgil imitated not just passages and lines but also plots, plot points, and characters (5.2.4–15, 5.17.4–6), as well as scale, tone, and presentation (5.13.40). Also worth mentioning here are Cicero, De or. 2.90–1 and Seneca the Younger, Ep. 114.17, on imitating faults of style. See Russell 1979: 14–15 on this last topic. I myself recognize the possibility that textual parallels might be formulaic, generic, and accidental and that intentions are very often elusive. (More on the latter subject to come.) But my concern in this book is with how Latin critics thought about textual resemblances. They did not parse parallels with anything at all like the categorizing rigor that modern classicists have; and it is striking how consistently confident they were in taking a biographical line and maintaining that an author intentionally imitated a predecessor.

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attributed literary property, which he owned to the extent that he maintained a proprietary claim to its authorship, even as his work also lay open to imitation. The ideal was to achieve originality and produce new property from the old by adapting predecessors and assimilating their work to a fresh place and purpose to create something unique of one’s own – and using multiple models was normal in practice and commonly prescribed in theory.71 Given this historical backdrop, how was it possible to apply the concept of plagiarism to moments of reuse whose traits were consistent with imitation? How could this happen when in Latin literary theory and practice imitatio was so essential a feature of composition?72 Answers in connection with particular authors will have to wait until later chapters. For now, let me sketch out general lines of response. First, it is possible that some individuals just cried plagiarism on the basis of parallels alone, without finding something in the perceived borrowings to justify the charge: there are at least signs of this approach in the Greek evidence.73 This would seemingly entail disregarding the cultural norm of imitation.74 But we also have evidence that Roman critics and audiences located plagiarism in particular features of what they perceived to be deliberate borrowings. Some indicate an approach whose emphasis lay on the failure to modify models adequately. The plagiarist presented as his own what he had just repeated with excessive fidelity, and thus without demonstrating the traits of true authorship to personalize his predecessor’s material and to produce a distinct, value-added version of it. The surviving criticism lacks close readings of precisely what about an author’s text demonstrates his plagiarism. As in very many Latin passages on imitation, the approach is declarative rather than analytical: the critic states something rather than develops an argument for it. But the focus is still textual and aesthetic, still involves judging formally how one author reused another. Plagiarism hunting in this vein stigmatized the artistic merit of an alleged thief by revealing what an uncreative pseudo-author he was; 71 72

73

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I echo Russell 1979: 16. Russell 1979: 11–12 asks similar questions when exploring how plagiarism could “make sense in a literature which was so thoroughly ‘imitative’ and traditional.” See Clement of Alexandria’s list of thefts in books 5 and 6 of the Stromata. Stemplinger 1912: 57–80 examines this text. The case of Terence, meanwhile, appears not to be understood in terms of imitatio. I should add that no surviving Latin source that I know of condemns imitation per se. It may be that the imitation of certain sources is frowned upon, because of how those models wrote (see, e.g., Tacitus, Dial. 18 and 22); but this is not to condemn the act of imitating itself. I consider it altogether unlikely, moreover, that a critic in ancient Rome would have been ignorant of the cultural norm of imitation while knowing enough about literary debts to allege plagiarism.

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and this was to give audiences that viewed the writer positively reason to see that he was not what they thought him to be. The stress placed upon close resemblance in these sources, coupled with certain of the speakers’ demonstrable familiarity with imitatio and with the prominence of that practice in Latin literary culture, points to the conclusion that critics were often cognizant of imitation but held on textual grounds that the plagiarist had come up short of it. The idea was that plagiarism constituted a failure to achieve the minimum artistic standards for legitimate reuse and thus stood as something different from and less than imitatio.75 Now, Latin literary criticism shows (and literary practice implies) that productive imitation could be defined loosely and could include even very close verbal echoes. This means that reuse did not always have to be especially transformative and personalizing to be legitimate.76 Even when individuals recognized insufficient textual change in Rome, moreover, they did not necessarily label it plagiarism. In antiquity as today, inert reuse could be viewed as bad imitation, but imitation all the same.77 Still, the evidence suggests that, while acceptable borrowing need not include creative transformation, its absence could lead to an accusation of plagiarism. In the eyes of the critics who used formal criteria in this manner to limit the reach of acceptable reuse, an author could not just say quicquid bene dictum est ab ullo, meum est (whatever anyone has said well is mine).78 Instead, he had to make his source material his own. Literary property was to be created anew, or else the writer was failing to achieve the originality that resulted from productive, legitimate imitation and was just taking what still belonged to another. So, too, the plagiarism accusations I have been discussing could 75 76

77

78

I paraphrase Mazzeo 2007: 2, on “poetical plagiarism” in Romantic literature. As Vardi 1996: 505–9 demonstrates, close adherence to a model could even be a virtue in some ancient assessments of imitation. Because Latin authors themselves sometimes stay quite close to their sources, echoing passages of poetry or prose very faithfully and even on rare occasions repeating entire lines of verse, it seems clear that they also considered strong resemblance to be compatible with imitation. (Certainly we cannot believe the alternative, namely, that they felt that they were plagiarizing!) There are many cases, too, where a resemblance is not as close as an interpreter says it is. But because the interpreter maintains that the imitating author stayed very true to his model, he shows that he considered such fidelity to be consistent with imitating. Examples where writers are chided for inordinate dependence, but are not called plagiarists, appear in Horace, Ep. 1.19.17–20 (the locus classicus), Seneca the Elder, Con. 9.3.12, Macrobius, Sat. 5.13.40, and Schol. Veron. ad Aen. 10.559 (quoting Aemilius Asper). Seneca the Younger, Ep. 16.7. Seneca is not asserting that entire texts are available for him to claim as his own. The idea is instead that he could make free use of what others had said before him when incorporating their material into his own discrete text. Moreover, Seneca very likely put things as baldly as he did when stating quicquid bene dictum est ab ullo, meum est not simply for effect (although the comment is certainly provocative), but to highlight the larger point he was making about how wisdom that transcends earthly matters, not the possession of worldly things, produces a happy life.

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extend to cases where authors changed models more significantly. Rome’s literary culture, like ours, never developed a firm textual measure for determining when someone had done enough to imitate, whether successfully or unsuccessfully. This produced conditions for interpreters to emphasize the similarities between works while downplaying or ignoring their differences.79 From there, critics could assert that a debt, no matter how slight the verbal parallels with a source, did not meet a subjectively drawn threshold for imitatio and lapsed into plagiarism. Another criterion for identifying plagiarism, which Cicero explicitly uses in Brutus 76, is the plagiarist’s intention to hide his sources when he adapted their individual lines and passages.80 As in the aesthetic criticism just described, the critic would posit a deliberate turn to a particular model. But he would then take the further step of contending that the person in question did not want his debts recognized, meaning that he was of no mind to display his connections with his sources.81 This defines plagiarism in psychological and moral terms, as an intentional act of deception through which the author gives a false impression of himself and his work.82 To expose the personal offense is to reveal artistic fraud, to show the plagiarist attempting to get credit for originality and an achievement that were not his. The alternative was not to cite models but simply to be open to having them discovered by at least some audience members.

79 80

81

82

I echo Lindey 1952: 60 on the techniques of the critic who roots out plagiarism. It bears noting here that the term furtum could generally connote deceit and fraud (see OLD s.v. “furtum” 3), and that theft in Latin legal theory had an intentional component (see Nicholas 1996: 213–14 and Evan-Jones and MacCormack 1998: esp. 175 and 177). Russell 1979: 12 makes a similar point, observing that a borrowing “had to be acknowledged” while also recognizing that the later author was to make his source material his own. Wholesale plagiarism, meanwhile, seems inevitably to involve deliberate fraud. It is impossible to see how a person could be anything other than conscious of how he was attaching his name to another’s entire work and presenting it as his own. As I have noted, this way of conceptualizing plagiarism remains in force in our postintentional fallacy world. See Randall 2001: 126–32 and Posner 2007: 40, along with Posner’s discussions of the plagiarism cases of the Harvard undergraduate/author Kaavya Viswanathan (pp. 3–6, 70–1, and 97) and of Doris Kearns Goodwin (esp. pp. 89–94), in which he notes that both issued intentionalist apologies – i.e., they argued that they were not plagiarists because they did not consciously set out to steal. Also worth citing is Suzanne Vega’s op-ed piece “The Ballad of Henry Timrod” in the New York Times, 17 September 2006 in which she defends Bob Dylan against charges that he plagiarized from the Civil War poet Henry Timrod on the album Modern Times: “Did he do this [steal from Timrod] on purpose? I doubt it. Maybe he has a photographic memory, and bits of text stick to it. Maybe it shows how deeply he had immersed himself in the texts and times of the Civil War, and he was completely unconscious of it.” For an example where a judge identified plagiarism/copyright infringement without establishing a mens rea (and was criticized severely on that account), see the case against the former Beatle George Harrison for plagiarizing “My Sweet Lord” from the Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine.” Vaidhyanathan 2001: 126–9 examines that case.

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The notion that a plagiarist sought to create a fraudulent Self by covering his debts assumes an audience that was liable to miss his borrowings and presume originality accordingly. In some cases, the underlying idea was perhaps that the plagiarist’s readers supposed that he had imitated a model in certain passages or lines under consideration but were in the dark about who that model was. He would then aim to perpetuate that ignorance in order to conceal his particular source. Yet it seems likely that critics, as a rule, saw behind the plagiarist’s intention to conceal his borrowings a desire to deceive his audience into believing that he had originated his material without any recourse to a predecessor whatsoever. This certainly gives the critical stance an efficient logic: the move to hide debts, after all, suggests a wish to seem entirely debt-free. Such a viewpoint is also feasible even in an imitative literary culture like that of ancient Rome. Common sense dictates that Latin authors did not imitate to produce every passage or line of text and that audiences did not expect them to do so, but rather accepted that they wrote at least some of their material without a model.83 Readers might hold that any sentence or verse could, in theory, be the product of imitation but would also recognize that only some, in fact, were the product of it, and that an author recast no predecessor at many points. Certain audience members, moreover, presumably did not think in intertextual terms when reading, even when aware of imitatio, and instead casually ascribed what they found in a text to the author’s originating hand. All of this would have created conditions for the deceitful attempt to seem model-less that, I would suggest, at least most critics who took an intentionalist line ascribed to the plagiarist. Original authorship in those instances was a matter of creating discourse apart from a precursor and was something that the thief counterfeited.84 Using intentions to identify plagiarism is compatible with the aesthetic mode of interpretation I have described. Some evidence suggests that critics identified literary theft on purely aesthetic grounds, or on the basis of inert, too faithful reuse alone. Plagiarists would pass off the derivative material as their own, but without any identified intention to hide the sources that, according to the interpreters, they had consciously reused; presumably, the thinking was that the plagiarism occurred either because audiences missed the debts or because they felt that the material met the formal requirements 83

84

Even the vital source for Latin imitation theory, Quintilian in the Institutio Oratoria, limits the reach of imitatio when he argues for the need to invent new material without imitating (Inst. 10.2.4–7). Relevant is Macfarlane 2007: 5, on how originality is “a function of readerly perception, or more precisely readerly ignorance (the failure to discern a writer’s sources).”

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for acceptable, legitimate borrowing. At other points, writers and speakers combined aesthetic and intentionalist criticism and held that the plagiarist tried to conceal his model in order to hide debts with minimal changes to a predecessor, and thus to hide his artistic inertness and failure. There were also those (for instance, Cicero in Brutus 76) who bypassed aesthetic considerations and just cited an author’s deceptive aims to identify plagiarism. The attempt to cover up a model in itself constituted the offense, in itself distanced a writer from legitimate reuse. Like textuo-aesthetic charges, this approach could encompass the full range of parallels, from near to inexact. When the criticism extended to instances of strong adaptation, and consequently to textual changes that were more than consistent in formal terms with creative imitation, the modifications could be construed as a sign of the plagiarist’s desire to conceal his actions, to get away with misrepresenting his relationship to the literary past. Clearly, there was abundant room for disagreement when dealing with whether or not an author had intended to hide his reuse of a model and, therefore, had committed plagiarism. This is due to the notorious variability in the interpretation of authorial aims. Latin critics were assured biographical readers, confidently asserting that a writer set out to do a particular thing. But then as today, the mindset of the author was open to various projections, however confident each of them might have been: because intentions were (and are) so resistant to absolute verification and, thus, such a fertile area for speculation, there was room for interpreters to reconstruct them in different ways, to see in them what they wanted to see. It was also easy for one person to identify plagiarism on formal grounds while others saw imitation, given the absence of any firm textual measure to guide interpretation. The same borrowings could be placed in either category, based on where one set the textual borders for them and how one then fit borrowings to those borders. The very contestability of perceived borrowings in all these instances bears noticing, in that it brings some nuance to the picture so firmly established in Latin literary studies today of the ascendancy of imitatio in the Roman world. Textual parallels could be constructed differently at the point of reception, with imitation the principal but not the only lens through which to view them.85 The ability to see imitatio and furtum in the same material vividly illustrates how audience members could create very different texts out of a single text through the processes and performances of interpretation. Another area where Latin antiquity permitted a liberal reuse of models, yet at the same time produced critics who labeled examples of such reuse 85

I echo Martindale 1993: 2, on reader-response criticism.

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plagiarism, was in the research for the writing of histories, technical treatises, and compilations/miscellanies. Authors were free to reuse large swaths of material in those texts, whether documentary evidence, eyewitness sources, or earlier texts, without acknowledging the debt.86 The footnote was unknown in Latin antiquity; and when authors did cite their sources, it was usually either to lend more authority to their accounts or to identify a predecessor whose views on a subject differed from their own.87 For all of this, Vitruvius (De architectura 7 praef. 3–10) and Pliny the Elder (Historia naturalis praef. 22) show that close repetition in research could be grounds for censure by classifying instances of such reuse as plagiarism.88 Their charges have two parts. The first is that authors writing architectural treatises, as Vitruvius did, and the varied texts upon which Pliny relied in his encyclopedic work stuck too close to their predecessors and failed to personalize them. Once more, plagiarism is a failure to achieve original authorship, which is understood here as a matter of adapting and rearranging preexisting material in order to create new content and, with it, new knowledge out of what came before. This way of thinking points to the intersection between notions of research and imitation, while also continuing to illustrate how the felt need to remake models could bring the concept of plagiarism into a kind of open-source environment. The second part of the charges exhibits the same concern with intentions described earlier and contends that other technical/compilatory writers sought to hide their predecessors. The allegations were both textual and intentionalist: the authors failed to do enough to personalize their sources and then tried to hide those failings by hiding their models. For Pliny, too, the plagiarists were not driven psychologically to outdo their predecessors and, instead, set out only to follow in their wake. According to Pliny, the plagiarists working in his field displayed their duplicitous aims by keeping their sources hidden rather than giving them by name, as he does by listing them in book 1 of the Historia naturalis.89 Despite the absence of footnoting and the freedom to reproduce unacknowledged 86

87

88 89

On research methods in ancient historiography, see, e.g., Hosius 1913: 183–4 and 188–9, Mellor 1993: 31–5, and Potter 1999: 79–119. In his preface to the Saturnalia (4–9), meanwhile, Macrobius programmatically asserts how freely a writer could reuse sources in a compilation/miscellany (and demonstrates the point in 5–8, where he adapts material from Seneca the Younger’s Ep. 84 without acknowledging the debt). On the history of the footnote, see Grafton 1997 and Zerby 2002. This is a good place to state that I recognize the special burden I have to footnote well and thoroughly, given my subject matter. I will deal more thoroughly with Pliny and Vitruvius in chapter 2. As we will find in the next chapter, the information Pliny provides is nowhere near as complete as modern scholarship demands. But the fact remains that he cites his sources in ways that, he relates, his predecessors did not.

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material in Roman research, Pliny thus inculpates others’ failure to cite the writers they relied upon when producing their scholarly tracts. The charge is that the writers are dishonest and dishonorable, and that their failure to provide bibliographical information demonstrates those traits and (in part) makes them plagiarists. To lodge such an accusation was to formulate criticism that ran counter to embedded cultural practices, to the accepted position that citation was unnecessary. As is the case with Vitruvius and with debts that could be considered examples of imitation, we find a reference to plagiarism in what might be an unexpected place, given the dominant modes of reuse in Latin culture. Those references together make the Roman world look a little bit different and a little bit strange, in that they bring some ambiguity to established ideas about that world and, particularly, about how Romans viewed borrowing from earlier texts. This ambiguity is not without ambiguity. It can be the case that someone will describe an author’s debt to a model with the language of theft but without actually putting it in the separate category of plagiarism. The purpose is instead to overstate how true an author stayed to a model, usually facetiously or to sharpen criticism.90 Even in these scenarios, the sources show that they had a concept of plagiarism, which the terms for stealing activate as a way of casting a cloud (humorously or otherwise) over borrowings.91 It is just that they do not really consider the reuse to be an instance of furtum. Instead, they use the idea of plagiarism metaphorically to heighten and to highlight the degree of similarity between a work and its model(s). An example of this approach appears in Horace’s Ep. 1.3.15–20. The subject of the passage is the poet Celsus, whom Horace warns to stick to his “home treasures” (privatas opes) and not to touch the writings preserved in Augustus’ library on the Palatine.92 If Celsus persists in taking from the Palatine authors, Horace continues, he should be wary of having them come to remove their stolen feathers from him, thereby exposing him, a naked crow, to derisive laughter: ne, si forte suas repetitum venerit olim / grex avium plumas, moveat cornicula risum / furtivis nudata coloribus (so that, if by 90

91

92

See, e.g., n. 23. Today, one might also use the language of theft to describe a debt when (sometimes mock) sheepish and uneasy about the extent of one’s dependence upon a source or to acknowledge a borrowing after the fact. In neither case is plagiarism really meant. I thus do not think that the relevant sources consider the language of theft to be just a metaphor, without reference to the concept and category of plagiarism. “Stealing” can operate like that today and can even be something of a dead metaphor. Quid mihi Celsus agit? monitus multumque monendus / privatas ut quaerat opes et tangere vitet / scripta Palatinus quaecumque recepit Apollo (What is my Celsus doing? He has been warned and must frequently be warned not to seek his home treasures and avoid handling whatever writings the Palatine Apollo has admitted [Ep. 1.3.15–17]).

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chance the flock of birds should at some time come back to reclaim their plumage, the crow not stir up laughter, stripped of its stolen feathers [Ep. 1.3.18–20]). While Horace’s “stolen feathers” went on to become part of the modern stock of imagery for plagiarism,93 his lines give the strong impression that he was simply warning Celsus against reaching too high when finding models to imitate. The theft consists in the poet’s inability to do anything more than inertly echo the superior Palatine poets from whom he borrows. To give this a more vivid turn, Horace uses the image of furtivi colores to introduce the concept of plagiarism, which was active in the culture around him, and with which he elsewhere displays familiarity: ne me Crispini scrinia lippi / compilasse putes, verbum non amplius addam (I will add not a word more, so that you do not think that I have robbed the writing cases of bleary-eyed Crispinus [Sat. 1.1.120–1]). This magnified the message that Celsus was not up to imitating his great predecessors well, i.e., productively and artistically, by suggesting with barbed facetiousness that he was passing off his models’ work as his own because he had failed to personalize them.94 It can sometimes be difficult to figure out whether or not references to theft really signify plagiarism in a Latin source – and indeed, there are those who, contrary to the reading I have proposed, understand Horace to counsel Celsus actually against plagiarizing.95 The issues are not how an individual sincerely felt about a borrowing, but how he conceptualized it and represented it to his audience, and if he was identifying plagiarism in a text, understood as a discrete, culpable mode of reuse, or was exaggerating matters. Throughout this book I try to determine as firmly as I can which approach a source was taking. In my judgment the evidence is frequently strong that the writer or speaker was thinking of the offense as a discrete authorial pursuit and critical category and was treating textual parallels as actual instances of it. The idea was that the plagiarism was something different from, for example, imitation or legitimate research, rather than another name for a poor version of them.96 Still, I accept the possibility that another reader might look differently at some of the evidence. It is well established that the identification of plagiarism is a slippery matter in that interpreters can and very often do dispute which examples of reuse 93

94 95 96

Famously in Robert Greene’s attack of 1593 on Shakespeare in A Groat’s Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentence, in which he, identifying Shakespeare as a plagiarist, calls him “an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers.” See also Russell 1979: 11 and the title of B. Hall 2008, Borrowed Feathers: Plagiarism and the Limits of Imitation in Early Modern Europe. Howell 1980: 168 understands the passage similarly. So Fiske 1966: 430 and Mayer 1994: 128. As we will see in chapter 5 (pp. 154–8), a distinction is also drawn in Seneca the Elder between plagiarism and translation (which, however, has traits in common with imitation).

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constitute instances of it.97 As I have suggested, this was the case in Roman antiquity just as it is today. Less recognized are the complexities at times involved in establishing whether someone truly meant plagiarism when calling someone out for stealing from another text. These complexities contribute to the challenge of interpreting the phenomenon or, viewed in another way, to the excitement of doing so. doing things with plagiarism My concern has been to trace the prevalent ways of identifying plagiarism in Latin antiquity and, in the process, to provide an introductory frame for understanding how it was able to exist in the Roman world. But it is important to remember that all the evidence for plagiarism, whether wholesale or localized, manifests itself in particular historical and textual settings and to bear in mind that the practical and rhetorical ends to which individuals put charges and denials of plagiarizing shape how they treat the practice. The sources still work with certain ideas and assumptions about what it means to plagiarize, which we can investigate to trace the history of the concept. Yet to reformulate a point made earlier in the chapter, that history emerges through writers and speakers who use the subject of plagiarism to say and to accomplish specific things. To examine adequately the sociorhetorical functions that Roman authors and speakers give plagiarism requires the bigger canvases of later chapters. But I do want to make the point now that it is not enough to identify plagiarism allegations simply as a tool of literary polemic and personal abuse, as other critics have done.98 Rather, we need to recognize that accusations of literary theft consistently involve attempts not only to undercut writers’ standing and value (and sometimes character) but also to affirm them. Plagiarism by definition is bound up with authorial value, in that plagiarists seek to earn credit for having written something and, thus, to gain recognition as well as to boost their reputations and status. Charges of plagiarizing allege that an author does not deserve the credit he endeavors to win and/or has won from other audience members. Yet in ancient Rome, accusations were also used to affirm the merits of the accusers, by distinguishing how they operated as authors from how the plagiarists operated and, in the process, showing that 97

98

Ricks 2002: 220–1 deals succinctly with this issue. For some more recent examples of controversies over plagiarism, see the article of Robert McCrum, “Plagiarism: In the Words of Someone Else . . . There’s Little New in Literature,” in the Guardian, 17 January 2010. McCrum is also worth reading for the references he gives to contemporary work on intellectual property. So Russell 1979: 12 and Kaster 1995: 181.

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they had authorial (and personal) virtues that the plagiarists lacked. When charges dealt with or came from a plagiarist’s source, meanwhile, they could depict that source as someone with the talent and achievement to attract the attention of the thief and to win the accolades that the thief sought. To be a victim of furtum in such cases was thus to have one’s literary worth and achievement confirmed. Finally, denials of plagiarism often asserted or implied that the accused deserved any credit he received. In defusing charges that had the capacity to taint and to deprecate a target, apologists not only made the claim that he was innocent but also showed what was authentic, good, and worthwhile about his work, thereby demonstrating his quality, authority, integrity, and appeal. Whether or not a Latin author plagiarized or was plagiarized, then, determines whether or not he was a real, accomplished, and well-deserving figure and how much value he and his work had. Yet such attacks on and defenses of authorship have varied tones as well as divergent aims and functions adapted to their historical and textual surroundings. A major purpose of this book is to explore that pragmatic variety and to show how accusations and denials of plagiarism, with their emphases on authorial credit and value, were used very differently across time and genre in Latin literature. The charges and defenses said specific things about specific authors and texts and also did things that were particular to the social and rhetorical contexts in which they arose.

what remains of roman plagiarism In presenting this book, I do not make excessive claims for the concern with and visibility of plagiarism in Latin literary culture. While the sources on the subject span several centuries and literary forms, their number is not particularly great. The accidents of transmission no doubt play a role in this; and for all we know, there was a list of furta-literature akin to Porphyry’s of κλοπαί-literature that failed to find a Eusebius to preserve it. At the same time, it is reasonable to suppose that the concept and category of plagiarism did have a rather limited compass in the Latin world. The conventionality of so much literary production, the sway of imitation, and the loose approach to scholarly repetition and citation would have created powerful deterrents to many plagiarism accusations and would have provided a powerful means of shooting down charges.99 Certainly all 99

Naturally, it is also the case that significant areas in which plagiarism occurs today – notably papers produced in high schools and universities as well as journalism articles – have no equivalent in Latin antiquity.

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appearances, moreover, are that plagiarism-hunters were in the strong minority among interpreters of textual borrowings.100 It nevertheless remains the case that the interest plagiarism generated was long-lived, diverse, and significant enough to establish it as a firm presence in Roman culture. Not only do varied accusations and denials of plagiarism survive, but some also point to the broader spread of such debates beyond our sources, particularly in live performance settings. What is more, the assorted passages on plagiarism imply assorted Roman audiences who were exposed to the concept and who were to recognize it as a legible item in the cultural vocabulary. My aim in this book is to make modern readers similarly familiar with plagiarism in the Latin context by shining a sustained light on discussions of it. In pursuing my investigation I take it as a foundational belief that – with apologies to Pliny the Elder – there is no accusation of plagiarism so tendentious and wrongheaded that we cannot learn from it.101 I do not deny that the identification of plagiarism in ancient Rome was at times synonymous with interested, hostile, and gross misreading. Latin sources themselves sometimes represent plagiarism-hunting in those terms, and they make debates over whether or not an author plagiarized, in part, debates over the competence and worth of the individuals arguing each position. But rather than just dismissing such allegations as so much biased foolishness, we should try to get at the cultural meaning of the concept with which the accusers were working by exploring how they defined plagiarism and what they hoped to achieve by issuing their charges. To do this, as well as to examine not just whether those denying plagiarism were right but also how they thought about the phenomenon and what their purposes were when countering accusations of it, is to endeavor to arrive at a deeper and more substantive understanding of an ancient precursor to a modern idea.102 100

101

102

Thus Quintilian, for example, does not mention plagiarism as a counterpart to imitation; nor do Aulus Gellius, another important Roman source on literary borrowing, and Servius/Servius Danielis, in whose commentary we do find cited many examples illustrating how Virgil legitimately reused a predecessor. One runs the risk of falling into an argumentum ex silentio from this lack of evidence. Still, it is hard to resist the conclusion that plagiarism failed to register strongly with most critics (in the case of Virgil, I presume, because charges were commonly rejected out of hand). Pliny the Younger, Ep. 3.5.10, on how his uncle, Pliny the Elder, used to say that there was no book so bad that he could not benefit from it. See also Pliny the Elder, HN 27.9 for the sentiment. It is also to explore in connection with ancient Rome questions about authors and authorship that Foucault 1979: 141 lays out: “Certainly it would be worth examining how the author became individualized . . . what status he has been given, at what moment studies of authenticity and attribution began, in what kind of system of valorization the author was involved . . . and how this fundamental category of ‘the-man-and-his-work criticism’ began.” I derive this citation from Graziosi 2002: 18.

part i

Accusations of plagiarism

chapter 2

Blame and praise: plagiarism and self-promotion in Latin prefaces

The biographer Suetonius records the most bitter plagiarism charge to survive from Latin antiquity. It comes from Lenaeus, a grammarian included among Suetonius’ sketches of grammarians and rhetoricians from the late republic and early empire (the De grammaticis et rhetoribus). In his account, Suetonius emphasizes Lenaeus’ devotion as a freedman to his former master, Pompey the Great. As an example, Suetonius cites Lenaeus’ response to the historian Sallust’s observation that Pompey was “upright on the outside but shameless within” (oris probi animo inverecundo [DGR 15.2]). In a completely savage lampoon (acerbissima satura [DGR 15.2]), Lenaeus labeled Sallust a catamite, glutton, scoundrel, barfly, and monster in his life and writings. He then topped things off (praeterea) by impugning him as a “completely ignorant plagiarist of Cato’s archaic diction” (praeterea priscorum Catonis[que] verborum ineruditissimum furem).1 Lenaeus provides a prime example of the use of plagiarism in ancient Rome as a weapon of invective. Recognizing that the charge of stealing another’s textual material had the capacity to stigmatize, Lenaeus accuses Sallust of plagiarizing in an attempt to smear him. The vituperation is born of personal more than literary considerations. Lenaeus takes a characteristic of Sallust’s style, namely his imitation of Cato and, driven by a preexisting animus, brands it in a way that he suspects will discredit the historian.2 As with lampoons generally, the concern is not to capture the literal truth but to twist the facts for the purpose of making someone look as bad as possible. 1

2

Kaster 1995: 181 (and see p. 20 for the profile of Lenaeus), notes that an anonymous elegiac couplet (see Quintilian, Inst. 8.3.29) also attacks Sallust’s plagiarism from Cato: et verba antiqui multum furate Catonis, / Crispe, Iugurthinae conditor historiae (Sallust, pervasive thief of the words of the archaic Cato, writer of the history of Jugurtha). I echo Kaster 1995: 181. Harrill 2006: 121, on ancient vituperation, is also an influence. How Lenaeus operates of course implies his assumption that his audience would care and would disapprove if they discovered that Sallust was a plagiarist.

33

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Lenaeus’ attack on Sallust lends credence to the idea that in Latin antiquity whether a particular borrowing was to be called furtum or not could hinge on the prejudice of the critic.3 But it would be a mistake to think that polemical plagiarism charges in ancient Rome had no interpretive content. Even Lenaeus gives his allegation some substance, implying that Sallust had stuck too close to his model;4 and while other accusations are, like his, emotional and tendentious (even if the hostility is more muted), they still work with particular criteria for establishing plagiarism.5 Indeed, a few sources describe in some detail the textual traits and/or authorial practices that underlie the charges. Roman accusers also make their charges of plagiarism more than the tools of invective that they are in Lenaeus’ lampoon. The critics continue to impugn and to denigrate alleged plagiarists. But reprehension is only part of the mix, and in many cases it makes the way for practical and rhetorical aims that extend far beyond the censorious, abusive functions of polemics. This chapter begins to confirm these observations about the content and pragmatics of plagiarism accusations in ancient Rome by examining authors who in programmatic prefaces charge rivals or other targets with plagiarizing. In the process they describe what constitutes the offense; and this allows us to identify how a group of different Roman writers conceptualized plagiarism across different acts of textual reuse. Instead of just smearing their targets, moreover, the accusers use their allegations to advertise their own authorial value, to promote their own texts, and to win themselves a positive reading. Plagiarists are subject to censure but also provide contrasts against which the critics highlight why they and their works deserve favorable attention.

vitruvius on plagiarism, augustus, alexandria, and his own authority The first preface to consider comes from Vitruvius. Probably in the 20s bce, Vitruvius produced the De architectura. In it, he provided an overview of architecture in ten books for an audience of nonspecialists, with each 3 4

5

As Russell 1979: 12 observes. We might wonder if Lenaeus also alleged that Sallust had intended to hide his borrowings, so that his readers credited him with originating what he took from Cato. Relevant is Russell 1979: 12: “Terms of polemic and abuse of course often have very little real content.” We might wonder what Russell considers “real content” to be. If he means nontendentious and sober, reasoned responses to the target subject matter, then he is probably correct. But in literary controversy, there will be some basis upon which a critic hopes to smear a target, something about the author or his work that he is impugning. Russell himself goes on to posit the existence of some content behind the identification of plagiarism in antiquity: “It is reasonable to expect that there were some criteria [for plagiarism] which common opinion would accept.”

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book devoted to a different facet of the discipline.6 The drive was to be encyclopedic and exhaustive, as Vitruvius included a vast array of information and instruction on topics related to building but extending beyond the normal parameters of the subject.7 Attached to the individual volumes are prefaces, which Vitruvius addresses to his dedicatee, the Emperor Augustus, in every case but one, the preface to book 8. While the passages end with brief surveys of the content of the book that follows, Vitruvius’ interests are much more rhetorical than expository. The principal aim is to make Augustus, and with him the broader audience, sympathetic toward Vitruvius and appreciative of his merits as an author (and architect) so that they respond favorably to his book.8 It is in the preface to book 7 that Vitruvius raises the subject of plagiarism. He begins the passage by praising previous writers who saw fit to publish their ideas in treatises (DA 7 praef. 1). Their efforts, he asserts, have given posterity something to build upon and have allowed people to arrive at “the highest acuteness of learning” (ad summam doctrinarum subtilitatem) by refining earlier work. After listing some of the subjects that have survived as a result of publication (DA 7 praef. 2), Vitruvius goes on to contrast the authors who deserve thanks with those who warrant disapproval and punishment (DA 7 praef. 3). This is because they steal (furantes) the writings of others and present themselves as the author (qui eorum scripta furantes pro suis praedicant), or because they devote themselves to criticizing invidiously the work of others rather than to presenting their own ideas: Itaque quemadmodum his gratiae sunt agendae, sic contra qui eorum scripta furantes pro suis praedicant sunt vituperandi, quique non propriis cogitationibus scriptorum nituntur, sed invidis moribus aliena violantes gloriantur, non modo sunt reprehendendi, sed etiam, quia impio more vixerunt, poena condemnandi. While thanks must be given to them, those who steal the writings of others and publish them as their own should on the contrary be condemned. Likewise, those who enviously attack others and take pride in it, rather than relying upon their own ideas, should not only be denounced but should also be sentenced to punishment, since they have lived wickedly.

6

7 8

Nylander 1992: 18 summarizes the De architectura in ways that I echo, and calls it a “Sach-buch” aimed at an educated general audience. I use the text of Liou and Zuinghedau 1995. So A. König 2009: 31. On Vitruvius’ prologues and their rhetorical character, see André 1985: 375–84 and 1987: 265–89. Knell 1985: 10–19 and Novara 2005: 17–22, meanwhile, summarize the content of each prologue. In DA 1.1.17, Vitruvius makes it clear that he envisioned two audiences, his dedicatee, Augustus, and the wider audience (peto, Caesar, et a te et ab iis, qui ea volumina sunt lecturi [I request from you, Caesar, and from those who may read these volumes]). Alexander 1993: 57–8 deals with this subject.

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The attributes that Vitruvius gives to stealing scripta are consistent with those that we today customarily identify with plagiarism. The pseudo-authors culpably (sunt vituperandi) pass off someone else’s work as their own (pro suis praedicant) to receive credit to which they are not entitled.9 Fraud is the implicit aim: Vitruvius accuses his targets of willfully deluding others into considering them the originators of the textual property they have stolen from another. This notion of property obviously lacks the legal and commercial component that comes with the development of copyright. But Vitruvius still recognizes that works belong to those who have produced them (note the possessive genitive eorum), as well as that literary thieves encroach upon textual borders to stake their own proprietary claim to the material (note the possessive adjective suis in pro suis praedicant). Ownership is of the symbolic kind that I described in chapter 1 and amounts to the acknowledgment of authorship, which the plagiarists inappropriately arrogate to themselves. Vitruvius goes on to note the existence of evidence that the ancients did not let plagiarism and gratuitous criticism pass without rather strict punishment (nec tamen haec res non vindicatae curiosius ab antiquis esse memorantur [DA 7 praef. 3]). To illustrate his point he records two anecdotes. The first, which Vitruvius probably derived from Varro, describes a case of plagiarism in Hellenistic Alexandria (DA 7 praef. 4–7).10 Vitruvius relates that Ptolemy had established literary competitions at the Mouseion, which was connected to the library at Alexandria.11 The victorious authors were to receive prizes and honors (praemia et honores [DA 7 praef. 4]) in the manner of athletes. When Ptolemy found it difficult to locate the seventh and final judge for the Mouseia, he asked those in charge of the library if they could recommend anyone. They proposed “a certain Aristophanes,” i.e., Aristophanes of Byzantium, who daily read through all the library’s books with the greatest zeal and diligence (quendam Aristophanen, qui summo studio summaque diligentia cotidie omnes libros ex ordine perlegeret [DA 7 praef. 5]).12 Their suggestion was heeded, and Aristophanes took his place among the judges. 9 11

12

I echo Ricks 2002: 240. 10 Fraser 1970: 118 discusses Vitruvius’ probable use of Varro. Vitruvius also asserts that the library at Pergamum preceded the library at Alexandria, which inverts chronological order: the Alexandrian library was founded under Ptolemy I Soter (321–283 bce) and Ptolemy II Philadelphus (283–247), and the library at Pergamum under Eumenes II (197–159). It would appear that Vitruvius was following a source favorable to Pergamum, probably via Varro. So Schofield 2009: 378. The phrase “a certain Aristophanes” is a nice touch. It allows Vitruvius to show that Aristophanes was not well known at the time and to create some dramatic irony for the reader who identifies the famous polymath, as Vitruvius surely expected at least a good portion of his audience to do. The anecdote, though, is unreliable as history, not least because the chronology is off. Aristophanes’ dates

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After the competition had ended, the six judges besides Aristophanes agreed to award the first prize to the poet who had most pleased the audience and the second prize to the one who was next in the crowd’s affection. To the agitation of Ptolemy and the assembly, however, Aristophanes contended that the winner should be the poet whom the audience had liked the least (DA 7 praef. 6).13 Having received permission to speak, Aristophanes asserted that the author he chose had recited his own piece, while the rest had recited work that was not their own; and he stated that it behooved the judges to give their approval not to thefts (furta) but to actual compositions (docuit unum ex his eum esse poetam, ceteros aliena recitavisse; oportere autem iudicantes non furta sed scripta probare [DA 7 praef. 7]).14 To prove his point, Aristophanes searched out the vast number of rolls in the library and from memory found the plagiarized texts. In response, Ptolemy ordered that the plagiarists be tried for stealing; and when they were then found guilty, he exiled them in disgrace (rex iussit cum his agi furti condemnatosque cum ignominia dimisit). Ptolemy rewarded Aristophanes, meanwhile, with huge gifts (amplissimis muneribus) and by putting him in charge of the library (supra bibliothecam constituit [DA 7 praef. 7]). By citing this episode as an exemplum, Vitruvius underscores his message that plagiarizing was a culpable practice. So, too, he continues to make it an intentional offense in two ways. First, he implies that the plagiarists recited meritorious works with the conscious aim of winning credit for them in the form of audience approval and, they hoped, a prize – and the top two applause-getters would have been successful, if not for Aristophanes. Second, Vitruvius relates that the plagiarists were condemned through an actio furti. In Roman law, intent, including the intent to make a gain, was a defining aspect of criminal theft.15 Now, seeing that Rome lacked copyright or any law protecting intellectual property, Vitruvius must have known that Latin plagiarists would not actually be subject to legal action.16 But he still

13

14 15

16

are c. 257–180 bce, and he was made head librarian at or around the age of sixty – i.e., well after the founding of the library. For other comments on the historical content of the anecdote, see Fraser 1970: 115–22 and Roscalla 2006: 71. Aristophanes vero, cum ab eo sententia rogaretur, eum primum renuntiari iussit qui minime populo placuisset (but Aristophanes, when his decision was sought, directed that the one who had pleased the crowd the least be proclaimed victor). I paraphrase the translation of Morgan 1914: 196–7. So Nicholas 1996: 213–14. See also chapter 1 n. 80. The gain in this instance consists obviously in the prizes for the competition. The detail that the plagiarists were driven away cum ignominia also suggests further a verdict that attributed personal guilt. The idea is that they had been caught in a lie, which brought disgrace on them. There was also no such law in the ancient Greek world; and because of the story’s dubious historicity, we must doubt whether Ptolemy actually took the measures Vitruvius describes. Still, Vitruvius certainly might have believed it, and at least presents it as something that occurred. Roscalla 2006: 71 notes that the anecdote provides the only ancient testimony for official protection of a literary work from plagiarism.

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saw fit to use the account of the Egyptian trial as a model for the kind of disapproving and severe response to plagiarism that he was endorsing. This was to give the offense the stigma of premeditated crime, with the attendant idea that intentional literary theft deserves punishment with a heavy hand.17 Nor was it far-fetched for Vitruvius to expect a stern attitude toward plagiarism in the Roman context. As Lenaeus shows and as other sources confirm, plagiarists were subject to negative treatment in the first century bce. Usually this consisted in disapproval and informal shaming penalties, which Vitruvius calls for when he asserts that plagiarists “should be impugned” (sunt vituperandi).18 Suetonius, however, describes a case, probably c. 80 bce, where the grammarian Lucius Aelius forced his plagiarist Servius Clodius to divorce Aelius’ daughter (DGR 3.3).19 After presenting his second anecdote – on how Zoilus, the Homeromastix or “scourge of Homer,” offended Ptolemy Philadelphus and afterward died a miserable death (DA 7 praef. 8–9) – Vitruvius addresses Augustus directly. He states first that he is not one to plagiarize (neque alienis indicibus mutatis interposito nomine meo id profero corpus [neither do I publish this book after changing the titles of others’ works and inserting my own name {DA 7 praef. 10}]) or to play the scold to win approval. Instead, he gives his boundless thanks to those who preceded him. This is because they provided him with abundant and varied materials by compiling from antiquity outstanding examples of learning – a statement that both acknowledges and praises his models. It is with the help of those predecessors, Vitruvius continues, that he has sought to advance knowledge further by producing his own work (DA 7 praef. 10–11):

17

18

19

P. Long 2001: 34, cited by Griffiths 2011: 352, is mistaken in supposing that Vitruvius cited an example where plagiarism was subject to the death penalty. The punishment meted out by Ptolemy is harsh, but not that harsh. For the phrase “informal shaming penalties,” see Posner 2007: 35 and 38 (cited as well in chapter 1 n. 54). Cicero and Horace, whom I cited in chapter 1, are two other first-century bce sources who understand plagiarism to be a culpable practice. See as well examples in chapter 5, on Seneca the Elder. We should note that in DA 7 praef. 3 Vitruvius said that harsh critics were to be subject to poena, while plagiarists were to be criticized. But here, he describes a criminal punishment for plagiarism as a way of emphasizing how negatively plagiarists should be viewed. Servius, cum librum soceri nondum editum fraude intercepisset et ob hoc repudiatus pudore ac taedio secessisset ab urbe, in podagrae morbum incidit (when Servius had dishonestly plagiarized a still unpublished book of his father-in-law and, duly disowned, had left the city in shame and resentment, he came down with the gout). Kaster 1995: 78–9 recognizes that Servius had committed plagiarism (“intercipere = to claim as one’s own something belonging to/intended for another” [78]). It bears observing how the forced dissolution of the marriage becomes a shaming penalty for Servius (see pudore).

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Unde nos uti fontibus haurientes aquam et ad propria proposita traducentes facundiores et expeditiores habemus ad scribendum facultates talibusque confidentes auctoribus audemus institutiones novas comparare. igitur tales ingressus eorum quia ad propositi mei rationes animadverti praeparatos, inde sumendo progredi coepi. Drawing from these sources as if draining water from springs and fitting them to my own purposes I find my command of writing made more fluent and easy; and trusting in such authors I set about to compose new teachings. Thus since I saw that such beginnings on their part were laid out for my planned undertaking, I set out to progress further by taking from them.

Vitruvius’ statement of purpose establishes him as a commendable borrower, as opposed to the plagiarists he just impugned. As in ancient imitation theory – and Vitruvius’ spring imagery echoes a common metaphor for imitatio in ancient literature – the proper and, indeed, laudable approach is to take from multiple sources and put one’s stamp upon them.20 The result is originality (institutiones novas), conceived in terms of personalizing source material to create a new, synthetic whole. As Vitruvius states later in the passage (DA 7 praef. 14) as well as elsewhere in the De architectura, the goal is completeness, at which he arrives by forming his varied models into a fresh unity.21 Such reordering leads to an advance in knowledge: by bringing multiple sources together in an original way, Vitruvius moves beyond them to create an account more comprehensive than that of anyone else. In this formulation, textual ownership, understood in terms of authorship, coexists with textual openness. A writer can freely draw from earlier works, even as he acknowledges their authors and, therefore, treats them as symbolic literary property. Such reuse begets literary progress when that writer creatively invents, i.e, when he reconstitutes what came before to produce something distinct out of others’ works.22 By contrasting his productive adaptation of his predecessors with how the plagiarists operate, Vitruvius gives still more insights into how he conceived of the theft he decries. First, the contrast itself establishes plagiarism as a category 20

21

22

See Harris-McCoy 2008: 85–6 on the spring imagery. The image migrated into Latin from the Greek tradition, where Homer was the most conspicuous author figured in such terms. Brink 1972: 553–6 and Lefkowitz 1981: 24 give examples of the Homeric image. Thus Harris-McCoy 2008: 86–7 describes Vitruvius’ aims. After listing sources on various branches of architecture (DA 7 praef. 11–14), Vitruvius writes quorum ex commentariis quae utilia esse his rebus animadverti collecta in unum coegi corpus (from whose commentaries I have gathered what I considered useful for my subject and molded it into a complete study [14]). See also DA 4 praef. 1, where Vitruvius relates that he synthesizes various sources to produce a complete and ordered treatise. This is to break down the binary of Steiner 2000: 13–53, cited in Macfarlane 2007: 1: Steiner asserts that “to create” is to make something out of nothing, whereas “to invent” is to rearrange something that was already there. It seems to me necessary, though, to recognize how “inventing” in Steiner’s terms is a creative process: the author creates something that was not there earlier out of what was there earlier.

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of reuse separate from the one Vitruvius pursues, just as it differed from the approach taken by the laudable authors of the past. It is not that the plagiarists do what Vitruvius does, only poorly, but that they engage with the past differently from how he does and, he relates, illegitimately. While Vitruvius portrays this as wholesale plagiarism, i.e., one in which a person slaps his name on another’s work and circulates it as his own, the problem is actually that the authors inertly follow their models rather than engage with them creatively to advance the study of the topic, as Vitruvius does. Once more, fraud is the intended result. Having placed his innocent intentions front and center (neque . . . id profero corpus), Vitruvius gives his passage an oppositional force that implies the plagiarists’ contrary aim of deluding others into giving them undeserved credit. The violation of textual property is both a textual and an extratextual matter, consisting as it does in flat repetition and in an effort to hide one’s debts. Implicit in this is the idea that the plagiarists tried to conceal just how close they stayed to their sources, so that their readers believed that they had been more creative than they really were and had produced something of their own out of their sources.23 Considering that several first-century bce figures acknowledge plagiarism, we might reasonably suppose that Vitruvius was activating what he knew to be a more widely recognized phenomenon.24 Of course, the existence of plagiarism implies as well the existence of plagiarists; and Vitruvius seems to want to have the fures he discusses understood as an actual menace. Certainly there is no reason to consider them any less historically plausible in Vitruvius’ account than the carping critics with whom he pairs them. The apparent message is that one can find both in the world, but will find neither in Vitruvius. While Vitruvius matches up with some of his contemporaries in referring to plagiarism, he is the only one of them, and indeed the earliest surviving Latin author, to apply the category to a scholarly text. As such, he gives a first glimpse into the contestability of research methods – analogous to imitatio in his formulation – in ancient Rome. As noted in chapter 1, researchers in varied genres were allowed to adhere closely to sources. Vitruvius himself observed that principle in his writing.25 But though he 23

24 25

It seems impossible that Vitruvius would have supposed a situation where readers assumed no sources at all for a scholarly work. Rather, the idea must have been that the plagiarists schemed to have their audience miss their specific sources and, in the process, miss how inertly they had echoed those earlier writers. See Lenaeus and the story of Servius Clodius, as well as n. 18. One very plausible example is that Vitruvius and Athenaeus Mechanicus, who dates to the Augustan Age, followed the same source closely when dealing with defenses (10.13–16.4 for Vitruvius, and 9.4–6 for Athenaeus). Whitehead and Blyth 2004: 25 identify that source as the first-century bce Agesistratus, probably from Rhodes.

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might follow a model closely, he conveys in his discussion of plagiarism that he combined his many sources in new ways, with the result that he avoided stealing and formed an original piece of scholarly, compilatory work. Legitimate authorship, and with it authorial creativity, is found in rearranging and reactivating the accumulated knowledge of the past.26 The writing is conservative, in that it follows tradition, and innovative, in that it recreates and expands upon earlier texts. Plagiarists, meanwhile, fail to do as Vitruvius does and then strive to cover up their actions. Vitruvius’ point is surely not that the plagiarists should have cited their models by name, since direct citation was unnecessary in antiquity,27 but that they still should have been open to having their debts discovered. Instead, they covered their tracks in an effort to win fraudulent authorial credit. Far from just being concerned with literary right and wrong in the abstract when he distinguishes his actions from plagiarism, Vitruvius uses the contrast to cast his virtues and value into relief for his dedicatee, Augustus, and for his general reader. The good appears as the absence of the bad and in opposition to the bad: Vitruvius devalues other writers for how they treat their predecessors while at the same time advertising himself as a valuable author who builds upon and even surpasses his sources.28 The interested nature of Vitruvius’ discussion does not mean that he offers unreliable, because nonobjective, information about how he conceptualized plagiarism. Vitruvius is still laying out the contours of the offense. It is just that he does so in a particular programmatic context, meaning that he applies his ideas about plagiarism – consistent as they are with those of other Roman sources – to particular rhetorical ends. Vitruvius’ use of plagiarism and plagiarists to tout his own merits reveals the rhetorical interests and knowingness that mark his prefaces as a whole. To follow up on an earlier observation, Vitruvius shows a consistent concern in his prefaces with promoting his text and taking steps to win over an audience. This was to give the passages functions that prefaces traditionally had in an array of genres, including specialist treatises.29 Some 26 27

28

29

I echo J. König 2009: 36. To follow up on n. 25, Vitruvius does list Agesistratus as a writer on machines in the preface to book 7 (praef. 14). But this, of course, is not the same thing as footnoting or citing that source when using him. While Vitruvius gives many predecessors in DA 7 praef. 11–14, moreover, he does not appear to be working with the idea that authors should explicitly provide sources to avoid being plagiarists. This message is consistent with my earlier suggestion that Vitruvius wanted to have his audience accept the plagiarists as historical. Their reality gives the reality of his merits greater substance: Vitruvius comments on the world as it is and advertises the good that he does when other options were possible. Of course, the point was not to have the prefaces dismissed as merely conventional performances but rather to sell a writer and his text to his public. Certainly convention and affective content were not mutually exclusive things in antiquity, just as they are not today.

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of the details in Vitruvius match up with directives in rhetorical theory for securing a favorable hearing for a speech, one of the areas in which prefaces operated to make an audience receptive, well disposed, and attentive.30 Thus he refers to his past work for the state, to his integrity, to his weaknesses and deprivation (a modesty topos), and to his treatise’s importance and patriotic value, as writers on rhetoric prescribed.31 But we cannot know if Vitruvius was responding directly to rhetorical doctrine or simply working with generalized ideas about how to woo an audience in a preface. Certainly many of his prefatory themes, including those with direct parallels in rhetorical theory, stand as topoi in Latin prefaces across genres.32 When promoting himself in his prefaces, Vitruvius repeatedly writes in competitive terms and places himself above other architects. While insisting that architecture is a worthwhile pursuit requiring much training and native ability, he suggests that the architects he assails are unworthy of their profession. Coming in for attack particularly are their ignorance and venality; these reveal them to be hacks-for-hire, as opposed, of course, to Vitruvius himself.33 A similar separation of Vitruvius from his lesser competitors is evident in his plagiarism charges. The message is not just that he has written a good book but that he has written a better book than others have on his subject and, consequently, has accomplished things they have

30

31

32

33

The corresponding Latin adjectives are docilis, benivolus, and attentus. See Rhet. ad Her. 1.4.7; Cicero, De inv. 1.15.20; and Quintilian, Inst. 4.1.5. See DA 1 praef. 2 on his services to the state; DA 6 praef. 5 on his integrity; DA 2 praef. 4 on his personal shortcomings; DA 4 praef. 1 and DA 6 praef. 7 on the text’s value (which the anecdotes in the prefaces to DA 2 and DA 9 also underscore); and DA 1 praef. on its patriotic value. Corresponding material in rhetorical treatises appears in Rhet. ad Her. 1.5.8, on referring to past work for the state; Cicero, De part. 8.28 and Quintilian, Inst. 4.1.7, on the importance of presenting oneself as a person of integrity; Rhet. ad Her. 1.5.8 and Quintilian, Inst. 4.1.8, on striking a modest pose; Cicero, De inv. 1.16.23 and De part. 8.28 on the need to affirm the importance of the subject under consideration; and Cicero, De inv. 1.16.23 and Rhet. ad Her. 1.4.7 on asserting that the subject is of significance to the state, as well as Quintilian, Inst. 4.1.7 on the desirability of conveying that one has taken up a case out of a sense of patriotism. Thus the pose of modesty is very common in prefaces of all kinds. Janson 1964: 124–33 and Alexander 1993: 73 examine this topic. Other material in Vitruvius with widespread currency in Latin prefaces include his references to his treatise’s importance and patriotic value; to the difficulty of the subject (DA 5 praef. 1 and DA 6 praef. 4); to the brevity of a work (DA 5 praef. 2–5); to stylistic shortcomings – another modesty topos (DA 1 praef. 1); and to how busy his imperial addressee is (DA 1 praef. 1). Janson 1964: 96 and 98–102 discusses these themes in prefaces generally. Obviously, writers will express the topoi differently, and they will use them and their prefaces as a whole to promote themselves in ways that reflect personal preoccupations and are fitted to their historical and rhetorical situations. DA 3 praef. 1–3, DA 6 praef. 4–6, and DA 10 praef. 2. In all the passages Vitruvius criticizes architects’ ignorance, while in the middle example he also assails their venality.

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not.34 For that reason he should be read and deserves approbation and respect for what he has been able to achieve. Visible in all of this is Vitruvius’ anxiety over his status in Roman society. Scholarship has recognized that Augustus promoted the standing of specialists in his effort to rationalize Roman culture and to redistribute social authority.35 This would have been a gradual process, however, not something done in a thunderbolt. Writing early in the age of Augustus, Vitruvius thus very likely still felt that his social position as an architect was uncertain. This explains the concern he demonstrates in the De architectura with whether architecture was a nonelite trade or a pursuit for an elite man of the best sort; and he is at pains to elevate the status of his profession and to portray himself in noble terms, notably by referring to his education and to how he refuses pay as an architect.36 The competitive approach he often takes in his prefaces, including in his discussion of plagiarism, fits with this anxious-seeming interest in asserting his authority and value. Vitruvius promotes himself in ways that show him to stand above the common herd, which includes architects who do not truly and properly pursue their craft and writers on architecture who do nothing to rise above their predecessors and advance knowledge, and that give him prestige and stature.37 Essential to how Vitruvius boosts his own profile as an architect and an author of an architectural treatise is his relationship with Augustus. Not 34

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Vitruvius’ competitive approach parallels the well-established technique in historiography of using polemic (as well as praise) to define the author’s own task. So Marincola 1997: 218. I owe this point (and the reference to Marincola) to Cristiana Sogno, “Curiositas nihi recusat: High and Low in History and Biography,” which at the time of this writing is forthcoming in a collection of essays from the “Shifting Frontiers” conference at Indiana University in 2009. It is also the case that Latin authors in prefaces across genres commonly distinguish their works from those of other writers and thinkers on a subject as a way of justifying and promoting what they produced. Plagiarism charges, however, are not common among them. Wallace-Hadrill 1997: 12, with A. König 2009: 42. Masterson 2004: 395–8 discusses Vitruvius’ anxiety over status and pay (expressed in DA 6 praef. 5, where he, demonstrating his integrity, distinguishes himself from architects who receive pay). See Masterson as well on Vitruvius’ discussion of education (pp. 392–5), as well as pp. 396–7, 402, and 404–5 for related comments. My understanding of Vitruvius’ purposes in the prefaces is consistent with both Brown 1963, who argues that Vitruvius wanted to dignify the architect’s profession in the De architectura, and Gros 1994, who argues that he sought to attain distinction himself. To me, both aims are visible and are, anyway, themselves complementary. Finally, I should note that, while Vitruvius claims not to receive pay from his clients, he does relate in the preface to book 1 that Augustus, at the recommendation of Octavia, rewarded him financially (DA 1 praef. 2–3). Rowland and Howe 1999: 6 suggest that this was a stipend or regular annuity. When Vitruvius concludes the preface to book 7 by noting that there are few works on architecture in Latin (14 and 18), he provides another example in that preface of how he places himself above others in his field, now by indicating that he will fill a hole with which most have not bothered and advance knowledge as they have not.

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only does he elevate himself by advertising his connections with the princeps through his dedication and through claims of proximity to Augustus’ family, but he also ennobles his field and his book’s subject matter by referring to the Augustan interest in a building program.38 Vitruvius’ ability to show the way to good architecture and thus to contribute to that program, moreover, strengthens his cultural standing by giving him an important role to play in Augustan Rome. In his discussion of plagiarism in book 7, Vitruvius also exalts himself by implying that he is someone upon whom Augustus should bestow his favor. Vital to this is the anecdote on Ptolemy and Aristophanes. Ptolemy’s punishment of the Alexandrian plagiarists is a model response for Augustus, who bears more than a passing resemblance to the Egyptian. Because the preface to book 1 of the De architectura makes it clear that Augustus had achieved sole power, it seems safe to conclude that Vitruvius wrote the treatise after the Battle of Actium in 31 bce; and the reference to Augustus’ triumph in the passage gives a more precise terminus post quem of 29, when the princeps celebrated his Triple Triumph.39 This means that the treatise arose at least close to when Augustus’ Palatine library opened either in 28 with the rest of the Palatine complex or soon after that year.40 Given these things, there seems no way that Augustus’ similarity to Ptolemy as a founder of a library would have been lost on Vitruvius when he was drawing a link between the two men.41 Nor, of course, could Vitruvius have missed 38

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DA 1 praef. 1–2 expresses the most full-throated support for Augustus and refers to his building program. McEwen 2003: 92–129 examines Vitruvius’ relationship with Augustus, as does A. König 2009: 31–52. It bears noting that Vitruvius also claims to have served under Julius Caesar in the preface to book 1 (2). Cum divina tua mens et numen, Imperator Caesar, imperio potiretur orbis terrarum invictaque virtute cunctis hostibus stratis triumpho victoriaque tua cives gloriarentur et gentes omnes subactae tuum spectarent nutum populusque romanus et senatus liberatus timore amplissimis tuis cogitationibus consiliisque gubernaretur . . . (when, Imperator Caesar, your divine intelligence and spirit were gaining power over the world and, after all your enemies had been laid low by your unconquerable bravery, the citizens were delighting in your triumph and victory, and when all conquered peoples were awaiting your command and the Roman people and senate, freed from fear, were being guided by your very great ideas and decisions [DA 1 praef. 1]). Baldwin 1990: 429 finds a reference to Augustus’ Triple Triumph in the passage, rightly I think. (The name Augustus was, of course, given in 27 bce; but for the sake of convenience, I have used it rather than Octavian.) While there is no firm evidence on the date of the library, it was likely completed by the mid 20s. There is an inscription assigned to the portico that suggests a completion date of 28 or 25, and the area of the complex identified as the library is generally thought to be early Augustan. (I rely upon Caroline Quenemoen per litteras for this.) Casson 2001: 81–4 is a useful source on the library. It is certainly plausible that book 7, a later book, was written somewhat later in the 20s. For more on the date of the De architectura, see Baldwin 1990: 424–34 and Rowland and Howe 1999: 3–5, who argue for publication before 22. Even in the event that book 7 was written between Actium and 28 bce, however, plans would have surely been far enough along for Vitruvius to know that Augustus was founding a library. Knell 1985: 16 n. 55 observes that the reference to the Alexandrian library must be related to the Roman context and the Palatine library. See also Novara 2005: 52–4.

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that Augustus had come to hold absolute sway over Egypt after his defeat of Antony and Cleopatra. In the preface to book 2, Vitruvius connects Augustus and Alexander the Great when he compares himself with Dinocrates, the architect of Alexandria (DA 2 praef. 1–4). Five books later, he returns to telling an Alexandrian anecdote and to having an eastern leader stand in for his imperial addressee, with historical conditions reinforcing the link. Vitruvius himself, meanwhile, has his double in Aristophanes. Like the bibliophile, Vitruvius appears in his preface as someone with the copious erudition to master a wide array of works and with the integrity to object to plagiarism.42 The implication is that Augustus should support and reward him just as Ptolemy had Aristophanes, based upon an appreciation of how different he is from other authors on his subject:43 they plagiarized, whereas he has offered up a work of honest, productive, and useful originality. By encouraging Augustus to view him in such a positive light, Vitruvius naturally impels his other addressees, namely his general readership, to do the same. Yet the communication with the larger audience occurs through his remarks to Augustus. Whether or not the princeps read the treatise, he is here as elsewhere the explicit audience, the person to whom and for whom Vitruvius writes.44 The Alexandrian anecdote thus provides a vivid example of how Vitruvius uses Augustus rhetorically to lay claim to importance, rank, and dignity in Roman culture. Vitruvius is careful to give the emperor ultimate authority over him by showing that Ptolemy had it over Aristophanes. But he also suggests that he deserves Augustus’ attention and esteem, and by extension that he should receive the attention and esteem of Augustus’ Rome as well. This is to express locally a message of the De architectura as a whole, in which Vitruvius demonstrates his expertise in an area prized by Augustus and of value in the Augustan milieu, however much he intended his book to be of real practical service. The architect jostled for position and authority in the new social order, quite possibly with an arriviste’s anxiety, 42 43

44

Harris-McCoy 2008: 83–4 makes this point similarly. The indirect call for the munera that Ptolemy gave Aristophanes anticipates the preface to book 9, where Vitruvius asserts that authors should be given palms, crowns, and triumphs and should even be considered worthy of consecration in temples (DA 9 praef. 1–3). When he then gives some examples of writers who were so rewarded (DA 9 praef. 4–14) before bringing himself into the discussion as a writer who relies upon the worthies he earlier listed (18), the implication is evident that he is part of that authorial continuum and, thus, is another person who deserves rewards. See also n. 36. Novara 2005: 106–9 examines the connection between the prefaces to book 7 and book 9. Janson 1964: 103 doubts that Augustus actually read Vitruvius, while A. König 2009: 36 n. 13 considers it “debatable” whether Vitruvius assumed that the emperor was going to read him.

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and produced a treatise to earn the notice and approval that he took steps toward securing in his prefaces, including by charging others with plagiarism.45

the hardest-working non-plagiarist in rome Vitruvius is the first extant Latin author to accuse his rivals of plagiarizing in a preface.46 After him, a handful of other writers similarly turn accusers when introducing their texts. One is Pliny the Elder, author of the thirtyseven-book Historia naturalis. Pliny’s text resembles the De architectura in having a totalizing, encyclopedic character: he collects and organizes a vast range of material to produce a comprehensive account of the world of nature.47 Preceding the work is a letter to Titus, the second of the Flavian emperors. The dedicatory preface, and therefore the publication of the Historia naturalis, appears to date to 77 ce, or two years before Titus succeeded his father, Vespasian, as emperor and Pliny lost his life in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.48 Like Vitruvius, Pliny displays a fundamental concern in his preface with laying the ground for a good reception, including by promoting the virtues, importance, and authority of himself and his text to his imperial dedicatee. When he addresses Titus, Pliny naturally seeks to win over his general reader as well. The prefatory letter communicates on two levels, with Pliny writing to Titus and through Titus to his wider audience. Thus one of his aims is to advertise to the broader public his close relationship with the

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I echo A. König 2009: esp. 50–2 on how Vitruvius was “jostling for position” in Augustan Rome. König (pp. 31–52) is generally very insightful on Vitruvius’ relationship with Augustus, and she strongly influences my discussion, although I do not agree with her that Vitruvius was challenging Augustus’ position and claiming power of his own as someone with technical expertise that surpassed the emperor’s. While Vitruvius certainly asserts that he warrants notice and standing for that expertise, he seems to me to put himself in the service of Augustus, whose authority is supreme, and of Augustus’ Rome. This naturally raises the possibility that Vitruvius inaugurated that practice in Latin literature. Certainly there is no reason to see Terence as a predecessor, who counters plagiarism charges in the prologues to his comedies the Eunuchus and Adelphoe. Not only do he and Vitruvius work in different genres, but he also wrote from the perspective of an apologist rather than of an accuser. Harris-McCoy 2008: 118–19 describes the Historia naturalis in these terms. I use the text of König and Winkler 1973. See Pliny the Younger’s famous letter to Tacitus on the eruption and the death of Pliny’s uncle, i.e., Pliny the Elder (Ep. 6.16; see also 6.20, in which the younger Pliny details more of his own experiences). The Flavian era provides several examples of prose epistolary prefaces, including Statius’ and Martial’s, which they attach to collections of poetry. Janson 1964: 107–12 examines the spread of prose prefaces in that period.

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future emperor, whose political prominence and power were great even while Vespasian lived.49 Pliny does this particularly at the start of the preface. There he cites Catullus to create a tone of ironic jocularity befitting familiar contact and, in calling attention to how Titus had disapproved of the insolence he showed in a recent letter, shows that they had an established relationship and that he felt free to be forward enough with Titus to elicit such a response, while also implying that the “anger” was of a friendly kind.50 Yet again like Vitruvius, Pliny seeks to color the broader reception of the Historia by how he addresses his imperial dedicatee.51 To examine Pliny’s use of the topic of plagiarism to secure a favorable response, we must begin with section 20 of his preface. There he refers to another work that he has been writing, a history of Rome that began where Aufidius Bassus left off (perhaps c. 31 ce) and continued on into the 70s. Pliny asserts that he has a draft of the text but has chosen not to publish it himself and to leave it to his heir to put out, so that no one thinks that he wrote it only to secure favor.52 The obvious subtext is that the treatment of the Flavians is complimentary, and that Pliny has refrained from publishing it to maintain a claim to historical objectivity and to avoid the suspicion of gross flattery. By indicating that he supports the imperial family – thereby in fact making a pitch to stay in Titus’ good graces – Pliny extends a theme found in the previous sections of the preface (HN praef. 16–20). He first touts the patriotic value of his 49

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Suetonius, Tit. 6, calls attention to Titus’ political prominence throughout the 70s ce and the reign of his father Vespasian. Murphy 2004: esp. 204–9 notes that Pliny gave his work an imperial imprimatur, and thus imperial authority, by dedicating it to Titus. I am not sure, though, about Murphy’s further contention that Pliny had to be careful because he was potentially encroaching upon the emperor’s status as the ultimate arbiter of knowledge. It seems unlikely that Titus would have felt challenged or threatened by intellectual activity like Pliny’s. Besides, the dedication confers respect upon Titus and casts the author as a subordinate, as dedications generally did. König and Whitmarsh 2007: 21 are relevant on this topic. HN praef. 1–4. Morello 2011: 147–65 finds the reference to Catullus and the opening jocularity more disquieting than I do. As I see it, along with operating in the ways I have described, the start of the preface also expresses conventional modesty (in, e.g., the portrayal of Pliny’s work as nugae), a topic to which I will return. This is the case even though Pliny also distinguishes Titus from the common reader who needs to learn from the work (HN praef. 6). The purpose there is, of course, to flatter and adopt a modest pose vis-à-vis Titus, but also to advertise the usefulness of the Historia (a subject that, again, I will deal with below). Iam pridem peracta sancitur et alioqui statutum erat heredi mandare, ne quid ambitioni dedisse vita iudicaretur (the draft has long been completed and is stored away; and at any rate it was my decision to hand it over to my heir, so that no one might think that I gave any of my life to currying favor). On the need for imperial historians generally to praise living emperors, see Barnes 1998: 185. Pliny’s remarks are a variation on the common Latin historiographical theme that writing contemporary history was a difficult and sometimes even dangerous undertaking.

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Historia naturalis, as opposed to Livy’s history (16).53 This is to enlist a conventional theme mentioned earlier for securing a favorable response: Pliny writes a work for the glory of the Roman state and, therefore, renders a service to the empire and its leaders. After going on to note how much research he has done for his treatise (17), moreover, Pliny states that he wrote it during the night, while devoting his days to his responsibilities to Titus and Rome – for Pliny commanded the Misenum fleet in the 70s. With this, he makes it clear that he gives all his time to Titus, trying around the clock to do right by him. To behave as Pliny does is to show absolute devotion to his imperial dedicatee and to serving Flavian Rome.54 Pliny closes his discussion of his “history of our times” (temporum nostrorum historiam [20]) by observing that he has done his contemporaries and later writers a favor by leaving them room to take up the subject. He then predicts that future historians will “struggle” with him just as he did with his predecessors (posteris quos scio nobiscum decertaturos sicut ipsi fecimus cum prioribus [20–1]). On one level, this again flatters Titus, now by suggesting that the Flavians will live on as a historical subject. At the same time, Pliny promotes his text when he forecasts its future value as a model. Subsequent writers will gravitate toward him as a useful source and strive to improve upon his account, thereby seeking to make the progress that he sought to make by building upon and outdoing his predecessors. The notion is that of aemulatio found in ancient imitation theory: the later historian takes it upon himself to surpass his model’s treatment, both in form and in content.55 Pliny proceeds to focus upon how he handles his sources in the Historia naturalis and to contrast his actions with those of others. It is at this point that plagiarism enters into the discussion (21–4): Argumentum huius stomachi mei habebis quod in his voluminibus auctorum nomina praetexui. est enim benignum, ut arbitror, et plenum ingenui pudoris fateri per quos profeceris, non ut plerique ex iis, quos attigi, fecerunt. scito enim conferentem auctores me deprehendisse a iuratissimis ex proximis veteres transcriptos ad verbum neque 53

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Profecto enim populi gentium victoris et Romani nominis gloriae, non suae, conposuisse illa decuit. maius meritum esset operis amore, non animi causa, perseverasse, et hoc populo Romano praestitisse, non sibi (for certainly he [Livy] should have written his work for the glory of the world-power state and of the Roman name, not for his own glory. There is greater merit to have persevered from the love of the work, not for one’s ego, and to have done a service for the Roman people, not for himself). Earlier in section 16, moreover, Pliny asserts that he preferred overcoming difficulties in order to perform a useful service (utilitas iuvandi) to pleasing and winning popularity. Sinclair 2003: 297 and Ker 2004: 232–6 discuss Pliny’s account of his nocturnal studies. Ker (p. 234) is especially relevant: “Pliny’s nocturnal scene answers directly to the public good of Roman society.” Russell 1979: 9–10 and Greene 1982: 58–9, 78, and 79 give brief but useful overviews of aemulatio in classical imitation theory (for which Quintilian, Inst. 10.2.9–10 is an important source).

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nominatos, non illa Vergiliana virtute, ut certarent, non Tulliana simplicitate, qui de re publica Platonis se comitem profitetur, in consolatione filiae “Crantorem,” inquit, “sequor,” item “Panaetium” de officiis, quae volumina ediscenda, non modo in manibus cotidie habenda, nosti. obnoxii profecto animi et infelicis ingenii est deprehendi in furto malle quam mutuum reddere, cum praesertim sors fiat ex usura. You will have the proof of this inclination of mine in the fact that I have prefaced this volume with the names of my sources. I consider it generous and full of honorable modesty to identify those from whom one profited, not to do as most of the authors upon whom I relied did. You should know, indeed, that I, when comparing my sources, have discovered old authors copied out word for word by the most reliable of the modern writers, without acknowledgment. These writers did not treat their sources with that Virgilian valor, for the purpose of rivalry, or with Cicero’s openness, who calls himself a companion of Plato in his De republica, and who in his consolation to his daughter says, “I follow Crantor,” and, similarly, “Panaetius” in his De officiis – a work that you know to be worthy of learning by heart rather than simply being held every day in one’s hands. Surely it is the mark of a servile spirit and wretched temperament to prefer to be caught plagiarizing than to repay a loan, especially since interest produces capital.

The word stomachus at the beginning of the passage must refer back to the preceding topic, Pliny’s “battle” with his predecessors. Pliny asserts that he will provide proof of his penchant for emulating his sources by giving their names, so that Titus (and the general reader) might be able to discern how Pliny strove to surpass them. This leads to the general observation that identifying the authors upon whom one has relied is a “generous” (benignum) and “honorably modest” (ingenui pudoris) thing to do. Pliny has learned during his research, however, that many recent authors do not treat their sources as he has. The contrast that Pliny draws between how he operates and how “most others” do (non ut plerique) ensures that he is introducing two distinct forms of textual reuse, one commendable and one wrongful. As with Vitruvius, the point is to set up a binary in which Pliny stands at a pole opposite to that of the authors he criticizes. When Pliny uses deprehendere and deprehendere in furto to describe others’ culpable reuse of their sources, he incorporates language from Roman law. In that context, deprehendere signifies catching manifestum furtum, or theft discovered during the act.56 Obviously, Pliny is not asserting that the authors actually commit a crime. But like Vitruvius, he lends a strong air of guilt to the misuse of literary predecessors, conceptualized as a violation of their textual property, by describing it in terms of criminality. The term furtum surely has the meaning of “plagiarism,” as it commonly 56

See Gaius 3.184: manifestum furtum quidam id esse dixerunt, quod dum fit, deprehenditur (some have said that manifestum furtum is theft that is caught while it happens).

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did in ancient Rome, including in the first century ce; but Pliny gives it extra bite by importing more legalistic language so as to underscore the wrongful nature of the act.57 Pliny’s notion of plagiarism joins with Vitruvius’ in seeing both excessive textual similarity and intentional fraud in it. Authors deliberately pass off their predecessors’ material as their own without personalizing it and by hiding it. Staying too close to a model is in Pliny’s words a matter of transcribing it “word for word” (ad verbum [21]). While this phrase described looser repetition than exact transcription/translation in Latin antiquity, it obviously signaled strong textual fidelity, which Pliny equates with inert, illegitimate reuse.58 By operating in this manner, writers fail to emulate (ut certarent) and to show “that Virgilian valor” (non illa Vergiliana virtute), as Pliny did. Once more the topic is the competitive drive to outdo models that was so significant a part of Latin literary theory and practice; and the contention is that plagiarists demonstrate none of that fighting, creative spirit. Pliny thus reads plagiarism partly in psychological terms, while also noting that the absence of virtus manifested itself in the flat repetition he found in the texts he consulted. When Pliny, in turn, does more than reproduce sources ad verbum, he demonstrates by how he works that he had the impulse, the conscious intention, to emulate. To extend a point already made in this book, there was no quantifiable measure in place to determine what constituted the productive change wrought by aemulatio and to distinguish it in formal terms from plagiarism. But Pliny places himself on one side of the divide and consigns most “reliable, modern” writers to the other, thereby showing that he felt it possible to make the distinction. In the process, he offers a second example of how close borrowings in research, while certainly allowed in ancient Rome, could also be stigmatized and separated from proper reuse. As with Vitruvius before him, Pliny identifies his task as a matter of reordering and synthesizing the knowledge of the past to create something new from his sources and, in the process, to surpass them.59 This to lay claim to authorial autonomy and authority: Pliny stands as someone who avoids inert 57

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I therefore do not agree with Pescucci 1982: 191 that the language is merely metaphorical or decorative. Instead, Pliny uses furtum in its literary sense and then activates its legal meaning to strengthen his message that plagiarism was a serious wrong. Other early imperial writers who use furtum to mean plagiarism are Martial and the Virgilian critic Asconius Pedianus, whom we will examine in later chapters, as well as Manilius and Seneca the Elder. McElduff 2004: 122–3 examines what, in Latin theory and practice, it meant to translate ad verbum. Relevant here are König and Whitmarsh 2007: esp. 27–39, on the archival impulse in the later Roman empire, which involved reordering and itemizing the textual world. On the synthesizing quality of Pliny’s work, see HN praef. 14.

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derivativeness and recreates his predecessors to advance the knowledge of the world. Originality and creativity are consequently made compatible with encyclopedic writing, in which Pliny remakes and builds upon the information contained in his sources.60 By aligning himself as an emulator with the canonical Virgil, moreover, Pliny casts a golden glow of excellence over his work and conveys that his competition with the past paid off in a successful, pre-eminent study.61 The point could not be clearer: Pliny’s text has virtues that the works of his rival authors lack, and it should be read before the pseudo-scholarship of those plagiarists whom he degrades. The other trait that Pliny ascribes to plagiarism, intentional fraud, demonstrates a lack of the candor (simplicitas) with which Cicero named his sources. The issue is the failure to cite sources (neque nominatos), understood in a culturally specific way. As we observed earlier and in chapter 1, Latin antiquity had nothing like our footnotes or our requirement that scholars cite their research obsessively. An author could refer within his text to a source when he chose, but he did not have to do so; and the reference would not be detailed but would often consist in giving only a name. Pliny illustrates how loose citation practices were when he himself does not identify a source, as well as when he names some predecessors within the Historia naturalis but without the precise details that we give in notes.62 The major place where Pliny provides bibliographical information (such as it is) is in the lists in book 1 of the authors upon whom he relied in each subsequent book. Despite being incomplete, these lists exhibit a unique emphasis in Roman texts on citing sources comprehensively.63 (Pliny includes the lists with tables of contents for 60

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How Pliny represents himself is consistent with the emphasis in Doody 2010: 11–39 on the originality of his encyclopedic enterprise, as distinct from, for example, the view of Conte 1994: 67–104 that the HN was a “culture text” to which notions of autonomous, mediating authorship do not apply. (Doody [pp. 15–18] discusses Conte’s argument.) The preface therefore shows us that, however much critics want to equate encyclopedism with unoriginal, uncreative, and impersonal compilation, Pliny depicted his own actions differently. Beagon 1992: 21, meanwhile, calls attention to the “creative intentions” that Pliny demonstrates in his treatise itself. This is the case irrespective of whether or not Pliny was hostile toward Virgil later in the Historia. For an argument that he was, see Bruère 1956: 228–46, who notes, however, that the comment on Virgil in the preface is “clearly laudatory” (p. 228). Pliny is, of course, also complimentary toward Cicero in the preface and seems to seek reflected glory by linking his conduct to that figure’s. For praise of Cicero later in Pliny, see HN 7.116–17. See Beagon 1992: 6–9 and Harris-McCoy 2008: 151–64 for examples of how Pliny cites sources. So Murphy 2004: 53–4. As we have seen, Vitruvius likewise identifies his sources in a list. But neither he nor any other Latin author whose list of sources survives (e.g., Varro, Rus. 1.1.7–10) is as comprehensive as Pliny is in citing his models. Beagon 1992: 6–8 suggests that in his bibliography and throughout the Historia naturalis, Pliny’s citations also link him to a community of equestrian and aristocratic predecessors. The purpose is to assert his elite identity by assimilating himself to elite circles. This is an intriguing reading, but it does not account for the citations to nonequestrian and nonaristocratic predecessors.

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his books.64) In the process, they exemplify the kind of openness that Pliny prescribes in his preface and that he faults plagiarists for not displaying.65 The loose approach to citation found among Roman writers points to the limits of the concept of plagiarism in Latin antiquity, since it implies that a failure to name sources would not have generally been grounds for alleging theft. In fact, only Pliny provides evidence for that line of criticism. With other Latin authors, including Vitruvius, the charge that plagiarists hid their sources is not matched to a belief that they should identify them explicitly. Some discussions instead take a psychological tack and maintain that writers would not be thieves if they intended to have audience members find their debts, though without the help of cited sources, rather than aiming to keep them hidden. Others suppose that plagiarists should at least not conceal their actions through some verbal subterfuge.66 Obviously, genre is an issue in this: most of the other charges arise in conjunction with poetry and rhetoric, forms not suited to explicit citation. But it remains the case that Pliny stands out as a unique Roman voice on plagiarism when he shows that it was possible in ancient Rome to make the absence of citation in research a basis for plagiarism charges. The difference between openly citing one’s sources and hiding them is a character issue in Pliny’s account. When he confesses his debts, Pliny shows himself to have the generosity and the honorable pudor that he ascribes to the candid borrower (est enim benignum, ut arbitror, et plenum ingenui pudoris fateri per quos profeceris [21]). The latter is the sense of shame or modesty that keeps him from pursuing the “discreditable extension of the Self,” or from improperly promoting himself at another’s expense and refusing that person his due honor.67 By contrast, plagiarists reveal their personal flaws when they refuse to give credit where credit is due. The offense is a moral one and exposes a person’s lack of benignitas and pudor as 64

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Riggsby 2007 deals with tables of contents in Latin antiquity (pp. 88–107), including Pliny’s (pp. 93–8). See also Morello 2011: 162–3. In his preface, Pliny states that he provides his table of contents to save Titus time, so that he can quickly find the information he wants (HN praef. 33). Ker 2004: 233 discusses Pliny’s assertion. Certainly, though, there is some inconsistency between Pliny’s accusations and his practice, since he also does not give some sources in the Historia naturalis. To reiterate a point made in the section on Vitruvius, moreover, Pliny must not have supposed a situation where the plagiarists wished to have their audiences believe that they had no sources at all. Instead, he must have been thinking that they wished to hide their particular models and, in the process, to keep their readers from seeing how inertly they reused them, i.e., from seeing their lack of emulation and creativity. I expand upon a point made in chapter 1 (p. 22). Examples of this way of thinking include Cicero (chapter 1); and more appear in chapter 5 and chapter 6. Kaster 2005: 42–5 identifies and examines the shame that comes with the “discreditable extension of the Self.”

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well as the “servile spirit” and “wretched temperament” (obnoxii animi et infelicis ingenii [23]) that keep him from “repaying a loan” with the capital of interest (mutuum reddere, cum praesertim sors fiat ex usura [23]). By “repayment,” Pliny must mean the act of citing sources, while the interest must be the additional acknowledgment that the author who cites his predecessors allows them to get.68 Pliny presents himself as a good man in contrast to plagiarists for the manifest purpose of making Titus and, by extension, his general reader favorably disposed to him and his text. The self-portrait renders him a man of honesty, magnanimity, and appropriate humility and thereby shows him to be the kind of individual to inspire benevolentia. This assertion of personal merits is part of a broader rhetorical tack that continues in subsequent sections of the preface (26–7). After defending his straightforward title (24–5), Pliny states that he has followed Greek painters and sculptors who inscribed their works with the imperfect faciebat, rather than the perfect fecit (26–7). For Pliny, the imperfect is full of verecundia, or the modesty that keeps a person from improperly blowing his own horn because it gives the impression that the work is still in progress, not completed.69 When artists instead used the perfect, audiences considered them arrogant and strongly disliked them.70 Though expressed in a different form, the underlying message is the same as that in the passage on plagiarism: with the personal virtues that he has, Pliny deserves goodwill and a friendly reading. Also underscored in Pliny’s account of plagiarism is the superhuman amount of research and scholarly effort that he put into his book. Pliny had 68

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For other perspectives on Pliny’s financial metaphors, see Murphy 2004: 63–6. Money enters differently into a story told by Pliny the Younger about his uncle (Ep. 3.5.17). According to him, Larcius Licinus wanted to buy Pliny the Elder’s notes for the Historia naturalis at a cost of 400,000 sesterces before Pliny published the work, in all likelihood with an eye to presenting the material that Pliny had gathered as his own (so Murphy 2004: 55). Licinus, a notoriously distasteful person (Pliny, Ep. 2.14.10–13 and Aulus Gellius, NA 17.1.1, with Murphy 2003: 303–4), presumably offends in this instance not only because of the crassness of his offer but also because of how he was just going to repeat Pliny. The assumption, then, would have been that an author should expend more effort in doing the research for his text, and that it would be an ugly thing for Licinus to buy Pliny’s notes and to make it seem that the work was his own. My description of verecundia derives from Kaster 2005: 17–18. In connection with this passage, Damon 2011: 133 observes that verecundia is “an important desideratum for Pliny, particularly in connection with authors’ claims about what they have achieved.” Pliny also criticizes Greek authors in HN praef. 24 for how their works have fancy titles and little within. By contrast, Pliny relates that his work will have a plain title and, he implies, much within (26). Schultze 2011: 169 rightly notes that Pliny’s subjects will include topics identified in the titles he criticizes – a situation that can be seen to confirm how his text really contains what the others only pretend to contain. Obviously, when suggesting that he considers his work to be still in progress, Pliny also gives himself an out for any mistakes or shortcomings his work might contain.

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already dealt with the prodigious amount of reading he did for the text earlier in his preface, when he turned to advertising his authorial efforts (14–18) after several paragraphs in which he adopted a pose of modesty and deprecated his writing (6–13) – an about-face illustrating how Pliny covers his rhetorical bases when discussing his work, moving from conventional modesty topoi to other means of securing a favorable reception.71 By Pliny’s count, he consulted 2,000 volumes, mostly unread by others, that yielded 20,000 facts (HN praef. 17). This is to show that he provides more information than anyone else has done, even if he admits that he, being human and laden with duties (homines enim sumus et occupati officiis [18]), no doubt fell short of giving an absolutely totalizing account (nec dubitamus multa esse quae et nos praeterierint [18]).72 Leading up to this reckoning of sources, Pliny stated that he was the first to have attempted to give an account of “the world of nature, that is, of life” (rerum natura, hoc est vita [13]). This is because most prefer pleasant fields of study, whereas he has tackled subjects of formidable abstruseness that lie hidden in shadowy obscurity (14).73 Pliny then goes on to comment on the value of treating all subjects pertaining to what the Greeks label “encyclopedic culture,” subjects that remain unknown or handled poorly. The arduousness of that task is great, he continues, in that one has to overcome various obstacles to producing good work that the wide subject matter presents (14–15). These remarks underline the worth of the Historia naturalis. The emphases lie upon standard themes in Latin prose prefaces, namely originality and the vastness and difficulty of the project.74 When 71

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One of the things Pliny states in self-deprecation is that he has taken on a “barren subject” (sterilis materia [13]) that does not permit stylistic flourishes and the ornaments of rhetoric. This is belied by his (often criticized) rhetorical prose throughout the Historia naturalis, on which see Wallace-Hadrill 1990: 80–1. (The idea that nature is “barren,” moreover, is an ironic oxymoron, as Wallace-Hadrill [p. 82] and Sinclair 2003: 286 observe.) Morello 2011: 164 is also sensitive to the shift in Pliny’s approach at around this point in the preface. Ker 2004: 210 with n. 8 observes that Pliny’s reference in section 18 of his preface to how he wrote at night because laden with duties during the daytime is a self-deprecating move “to explain why the work is not everything it could have been.” While this is true, that section, together with those around it, also vividly and, I would say, primarily advertises his vast labor. Pliny returns to the idea that much could be added to his treatise, as to all his texts, in HN praef. 28 (ego plane meis adici posse multa confiteor, nec his solis, sed et omnibus quos edidi [I openly admit that many things could be added to my work, and not just to this work alone, but to everything I have published]). Pliny thus combines self-praise and self-disparagement: he suggests that his work lacks the easy pleasure of others while at the same time advertising his ability to deal with very difficult subject matter. See, again, Janson 1964: 98–100. Morello 2011: 163–4 also calls attention to how Pliny locates the value of his work in the labor he put into it (while noting, too, that the “ironic veneer” of the light opening of the preface emphasizes the “weight and serious utility” of the text, as well as of its dedicatee).

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Pliny proceeds to give the number of sources he consulted, he continues to commend himself for preferring to surmount difficulties and for putting profound amounts of effort into writing a book of unparalleled scope. By stating that he consulted thousands of predecessors, moreover, Pliny promotes the scholarly authority of his work. With such labor behind it, the Historia naturalis must be a definitive study, a strong and commanding lode of information and knowledge. In Pliny’s remarks on plagiarism, the picture is again of his extensive engagement with the past. When opposing how he handled his many sources and how the plagiarists conducted themselves, Pliny recalls the abundance of research he did and provides an argumentum stomachi, proof of his efforts to build upon and surpass the predecessors he consulted. It becomes evident that the concern with openness that Pliny ascribes to himself in his comments on plagiarism and then displays in the lists of sources in book 1 is on one level another nod to his industry. What Pliny illustrates is how committed he was to exerting himself to the utmost, by striving to improve upon his myriad sources, in order to compose the valuable and momentous work that he had already emphasized his book to be. Quite possibly Pliny believed that he was offering up an aid to understanding a world of knowledge made accessible by Roman power, or discovered and brought together with the spread of the empire. So, too, he gives signs in his preface and elsewhere that he wanted his text to be an impetus to Roman intellectual curiosity and continued research.75 But those services will only be possible because of his efforts to master his many sources and to create an authoritative model for others. The discussion of plagiarism advertises that labor and, with it, Pliny’s will to make a productive and meritorious contribution to Roman culture, so that he would benefit Titus and Flavian Rome as an author no less than as a naval commander. To recognize these aspects of Pliny’s plagiarism accusations is again to see him adopting the identity of the good civic-minded Roman. As he did earlier in the preface, when he highlighted his services to Titus and Rome, Pliny portrays himself as a person devoted to the state and its people. This is to justify further the rank and power he had achieved that allowed him entrée into the most elite of elite 75

Murphy 2003: 309–22 and 2004: 51–3 deals with the connections between Pliny’s text and Roman power and (2004: 66–71) examines Pliny’s interest in stimulating study, with an emphasis on the author’s fear of “decaying knowledge,” of “knowledge slipping irrevocably out of Roman hands” (p. 69).

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circles. Pliny shows once more that he wished to use his talents and time only to serve the empire: his is a beneficent and munificent labor, a model diligence in which he lays out for the public good all the work that he has gathered and mastered.76 The plagiarism charges that display his exemplary conduct, by pointing to the extraordinarily rigorous research and writing he did to be of service to his imperial addressee and Rome, thus render him a fit recipient of favor and respect. By distinguishing himself from plagiarists, Pliny not only demonstrates his originality, the authority of his exhaustive treatment of his subject, and his benignitas and pudor but also reinforces the image of him as an ideal citizen who, because he works hard and honestly for the good of the emperor and the Roman world, deserves a good reception. While Pliny resembles Vitruvius in how he understood plagiarism and in using plagiarism charges for the purposes of self-promotion, there are no textual parallels strong enough to support the idea that he took the De architectura specifically as a model.77 The suggestion is instead of authors using plagiarism similarly but independently of each other, so that their charges serve the purposes of both polemics and programmatic advertisement. This effort implies for Pliny no less than for Vitruvius the aim of having his readers accept that the writers from whom he distinguished himself were real and were really plagiarists. Certainly he offers no indication that he was merely exaggerating to suggest that they were bad but still legitimate researchers; and if we assume consistency, there is no reason to think that he wanted his comments to be read any less literally than he did his subsequent remarks on the Greek authors who had marvelous titles or the artists who used the imperfect faciebat. Besides, the point was to make Titus and his general reader think that Pliny could have behaved as he had found so many others doing. Instead, he stood apart from the plagiarists, or more accurately, above them – a true author and true Roman rather than one of the many striving to earn false accolades.

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Beagon 1992: 13–15, Sinclair 2003: 277–99, and Murphy 2004: 65–6 influence my understanding of how Pliny creates this identity for himself in his preface. I do not emphasize as they do, however, the elite qualities of that identity. While Pliny advertises his links to an elite’s elite, Titus, he appears to me to construct a patriotic Self that transcends class and status: his behavior is a model for all, something that any good Roman can and should aspire to and demonstrate in his own way, irrespective of social standing. For another perspective on the construction of Pliny as a tireless researcher, this time by his nephew Pliny the Younger, see Henderson 2002: 256–84. Worth noting is Pliny’s reference to Homeromastiges, “Scourges of Homer,” when referring to the hostile critics against whom he wished to gird himself (HN praef. 28). This matches up with Vitruvius’ anecdote in the preface to book 7 on Zoilus, a Homeromastix (7–8), in connection with his polemic against captious critics. But this parallel, without accompanying specific linguistic echoes, seems too broad to support an argument for direct borrowing.

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accusations of a vates and an angry old man In the decades between Vitruvius and Pliny, two other authors, Marcus Manilius and Seneca the Elder, issue plagiarism charges in programmatic prefaces. Manilius does so in his Astronomica, a work that differs from Vitruvius’ and Pliny’s most obviously in being a poem. The Astronomica, in five books of hexameters, is a didactic work on the subjects of astronomy and astrology, with an emphasis on Stoic philosophical principles. Internal evidence places Manilius in the early first century ce; it is possible that the composition of his poem spanned the principates of Augustus and Tiberius.78 The Astronomica “abounds in explicit self-referential reflections on the poet’s activity and the principles of his work.”79 These reflections dominate the preface or proem to book 2. Manilius’ guiding theme is his originality, a topic that also figures prominently in his other prefaces. The passage begins with the depiction of Homer as a mighty river, from which subsequent writers drew and channeled into slender streams (2.8–11).80 After a survey of the poetry derived from Homer (2.11–48), Manilius issues the conventional lament that contemporary poets work with played-out themes and create hackneyed verse (2.49–52).81 But Manilius himself will still seek out “untouched meadows” (integra prata [2.53]), where water that neither a bird nor Phoebus has touched murmurs in hidden caves (2.54–6). It becomes evident at this point that the previous pessimistic picture was designed to cast into relief Manilius’ own originality, which he proceeds to declare boldly (2.57–9): Nostra loquar, nulli vatum debebimus orsa, nec furtum sed opus veniet, soloque volamus in caelum curru, propria rate pellimus undas. I will say my own things, I will owe my words to no poet. A real work, not plagiarism, will arise, as I fly into the sky on a companionless chariot and beat the waves with my own ship.

The contrast in these verses lies between the reuse of a predecessor’s traditional subject matter and Manilius’ independence from the literary past and 78

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So Volk 2009: 1 and 3–4. Book 1 and book 2 are addressed to Augustus, while Tiberius is implied in book 4 (see Goold 1985: xii, whose text I use, with Toohey 1996: 181). The terminus post quem is 9 ce, the year of the Teutoburg forest military disaster under Varus, to which Manilius refers (1.896–903). It is possible that Germanicus’ version of Aratus’ Phaenomena, written in 19 ce, echoes Manilius, in which case a terminus ante quem would be established. Volk 2002: 197. We thus have in Manilius an example of the water imagery mentioned in n. 20. Volk 2009: 203–4 discusses Manilius’ version of the topos.

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its themes. This is clear not only from his emphases in the earlier portion of the preface but also from how he goes on later in the passage (2.60–149) to lay claim to absolute originality of content. Manilius portrays himself as more than a creative epigone; he is a vates mundi, a poet/priest whom the universe has inspired into composing an unprecedented poem about the Stoic cosmos.82 The poet ascribes to himself something like Romantic originality: as someone who looks to the universe for his subject matter, he stands aloof from the literary tradition and creates a work native to himself.83 How should we reconcile this claim with the demonstrable fact that Manilius imitated earlier writers on his topic?84 Not by calling him out for hypocrisy or for dishonestly trying to hide his reuse of the textual past and, thus, for being a plagiarist, but by recognizing that Manilius was given to an emphatic poetics of originality, without requiring of himself absolute truth in advertising. He claims for his text an outsize newness here and elsewhere in order to express as forcefully as possible that his was a fresh work and had value as such. Two of the terms that Manilius uses to contrast his original Astronomica and conventional poetry are opus and furtum (2.58). Given that he turns to the latter word when discussing an objectionable dependence upon the literary past, we can reasonably conclude that he was familiar with its wider existence as a term for plagiarism. In particular, Manilius activates the broadly recognized criterion of excessive resemblance as a way of defining the phenomenon. Plagiarists steal by following others too closely, which here equates to the stale repetition of conventional content. A parallel with Virgil in Manilius’ preface raises the possibility that he was also thinking of the furta-hunters who descended upon Virgil in his early reception, as the Suetonian biography of the poet reveals (VSD 44–6).85 To 82

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So Volk 2002: 215–18. On the concept of the vates in Manilius, see also Newman 1967: 115–22. What Manilius offers up is a version of the primus-theme, in which a Latin poet claims to be the first to produce a particular kind of poetry (as Volk 2009: 200 describes the motif; Volk 2002: 114 n. 120 gives examples). Along with activating that conventional motif, Manilius uses imagery that is deeply Callimachean and, as we will see, quite possibly Virgilian. But there is no direct contradiction between these things and his claim nostra loquar, nulli vatum debebimus orsa, since Manilius’ point there is that he will be treating astronomical subject matter in ways that no predecessor has. (Of course, a reader might still find some irony in how Manilius uses conventional and Callimachean/ Virgilian material to rail against traditional content.) I echo Macfarlane 2007: 19 on Romantic originality. On Manilius’ reuse of sources, see Volk 2009: 182–97. This issue is linked to the one discussed in n. 82. Perutelli 2001: 74–6 argues for this idea. I take my interpretation of Manilius’ connection to Virgil’s critics, however, in directions different from his. For more on plagiarism accusations against Virgil, see chapter 1 (p. 8) and chapter 6, where I deal more with when those charges developed (pp. 178–9).

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open Georgics 3, Virgil laments the exhaustion of conventional themes (G. 3.3–8) and seeks original material whereby he might be able to rise above the earth and fly victorious through the mouths of men (temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim / tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora [G. 3.8–9]). It seems entirely plausible that Manilius had Virgil’s passage in mind when similarly claiming to be rising above the hackneyed. Having recalled that earlier programmatic material, he might have then thought of how Virgil’s detractors had dealt differently with his originality and fame, denying the former and trying to undercut the latter through plagiarism charges. This could have led him to use the label furtum to stigmatize the kind of work that Virgil had rejected. The idea would have been to criticize stale convention by echoing the Georgics, and to do so with a term and concept used to censure Virgil’s own reuse of the past. Perhaps, too, Manilius aimed on a secondary level to counter the charges against Virgil by suggesting that the poetry Virgil had avoided could be called furtum, not what he actually wrote. In referring to furtum, however, Manilius was not setting plagiarism up as a separate category of reuse, into which the repetition of traditional subject matter falls. Instead, the allegation that inheres in the use of that word strengthens his critique of how authors rework conventional content, without actually making them plagiarists. Manilius decries their conventionality for roughly forty lines without any reference to plagiarizing; and when the word furtum does make its appearance, it serves only to associate in passing the repetition of traditional content with that transgression. Manilius’ approach is to import fleetingly the concept of plagiarism into his account in order to liken to it the kind of writing he was criticizing. Whereas Vitruvius and Pliny set up a binary between plagiarism and their reuse of models, Manilius establishes a different binary between others’ trite subject matter and his freshness. He then writes in heightened terms about their conventionality just as he does about his originality and equates the use of customary themes to literary theft. This enables him to tarnish derivativeness further by identifying it with (but not as) culpable furtum. While Manilius does not actually maintain that to reuse a predecessor’s conventional subject matter is to plagiarize, his reference to furtum indicates that he understood the two practices to lie on a continuum. Manilius connects derivativeness to plagiarism because he knew that inert reuse, in its worst form, could be stigmatized as theft, understood as a distinct and illegitimate form of repetition. Reworking traditional themes was, of course, fundamental in so much Latin poetry. But as Manilius shows, it was still possible to complicate and reprove that practice and to do so in part by

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recognizing its proximity to plagiarism. This, in turn, enabled him to set himself all the more sharply apart from other poets. Their degradation, underscored by their association with plagiarism, emphasizes through contrast Manilius’ heroic originality and, thus, advertises his poem as something new and worthy of notice. Some two to three decades after Manilius, Seneca the Elder wrote the preface to his Controversiae.86 This is a ten-book collection of extracts from early imperial judicial declamations, or speeches on fictional forensic cases. These were a species of performative oratory developed in the schools of rhetoric (although sometimes delivered in other venues). While controversiae existed when Cicero was alive, they took the form they have in Seneca around the beginning of the principate and constituted a branch of rhetoric/ oratory that stood at a distance from the law courts and the world of politics.87 When gathering his rhetorical material, Seneca’s specific focuses were the divisiones (the main lines of argument, or summaries of the plans of the speeches), the colores (the particular “spin” or “complexion” that the speakers gave a speech), and the sententiae (the rhetorical epigrams, i.e., striking or clever lines that the speakers formulated)88 found in different controversiae. After giving the law, if there was one, upon which the theme depended and then the theme itself, he quotes from the speeches and epigrams of different declaimers before moving on to the divisiones and the colores (although in those sections, too, he often cites sententiae).89 Seneca adopts a similar scheme in his one surviving book of Suasoriae, 86

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On the date of the Controversiae (as well as of Seneca’s collection of Suasoriae), see Sussman 1978: 91–3, who contends that Seneca put together his work after the mid 30s ce, perhaps as late as 41 ce. I am more comfortable with a date in the late 30s, since Seneca was dead in 41, when his exiled son wrote the Consolatio ad Helviam. Bonner 1949 and Sussman 1978: 1–17 provide good overviews of Roman declamation. Tacitus’ Dialogus, meanwhile, is an important source for an ancient perspective on the fictitious, scholastic, and “impractical” character of declamation (itself a topos of the rhetorical tradition). See also Quintilian, Inst. 2.10. It is a common belief that declamation arose in Rome as rhetoric/oratory began to play a smaller role in political life with the coming of the principate. But the law courts continued to operate, while, at least under Augustus, senatorial oratory was still practiced, if not as robustly as in the republic, and not in the form that, we can assume, Cicero would have liked. Declamation in much of the period that concerns Seneca, therefore, was one of different kinds of rhetoric/oratory still found in Rome. I thank Chris van den Berg for discussing this topic with me per litteras. In Con. 1 praef. 23, Seneca uses the word sententiae to signify loci communes, or “traditional passages” that a writer could plug into different rhetorical situations. But sententia in Seneca customarily has the meaning I have given. The MS title of Seneca’s work is, in fact, Oratorum et Rhetorum Sententiae Divisiones Colores; but I give the titles that are more familiar today. Winterbottom 1974: i.xvi summarizes well how Seneca operates. It bears noting, as Winterbottom does, that Seneca only rarely gives a continuous extract from a speech and only once in his extant work (Con. 2.7.1–9) gives a full declamation.

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which he put together soon after the Controversiae, and which contains selections from seven deliberative declamations, i.e., scholastic speeches in which historical figures deliberate over a course of action. Seneca’s volumes are rich sources for rhetoric as practiced in the schools (and related venues) of the late first century bce and the early first century ce. Yet Seneca is more than a compiler of declamatory extracts. Within his prefaces to the books of Controversiae and within the body of both of his collections, he provides sketches of declaimers, literary anecdotes, and his own and others’ observations on speakers, poets, and the cultural scene generally. Included in this material are several references to plagiarism. These appear in connection with speeches, where plagiarism is consistently a matter of stealing sententiae, and with poetry, where the usual issue is whether an author stole individual lines.90 The relevant discussion for our current purposes lies in Seneca’s preface to book 1 of the Controversiae, at the end of a screed on the decline in rhetoric at Rome since the glory days of Cicero (Con. 1 praef. 6–10).91 Emblematic of that decline is the way that contemporary declaimers reuse the sententiae of their models (Con. 1 praef. 10): Quis est qui memoriae studeat? quis est qui non dico magnis viribus sed suis placeat? sententias a disertissimis viris factas facile in tanta hominum desidia pro suis dicunt et sic sacerrimam eloquentiam, quam praestare non possunt, violare non desinunt. Who is there who cares for his future reputation? Who is there that pleases – I will not say by great abilities – but even by his own? They deliver epigrams created by the most celebrated men easily as their own amid so slothful a public. In doing so, they ceaselessly profane the holiest eloquence, which they are unable to outdo.

The kind of repetition Seneca decries here has traits that clearly identify it as plagiarism: contemporary declaimers are culpable (note in particular the indignant rhetorical questions and word violare) in how they pass off their illustrious predecessors’ sententiae as their own (note again the questions and the phrase pro suis dicunt). By contemporary declaimers Seneca presumably means those of the late 30s ce, when he probably put together his collection, even though the dramatic date of the preface, which he addresses to his three sons while, of course, targeting a wider audience, is c. 20 ce. Seneca relates that he has produced his volume as an old man at the request of the boys, 90

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The only reference to plagiarizing poetry that does not involve individual lines comes in Con. 1 praef. 19. (See chapter 5 n. 1). Could plagiarism in declamations, meanwhile, have encompassed more than sententiae? It would be curious if the transgression were confined only to epigrams; but there is nothing in Seneca that allows us to extend its reach. Sussman 1972: 195–210, Fairweather 1981: 132–48, and Gunderson 2003: 31–44 examine this passage and Seneca’s treatment of cultural decline. I use the text of Håkanson 1989.

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who wanted to learn more about the speakers of the past (Con. 1 praef. 1).92 By disertissimi viri, or the plagiarists’ sources, meanwhile, Seneca means the great Latin declaimers of the early principate. It is those earlier speakers, born “in Cicero’s day” (circa Ciceronem [Con. 1 praef. 7]), that Seneca lionizes throughout his preface and that he introduces as the major sources for his collection. Seneca deplores how current declaimers, who cannot produce their own good sententiae, plagiarize the excellent epigrams of their forebears, i.e., those who were endowed with “Roman eloquence” (Romana facundia) and with the talent that “brought distinction” to Latin declamation (ingenia quae lucem studiis nostris attulerunt [Con. 1 praef. 6–7]).93 Seneca does not object to reusing sententiae as such. In fact, a primary function that he gives his collection in the preface to book 1 is to provide his sons with models to imitate, with epigrams a principal focus (Con. 1 praef. 5–6). The advice is to rework many predecessors so that one escapes a problem that, in Seneca’s pessimistic view, is inherent to imitation: an imitator is never able to equal any one particular source.94 When Seneca then comes to accuse contemporary declaimers of plagiarizing, he makes them powerfully worse than their models, violating the sacerrima eloquentia they cannot attain. The indication is that he concludes the section on cultural decline by returning to the subject that led into that section, namely, the reuse of models’ epigrams, and by having inferior speakers take lines from superior predecessors. Yet Seneca draws an emphatic distinction between the plagiarism that he deplores and the imitation that he accepts and, indeed, promotes, however inevitably a borrowing will come up short of its model. The former is not simply an extreme version of the 92

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It was conventional in ancient Rome to address works to sons. Macrobius, whom I will examine in chapter 6, provides another example. Seneca’s target in Con. 1 praef. 8–9 is the young generation (see torpent ecce ingenia desidiosae iuventutis [look at how the intellects of our lazy youth languish {8}]), and so presumably students. This is still the case in section 10, although he could have had in mind their teachers as well. Seneca’s accusation also illustrates that plagiarism could be seen to occur in performance, i.e., in oral rather than in written form. Non est unus, quamvis praecipuus sit, imitandus, quia numquam par fit imitator auctori. haec rei natura est: semper citra veritatem est similitudo (You should not imitate a single man, no matter how distinguished he is, because the imitator is never the equal of his model. This is how it is; the copy is always less than the reality [Con. 1 praef. 6]). Russell 1979: 4 discusses this pessimistic strand in Latin imitation theory, citing this passage and Quintilian, Inst. 10.2.11. Another important work on the subject, with a focus on the first century ce and comments on Seneca the Elder on p. 112–13, is Fantham 1978: 102–16. (Fantham [p. 113] rightly comments on the lack of agreement between Seneca’s barb that contemporary declaimers “have models as degenerate as their intellects” [talia habent exempla qualia ingenia {Con. 1 praef. 10}] and his subsequent accusation that those declaimers plagiarize from the great speakers of the past. It would appear that Seneca was criticizing his targets without regard for absolute consistency.) On imitation (and emulation) in Seneca, see Berti 2007: 251–64.

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latter but a separate form of reuse, blameworthy rather than encouraged, deviant rather than standard. Instead of creating epigrams that are worse than their models’, moreover, the plagiarists steal in order to compensate for their shortcomings and, through their sources’ lines, to look better than they are. From plagiarizing, the declaimers get credit for eloquentia that is not their own and, it is understood, acquire reputations for literary value they do not deserve. Whenever the topic of plagiarizing sententiae comes up elsewhere in Seneca’s work, the discussion centers upon instances where speakers adapt predecessors’ epigrams rather than repeat them verbatim. It seems sensible to assume consistency and to hold that in his preface Seneca likewise had in mind declaimers who modified their models to some degree. One of his criticisms would surely have been that the contemporary speakers stayed too close to their sources, aping the great sententiae and then getting credit for the aptness of the expression.95 Yet along with the formal flaw of slavish fidelity and inadequate personalization, the effort to keep the debts to earlier sententiae concealed defines the speakers’ actions.96 The plagiarists take advantage of their audiences’ desidia, or the laziness that keeps them from identifying the epigrams’ origins. (Presumably Seneca means that the audience members are too sluggish to have learned about the great declaimers of the past; but he may also be complaining that they fail to pay attention to the speeches.97) The sloth that surrounds the thieves allows them to achieve their aim of receiving false credit for having produced lines that they had inertly borrowed. Duplicity and fraud again mark plagiarism, giving it psychological and moral dimensions to go along with its textual, aesthetic component. Presumably, Seneca supposes that the plagiarists angled to have their listeners consider them the originators of the well-turned epigrams they stole. This, at least, is a logical purpose of exploiting desidia to keep debts hidden. It is clear from Seneca that declaimers did not always have predecessors for their epigrams, however normal imitation was, but instead 95

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Relevant is Bloomer 1997: 147, who asserts that with plagiarism in Seneca, “Originality of treatment is surely the critical issue, and the critical anxiety.” Gunderson 2003: 42 also recognizes that Seneca ascribes dishonest intentions to the plagiarists, noting that they operate “with the hope of stealing one man’s private property in a bid to make it his own.” It bears noticing that in Seneca’s portrait, the plagiarists themselves, despite their other faults, are by logic not so desidiosi as their listeners when it comes to literary history, since they know their illustrious predecessors’ sententiae. This means that they exercise their memories to learn great sententiae – a potentially meritorious pursuit, but one turned to improper ends. Gunderson 2003: 47–8 analyzes things similarly. As Gunderson (p. 42) notes, the ignorance and idleness of the declaimers’ audience are also signs of decline. But the speakers themselves are clearly the main targets of the fulminating Seneca.

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could formulate lines without turning to a model.98 In his preface, Seneca would have the contemporary speakers passing themselves off as just such original authors, creating sententiae that were free of sources.99 We might reasonably suppose, though, that Seneca was attacking the current declaimers in hyperbolic terms when charging them with plagiarizing sententiae. In the sections leading up to the discussion (Con. 1 praef. 8–10), Seneca slams the speakers and their culture with universalizing assertions of decadence and effeminacy, making the current generation caricatures of depravity and worthlessness. The force of the fulminations indicates that Seneca was deliberately exaggerating for satiric effect; his message was actually critical, but was expressed in vividly heightened strains.100 Because he includes the plagiarism charges within that critique, it follows that the accusations were similarly overstated. The rhetorical tack is different from that of Vitruvius and Pliny, as heated satire replaces their more observational (though, of course, still interested) charges. Given how authorial intention factors into Seneca’s criticism, it would seem that he was not referring to plagiarism just to describe excessive resemblance in overblown terms. Instead, the exaggeration lay in the idea that all contemporary speakers plagiarize when they turn to their great Augustan predecessors. The point was to activate the concept of plagiarism as a distinct, culpable practice and to use its (overstated) frequency to continue to impress forcefully upon his readers – 98

99

100

Examples are found passim; but a good one is Con. 1.4.11, on Publius Vinicius: Seneca relates that Vinicius usually took well-said material from everyone, but in that instance spoke nove, i.e., created an epigram without borrowing from a model, in contrast to his customary practice. Now even declaimers who did not use specific models could and often did rework the same theme as other speakers. My point, though, is that they were perceived not to recast a particular predecessor but to originate their variation on a theme. Similar to stealing rhetorical epigrams is joke plagiarism today: comedians steal others’ jokes, and particularly those delivered in performance, to win credit for a funny or clever line. Chris Green’s article “Plagiarism Is No Laughing Matter for Comedians” in the Independent, 11 November 2009 deals with the subject. As a person of “old-school severity” (antiquus rigor, Seneca the Younger, ad Helv. xvii.3), Seneca would have been a sort to believe in what he was saying, while exaggerating to drive home the point. But of course, we have no access to his real feelings. What we can determine is that he was sounding a standard theme when he lamented cultural decline. Other examples include Livy’s well-known preface to his history of Rome, as well as Columella, Rust. praef. 15–17 and Tacitus, Dial. 28. The latter two decry, like Seneca, the laziness and general worthlessness of young people. What is more, lamenting cultural decline was a locus communis in the rhetorical schools. We can reasonably assume that Seneca knew that his subject matter was conventional. This means either that the standard theme reflected his actual thoughts or that he turned to it to tar the present without sincere, or perhaps complete, belief. A modern analogue to the aspersions that Seneca levels on “the youth of today” lies in the culture wars in the U.S. over the 1960s. Traditionalists and conservatives complain that America fell into decline during the decade and generalize about how the young people of that time were decadent and immoral, even godless. While the critics may sincerely believe those things, their criticism has become a stock theme and involves caricature and exaggeration.

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explicitly, his sons and, implicitly, his general audience – how terrible things had become, how badly rhetorical culture was in decline. Even if an audience member recognized that the abuse was exaggerated, that current speakers did not always plagiarize when they reused sententiae, the indictment of the times and, with it, the idea that the speakers came up woefully short of their predecessors were to remain in place. This means that Seneca must have assumed that his charge would carry an appropriately strong stigma. The contention that the inferior declaimers plagiarized from their superior models joins with the broader remarks on cultural decline to advance Seneca’s programmatic efforts to validate his work. The concern is the conventional one of securing a favorable response, which the author sets out to do by presenting himself sympathetically and by advertising the virtues of his text. Seneca had already taken steps in those directions earlier in the preface. First, he calls attention to the harmful effects of old age on his once formidable powers of recollection when asserting that he will put together his volume from memory (Con. 1 praef. 1–5). This is a variation on the theme of inadequacy, through which the speaker struck a modest stance to elicit the goodwill of an audience and, thus, to create the conditions for a friendly reading.101 Seneca proceeds to discuss how “necessary and useful” a thing it is (rem necessariam et utilem) for his sons to get to know models of the preceding generation (Con. 1 praef. 6). That familiarity will enable them to abide by Seneca’s aforementioned ideal of imitating many good sources, while also showing them just how much oratory had declined. These statements justify Seneca’s compilation by pointing to the past’s worthiness as an object of attention, as opposed to the present, and to the profit that comes from looking to the preceding era.102 The treatment of decline that follows expands upon how badly things have decayed, so that Seneca underscores the difference between then and now. This highlights 101

102

Sussman 1978: 54–5 discusses Seneca’s modesty pose. As he notes, Seneca’s comments on his impaired memory also underline the difficulty of his task (another theme of the captatio benevolentiae), which he had emphasized in the first sentence of the preface. Sussman 1978: 67–8 along with Gunderson 2003: 34 see as well a parallel between the decline in Seneca’s mnemonic capacities and cultural decline. I am not sure myself that Seneca wanted that connection to be made; he is only resigned to his worsening memory, not critical of it. In my view, moreover, Gunderson (pp. 42–4) overstates how unstable and unreliable Seneca’s memory is made to be in the preface. This does not give enough weight to how (as will soon become clearer) Seneca depicts his memory as a bulwark against plagiarism, an agent of literary preservation, and a protector of exemplary declaimers. Seneca’s memory, in other words, is emphatically still a solution to some literary–historical problems and more than strong enough to fight against the plagiarists and help to save the rhetorical past. Sussman 1978: 57 similarly interprets Seneca’s rhetorical purposes. This is a good place to note, too, that other Latin writers use the theme of decline to highlight what is good and useful about their texts: Livy is a notable example. But none use plagiarism to that end as Seneca does.

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all the more the usefulness of Seneca’s text: the collection will allow its readers to know the superior past and to learn from its models, particularly while imitating them, so that they might stop or at least resist decline. The glorifying portrait of the earlier declaimers in the passage on plagiarism then brings home the point about how great and worthy of notice those speakers were, just as the satiric depiction of the wretched plagiarists emphasizes how bad things are and, therefore, how necessary it is to try to remedy the situation by giving attention to Seneca’s subjects. Seneca continues to use plagiarism to promote his text in the passage immediately following his accusations against contemporary declaimers (Con. 1 praef. 10–11): Eo libentius quod exigitis faciam et quaecumque a celeberrimis viris facunde dicta teneo, ne ad quemquam privatim pertineant, populo dedicabo. ipsis quoque multum praestaturus videor, quibus oblivio imminet, nisi aliquid, quo memoria eorum producatur, posteris traditur. fere enim aut nulli commentarii maximorum declamatorum extant aut, quod peius est, falsi. itaque, ne aut ignoti sint aut aliter quam debent noti, summa cum fide suum cuique reddam. So much the more gladly I will do what you request, and I will give to the public whatever I can recall of the eloquent sayings of very famous men, so that they not be anyone’s private possession. Indeed, I think that I will do a great service to the past declaimers, who are in danger of being forgotten unless something is handed on to posterity by which the memory of them might live on. For generally there are either no drafts of the greatest declaimers or, what is worse, there are forged ones. Thus I will attribute to each his own work with the greatest faithfulness, so that they not be unknown or known in a way they should not be.

The train of thought (note in particular eo libentius, “so much the more gladly”) indicates that Seneca is identifying plagiarism as a spur to composition. By taking his private stock of declamatory material, including sententiae, that he has stored up in his memory and publishing it to the people, Seneca will make it so that the epigrams circulate under the names of their actual authors. This is to fight against the plagiarists, whose exploitation of desidia to get away with their actions Seneca just described. Publication of the written text operates as an impediment to stealing epigrams: by circulating a collection of the earlier declamatory material, Seneca will cause the sententiae of the celeberrimi viri to become better known, which will make it harder to get away with the plagiarism he deplores.103 To 103

This means that the audience has to overcome its desidia in order to read Seneca. Indeed, there seems again to be some logical inconsistency, since Seneca’s collection would be ignored or read without proper diligence if the rhetorical public behaved true to form. But Seneca papers over such things when stating his motives here.

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continue with his earlier theme of how his memory is not what it was, Seneca relates that his collection of extracts will not be total or perfect (quaecumque a celeberrimis viris facunde dicta teneo). But the significant point is that his efforts will go a long way toward protecting the past and foiling the plagiarists. Underlying all of Seneca’s remarks on plagiarism is a concern with proper attribution, an issue of general importance in early imperial declamatory culture. Speakers in the schools fought for standing, which could bring them students and even social advancement, and tried to use their wellturned epigrams to bolster their reputations. This required that sententiae belonged to those who distinctly expressed them, whether through imitation (as well as translation) or without recourse to a specific predecessor. The claim was for symbolic ownership, embodied in the form of recognized individual authorship, i.e., in the lines’ attribution as quotations to specific individuals, which abided even as the epigrams stood open to imitation.104 It is this ownership that Seneca pledges in his preface to observe and to protect – and the vigilance he shows throughout his collections in accurately attributing sententiae, particularly but not exclusively in cases where speakers produced quality lines, demonstrates that he meant what he said.105 The picture is of epigrams as a form of literary property that could outlast the ephemerality of performance: they are able to live on in memory (however imperfectly) and, through Seneca, will be memorialized in written texts.106 What, in turn, characterizes the plagiarism that Seneca denounces in satiric strains in Con. 1 praef. 10 is counterfeit authorship and ownership. The fakery allows the plagiarists to win improper credit and to close the vertical distance between themselves and the giants upon whose backs they stand. Seneca’s assertion that he will attempt to thwart plagiarism by attributing sententiae to their real authors further proclaims the value of his collection. It is clear from his glowing portrayal of the declaimers of the past, which 104

105 106

My account owes much to Sinclair 1995: 121–32. Gunderson 2003: 42, cited in n. 96, also recognizes that sententiae constitute private literary property. Berti 2007: 21–2, meanwhile, notes that in Con. 9.2.23, Seneca is concerned with how a sententia has been falsely attributed to Latro. This shows that there could be some confusion over whose epigram was whose – a natural and inevitable development, particularly in a predominantly performance-based, oral context. Yet the concern to attribute authorship is still in evidence there. For similar ideas, see Sinclair 1995: 122 and 130–1. Berti 2007: 19 points out the ephemeral nature of declamatory performances. Seneca’s reference to the forged drafts of speeches, moreover, shows that there was some interest in giving speeches textual fixity; and the possibility that Seneca relied upon notes he had taken in the past or upon others’ collections of declamatory material (despite his claims in Con.1 praef. 11), rather than just upon his memory, to put together his volumes (see chapter 5, nn. 11–12) is important to keep in mind in connection with this topic.

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includes the religious imagery in section 10 (sacerrima eloquentia, violare, dedicare), that he wished to present his efforts to counter the plagiarists and to preserve the earlier speakers’ proprietary claims to their sententiae as worthwhile ones.107 The authors deserve to have their accomplishments noted and, concurrently, to have their positions at the top of the rhetorical pecking order recognized. The alternative is to have them lost to posterity; and the movement of ideas in the preface suggests that Seneca was presenting plagiarism as one of the threats to their existence. While the plagiarists themselves had to have known their sources’ sententiae, Seneca portrays them as people who do nothing to allow their predecessors to emerge through the fog of desidia and, in fact, exploit cultural conditions in order to suppress the models’ identities and to keep their authorial achievements from being acknowledged. To resist that effort to hide the earlier declaimers and, thus, to consign them to oblivion, as well as to meet other threats to them, Seneca puts together a volume in which he scrupulously gives each declaimer his due. Again, even though Seneca relates that his powers of recollection, once awesome, have dimmed, he still portrays the text that he will produce from memory as an agent of survival. Through his work, the great declaimers’ material will endure both as their private possession (note suum cuique reddam) and as a common cultural inheritance.108 The stated aim of preserving the earlier speakers’ identities as the authors of particular sententiae reflects Seneca’s fundamental concern with exemplarity. It is well established that models from the past played a powerful role in Roman culture; the central place of imitation in literature of different kinds is on one level a manifestation of that cultural characteristic. Seneca demonstrates that deep Romanness when he asserts that he will respond to the plagiarists by handing on the past declaimers’ epigrams to posterity. Protecting their literary property means protecting individuals who could 107

108

On the use of the word dedicare in “dedications” of literary texts generally, see White 1974: 51–5 (with a mention of Seneca on p. 55). White (p. 52) notes that the word “is used primarily in religious contexts, and when Latin writers apply it to the presentation of books, they sometimes take pains to surround it with other words or images which enhance the religious aura.” This is what occurs in Seneca. As we have seen, Seneca also asserts that he will make sure that the epigrams “not be anyone’s private possession” (ne ad quemquam privatim pertineant [Con. 1 praef. 10]). Since he had just been dealing with the plagiarists who were passing off their predecessors’ sententiae as their own, he presumably meant by that comment that he was publishing his work to keep those thieves from claiming the lines as their own work. That is to say, far from suggesting that the epigrams should not come to belong to their actual creators by being attributed to them (a message that would run contrary to Seneca’s entire enterprise and his remark suum cuique reddam), Seneca refers to any plagiarist with quemquam and states that he wants to keep the thieves from getting credit for producing what they stole from others.

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and should serve as models. The concern is not with that property simply in the abstract – although Seneca does operate as someone who believes in the principle of acknowledging and protecting authorship – but with how its disappearance, to which plagiarism contributes, eliminates exempla that should be safeguarded. The loss is to the speakers themselves (and recall Seneca’s ipsis quoque multum praestaturus videor), but also to the memorializing impulse, which will preserve and perpetuate the good and the profitable in Latin rhetoric for the benefit of those who, like Seneca’s sons, want to make the effort to learn from it, thereby stanching decline.109 This makes the plagiarism that Seneca satirically laments an urgent matter in Roman terms and, consequently, one whose pursuit reflects well on the author engaged in it and the text he produces.

a postscript: priscian It would be excessive to conclude from the additional evidence of Manilius and Seneca that prefatory references to plagiarism had become conventional from the first century bce into the first century ce. Even with the two of them, the frequency of the references is insufficient to support that idea – for there is no other surviving writer from the period who issues plagiarism charges in a preface to advertise the merits of his work and to secure the interest and favor of an audience. So, too, Manilius and Seneca’s comments differ so much from each other’s (as well as from Vitruvius’ and Pliny’s) that it seems very safe to suppose that they arrived independently at the subject of plagiarism. The apparent situation, therefore, is that a cluster of authors from the Augustan age into the first century ce discretely recognized plagiarism as a critical term in the cultural lexicon and applied it to similar programmatic ends. The authors show a coherent understanding of the offense, even as they identify it in a wide range of textual repetition: all of them make it a matter of culpably passing off another’s work as one’s own by sticking too close to a model, and all except Manilius make it clear that plagiarists have fraudulent intentions, in that they scheme to win false credit by hiding their sources. They then turn their accusations to their rhetorical advantage, promoting their own virtues, value, and authority in contrast to the plagiarists whose work and worth they disparage. I have discovered no further evidence for corresponding programmatic uses of plagiarism charges in Latin prefaces until the fifth- to sixth-century 109

Once more, exchanges with Chris van den Berg have clarified my thinking, and my discussion owes much to him.

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ce grammarian Priscian of Caesarea.110 There is nothing to suggest that Priscian was responding directly to any of the early imperial writers. The inference is that he either included accusations in his preface on his own initiative or followed a model that we cannot identify. A teacher at Constantinople, Priscian wrote the eighteen-book Institutio probably in the early 500s.111 This was to become the standard Latin textbook through the Middle Ages. The first sixteen books deal mainly with the parts of speech, while the last two contain a systematic account of Latin syntax. Prefacing the tome is a dedicatory letter to the consul and patrician Julian (Juliane consul et patricie [GL ii.2.24–5 {Keil}]). The purpose was the familiar one of winning a favorable reception from his addressee and general reader. Priscian accomplishes these things by echoing customary prefatory themes. Among them is a claim for relative brevity. While Priscian obviously cannot state that he has produced a short treatise, he does maintain that his text is economical when compared to the vast tracts of Herodian and Apollonius Dyscolus, his chief sources. Therefore, it is useful and appealing in ways that their studies are not (GL ii.2.20–3). But Priscian’s stronger assertion, which he makes as the preface opens and at some length (GL ii.1.1–2.11), is that he has done something new, difficult, and valuable by laboring to bring together multiple Greek and Latin sources into one place and to correct earlier errors. The result is a totalizing, authoritative, and profitable work from which others will benefit.112 While Priscian emphasizes his work’s originality, breadth, authority, and value, he also allows that later grammarians will surely find omissions and mistakes to rectify (GL ii.2.12–16). Nor should this be a surprise, Priscian asserts, since nothing that humankind can produce will ever be perfectly realized (nihil enim ex omni parte perfectum in humanis inventionibus esse posse credo [GL ii.2.13–14]). Priscian then goes on to explain why some gaps and errors found their way into the Institutio (GL ii.2.16–20): Namque festinantius quam volui hos edere me libros compulerunt, qui alienis laboribus insidiantes furtimque et quasi per latrocinia scripta aliis subripientes unius nominis ad titulum pertinentis infanda mutatione totius operis in se gloriam transferre conantur. For they forced me to publish my work faster than I wanted – they who, lying in wait for others’ labors and, like robbers, stealing writings through the villainous 110

111 112

Among the material I have examined is Santini, Scivolini, and Zurli (1990–8). Scott Johnson also provided me with an exhaustive list of geographical, astronomical, and cosmographical texts from the Roman empire, which greatly facilitated my inquiry. Kaster 1988: 346–8 and Coyne 1991: 4–7 sketch out what we know of Priscian’s biography. On the novelty, difficulty, and usefulness of his task, see in particular GL ii.1.12–13 and ii.2.1–4. On the universalizing quality of the treatise, see GL ii.2.4–5 and ii.2.8–9.

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change of the particular name given in the title, try to transfer the glory to themselves.

According to Priscian, plagiarists are responsible for the shortcomings of his text, because those bugbears compelled him to publish the Institutio before he wanted to. Priscian surely exaggerates, as Vitruvius did, when he accuses the thieves of simply inserting their names into the titles of others’ books. The charge is instead that individuals follow their predecessors with extreme fidelity when putting together their own discrete works and then hide those sources in order to win credit for having produced what they inertly repeated. Once more, the stealthy and deceitful transfer of both literary property and literary credit defines the transgression: lurking like brigands, the thieves take material that belongs to others (note qui alienis laboribus insidiantes and scripta aliis subripientes) and then pass it off as their own. This activity stands opposed in Priscian’s preface to his own handling of sources and to the reuse of his text by subsequent grammarians, which he welcomes (GL ii.2.14–16). In his handling of the past and in his successors’ handling of him, personalizing adaptation, which at one point Priscian labels imitation (eos imitor [GL ii.2.9]), is a crucial trait.113 In turn, what marks the contrasting activities of the plagiarists is how flatly they echo their predecessors and how fraudulently they appropriate authorship. Two separate modes and categories of repetition come into view; and the rhetorical organization of the passage indicates that Priscian wished to establish a firm binary between the legitimate research practices and plagiarism, the illegitimate opposite of productive borrowing. For plagiarism to be an issue at this juncture for Priscian, the assumption has to be that he had already put the Institutio (or sections of it) into partial circulation, presumably by sharing his work among a private circle.114 It is difficult to know whether he was then suggesting that his material had actually fallen into the wrong hands and been plagiarized or that he simply faced the threat of plagiarism. In either case, Priscian relates that he was forced to hurry publication to combat the plagiarists who lurked in his literary community. Priscian’s personal exposure or vulnerability to 113

114

GL ii.1.10–2.11 conveys that Priscian has modified his Greek sources, by translating them, combining them in new ways, and correcting them. Priscian’s successors, meanwhile, will in his words “either add or change” (vel addere vel mutare [GL ii.2.16]) things in his work. Priscian also uses imitari to describe how Latin writers have followed Greek grammatical treatises (both their accurate information and their errors) in GL ii.1.5 and labels an author reworking earlier treatises an imitator in GL ii.1.13. This would have been for the author a prepublication activity. Starr 1987: 215–16 discusses how Latin authors initially shared work with a select few. The further suggestion is that Priscian’s work had then somehow circulated further than he wanted. This at least would explain how a work not yet published could have been exposed to the plagiarists he describes (or to the threat of their plagiarism).

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plagiarism need not have been a reality. But if his comments were to operate as an effective explanation for why his text might have shortcomings, it was necessary that the plagiarists he described be accepted as a real phenomenon. Priscian’s reference to plagiarism implies that it remained for him an active, legible concept. His rhetorical tack is then to place plagiarists in the world as an at least plausible threat that would have motivated him to release his work early, with its errors uncorrected. Priscian’s remarks on the threat of plagiarism are, of course, apologetic in nature. The aim is to pre-empt criticism of the Institutio and, in the process, to neutralize the presence of material that might detract from the treatise’s excellence and utility. Yet Priscian also uses the plagiarists to create sympathy for himself as the (real or potential) victim of an egregious wrong: note, in particular, the strong adjective infanda as well as how Priscian heaps up terms for theft (insidiantes, per latrocinia, subripientes), which emphasize the transgressive quality of the plagiarists’ actions. What is more, he solicits goodwill by relating that he wanted more time to create the best, most reliable text he could. This underlines how Priscian was doing a good service and working to produce an expert, worthwhile text; it was only some malefactors who kept him from eliminating the flaws that might inhere in it. Two details within Priscian’s description of how the plagiarists operate further show him seeking to present himself favorably as an author. The first is the appearance of the term labores to describe the work that the wrongdoers plot to steal (alienis laboribus insidiantes). Having already used labor when relating that he had worked hard to produce a useful text (meo labore faciente [GL ii.2.8]), Priscian returns to the same term to reiterate the theme, thus characterizing his text once more as an arduous undertaking pursued to benefit others. The second detail is the remark that the plagiarists try to appropriate the praise or glory that a text affords (totius operis in se gloriam transferre conantur). By making this their goal, Priscian indicates that his Institutio could in fact grant gloria. Plagiarists lurk in the background, plotting to co-opt his text, precisely because his work would give them the credit and renown that they desire. At the close of his prefatory letter proper, Priscian refers once more to gloria and labor.115 Flattering his addressee, Julian, Priscian states that “whatever glory” God grants him for his work will shine the more brilliantly with Julian as his dedicatee (ut quantamcumque mihi deus annuerit suscepti 115

Priscian proceeds to give a table of contents, which gets increasingly less detailed as it goes on (GL ii.3.5–4.10). (Priscian does not also list his sources, as Pliny does.)

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laboris gloriam, te comite quasi sole quodam dilucidius crescat [GL ii.3.1–2]). But Priscian relies upon his own rhetorical efforts, rather than just divine or patronal aid, to secure a favorable reception. By including plagiarism charges in his self-promoting material, Priscian shows that very late in the classical record accusations continue to have the programmatic function they had centuries earlier. Blame contains praise, as Priscian uses the bête noire of plagiarism to cast himself and his text in a bright light.

chapter 3

Playing the victim: Martial on the plagiarism of his poetry

Another Latin author besides Priscian who claims to be a target for plagiarists is the late first-century and early second-century ce poet Martial. Scattered among his twelve books of epigrams are several pieces in which he speaks as a plagiarism victim. Book 1, published probably in 85/6 ce, contains the bulk of the texts, the so-called Fidentinus cycle.1 This consists of six scoptic or satiric epigrams on the plagiarist Fidentinus, who was passing off Martial’s work as his own.2 The number of poems devoted to plagiarism makes it a prevalent theme in book 1.3 Martial then refers to the subject only a few times throughout the rest of his corpus. In book 2 (Ep. 2.20), he writes on Paulus, who plagiarized poems other than Martial’s, while once each in books 10 (Ep. 10.100), 11 (Ep. 11.94), and 12 (Ep. 12.63), he again satirizes his own plagiarists, who are now anonymous thieves rather than Fidentinus.4 1

2

3 4

The classic study of cycles in Martial is Barwick 1958: 284–318. Martial seems to have published a book of epigrams roughly every year from 85/6 ce until his return to Spain in 98, after which book 12 appeared perhaps in 101, or perhaps posthumously. Before the publication of book 1 of the epigrams, Martial had also produced the Liber de spectaculis in 80 for the opening of the Colosseum and had published the Xenia and Apophoreta in December 85. On his life and literary career, see Sullivan 1991: 1–55 and (for a succinct account) Watson and Watson 2003: 2–4. Martial is best known for the satiric type of epigram. But he also wrote many other types, including erotic, epideictic, protreptic, sympotic, and praise/dedicatory pieces. So Citroni 1975: xxiii and Fitzgerald 2007: 91. I use the texts of Howell (1980) for book 1 and of Shackleton Bailey (1990) for the later plagiarism poems. Omitted in my examination are two epigrams that Williams (2004: 91) cites as works on plagiarism. One is Ep. 7.77: exigis ut nostros donem tibi, Tucca, libellos. / non faciam: nam vis vendere, non legere (You demand that I present you with my epigrams, Tucca. I will not do it; for you want to sell them, not to read them). All that we can gather here is that Tucca wants to sell Martial’s poems, perhaps to a bookseller, not that he wants to sell them under his own name or to someone who will then pass them off as his own. The other is Ep. 10.3, which is clearly a work on a forgery in Martial’s name. (I will also deal later with 10.102, which Williams also considers a plagiarism poem.) Finally, I follow Howell 1980: 257–8 and others in not seeing a reference to plagiarism in Ep. 1.63: ut recitem tibi nostra rogas epigrammata. nolo. / non audire, Celer, sed recitare cupis (You ask that I recite my epigrams to you. I refuse. You do not want to hear poems, Celer, but to recite them). The

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The cognomen “Fidentinus” shows Martial engaging in the kind of onomastic play that was typical of him. Clearly not a real name, it underscores the plagiarist’s rascally character and signals his fidentina, his “brashness” or “shamelessness.”5 The appearance of the word fides at the start of a poem (Ep. 1.39.2) that immediately follows one of the pieces on Fidentinus, moreover, gives us reason to suppose that Martial chose the plagiarist’s name to play on that noun as well.6 Elsewhere, he links a proper name in one epigram with a word in an adjacent or nearby poem.7 The motive in this instance might have been to imply that Fidentinus shows no fides, no honesty and good faith, in his handling of Martial’s poetry. But is “Fidentinus” a pseudonym for a real person or a name for a fictional character? In the preface to his first book of epigrams, Martial states that he does not follow earlier authors in attacking “real people by name,” including the great (nominibus non tantum veris abusi sint sed et magnis).8 The difficulty here lies in determining whether he means that he satirizes real people, just not by name, or that he makes up his targets. Even if he meant the latter, we might still wonder if we should take his words at face value, since they could amount to a conventional disclaimer, and accept that he never satirizes actual people.9 Critics have well established that Martial does, indeed, frequently avoid personal attacks by satirizing fictional types.10 At the same time, he also

5

6

7 8

9

10

point is not that Celer wants to hear Martial’s poems so that, having somehow memorized them (or parts of them), he could later recite them as his own, but that he wants to force Martial to reciprocate and to listen to Celer deliver his own poems. On the name Fidentinus, see Barwick 1958: 308–9 and Spahlinger 2004: 481. Pavanello 1994: 161–78 deals with signifying names generally in Martial. For more on the cognomen Fidentinus, see Kajanto 1965: 196 and 257. Si quis erit raros inter numerandus amicos, / quales prisca fides famaque novit anus (if there is anyone to be counted among rare friends, such a kind as the loyalty of yore and fame of old knows [Ep. 1.39.1–2]). See Maltby 2006: 159–67 and 2008: 255–68. Spero me secutum in libellis meis tale temperamentum ut de illis queri non possit quisquis de se bene senserit, cum salva infimarum quoque personarum reverentia ludant; quae adeo antiquis auctoribus defuit ut nominibus non tantum veris abusi sint sed et magnis (I hope that I have pursued such moderation in my work that no one can complain about them who has a clean conscience, since the poems entertain while showing respect even to humble people. This was so lacking in ancient authors that they attacked not only real people by name but also important people). I follow Howell 1980: 29 in translating “real people by name.” So Sullivan 1991: 64, who also remarks about Martial, “But like Phaedrus and others before him, his professed aim is to castigate vice, not people . . . One must, however, wonder whether there was more than one rich cobbler in Bononia who put on public spectacles (3.16; 3.59; 3.99).” It is true, as Nauta 2002: 43 points out, that Domitian was sensitive to perceived libel against leading citizens (Suet., Vit. Dom. 8.3) and to satire against himself (Suet., Vit. Dom. 10.1, 10.2, 10.4). Yet this need not have precluded all pseudonymous satire on Martial’s part. See, e.g., Saller 1983: 246; Holzberg 2002: 85–6; Lorenz 2002: 8–10; Nauta 2002: esp. 42–55; Wills 2008: 15; and Howell 2009: 42–3 and 49–50 (with Howell 1980: 96).

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suggests intermittently that he sets upon real individuals under pseudonyms. This could itself be a fiction, a game to produce more spurious particularity and a stronger “reality effect.”11 But it introduces a further element of uncertainty over how to read the historicity of at least some of his satiric targets.12 In my judgment, that same uncertainty attends the existence of Fidentinus as well as the other plagiarists whom Martial treats; there is no way of determining for sure if they were historical or not. To pursue that issue any more, therefore, is to head down a blind alley.13 It may be that the clustered appearance of plagiarism poems in book 1 reflects how Martial was dealing with an actual problem that subsequently dissolved (at least for the most part) as his career advanced.14 Yet he could have just as easily been treating a fictional theme that occupied him enough to produce a cycle of poems on it, but that then fell out of heavy rotation. What we can draw solid conclusions about is how Martial represented the plagiarists, their actions, and their aims as well as himself as a victim of literary theft. A major concern will be to examine how Martial fits his plagiarism charges to the genre of scoptic epigram. Perhaps he took his cue from an earlier Latin epigrammatist whose work on the theme has been lost 11

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14

I echo Wills 2008: 15. Williams 2004: 8 is very good on this topic. Poems that give the impression of pseudonymity are Ep. 4.31, 5.60, 12.61, and 12.78. Nauta 2002 advocates seeing Martial’s satiric targets as fictional, and his non-satiric addressees, including his patrons, as real. I leave open the possibility that the situation was a bit messier. Relevant is Ep. 5.15.2, et queritur laesus carmine nemo meo (and no one complains of being hurt by my poetry) and Ep. 9.95b, where Martial states that he does not know who his satiric target is, i.e., that he is unreal. Yet one might cite Ep. 6.64, for example, as a satiric poem that is vicious in attacking what looks to be a real person. Also important is Ep. 10.33, where Martial states that he “spares people and deals with vice” (parcere personis, dicere de vitiis [10.33.10]). This is one of a few poems on forgers who put out venomous poems in Martial’s name (Ep. 7.12, 7.72, and 10.3). The suggestion in them is that the epigrams target actual people, and that this runs contrary to Martial’s practice (and see Ep. 7.12.9, ludimus innocui, “my playful poems are harmless,” with Galán Vioque 2002). But if at least some of the forgers were themselves historical, then at least some of the poems would be directed at real individuals. Critics who have considered Fidentinus to be real include Barwick 1958: 308–9; Citroni 1975: xxiii (and the reality is presupposed in his commentary; see in particular p. 96, on Ep. 1.29); Howell 1980: esp. 168 and 229; and Puelma 1995: 431–2. Spahlinger 2004: 480, meanwhile, is unsure about whether the plagiarist is real, while Friedlander 1961: 376 lists Fidentinus as a fictional person. See also Winsbury 2009: 209 n. 28, who wonders if Martial made up the plagiarist. So Citroni 1975: xxiii and Puelma 1995: 431–2. In Ep. 10.2.11, Martial indicates that readers in Rome do not plagiarize him (at chartis nec furta nocent) – an assertion then belied at the end of the book, in Ep. 10.100. Yet this is more to construct an idealized Roman audience than to suggest something about the trajectory of his career. We should bear in mind, too, that when he published book 1, Martial had already achieved some significant literary success and, with it, had presumably achieved some fame (n. 1). This poses a challenge to anyone who would maintain Fidentinus plagiarized what he knew to be the poems of an unknown or obscure writer, unless that person supposes that the epigrams were written much earlier than their publication date, and before 80 ce.

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to us.15 To judge by Catullus 36 and 42, it was at least possible before Martial to write poems on how the author lost control of his circulating text and found it threatened with burning (36) or held hostage (42). It would have been a not at all huge jump for another Latin predecessor to treat another form of short-circuited circulation in which someone took unwanted and undue possession of the author’s poetry by plagiarizing it.16 Whether or not Martial had a model, though, he molded his theme to a principal satiric interest of his own: the construction of a literary world filled with bores, miscreants, and mediocrities or worse.17 Wit is the soul of the poems, as it is in his scoptic pieces generally: the prevalent features are irony and pointed, humorous turns of thought and phrase (things that naturally can overlap).18 Because Martial is the only surviving Latin source to write such epigrammatic poems on plagiarism, he offers unique perspectives on the phenomenon in ancient Rome.19 My aim is to build upon or counter earlier analyses of the wit and humor that Martial brings to his satiric treatment of plagiarism. In the process, I will provide fresh interpretations of the ideas about furtum and the attitudes toward it that are embedded in the epigrams.20 Of consistent interest will be the various ways that Martial places authorial credit at the center of plagiarism. What his plagiarists recurrently steal is not anything material, but rather the mantle of authorship as well as the literary value that stems from talent and is manifested in good poetry and the credit for it.21 To convey that the thieves were attracted to the epigrams they were, as well as to suggest that they took pieces that were accomplished enough to grant renown, reflects well on Martial the plagiarism victim. But 15

16 17 18

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21

On Latin epigrammatists before Martial, see Sullivan 1991: 93–100. Apart from Catullus, Martial indicates in his preface to book 1 that his most significant predecessors were Domitius Marsus, Albinovanus Pedo, and Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus. I should add here that a Greek epigram by the perhaps second-century ce Pollianos derides the plagiarists of Homer (AP 11.130; see Nisbet 2003: 188–94). But of course, this is no evidence that plagiarism was a common Greek epigrammatic theme. I derive this point from Farrell 2009: 173. Wills 2008: 205 has a convenient index of Martial’s poems on “the writing profession.” I echo Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem on epigram published in the Morning Post in 1802 (and cited in Howell 2009: 35): “What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole; / its body brevity, and wit its soul.” Ausonius also satirizes his addressee, Theon, for plagiarizing the poet Clementinus (Epist. 13.9–15 and 103–4 [Green]; see p. 91). Yet he differs from Martial in not devoting his entire poem to plagiarism. Among the critics who have dealt with Martial’s epigrams on plagiarism are Citroni 1975, Howell 1980, Spahlinger 2004: 472–94, P. Anderson 2006: 119–22, Fitzgerald 2007: 91–7, Rimell 2008: 40–50, and Seo 2009: 567–93. My interpretation of this aspect of Martial’s work responds in particular to Seo 2009: 567–93, who argues that the poems on plagiarism emphasize the materiality of Martial’s texts and their commodification in the marketplace. While I found Seo’s article very smart and stimulating, I understand the evidence differently from how she does.

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rather than making the blanket observation that he “complains, or boasts, of being plagiarized,” i.e., that throughout his poems on plagiarism he uses his charges to promote himself,22 I want to explore if and how that biographical dimension manifests itself in individual poems. A crucial aspect of this will be to recognize that the plagiarism poems were literary performances, and that Martial constructed his authorial identity in them in ways that were appropriate to the genre of satiric epigram.

epigrammatic accusations Martial first deals with the plagiarism of his poetry in Ep. 1.29. As is customary, he gives the poem a direct addressee, which contributes to its drama and vigor by creating the effect of live dialogue:23 Fama refert nostros te, Fidentine, libellos non aliter populo quam recitare tuos. si mea vis dici, gratis tibi carmina mittam: si dici tua vis, hoc eme, ne mea sint. Rumor has it, Fidentinus, that you publicly recite my poems just as though they were your own. If you are willing to have the poems called mine, I will send them to you for free. But if you want them to be called yours, buy this, that they not be mine.

Because the first-person speaker is a poet, Martial makes it very hard to separate Fidentinus’ victim from him, even if we were to maintain that the plagiarism was a fiction.24 This corresponds to his practice throughout his corpus, in which the first-person poet persona is the author of the collection.25 In his scoptic pieces, Martial then commonly places his authorial ego in unreal situations and endows it with some unreal traits.26 At the same 22

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Farrell 2009: 173–4 n. 17. See also Watson and Watson 2003: 75: “In protesting loudly about literary theft at this early stage in his publishing career, M. was indulging in self-advertisement: the clear implication is that his epigrams are considered worth stealing.” According to these critics, therefore, Martial was looking for readers like Kay 1985: 259, who notes that “Martial would not have been entirely sorry to see these literary predators at work – they showed both that he was popular and that he was an excellent poet.” On this topic, see Nauta 2002: 42 and 182–3. Fitzgerald 2007: 94, on the need to “imagine an effective spoken realization” in Martial’s epigrams, is also relevant. Damon 1997: 159–60 discusses this difficulty in Martial generally when he speaks in the first person as a poet. So Spisak 2007: 102 n. 10. See also Nauta 2002: 48–9. Obviously, the first-person epigrammatist in Martial’s epigrams other than the scoptic pieces is also a represented ego. The poet’s awareness of the difference between speaker and Self is also apparent in his well-known defense of the obscenity in his poems, lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba (my page is wanton, my life upright [Ep. 1.4.8]). As he elsewhere tells it (Ep. 1 praef.), his obscene voice is simply a construct for his genre.

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time, that speaker is always on one level a fiction, irrespective of the fictional status of the narrative situation, because Martial shapes it to the rhetorical setting: the ego speaks in the particular strains and from the vantage point of the epigrammatic satirist, thereby becoming a Self fitted to his genre, a scoptic identity. The result is a “performed I” situated between the “biographical I” and the “fictional I”: “Martial” both is and is not Martial, since the poet turns his own person into a satiric speaker.27 Fidentinus’ imagined conduct in Ep. 1.29 amounts to a perversion of the “social reading” of Martial’s poetry.28 In several epigrams, Martial relates that his enthusiasts recite his poems at dinner parties, recitations, and other public and private gatherings.29 One such social reader was Pompeius Auctus.30 According to Martial, this figure delivered Martial’s poetry to anybody who wanted to hear it and remembered the epigrams so thoroughly that he could be regarded as their author (Ep. 7.51). Memory stands as a guarantor of literary property: the assumption is that the person who produced a text will know it by heart.31 But rather than claim the poems as his own, Auctus prefers to ascribe them to Martial and to promote his reputation (sed famae mavult ille favere meae [Ep. 7.51.10]).32 While Martial treats Auctus with teasing irony, he still considers him an ally who respects the right of authorship – i.e., Martial’s right to be recognized as the author of the epigrams he wrote – and who tries to get him as much credit as possible.33 27

28 29 30

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I take the idea of the “performed I” from Nauta 2002: 51 n. 37, citing Slings 1990: 11–12. While recognizing these things about Martial’s first-person speaker, I often call him Martial and quote by way of explanation/justification a prickly Greenwood 1998: 279 n. 4: “It is doubtful whether any intelligent modern-day reader still needs to have it pointed out to him that a literary critic does not necessarily either mean or believe that an ancient writer’s narratorial ‘ego’ is purely autobiographical when the same writer’s bare name is used in the third person without the critic’s constant recourse to editorial qualification.” See Nauta 2002: 137–8 on social reading. Ep. 2.6.7–8, 5.16.2–3, 6.85.9–10, 7.51.11–14, 7.52.1, and 7.97.11–13. Martial also addresses Pompeius Auctus, presumably a real person (so, e.g., Friedlander 1961: 379 and Nauta 2002: 65), in Ep. 7.28, 7.52, 9.21, and 12.13. Ep. 7.28.5–6 reveals that he was a lawyer. Seneca the Elder works with the same idea in Con. 1 praef. 19 (see chapter 5 n. 1). Martial also depicts Camonius Rufus as a person who knows his poems by heart: pectore tu memori nostros evolvere lusus, / tu solitus totos, Rufe, tenere iocos (you, Rufus, accustomed to quote my playful poems with your unforgetting heart, to memorize entire poems [Ep. 6.85.9–10]). Non lector meus hic, Urbice, sed liber est. / sic tenet absentes nostros cantatque libellos / ut pereat chartis littera nulla meis: / denique, si vellet, poterat scripsisse videri; / sed famae mavult ille favere meae (he [Auctus] is not my reader, Urbicus, but the book. He so remembers and recites my poems when he does not have the text that not a single letter falls from my pages. In sum, if he wanted, he could appear to be the one who wrote them; but he prefers to champion my reputation [Ep. 7.51.6–10]). As Rimell 2008: 27 points out, Martial must be playing on the link between the name Auctus and auctor, “author” and “one who promotes increase.” Nauta 2002: 65 notes the irony and surmises that Auctus was of lower status. Martial, however, seems to be mocking Auctus without any real hostility. The banter is, instead, friendly and gently teasing. In my view, Martial also appreciates Auctus’ efforts to support him.

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In Ep. 1.29, the rumor is that Fidentinus does the exact opposite with Martial’s libelli. Having somehow gotten his hands on Martial’s epigrams, Fidentinus conceals his source and claims to be the poems’ author when he recites them.34 This is to plagiarize, i.e., to present another’s work as one’s own in order to garner fraudulent credit for it. The understanding of the offense matches up with what we find generally in Latin antiquity but extends it to the epigram and (like Seneca in chapter 2) to the arena of live literary performance. Whether Martial means that Fidentinus delivered his epigrams at formal recitations or at other gatherings, he has the plagiarist stealing in an oral medium. The performances function as forms of fraudulent publication, in that they give Fidentinus an outlet to present “his” epigrams to others, so that he receives recognition for them and, by logic, for the literary value that he found in them and assumed his audience would likewise identify.35 Martial designs Ep. 1.29 so that it works rhetorically to unmask his literary thief. As he commonly does throughout his epigrams, the poet uses the medium of rumor as a satirical gambit to introduce a wrongdoer.36 What then follows is an accusation, in that the text, like the poems on plagiarism generally, inculpates the actions of its target and exposes them to view. In portraying himself as the victim of the transgressing Fidentinus, Martial works with a major theme in book 1, the relation between book and world.37 The poet uses that theme in part to construct an epigrammatic persona that finds itself exposed to, and buffeted by, urban life and its follies, perils, and inconveniences. The problem here is particularly the instability of the epigrams when they get out into the public domain, 34

35

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37

Because I recognize the possibility that Fidentinus’ plagiarism could be a fiction, I hesitate to think that Ep. 1.29 or the other plagiarism poems offer plainly factual insights into how his work circulated. But Martial does, at least, appear to assume that his epigrams were circulating in some kind of volume or as individual poems before the publication of book 1; for Fidentinus to have simply heard the poems recited and then plagiarized them from memory would have been highly unusual, to judge by Ep. 7.51 (and 6.85). Libelli could then be meant to designate the collections that Fidentinus recites or just the individual epigrams within such a collection. Much critical attention has been given to how Martial circulated his epigrams: see Citroni 1975: xix–xx and 96 and 1988: 3–39; Howell 1980: 5–6; Sullivan 1991: 123; Fowler 1995: 31–58; White 1996: 396–412 (a response to Fowler, who had himself countered White 1974: 40–61); and Nauta 2002: 93–105 (on the oral presentation of Martial’s poems) and 105–31 (on the circulation of his written texts). See also n. 42. Ker 2004: 211 notes that recitation “constituted a first, oral publication of [a] text.” Valette-Cagnac 1997: 153–5 also discusses plagiarism and recitation. See Greenwood 1998: 278–9, 304–7, and 309–10 on this approach generally; 291–2 on Martial’s use of the term fama; and 302 on his use of rumor/gossip in connection with literary subjects, including plagiarism. So Fitzgerald 2007: 68, who proceeds to explore the theme in 68–105.

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outside of the circle of Martial’s intimates, of his spheres of association.38 Textual borders are breached and literary property violated, so that another gets recognized for Martial’s work. As he does with forgery, Martial treats plagiarism as a recognizable wrong and a danger in his literary culture and, specifically, as a threat to authorial identity. At issue is the (symbolic) ownership that inheres in authorship: Fidentinus plots to get acknowledged for writing things he had not, thereby making them his in authorial terms. How Martial responds to Fidentinus in his epigram’s second couplet has led some to suppose that he was offering to sell his services as a ghostwriter. After saying in the third line that he will give Fidentinus his carmina provided that Fidentinus acknowledges him as their author, Martial subsequently proposes to keep quiet for the right price and to allow Fidentinus to take credit for the poems he stole.39 This message would run παρὰ προσδοκίαν, or contrary to expectation, to give the conclusion its epigrammatic point, i.e., the final humorous, surprising, or satirical thrust that was customary in Martial, particularly in his satiric pieces.40 The progression of ideas in lines 3–4, however, suggests that we should understand things differently.41 The contrast that Martial draws in the couplet lies most simply and clearly between his giving poetry and his not giving it. He will either send Fidentinus his poetry as a gift or leave him to get it on his own, by buying it from someone else, if he continues to plagiarize – and the image of the thief buying what he steals is in itself a pointed paradox. Presumably, Martial’s specific message is that Fidentinus will have to buy his poetry from a bookseller. To judge by Ep. 4.72, where Martial refuses to give his libelli to the undeserving, because unappreciative, Quintus and directs him instead to buy the epigrams from a bookstore, he could certainly think in those terms.42 Underlying Martial’s remarks is the principle that there can be no present made of the work when the potential recipient has as 38

39

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I echo Fitzgerald 2007: 68 and Peter Anderson in a paper delivered at the CAMWS Spring Conference in 2011, entitled “Quod Roma me legit, or, Be Careful What You Wish For.” So Howell 1980: 169. Friedlander 1961: 183 and Rimell 2008: 43 understand the poem similarly. As Howell notes, there is another reference to ghostwriting for pay in Ep. 12.47 (following Shackleton Bailey’s numbering): vendunt carmina Gallus et Lupercus: / sanos, Classice, nunc nega poetas (Gallus and Lupercus sell their poetry. Now, Classicus, deny that poets are sane). See also Ep. 10.102, which I will discuss later. On epigrammatic point in Martial, see Watson and Watson 2003: 15–18. Sullivan 1991: 237–49 also examines Martial’s wit and humor, including his use of point. Also relevant are Szelest 1981: 293–301 and Salanitro 1991: 1–25. This interpretation basically follows Citroni 1975: 98, although see n. 52. Fitzgerald 2007: 94–5 cites Howell’s and Citroni’s different readings of the epigram without coming down on either side. Exigis ut donem nostros tibi, Quinte, libellos. / non habeo, sed habet bybliopola Tryphon. / “aes dabo pro nugis et emam tua carmina sanus? / non” inquis “faciam tam fatue.” nec ego (You harangue me to give you my books, Quintus. I don’t have them, but the bookseller Tryphon does. “Will I pay money for trifles and

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his aim his personal aggrandizement at the giver’s expense. Fidentinus breaks the communal bond that a gift would strengthen and, therefore, alienates himself from such generosity.43 The purpose is not to denigrate Martial’s own poetry by making it an object to be bought and sold nor to implicate him as a venal and illicit trader in authorship.44 Rather, Martial separates plagiarism and his plagiarist, the objects of his detraction, from the protocols that create and sustain personal ties in the literary community. The command to buy his poetry with which Martial ends Ep. 1.29 sets up a joke similar to the one found in Ep. 2.20, on the plagiarist Paulus:45 Carmina Paulus emit, recitat sua carmina Paulus. nam quod emas possis iure vocare tuum. Paulus buys poems, Paulus recites them as his poems. After all, you may justly call what you buy yours.46

What gives this poem “the characteristic punch of a monodistich”47 is the way it blends two modes of textual possession. It is true that in Latin antiquity ownership of a physical text acceded to the person who owned the stuff upon which the work was copied. A bookseller, to whom Paulus apparently turned for the poems,48 could then sell the material copy he had

43 44

45

46 48

buy your poems in my right mind? No, I won’t behave so foolishly.” Neither will I). Relevant, too, is Ep. 1.117, on Lupercus. This figure asks Martial to lend him a copy of his epigrams. But Martial knows that he does not actually value the work and, therefore, calls his bluff by sending him to the bookseller Atrectus. Of course, my reading of Ep. 1.29 has Martial describing a situation where a bookseller has copies of his work before the publication of book 1. This is not impossible, given his earlier publications (n. 1), which, Martial indicates in Ep. 1.113, also included a collection of his juvenilia. Just maybe, too, a first edition of book 1 existed when Martial wrote 1.29 (see Citroni 1975: xix–xx). But, again, I am inclined to be very careful about using a possibly fictionalized vignette – let alone an example of epigrammatic point – as a source for historical details about publication. I echo Gold 2003: 599, on gift-exchange. Roman 2001: esp. 113–29 examines how Martial elsewhere denigrates his poetry by calling attention to its materiality and to how it is available for money. But this is hardly the only way that Martial portrays his work. Indeed, self-justification and pride are also evident; see Williams 2004: 60–1 for examples. As Citroni 1975: 98 recognizes. Because in every other poem on plagiarism, Martial explicitly refers to himself as the victim, whereas in this poem he has no first-person presence, it seems to me reasonable to conclude that he conceived of Paulus as a plagiarist of poems other than his own. On the translation of these lines, see Williams 2004: 92, whom I follow. 47 Williams 2004: 91. There is no indication that Paulus bought his texts on a black market or from complicit authors – and presumably, those things would have themselves been worthy of mention, since they would have constituted aberrant practices (see Ep. 12.47.) Instead, Martial implies that Paulus did something normal in getting his poems from a bookstore, but then proceeds to do something abnormal by claiming to be their author. Very similar to Paulus is the nineteenth-century playwright Charles Reade, whose play White Lies turned out to be taken from a drama of Auguste Maquet. As Lindey 1952: 235 relates, Reade asserted that he bought the play from Maquet and, “having paid for it, he saw no reason why he shouldn’t use it any way he wished, even to the point of affixing his name to it.” That the play was entitled White Lies seems almost too good to be true (although one could certainly argue that Maquet’s was more than a white lie).

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had made to a buyer, with nothing like copyright in place to complicate the exchange by giving a publisher and an author continued commercial possession of the work and a claim to royalties. Yet it is also true that the author continued to own symbolically the content he produced, in that he was to be acknowledged as the person who had produced it.49 When Seneca the Younger notes that the bookseller Dorus owns the usus of Cicero’s text while Cicero himself owns the work as its auctor, he observes precisely that distinction.50 It is against this backdrop that Ep. 2.20 operates. Although Paulus did not buy authorship when he bought his physical copy of carmina from a bookstore, Martial gives his poem epigrammatic point by blurring the line between legitimate exchanges of textual property and Paulus’ conduct. The joke rests upon presenting as truth the patently false proposition that Paulus has the right to deliver entire poems as his own upon buying them. This Martial does with a straight face (note iure), so that he satirically accentuates via irony Paulus’ violation of a norm. Martial similarly mixes kinds of textual ownership at the end of Ep. 1.29, which resembles Ep. 2.20 in pointing to wholesale plagiarism. Reasons for believing that Martial was not exaggerating, that he really meant that Fidentinus was reciting entire poems as his own rather than overstating how he stuck too close to Martial’s language when writing independent pieces, will emerge as this chapter proceeds. For now, it is enough to point out that Ep. 12.47, on ghostwriting, confirms that Martial was familiar with the idea that people might present others’ entire poems as their own; that, as Martial’s occasional patron Pliny the Younger demonstrates, wholesale plagiarism was a recognized phenomenon in Martial’s age; and that the references to libelli and to giving and buying carmina certainly fit with a scenario in which Fidentinus was plagiarizing complete epigrams.51 Martial asserts in line 4 that Fidentinus can make the poems he steals his own if he buys them. Whatever hoc actually refers to,52 the line suggests that 49

50

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52

See chapter 1, esp. pp. 13–18, on this issue, as well as n. 34 in that chapter on the ownership of the material text in ancient Rome. De ben. 7.6.1, cited in chapter 1 n. 59. Seo 2009: 580 also examines this passage of Seneca in connection with Ep. 2.20 (and 1.29). See n. 39 for Ep. 12.47 and Pliny’s Ep. 2.10.3–4, cited in n. 116, for his reference to wholesale plagiarism. See as well Ep. 10.102 for another pseudo-author who claims as his own others’ entire poems, whether via ghostwriting or plagiarism. The question is whether it refers to “this poem” or “this book” or, to quote Howell 1980: 168, whether “hoc anticipates ne mea sint, which is another way of saying ut tua dicantur haec carmina.” Citroni 1975: 98 argues that hoc refers to hunc libellum, while P. Anderson (2006: 120) suggests that hoc refers to “this poem,” and therefore that Martial enjoins Fidentinus to buy Ep. 1.29 from him. It is difficult, however, to see how hoc could refer to libellus after libellos and carmina (so Howell [p. 169]) or to reconcile Anderson’s interpretation with the plural mea.

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the plagiarist will own the poems upon purchasing them and, consequently, will be able to say that they are his compositions, not Martial’s. As in Ep. 2.20, the mode here is stable irony, in which the surface meaning is clearly contradicted and the actual secondary message is clearly implied.53 This gives the epigram its conventional point. Martial plays on how he no longer has a claim on his material text when another buys it by suggesting that the exchange of ownership might extend to authorship. This notion so blatantly inverts cultural assumptions to confound commonsense ideas and create incongruity that it compels a reader to understand the opposite, i.e., that Martial by rights remains the acknowledged author of his carmina after Fidentinus buys them.54 The ambiguity with which Martial works is not real but a facetious blurring of matters that, in fact, works to satirize how Fidentinus has behaved, by affirming the existence of the textual boundaries upon which he has impinged and, thus, underscoring that he, as a plagiarist, handles Martial’s poetry improperly. In the process, Martial implies that the credit for authorship and the symbolic ownership that the credit brings are normally not commodified, not bought and sold. The solution to turning mea into tua that Martial proposes is no solution at all but a substitution of one illegitimate exchange of literary property for another. Even as Martial exposes Fidentinus for misconduct, his touch is light. To restate an earlier point, the premise of Ep. 1.29 creates a suitable Martial for his genre, namely one living in an urban world and subject to its vagaries. Yet while the situation assumes his vulnerability in that world, seeing that he was unable to keep his work from being stolen, it also shows him asserting verbal and conceptual control over events through his use of irony. More specifically, Martial speaks in 1.29, as well as in 2.20, with ludic irony, i.e., irony characterized by humor, wit, and, thus, playfulness.55 Like Freud’s tendentious jokes, the poems align the audience with the speaker against the target, thereby asserting common values and norms and producing an element of moral reflection.56 But instead of calling for anger and condemnation, the texts urge the audience to enjoy how Martial molds his accusations to humorous form, and particularly how he satirizes with witty irony and intellectualized jokes about literary property. Martial’s 53

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Booth 1974 is the source for the term “stable irony”; for a definition, see p. 12. I thus do not feel that Martial is being ambiguous in the poem, as Fitzgerald 2007: 94–5 does. On how irony plays off cultural norms and values, see Booth 1974: 53, 91, 93, and 100; Hutcheon 1994: 143–4; and Colebrook 2004: 16, 41, and 55–6. My understanding of ludic irony comes from Hutcheon 1994: 49. I adapt Long 1996: 58, on how jokes confirm common values. On the element of moral reflection in Martial’s epigrams generally, see Howell 2009: 60–1. Spisak 2007 is also worth consulting, although he overstates the moral earnestness and function of Martial’s poetry.

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approach in the epigrams matches up with how he frequently proceeds in his scoptic works. A well-observed aspect of his epigrammatic art is the calm and clever good humor he recurrently displays when satirizing.57 This can produce a feeling of detachment, as it does in Ep. 1.29 and 2.20. Martial satirizes with the urbane wryness of an unruffled speaker who stands above the fray, responding to his targets with cool irony.58 By combining plagiarism and play as he does, Martial provides a twist on accusations of literary theft in Latin antiquity. It would make no more sense to think that his ludic approach to his subject implies its insignificance in ancient Rome than it would to maintain, say, that his light treatment of arson shows it to have been a trifling thing.59 The conclusion to take away is instead that Martial was working with what other evidence demonstrates was the wider recognition in the first century ce of plagiarism as a culpable practice, and that he turned his accusations into witty performances.60 In the process, he presents plagiarism both as an identified offense and as something compatible with his lascivia, or his playfulness. This obviously tells us nothing about how seriously the person Martial took the phenomenon. What his poems do reveal is simply that he considered plagiarism to be adaptable to his generic setting and its emphasis on cleverness and amusement. The picture is of particular ways that plagiarism could be aestheticized in Latin antiquity and, therefore, of particular ways that the disapproving content of plagiarism charges, which is implied in the satire, could coexist with displays of performative verbal wit.61

plagiarism and patronage The epigrams on Fidentinus, like epigrammatic cycles generally, demonstrate Martial’s ability to handle unified subject matter aliter, or in different 57

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See W. Anderson 1982: 362–95 (a commanding if overly schematic contrast between Martial and Juvenal); Spisak 2007: 24–5; and Howell 2009: 91. Nauta 2002: 174–9, meanwhile, investigates Martial’s gentle mockery of his patrons, connecting this to the Saturnalia and the symposium and to Martial’s desire to avoid being a scurra, a hanger-on who entertains dinner guests with biting mockery. (When attacking fictional targets, by contrast, Martial could be a sharper scurra than he is in Ep. 1.29 and 2.20. What is more, we will see him satirizing his plagiarists more stingingly as this chapter proceeds.) Hutcheon 1994: 40–1 examines “cool irony” and the cool ironist’s apparent detachment and superiority. Muecke 1970: 35–6 also discusses detachment in irony. W. Anderson 1982: 362–3 analyzes the playfulness with which Martial treats arson in Ep. 3.52. Other first-century ce references to plagiarism come from Pliny the Elder, Manilius, and Seneca the Elder, whom we examined in chapter 2, and from Pliny the Younger, whom I just mentioned. See as well as chapter 6, pp. 178–9. I take the phrase “performative verbal wit” from Wray 2001: 52.

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ways. This is because in each poem he adapts his treatment of his theme to produce new scoptic effects – a drive to variety that also marks the pieces on his plagiarists in later books. One distinct feature of Ep. 1.52, another of the poems in the Fidentinus cycle, is its addressee, Quintianus. This is the only text dealing with the plagiarism of Martial’s epigrams that the poet addresses to anyone other than his plagiarist. This is surely the same person as the Quintianus in Ep. 5.18, whom Martial identifies as his patron; in 1.52, the way that Martial sends Quintianus his poetry and, as we will see, calls on him for aid and protection indicates likewise that Quintianus is his patronus.62 One might reasonably suppose that Quintianus was a real person on the grounds that, apart from the targets of his satire, Martial commonly populates his epigrams with historical people. These include his patrons, to whom Martial writes to acknowledge publicly his relationship with them, to praise them and their generosity, to treat issues related to patronage, and to get them to circulate his texts. If we accept that Quintianus was real, the temptation might be then to think that the plagiarist was real as well.63 Yet Martial could have constructed a “partial reality” as he does in other poems, where he deals with (clearly or seemingly) unreal wrongdoers but includes historical individuals, usually addressees.64 The opening words of the epigram, commendo tibi (nostros libellos), indicate that Martial sent it to Quintianus as a dedication poem to the patron along with a volume of his epigrams:65 62

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On Quintianus, who appears only in Ep. 1.52 and 5.18, see Howell 1980: 229, who mentions the faint possibility that he is the same Quintianus as the man “about whose death Pliny the Younger writes at Ep. 9.9.” Howell also recognizes, however, that there are problems of chronology with this. In Ep. 5.18, the description of Quintianus as an amicus dives or “rich friend” (9) and the detail that Martial and others are honoring him with gifts at the Saturnalia imply that he is a patron. Howell 1980: 229–30 observes that this would form “a remarkable exception to the general rule that the objects of M.’s satirical attacks are not intended to be identifiable.” But, again, we might question just how general that rule is. Besides, the pseudonym would shield the plagiarist’s identity at least to some extent. For the term “partial reality,” see Nauta 2002: 49. Nauta (p. 46) calls attention to the “isolated vocative” in Martial, or the direct address to a person in a poem on another subject. That subject, Nauta observes, can be fictional even when the person behind the “isolated vocative” is real. If the plagiarist was fictional, Martial must have also felt comfortable that Quintianus would not mind having that thief attached to him. The suggestion is therefore of the circulation of a volume of epigrams before the publication of book 1. In this instance, we can accept the historicity of that volume if we also accept the historicity of the recipient, as I do. The dedication would appear to have been a dedication of a copy, not of a work, a distinction made by Nauta 2002: 120–1, following Genette 1987: 110–33. That is, Martial dedicates to Quintianus the copy of the epigrams he is sending him but presumably leaves open the possibility of dedicating another copy of the same poems to another recipient. By including Ep. 1.52 in the published book 1, Martial then makes Quintianus one of the dedicatees of that volume.

Martial on the plagiarism of his poetry Commendo tibi, Quintiane, nostros – nostros dicere si tamen libellos possum, quos recitat tuus poeta –: si de servitio gravi queruntur, adsertor venias satisque praestes, et, cum se dominum vocabit ille, dicas esse meos manuque missos. hoc si ter quaterque clamitaris, inpones plagiario pudorem.

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I entrust my books to you, Quintianus – if, however, I can call the books mine that your poet recites. If they complain of their grievous enslavement, come forward as their claimant and give guarantees, and, when that one calls himself their master, say that they are mine and have been manumitted by me. If you proclaim this three or four times, you will make the plagiarist feel shame.

It is safe to identify the unnamed thief in Ep. 1.52 with Fidentinus. This is because Martial uses that name not only in Ep. 1.29 and the other preceding poem of the cycle of poems on his plagiarist, 1.38, but also in 1.53. The likelihood is extremely small that Martial introduced a new plagiarist in Ep. 1.52, while the plagiarism poems before it and immediately after it featured the same target in Fidentinus. Moreover, Ep. 1.52 and 1.53 are paired poems, or consecutive epigrams on the same subject. It strains belief that, as such, they do not feature the same plagiarist.66 Rather than name his thief in Ep. 1.52, Martial chooses to designate him only as Quintianus’ client (tuus poeta [3]).67 The assumption, or at least the premise, appears to be that Quintianus will know who the poet is: although as a plagiarist he must lie outside of Martial’s intimates and associates, he shares with him a relationship with the same patron. At the same time, the phrase tuus poeta forms a contrast with nostros libellos to underscore how the plagiarist improperly takes what is Martial’s and claims it as his own. To bring out the wrongful nature of Fidentinus’ activity, Martial uses stable irony when questioning if he can call his poetry his when the plagiarist recites it. Far from really doubting this, Martial works against the norm that what he had written naturally belonged to him and not to a person who falsely delivered it as his own. The caution is incongruous, so that it affirms

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Damon 1997: 155 discusses paired poems in Martial. The possessive adjective + poeta also establishes Martial as Norbanus’ client in Ep. 9.84.7–8, where Martial has Norbanus call him meus poeta. Also worth citing is Ep. 7.72.16, where Martial asks Paulus to adopt a patron’s voice and state non scripsit meus ista Martialis (my Martial did not write those things) about some slanderous forgeries that were circulating in Martial’s name.

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the obvious validity of Martial’s claim to authorship and ownership and, in the process, exposes the plagiarist’s obvious malfeasance.68 As the epigram proceeds, Martial varies a common metaphor in his work and in Latin literature generally by figuring his poems as slaves and their publication as manumission.69 Legalisms abound as Martial imagines Quintianus at a trial defending the free status of the book.70 Among them is the term plagiarius. As we saw in chapter 1, the noun can denote either someone who steals another person’s slave or child or someone who forces a freeborn person or freedman into slavery. These actions, labeled plagium, were illegal under the Lex Fabia.71 In relating that he has manumitted his poetry (dicas esse meos manuque missos [7]), Martial makes it clear that he was figuring Fidentinus as a stealer of freedmen. The plagiarist discovers epigrams that Martial released and that still bore the name of their former master. He then proceeds to re-enslave the texts, which here must mean that he lays claim to them as his own unpublished work.72 Martial thus stretches a topos to continue to make plagiarism a danger of literary circulation, in which another person takes possession of his poetry, or more precisely, takes credit and, with it, authorial ownership that did not belong to him. This is one of two times that Martial introduces the topic of slavery when dealing with the plagiarism of his work. The other occurs in Ep. 11.94, where Martial alleges that a malicious Jewish poet steals his work (compilas [4], a word that elsewhere means “to plagiarize”), even though he carps at it.73 In the poem, plagiarism is an offense incidental to the larger one of sodomizing Martial’s puer.74 But Martial still continues to write it into his literary world, this time as something done out of jealous admiration and as something that 68

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This reading departs from Fitzgerald 2007: 96, who to my mind misses the stable irony in Martial’s lines. The locus classicus is Horace, Ep. 1.20. See also Martial, Ep. 1.3, with Fitzgerald 2007: 74 as well as 97–104. It bears noting that Martial refers to his poems as vernulae, “young slaves,” in Ep. 5.18.4, to Quintianus. We might wonder if there was something about Quintianus specifically that led Martial to use slave imagery in the two epigrams we have that he wrote to the patron. Thus an adsertor libertatis was an official defender of alleged slaves in cases concerned with their legal status. Queruntur, meanwhile, was the verb used for lodging a formal complaint, while satis praestare approximates satis dare, which described the adsertor’s role. Finally, Martial’s call to state “two or three times” that he had manumitted his poems recalls the need in legal cases to repeat statements in order to avoid permanent legal error. See Citroni 1975: 175–6 for these details, as well as Seo 2009: 574. Seo 2009: 572 discusses this law. See as well chapter 1 n. 28. I follow Fitzgerald 2007: 96. This, of course, points to a collection that Martial published before the book of epigrams to which 1.52 belongs (and see nn. 34 and 42). For compilare meaning “to plagiarize,” see OLD s.v. “compilare” 2. Kay 1985: 258–9 also understands the reference to be to plagiarism. Quod nimium lives nostris et ubique libellis / detrahis, ignosco: verpe poeta, sapis. / hoc quoque non curo, quod cum mea carmina carpas, / compilas: et sic, verpe poeta, sapis. / illud me cruciat, Solymis quod natus in ipsis / pedicas puerum, verpe poeta, meum (that you are overly malicious and disparage my books

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he links to the sexual violation of his slave. The image in Ep. 11.94, as in 1.52, equates poetry with a person that an aggressor mistreats. Possession and control are the issues in both poems, as the plagiarist asserts his dominance over what did not rightfully belong to him.75 Plagiarius was a term of strong abuse in Rome, just as the corresponding ἀνδραποδιστής was in Greece, because a kidnapper of slaves and free citizens was a very low criminal in Greco-Roman society.76 To stick Fidentinus with the label, therefore, was to hold him up as a severe wrongdoer and to give his literary theft a strong air of criminality. Although this was, of course, to hyperbolize, Martial clearly wanted to represent Fidentinus as someone who deserved to be scorned and even ostracized. Filling out that message is the appearance of pudor alongside plagiarius in line 9. This is the emotion that (ideally) a person will feel upon the discovery of his “discreditable extension of the Self.”77 The tacit assumption is once more that Fidentinus plagiarizes to get something immaterial – honor or creditable attention. Yet according to Martial, he will experience the opposite when Quintianus exposes him. Specifically, he will feel shame at losing positive face when confronted with how he has willfully promoted himself at the expense of another, thereby denying that person’s face claims. (This assumes Martial’s right to earn existimatio or “favorable notice” for what he has produced, a right upon which Fidentinus has impinged.) By calling upon Quintianus to expose Fidentinus, Martial therefore conceives of a shaming penalty for plagiarism that is private and informal but sharp, as it saddles the thief with a justifiably strong stigma. If the plagiarist was real, then Martial presumably wished to stir up Quintianus’ disapproval, if not his anger and hostility, toward that figure. Certainly the satire is more heated than in Ep. 1.29 (and 2.20), sharper in how it brands its target. Yet Martial also had other purposes. A principal one was, again, to entertain his addressee (and subsequently, his broader

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everywhere, I forgive: you are wise, circumcised poet. I also do not care that, although you carp at my poems, you plagiarize them: once more you are wise, circumcised poet. But it tortures me that, born in Solyma, you fuck my boy, circumcised poet [Ep. 11.94.1–6]). While Martial conveys that he does not care about the plagiarism, he does so just to set up the finish: rhetorical conditions thus determine his response, not a cavalier attitude toward the offense. It bears noting that the first line of Ep. 1.52 appears to imitate the first line of Catullus 15, commendo tibi me ac meos amores, in which Catullus warns Aurelius not to have his way with the slave boy that the poet is sending him for protection. If Martial took Catullus as his model, then he must have been aware of the themes of sex, power, and possession in the original, only to suppress the pedophilic element while recasting Catullus’ other themes. So Harrill 2006: 121–5. Kaster 2005: 42, with a discussion of the “discreditable extension of the Self” on p. 42–5. As I did in my discussion of pudor in chapter 2, I follow Kaster (pp. 43–5) in my analysis of the content of Fidentinus’ shame.

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audience), in accordance with the nature of his genre. No matter if and how much the satire would turn Quintianus against a pseudonymous client, the accusation was also and, indeed, fundamentally a performance in which Martial displayed his wit by playing on a traditional conceit to stigmatize his plagiarist. If Quintianus was a lawyer, as has been suggested, Martial would have probably been aiming to amuse him particularly with his version of a well-worn topos and its many legalisms.78 A second aim that we can extrapolate from the content of the poem was to use the entertaining mise-en-scène to show Quintianus giving Martial the protection that the poet wished to earn from their asymmetrical relationship, in which the more powerful patron looked out for the client.79 As dedication pieces elsewhere did in Latin antiquity, Ep. 1.52 urges the addressee to advocate for the poet and the work he has sent: Martial vividly and wittily dramatizes the efforts that the patron should make to combat the threats and dangers to his text and literary career that existed in Rome. Quintianus is to oppose Fidentinus and others like him when they give Martial trouble and to view them negatively – a message made with (scoptically exaggerated) force through Martial’s depiction of his plagiarist as a flagrant malefactor, no matter what that figure’s historical reality. By putting the plagiarist in Quintianus’ circle by calling him tuus poeta, Martial also indicates that he wished to place himself above others who vied for Quintianus’ patronage. The design is somewhat similar to that of Ep. 5.18, where Martial contrasts himself as an honest, magnanimous client with Quintianus’ less worthy amici.80 Here, the picture is of an author whom his competitor for patronal support deems worthy of plagiarizing and, consequently, of someone who is altogether superior to that figure – and the strength with which he stigmatizes Fidentinus accentuates the message. This was to convey what Martial must have hoped to show in the volume he sent Quintianus: he was an accomplished poet who 78 79

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On the possible prosopography, see Howell 1980: 229, with Seo 2009: 574. The literature on patronage in Rome is vast. The bibliography of Nauta 2002: 10–11 is a good place to start, to which I would add Bowditch 2001. On patronage in this poem, see also Fitzgerald 2007: 97 and Spahlinger 2004: 475. White 1974: 56 n. 68 cites Ep. 1.52 as an example where Martial “implore[s] the advocacy of a patron against detractors and slanderers.” Specifically, Martial distinguishes himself from those who send Quintianus nicer gifts than Martial’s poems for the Saturnalia. According to Martial, “gifts are like hooks” (imitantur hamos dona [Ep. 5.18.7]), an idea he voices elsewhere (Ep. 4.56). (Spisak 2007: 247–8 examines this theme.) It is Martial himself, moreover, who shows real generosity: quotiens amico diviti nihil donat, / o Quintiane, liberalis est pauper (Every time he sends nothing to a rich friend, Quintianus, the poor man is generous [Ep. 5.18.9–10]). There is thus a thread of self-justification, as well as criticism of other clients, running through the two poems to Quintianus. The circumstances that might have caused this are, of course, lost to us.

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warranted favor. While a patron’s support could naturally be economic, Martial depicts it in more abstract terms, as a matter of protecting authorial credit or existimatio, and lays claim to it by using his self-representation to convey that he was a poet with the talent and quality to attract a plagiarist.81 As I read Ep. 1.52, the presence of Quintianus brings Martial’s first-person speaker and his historical Self closer together than they were in the opening epigrams of the cycle. In 1.29, Martial does not press the identification between the two beyond making the victim a writer of libelli. Rather than give any further autobiographical substance to the texts, he concerns himself with using his “I” to set up the epigrammatic point in which the meus/tuus dichotomy is crucial. The same holds for Ep. 1.38: Quem recitas meus est, o Fidentine, libellus: sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus. The poetry that you recite, Fidentinus, is mine. But when you recite it badly, it begins to be yours.

In a passage modeled upon this epigram, the fourth-century ce Ausonius describes how the poet Clementinus ridicules with cutting laughter (proscindere risu) his plagiarist Theon’s recitation of his work.82 Perhaps Ausonius ascribed these actions to Clementinus because he recognized that Martial was likewise being derisive in Ep. 1.38. The scoptic target here is not simply that Fidentinus recites Martial’s work as his own, but how he does so. Martial asserts that the performances lead to a transfer of literary property, but not as the plagiarist wanted. His bad delivery adulterates the epigrams and, in the process, makes them into something different from what they were and, specifically, into the poorsounding poetry that, Martial implies, Fidentinus would actually write. Essential to the poem are the paradox and irony through which Martial 81

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I therefore disagree with Seo 2009: 572–6, who argues that Martial treats his poetry as an economic object in the epigram. It is hard to see, moreover, how Seo can equate the plagiarism Martial describes with theft that could bring financial damage to the owner because the owner loses his property and “the potential profit from the slave’s future labor” [p. 573], when Martial has depicted his poetry as a freedman (even though freedmen did provide some continued services to former owners and, thus, some continued economic benefits). Musae non Helicone satae nec fonte caballi, / sed quae facundo de pectore Clementini / inspirant vacuos aliena mente poetas, / iure quidem: nam quis malit sua carmina dici, / qui te securo possit proscindere risu? / haec quoque ne nostrum possint urgere pudorem, / tu recita; et vere poterunt tua dicta videri (Muses sprung not from Helicon or from the horse’s fount, but those that, from the eloquent breast of Clementinus, inspire vacuous poets with another’s thoughts, and, indeed, rightly so: for who would prefer to have the poems called his, if he could ridicule you safely with his laughter? And recite these lines too, so that they not succeed in making me feel shame; and truly they will be able to appear to be yours [Epist. 13.9–15 {Green}]).

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derides his plagiarist. Indeed, the piece exists for the Aufschluss or “resolution,” i.e., the witty climax that comes at the end.83 As in Ep. 1.29, the “I” is equated with Martial only insofar as he is a poet. Instead of adding any more personal dimensions to the piece, Martial focuses on generating satiric humor by setting the possessive adjectives meus and tuus against each other in a pointed manner. Certainly Martial could not have kept his readers from pursuing a biographical reading and even maintaining that the plagiarism displayed his merits as a poet worthy of theft (and in Ep. 1.38, as someone whom a bad writer would plagiarize in order to look better than he was) – and he indicates elsewhere that members of his ancient audience were, indeed, biographical readers.84 Nor do I dismiss the possibility that on one level this was something he hoped for when he wrote the pieces. But the “performed I” in Ep. 1.29 and 1.38 remains only minimally Martial and is fundamentally a vehicle for playing on the relationship between “mine” and “thine.” While the same play marks Ep. 1.52.1–3, I would suggest that the historical Martial’s presence in the poem is far more marked than in 1.29 and 1.38 because he speaks as a client of the real patron Quintianus. Whatever the historicity of the plagiarist and of Martial’s identity as his victim, the poet uses his “performed I” for autobiographical purposes not found in the earlier epigrams. It becomes evident that the relationship between the speaker and the author could take on different contours among the epigrams of the Fidentinus cycle, depending upon the rhetorical conditions within the texts.85 With the addressee, Quintianus, being real, 83

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The term Aufschluss comes from Gotthold Lessing’s discussion of the epigram: in his view, the true epigram has a bipartite structure consisting of the Erwartung, or “set-up,” and the Aufschluss, or “information,” at the end. Sullivan 1991: 222–4 and Williams 2004: 9 discuss Lessing’s ideas. A Latin term for Martial’s verbal wit, meanwhile, is urbanitas. See Quintilian, Inst. 6.3, and particularly 6.3.104, where he quotes Domitius Marsus’ definition of it: urbanitas est virtus quaedam in breve dictum coacta et apta ad delectandos movendosque homines in omnem adfectum animi, maxime idonea ad resistendum vel lacessendum, prout quaeque res ac persona desiderat (wit is a certain force, compressed into a short statement and suited to amusing or moving people to a whole range of emotion; it is especially suitable for objections or sarcasm, depending on what the subject or person requires). Thus the lasciva pagina/vita proba distinction presupposes that readers might identify Martial with his speaker. In addition, in Ep. 2.23 and 9.95b Martial relates that there were those who tried to identify the actual people behind his scoptic poetry. When he demands that no “spiteful interpreter” (malignus interpres) rewrite his epigrams in the preface to book 1, moreover, his point is that one should not try to find real people behind his characters. Yet by saying that, Martial assumes the possibility that readers could respond to his poems in such a way. I see no reason why ancient audience members could not have been just as biographical in their approach when encountering Martial the plagiarism victim in Ep. 1.29 and 1.38. As we have seen, modern readers also interpret Martial’s plagiarism victim in biographical terms. This reading is consistent with Lorenz 2002: 41–2, who notes that Martial does not present a single, unified “Dichter-persona” throughout his corpus but, instead, offers up several “Dichter-personae.”

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Ep. 1.52 acquires a deeper personal dimension than the first two poems of the cycle had and, through its protreptic account, promotes Martial as a client worthy of his patron’s attention and support. As a poem on patronage, Ep. 1.52 links up with 1.54. In the latter piece, Martial asks his addressee, Fuscus, to make room for him, a new friend, among the many he already has. Because patronage was commonly described through the language of friendship, we can safely understand Ep. 1.54 as a bid to firm up Martial’s bond with a freshly established patron, by suggesting that he is worthy of support.86 The proximity of this poem to Ep. 1.52 must not be accidental. As frequently happens throughout Martial’s books of epigrams, nearby texts match up in content and operate in dialogue with each other: Ep. 1.52 and 1.53 share the subject of plagiarism, while 1.52 and 1.54 share a concern to assert that Martial deserved a place in a patron’s circle. To interpret Ep. 1.52 as I do is to see in it a glimpse into the potential benefits of being a literary client. The epigram captures some sense of the hurly-burly of the patronage system, in that it shows a fellow client plagiarizing, it is understood, to win credit and to strengthen his position with Quintianus. Yet Martial does not adopt the role of the put-upon, impoverished dependent in the poem, as he does in many other pieces throughout his corpus.87 Instead, Ep. 1.52 looks to a secured patron as an advocate who can help an author to deal with a problem and appeals to him to continue to serve Martial in that capacity. At the same time, Ep. 1.52 represents Quintianus as a person with the power to set right a wrong done to one of his clients. To advertise him in this manner is to honor him as a worthwhile dedicatee, while also calling upon him to go on demonstrating that worth.

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Si quid, Fusce, vacas adhuc amari – / nam sunt hinc tibi, sunt et hinc amici –, / unum, si superest, locum rogamus, / nec me, quod tibi sim novus, recuses: / omnes hoc veteres tui fuerunt. / tu tantum inspice qui novus paratur / an possit fieri vetus sodalis (if you have any space still for a friend – for you have friends on all sides – I ask for a single spot, if it remains. And do not refuse me, because I am new to you: old friends were once new, too. Just investigate the new friend you are getting to see if he can become an old companion [Ep. 1.54]). On the language of amicitia in the context of patronage (which we find as well in Ep. 5.18), see White 1978: 81–2; Saller 1983: 255–6; and Nauta 2002: 18, among many others. Martial then follows up this poem with a piece on rural escape, in which he lives on a farm and avoids the morning salutatio with patrons (Ep. 1.55.5–6). That epigram thus points to the drudgery of being a client, meaning that the cluster of poems shows different sides of the institution of patronage. Much critical attention has been given to Martial’s treatment of patronage. Examples are White 1975: 265–300; Saller 1983: 246–57; Sullivan 1991: 116–30; Nauta 2002; and Gold 2003: 591–612.

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In Ep. 1.53, Martial introduces a fresh element into his Fidentinus cycle by having the plagiarist do something other than recite Martial’s poetry as his own: Una est in nostris tua, Fidentine, libellis pagina, sed certa domini signata figura, quae tua traducit manifesto carmina furto. sic interpositus villo contaminat uncto urbica Lingonicus Tyrianthina bardocucullus, sic Arretinae violant crystallina testae, sic niger in ripis errat cum forte Caystri, inter Ledaeos ridetur corvus olores, sic ubi multisona fervet sacer Atthide lucus, inproba Cecropias offendit pica querelas. indice non opus est nostris nec iudice libris, stat contra dicitque tibi tua pagina “fur es.”

5

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There is one page of yours in a book of mine, Fidentinus, a page stamped with the clear likeness of its master, that convicts you of red-handed theft. Thus with its oily wool a Lingonican cloak contaminates the purple robes of the sophisticated when placed among them. Thus Arretine pots spoil crystal, thus the black crow is mocked among the Ledaean swans when it chances to wander on the banks of the Cayster. Thus when the sacred grove is alive with the varied strains of the nightingale, the brash magpie jars with Cecropian laments. My books have no need of an informer or judge; your page testifies against you and says, “You are a thief.”

The pairing of Ep. 1.53 with 1.52, the existence of the other Fidentinus poems in book 1, and the presence in the text of the words furtum and fur make it clear that Martial’s subject remained plagiarism, even though the language in the opening lines could also suggest forgery. That is, we are not to understand that Fidentinus had inserted a single poem of his own into a book of Martial’s poetry and then ascribed the entire book to Martial. Instead, Martial has Fidentinus shifting from oral to written plagiarism: he gathers poems of Martial’s into a volume that he circulates under his own name, while also adding a single poem that he himself wrote. The sense is clearly of wholesale plagiarism. Fidentinus combines epigrams he had not written with one epigram that he had, which must mean that he adds nothing of his own to Martial’s pieces and just plagiarizes them as they were.88 The image of Fidentinus the wholesale plagiarist in this epigram gives us reason to think that Martial was not exaggerating when pointing to 88

It would have certainly been brazen for an actual plagiarist to produce the kind of volume that Martial describes in Ep. 1.53. But if the thief expected the volume only to circulate among a select group of

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such macro-theft in the other poems of the cycle. Certainly it is reasonable to assume consistency and to suppose that Martial was describing the same kind of plagiarist throughout the set of texts. In a poem on plagiarism, the words tua carmina in line 3 become another instance of stable irony. What Fidentinus calls his poems are anything but that, as the presence of the one page that actually does come from him demonstrates. Martial describes this plagiarism as manifestum furtum, a term from Roman law that, as we saw in chapter 2, designated theft that one catches in the act. To read Fidentinus’ poem is to uncover him passing off Martial’s epigrams as his own, because the difference between what he writes and what he steals is so pronounced that they could not possibly have come from the same author. The phrase manifestum furtum joins with the trial imagery at the close of Ep. 1.53 to give the poem a legalistic flavor. This deepens the connection with Ep. 1.52, so that they are paired not only in their subject matter but also in how they associate Fidentinus’ actions with criminality. Exposing Fidentinus is specifically the disparity in quality between his poem and the ones of Martial that surround it. Through the catalogue of analogical metaphors that dominate Ep. 1.53, Martial relates that Fidentinus is to him as vulgar, coarse, and ugly items are to noble, fine, and lovely ones.89 This is to make Martial a poet of quality via his association with superior things, while the wretched Fidentinus comes across as a hapless hack. So bad is the plagiarist’s effort, in fact, that it contaminates and mars Martial’s carmina (4–6), disfiguring them simply by its presence and the contact it has with them. Earlier in book 1, Martial asserts that he himself combined good and bad poetry when putting together his collection of epigrams. As he states in Ep. 1.16, the volume contains more pieces that are mala than bona or even mediocre, as is natural in any book (sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala plura / quae legis hic: aliter non fit, Avite, liber). Two poems later, Martial scolds the vulgar host Tucca for “murdering” (iugulare [Ep. 18.5]) an excellent old Falernian wine by mixing it with a bad Vatican one. The proximity of this epigram to Ep. 1.16 raises the possibility that Martial wanted the poems to be read together and wanted to have the later text point up how the worse epigrams in his volume contaminate the better

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people, as is certainly possible, then he might have believed that he could get away with it. Plagiarists, moreover, can sometimes just be reckless, even pathologically so. (The plagiarist described in Bowers 1997 is a good modern example.) Szelest 1981: 298–9 discusses catalogues in Martial. I derive “analogical metaphor” from Sullivan 1991: 240.

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ones.90 This would have Martial doing what he accuses Fidentinus of doing in Ep. 1.53. Even if we resist linking Ep. 1.16 to 1.18, moreover, it remains the case that Fidentinus, in combining a carmen malum with carmina bona, bears some resemblance to the Martial who appears in Ep. 1.16. It is a mistake, however, to connect Fidentinus and the Martial of Ep. 1.16 through how they bring together good and bad poetry, a move that would certainly complicate any effort to preserve the opposition in Ep. 1.53 between Martial and the illegitimate, pseudo-author Fidentinus. Obviously, the plagiarist and the Martial of Ep. 1.16 have powerful differences that outweigh any similarities. The former is an author denigrating his own writing, while the latter is a miscreant with whom the speaker Martial contends. These differences reflect the divergent purposes of the poems: 1.16 expresses programmatic modesty, while 1.53 delivers stinging satire. So, too, it makes more sense to read 1.53 with 1.52 and the other poems of the Fidentinus cycle than with 1.16 (and maybe 1.18). It follows from all of this that we should continue to separate the plagiarist’s actions from legitimate modes of authorship, just as Martial does in those related texts, rather than associate them with the inevitable blend of good and bad work described in 1.16. Recent scholarship has emphasized how the content of particular poems can spill over into other texts within a volume of Martial’s epigrams in ways that the author might not have foreseen and could not control.91 But this does not give interpreters free rein to connect poems wantonly by pushing forward with certain parallels even when other considerations cogently argue for keeping the texts separate. After the catalogue, Martial ends Ep. 1.53 by returning to legal imagery (indice and iudice) to restate that his poetry can be distinguished from Fidentinus’ by its quality.92 The plagiarist’s epigram is so much worse than those around it that there need not be a trial to convict him of theft. Rather, the badness of his poem operates like a perverse sphragis, or a seal of inauthenticity that marks his piece out from the superior works 90 91

92

So Rimell 2008: 33–4. Fitzgerald 2007: esp. 88–93 (with a connection drawn between Ep. 1.16 and 1.18 on 90–1) and 106–38; and Rimell 2008: 32–50. Because of its syntactic connection with iudice, index must have the primary meaning “informer.” But the context raises the possibility that Martial had the word doing semantic double duty, so that it secondarily signified the titulus of a roll, upon which the title of the poem and name of the author was given. The latter message would therefore be that Martial’s name need not appear on the titulus – and Fidentinus’ plagiarism would have made it so that it did not appear there – in order for his poems to be recognized as his. The same idea is found in Ep. 12.2.17–18. Addressed to Martial’s book, the epigram concludes with the observation that it will need no title because after reading two or three lines everyone will know that it is Martial’s: quid titulum possis? versus duo tresve legantur, / clamabunt omnes te, liber, esse meum.

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surrounding it.93 Assumed in the disparity between Fidentinus’ and Martial’s poems is the idea that the plagiarist claims for himself authorial value he does not possess. Martial continues to make plagiarism revolve around authorship and credit, ascribing to Fidentinus an effort to appear to be a better poet than he was by passing himself off as the originator, and so symbolic owner, of epigrams he could never have produced. The final message of the poem joins with what precedes it to form a coherent scoptic performance: Martial frames a mocking catalogue with lines containing legalistic language and has the close of the poem build upon the opening to give it a closing thrust. Yet there appears to be more to the poem’s satiric humor and wit. The first thing to consider is the meter of the epigram: dactylic hexameter. No other epigram in book 1 contains that meter. Just three poems in Martial’s entire corpus, moreover, are written in it; and of these, only Ep. 6.64, at thirty-two lines, is longer than one verse.94 Martial follows up that poem with a piece in elegiac couplets in which he defends himself for using hexameters. In doing so, he makes it apparent that epigrams in that rhythm were not expected of him.95 All of this suggests that Martial wrote Ep. 1.53 in hexameters to create an irony of style, in which the meter has a secondary significance and creates a further level of meaning. Through his choice of rhythm, Martial produces a poem unlike his usual work. The isolation of Ep. 1.53 within its volume reflects the isolation of Fidentinus’ within his. But far from equating the substance and quality of the poem with the plagiarist’s,96 the choice of meter reproduces the effect of encountering an epigram that stands out within its volume. The point is not to bridge the gap between Fidentinus and his victim, Martial, but to use a formal feature to underscore the gap that existed between the poems that the two wrote. Also suggestive of stylistic irony are lines 4–5 of the poem, sic interpositus villo contaminat uncto / urbica Lingonicus Tyrianthina bardocucullus. Line 5 is striking as a “lumbering tongue-twister of a hexameter,” so much so that it looks to be a caricature of bad poetry.97 The rest of the catalogue, 93

94 95

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Seo 2009: 585–6 also discusses the sphragis in connection with the poem, though in different terms from mine. The other dactylic epigrams are 2.73 and 7.98. “Hexametris epigramma facis” scio dicere Tuccam. / Tucca, solet fieri, denique, Tucca, licet (I know that Tucca says, “You write your epigram in hexameters.” Tucca, this is common and, in fact, Tucca, permitted [Ep. 6.65.1–2]). Even though Martial relates that epigrammatists commonly wrote hexameter epigrams and that there was no injunction against it, by writing these lines he shows that hexameters were not the norm with him. This means that they should surprise the general reader, whom Tucca represents. As Rimell 2008: 49 suggests. Rimell (pp. 44–9) is insightful on Ep. 1.53. 97 Rimell 2008: 46.

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meanwhile, not only lacks any such awkwardness but also displays high stylistic details in its epic phrasing (Ledaeos olores and Cecriopias querelas, with agreement at the third-foot principal caesurae and final positions) and its mythological allusions (Ledaeos, Cecriopias, and Atthide).98 One explanation for this shift is that Martial included the clunky material to reflect the quality of Fidentinus’ poem and then heightened things to reflect the quality of his superior work. Style again has deeper meaning, so that the catalogue contrasts the plagiarist and his source through its form as well as through its content. The reading that I propose thus finds Martial continuing to modify his approach to his subject and, in the process, adding to the variety with which he combines the said and the unsaid in his poems on plagiarism.99 Martial assails Fidentinus with manifest hostility through the accumulation of unfriendly metaphors and a culminating charge of inferiority while also conveying on the metalevel that Fidentinus was very different from his superior source. The attention Martial gives to disparaging and devaluing his plagiarist and to putting himself above him distinguishes the poem from the earlier pieces of the cycle.100 The aggressive satire through which he establishes his superiority gives the poem a sharp emotive accent and, with it, a strong air of disapproval.101 Still, Ep. 1.53 is no heavy response to a plagiarist. The purpose continues to be to entertain via the witty manner of satirizing, with its barbed verbal play and humor and with the added element of stylistic irony that signals a desire to invest his treatment with “the maximum amount of wit for the audience’s pleasure.”102 Another possible aim of the poem emerges from its placement in book 1. Because it comes between two epigrams whose content points to Martial’s aim to promote himself as a meritorious poet, the question arises whether in 98

99 100

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Fitzgerald 2007: 91 calls attention to the stylistic mix of high and low in the epigram, but without drawing the conclusion that I do. Following Citroni 1975: 181, Fitzgerald also notes that the “black crow amid white swans and, more clearly, the magpie chattering in the grove of nightingales are figures for poetic rivalry.” Seo 2009: 587–8 finds in the bird imagery a reference to Horace, Ep. 1.3.15– 20 (see chapter 1, pp. 26–7). She also emphasizes that the cloaks, earthenware, and glass in lines 4–6 are consumer items as part of her argument that Martial commodifies his poetry in his epigrams on plagiarism. As should be clear, I understand things differently and, once more, do not find the concern with the economic status of the poems that Seo does in Martial’s treatment of plagiarism. I echo Hutcheon 1994: 89, on how irony “combin[es] said and unsaid meanings.” Thus, while Ep. 1.38 implies that Fidentinus is the kind of poet to write bad epigrams and is worse than Martial, and while Ep. 1.52, I believe, conveys that Martial is superior to his fellow client the plagiarist, they do not degrade him with the clarity and insistence that the analogical catalogue does in Ep. 1.53 or through the meta-gestures found in that poem. I derive these observations from Hutcheon 1994: 53, who, in response to Wimsatt and Brooks, calls attention to the existence of emotive accent in irony. W. Anderson 1982: 364, which echoes Mason 1963: 165.

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Ep. 1.53 he was likewise touting himself as an author when highlighting the literary quality that he, as a plagiarism victim, possessed. If so, 1.53 would form part of a self-promotional triptych, as the superior writer in the poem would embody and point up Martial’s authorial virtues. To echo an earlier point, Martial could not have stopped his readers from seeing him in the good poet he describes in the epigram. Considering how he arranges Ep. 1.52, 1.53, and 1.54, moreover, I am inclined to accept that he did wish to leave that option open to them, to have readers apply the good things he says about his “performed I” to his extratextual Self.103 But the “performed” part of that ego remains fundamental to it. Martial creates a gap in talent and achievement between the plagiarist and himself the plagiarism victim, thereby making space for the illegitimate transfer of authorship, credit, and value that is central to his understanding of literary theft. In the process, he constructs a scoptic voice that can be read biographically but that produces a particular rhetorical dynamic, in which a superior speaker delivers some sharp mocking satire. Since Ep. 1.53 lacks the appeal for favor from an addressee that 1.52 and 1.54 have, moreover, I hesitate to give the self-promotional dimension in the poem as much weight as it has in its neighboring pieces. What Martial is fundamentally after is a way of performing disapproval with the witty, entertaining bite that was appropriate to his genre. To that end he sets himself above his plagiarist and uses the contrast to puncture and degrade that target. A poem on plagiarism in book 10 resembles Ep. 1.53 in containing stylistic irony and, with it, metafiction (Ep. 10.100): Quid, stulte, nostris versibus tuos misces? cum litigante quid tibi, miser, libro? quid congregare cum leonibus vulpes aquilisque similes facere noctuas quaeris? habeas licebit alterum pedem Ladae, inepte, frustra crure ligneo curres.

5

Why, you fool, do you mix your verses with mine? What, wretch, do you have to do with a book that conflicts with you? Why do you seek to herd foxes with lions and to make owls like eagles? Although you have one foot of Ladas, you idiot, you will run in vain with a wooden leg.

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Of course, the display of wit in the epigram was itself able to demonstrate that Martial was an accomplished epigrammatist. But my point is to explore whether Martial was concerned with making “a self-allusive bid for [the] recognition of [his] aesthetic excellence” (Wray 2001: 124, on Catullus).

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As is evident from Ep. 10.102, Martial considered the mixture of verses he describes to constitute plagiarism: Qua factus ratione sit requiris, qui numquam futuit, pater Philinus? Gaditanus, Avite, dicat istud, qui scribit nihil et tamen poeta est. Do you ask how it is that Philinus, who never fucks his wife, is a father? Let Gaditanus tell you, Avitus, who writes nothing yet is still a poet.

The acerbic satire has someone else producing Philinus’ children, just as someone else produces Gaditanus’ poetry. Whether Martial meant that Gaditanus plagiarized or that he relied upon a ghostwriter is uncertain.104 But because the epigram links up with Ep. 10.100 as a paired poem on inauthentic claims of authorship, it implies that Martial was identifying his unnamed target in the earlier of the pieces as a plagiarist. Instead of pursuing wholesale plagiarism, the addressee mixes his verses with Martial’s and then passes off the hybrid texts as his. This is the first time since book 1 that Martial speaks as a plagiarism victim; and as in Ep. 1.53, the plagiarist creates some material on his own, although how he steals from Martial and how he combines his work with the plagiarized poetry are new.105 Whether or not this plagiarist was real, Martial gives him a precise authorial identity. Rather than just relating that the person plagiarizes his epigrams, as he did with Fidentinus, Martial specifies down to the meter the kind of epigrams that he takes. This he does tacitly, through the imagery of his poem. The first detail to consider is Martial’s use of the lion (3) and the eagle (4) as metaphors for himself. Earlier in book 10 (Ep. 10.65), Martial had turned to the same animals when contrasting himself with the effeminate Spaniard Charmenion (Ep. 10.65.10–13): Os blaesum tibi debilisque lingua est, nobis †filia† fortius loquetur: tam dispar aquilae columba non est nec dorsas rigido fugax leoni.

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As previously observed (n. 4), Williams 2004: 91 lists Ep. 10.102 among Martial’s plagiarism poems. Howell 1980: 168, meanwhile, does not. Despite my best efforts, I have not been able to see the commentaries on book 10 of J. Jenkins and C. Francis, which they wrote as their dissertations (Jenkins from Oxford in 1981, Francis from the University of Otago in 2007). Because both Ep. 1.53 and 10.100 show plagiarists mixing their own work with Martial’s (albeit in different ways) and because both poems contain legal language (litigante [10.100.2]) and meta-poetic elements (as we will see), the temptation is to suppose that Martial took Ep. 1.53 as his point of departure in the later work.

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You lisp and speak feebly, whereas my guts (ilia for filia?) will speak out more strongly. A dove is not so dissimilar to an eagle, nor a timid doe to a fierce lion.

The eagle and the lion represent Martial’s virile roughness and aggression, including the verbal strength that he describes in line 11 and unleashes in his satiric attack on the delicate and timid Charmenion throughout the poem.106 In Ep. 10.100, he uses the metaphors similarly. Martial is again powerful like a lion and an eagle, and his weaker plagiarist is no match for him, even though he has the sneakiness of a fox. (Perhaps, too, Martial is suggesting that the plagiarist seeks to hide himself like the nocturnal owl).107 Given the situation in Ep. 10.100, Martial must mean that he displays his ferocity and power when writing satiric epigrams, i.e., the lines that the plagiarist mixes with his own. The metaphor figures his potency as a satirist, just as it did in Ep. 10.65 and does again in book 12 (Ep. 12.61.5), when Martial once more represents his scoptic poetry as the work of lions.108 The further implication is that Martial’s deceitful addressee writes lines that are less potent and effective satire than the lines he steals from Martial. To mingle verses as he does is to combine better and worse scoptic material, measured in terms of its bite. The concluding two lines of Martial’s text then indicate that he was thinking of his plagiarist specifically as a writer of scazons, or limping iambs, a meter associated with invective.109 In book 2 of his epigrams (Ep. 2.86), Martial equated himself with the figure of Ladas, the Spartan runner who was proverbial for his speed. Attacking Classicus, a writer of pattern poems (palindromes, Sotadeans, and echoing verses) and of galliambics, Martial expresses his disdain for such frivolous texts by relating that he, like Ladas, is not one to perform tricks.110 In Ep. 10.100, Ladas again doubles for the poet.

106 107

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109 110

Williams 2002: 150–71 examines how Martial elsewhere treats poetry in gendered terms. The fox and the lion seem to have been proverbial counterparts. Thus Aesop writes fables on them, while Horace, Sat. 2.3.186, and Petronius, Sat. 44.14, contrast them. Aesop also has a fable on the eagle and the owl. Versus et breve vividumque carmen / in te ne faciam times, Ligurra, / et dignus cupis hoc metu videri. / sed frustra metuis cupisque frustra. / in tauros Libyci ruunt leones, / non sunt papilionibus molesti (You are afraid that I will write verses and a short and punchy poem against you, Ligurra, and you want to seem worthy of this fear. But you fear and desire this in vain. African lions attack bulls; they are not stirred to trouble butterflies [Ep. 12.61.1–6]). So Howell 2009: 52. Quid si per gracilis vias petauri / invitum iubeas subire Ladan? / turpe est difficiles habere nugas / et stultus labor est ineptiarum (What if you ordered an unwilling Ladas to mount the narrow ways of the trapeze? It is degrading to pursue difficult games, and foolish is the effort expended on childish things [Ep. 2.86.7–10]). Martial himself, however, does write one poem in Sotadeans (3.29), presumably to satirize his effeminate subject, the freedman Zoilus (Sotadeans being an effeminizing meter [Sotaden cinaedum {Ep. 2.86.2}], as Sullivan 1991: 229–30 suggests).

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Now, though, he represents Martial’s lines as distinguished from the plagiarist’s, which Martial describes with the metaphor ligneus crus. The image is of the thief making his way on uneven limbs, one of which is vastly superior to the other. This is to place authorial credit and artistic value yet again at the heart of plagiarism. The plagiarist is a poet inferior to his source but tries to appear to be up to his level by reusing his lines and getting recognition for the literary quality they possess. The fact that scazons are a limping meter (scazon from the Greek σκάζειν, “to limp”) explains what otherwise seems an abrupt shift from the animal metaphors to Ladas’ feet and the wooden leg. The purpose is to suggest that the plagiarist’s work rhythmically limped, but did so awkwardly, because he combined good lines with bad ones to produce hybrid satirical scazons that he proceeded to pass off under his own name – and the appearance of the word pes in line 5, which could mean “meter,” is another strong indication that Martial’s subject was poetry. The seemingly disparate imagery in the text actually coheres. After indicating first that he is a stronger satirist than his plagiarist, Martial concludes by relating that he writes better scoptic scazons specifically, which the thief mixes with his own weak verses. It is naturally no accident that Ep. 10.100 itself contains scazons. Martial again turns to stylistic irony, giving his meter secondary significance: the rhythm is not just a rhythm but, rather, gives the poem a metafictional component. The correspondence between form and content strengthens the connection between Martial and the plagiarism victim, since the kind of poetry that the speaker claims to write well parallels the kind of poetry that Martial himself writes. The suggestion naturally emerges that the very epigram in which Martial, through his “performed I,” declares his ability to write effective scazons demonstrates that ability. Martial leads his reader to understand the poem on one level as an advertisement for itself, for its scoptic vigor. But the playfulness with which he delivers the message indicates that he was not only or even primarily concerned with promoting his own satiric force. The use of scazons in a poem on scazons looks, instead, to be fundamentally about the thrill of the meta. What matters more than the referent is the way Martial constructed his message: he shows his characteristic concern with displaying verbal wit and inducing his readers to appreciate his cleverness, which in this case means appreciating how he brought together the planes of reality and representation, of the writer and the written.111 111

Wray 2001: 52 and 61, on the performative Catullus, influences me here.

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To recognize the metafictional element in Ep. 10.100 is also to take a full measure of the element of satiric superiority in the poem. Martial again creates a mocking satirist, who generates the wit and humor essential to his scoptic performance by belittling his plagiarist as a poor writer. The approach is to insult and to deride from a superior rhetorical position, and thus to place the plagiarist below the authorial “performed I” who casts the malefactor down.

superior to the end Scazons make their sole appearance in the Fidentinus cycle in Ep. 1.66. The poem begins with Martial chastising the “greedy thief” of his books for thinking that he could become a lauded poet at the cost of six or ten sesterces (Ep. 1.66.1–4): Erras, meorum fur avare librorum, fieri poetam posse qui putas tanti, scriptura quanti constet et tomus vilis: non sex paratur aut decem sophos nummis. Greedy thief of my books, you are mistaken if you think that you can become a poet for the price of a copy and a cheap volume. Applause is not won for six or ten sesterces.

Although the addressee is unnamed, we can safely identify him with the plagiarist in the other poems of the Fidentinus cycle in book 1. The absence of the name “Fidentinus” presumably results from the choice of meter: because of its rhythm and caesura pattern, Martial’s scazons have no place for a name with three long syllables followed by a short one (or one long by position). In the opening lines of Ep. 1.66, Martial describes a situation where Fidentinus has paid to have Martial’s poems copied for him and has gone on to present himself as their author. Lying now explicitly at the center of his plagiarism is the attempt to win credit or, in Martial’s terms, to “become a poet” (fieri poetam [2]) and to garner applause (sophos [4]).112 Not only does this demean Fidentinus by presuming that he needed to plagiarize in order to become an actual poet, i.e., one who earns favorable notice for producing good texts, but it also enhances the victim’s standing by relating that his 112

That Fidentinus seeks to hear sophos, or “bravo,” indicates that he is again reciting Martial’s poetry (just as Martial’s book is recited when it receives approving calls from its audience in Ep. 1.3.7 [audieris cum grande sophos]).

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epigrams were able to confer that status on his thief. It is true that Martial shows Fidentinus buying a shabby copy of his poetry (note especially tomus vilis [3]).113 This is in keeping with how he elsewhere equates the materiality of his text and its exposure to the marketplace with degradation, so that it takes on an identity suitable to the “lower” genre of epigram.114 But in Ep. 1.66, Martial has his poetry transcend the mean form it takes in Fidentinus’ transaction. The writing itself, the immaterial substance of the epigrams, is what the plagiarist seeks, and he does so because of its high quality, which can grant him literary credit and renown and make him a poeta.115 Martial proceeds in Ep. 1.66 to contrast the poetry that Fidentinus has had copied with “unpublished poems” and “unfinished drafts,” which he tells his plagiarist to seek out (secreta quaere carmina et rudes curas [5]). He then explains why such conduct is necessary: “a well-known book cannot change its master” (mutare dominum non potest liber notus [9]). The animating assumption is that plagiarism is a furtive enterprise: thieves try to hide their actions with the intention of deceiving audiences into giving credit where credit is not due. This makes unpublished works a better target for the plagiarist, whereas publication, through which a liber becomes notus, hinders him. Like the aforementioned Pliny the Younger, who encourages Octavius Rufus to publish his poems in order to keep anyone else from claiming them as his own, Martial recognizes that the circulation of written texts could be a bulwark against plagiarism and, conversely, that unpublished works were quarry for the thief.116

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The cost, however, was more than negligible. According to Nauta 2002: 134, the copy would in fact have been a luxury to some – a client, for instance, would receive a sportula of no more than 6 ½ sesterces for attending on a patron for an entire day. Better-off people, however, would have been comfortably able to afford the book. Roman 2001: 113–29 (already cited in n. 44). Seo 2009: 582 similarly observes that Fidentinus is really after poetic talent, while again emphasizing the materiality and economic commodification of the book (as well as the subject of gift exchange) in ways that I do not. Enotuerunt quidam tui versus et invito te claustra tua refregerunt. hos nisi retrahis in corpus, quandoque ut errones aliquem, cuius dicantur, invenient (Certain verses of yours have become known and broken free of their chains, although you did not want it. Unless you gather them into a volume, the escaped slaves will find someone who will claim them as his [Ep. 2.10.3–4]). The situation is thus that some of Rufus’ poems are circulating in pirated form; and Pliny asserts that unless Rufus makes a public claim to authorship by putting out an edition of his poems, someone else will plagiarize them. While this is meant to flatter Rufus, it points not only to Pliny’s awareness that the plagiarism of entire texts could occur but also to his sense that publication could check such theft by making the actual author’s identity known. Note, finally, Pliny’s slave imagery, which resembles Martial’s Ep. 1.52 in its application to plagiarism. (The word dominus in Ep. 1.66.9 would appear to provide another example of this.) Seo 2009: 569–73 examines Pliny’s remarks.

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Martial concludes his epigram by suggesting that Fidentinus buy his poetry (Ep. 1.66.10–14): Sed pumicata fronte si quis est nondum nec umbilicis cultus atque membrana, mercare: tales habeo; nec sciet quisquam. aliena quisquis recitat et petit famam, non emere librum, sed silentium debet. But if there is any book with a front not yet smoothed by pumice or decorated with rods and a parchment case, buy it. I have such books; nor will anyone know. Whoever recites others’ work and seeks fame in the process ought to buy not a book, but silence.

Unlike in Ep. 1.29, the offer is now unmistakably to serve as the plagiarist’s ghostwriter: Martial offers to sell Fidentinus unpublished epigrams and to allow him to deliver them as his own. Because this is a response to how the avarus fur had paid to have copies made of Martial’s work, it strengthens all the more the impression that Fidentinus was a wholesale plagiarist. Martial offers to give Fidentinus precisely what he has been stealing – entire epigrams. When Martial raises the prospect of making his unpublished poetry a commodity and selling it to Fidentinus, he speaks on the surface like the hard-edged, mercenary persona he constructs in other epigrams. (The suggestion, evident from line 4 [non sex paratur aut decem sophos nummis], that the “greedy thief” will have to be generous and pay the ghostwriter Martial a lot more than six or ten sesterces only heightens that resemblance.) As critics have widely observed, Martial creates a first-person speaker who consistently refers to his straitened circumstances and shows a concern for money.117 The role is appropriate to Martial’s genre and, more specifically, to the world that epigram creates, with its hard and often sordid urban realities to which the epigrammatic speaker is exposed.118 Among the everyday afflictions that Martial faces is the struggle to earn a living. This leads him to make his poetry an object of financial calculation. Unlike Augustan poets, who downplay interest in monetary remuneration, Martial treats his epigrams as a vehicle for material gain.119

117

118 119

E.g., Roman 2001: 114–19; Lorenz 2002: 14; Gold 2003: passim; and Fitzgerald 2007: 8–9. Nauta 2002: 51–8 analyzes Martial’s actual financial circumstances, which were rosier than the poet often let on. I echo Roman 2001: 120. Again, Roman 2001 is an important source on this subject; see, in particular, pp. 116–19 and 126–9.

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In Ep. 1.66, however, Martial is actually not after the money. For his proposal to sell his poetry is an ironic one. Having shown Fidentinus to be at least a partly failed plagiarist, in that Martial and others have found him out, Martial adopts a pseudo-didactic role and mockingly advises him on how to pursue a better way forward.120 This produces the concluding point, where Martial ends again with a sharp surprise in which he relates to Fidentinus what he really needs to buy in order to keep his plagiarism hidden and achieve his aims. The poet pretends to move downward toward his subject but, in fact, asserts satiric control over him by toying with him and facetiously putting his own compliance up for sale, while being anything but silent about the plagiarist’s actions.121 This means that Martial continues to take a disapproving posture toward plagiarism rather than suggests that he was open to having Fidentinus claim authorship of his work for a price.122 The attitude is consistent throughout the cycle and is here characterized once more by acerbic mockery that heats up the irony. At issue once more is how the plagiarist wrongfully arrogates Martial’s authorship and literary value. In response to that activity, Martial is caustic in keeping the credit for his work and, with it, his pre-eminence to Fidentinus out of the thief’s grasp. When he taunts Fidentinus in Ep. 1.66 by relating that he had many unpublished pieces in his possession, the “performed I” comes to look very much like the author Martial himself, who, of course, had yet to publish book 1 at the time of writing 1.66, or, if viewed from the time of the appearance of book 1, was still new to publishing large-scale books of miscellaneous epigrams.123 This indicates a desire on Martial’s part to give 120

121 122

123

So Rimell 2008: 41: “He [Martial] takes on a sarcastic, pseudo-didactic role here, advising an enemy on how to raise his game.” For another poem on buying silence, this time from a prostitute, see Ep. 9.4. I follow Booth 1974: 38, on techniques of irony. As a result, the satirist is not himself rendered suspect like his target. Sullivan 1991: 250–2 discusses Martial’s frequently ambivalent attitude toward his subject matter and notes that, in the world’s duplicity and hypocrisy, Martial “fears he sees his own reflected.” This matches up with Alvin Kernan’s analysis (1959) of how a satirist can undercut his critique of vice and folly by taking too much interest or pleasure in them as he attacks them and by demonstrating some of the same traits that his targets do. But I would argue that in Ep. 1.66 and the other poems on plagiarism there is nothing comparable going on, no attempt to show Martial behaving like his plagiarists or aligning himself with them. The humor in the epigrams, even when delivered with cool irony and good temper, still keeps the thieves at a distance, from which the “performed I” exposes them as objects of satire. I.e., the author with the unseen poems in Ep. 1.66 is consistent with someone who had yet to publish a first large-scale collected book of miscellaneous epigrams or had just published one such book; even in the latter circumstances, the poet would surely have written a lot of poems he did not include in his volume.

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his speaker added autobiographical contours and to have his reader identify him all the more in his “I.” Consequently, when he conveys outright that he, a true poeta, wrote a body of epigrams that granted sophos and fama, there continues to be reason to suppose that he was investing the poem with a degree of self-promotion. The speaker, however, remains a role even with the increased touch of autobiography, a “performed I” adapted to the scoptic purposes of the poem. Martial is again representing himself in a way that creates satiric superiority: he speaks as a true and accomplished author, while Fidentinus is a parasitic fraud. What then generates the play of wit and humor in the poem are the verbal thrusts that puncture the plagiarist and keep him from bridging the gap between himself and the circle of quality authors to which his victim belongs, and to which he had been aspiring through his dishonest and illegitimate behavior. Martial goes on to close out the Fidentinus cycle with a poem that echoes Ep. 1.66 (Ep. 1.72): Nostris versibus esse te poetam, Fidentine, putas cupisque credi? sic dentata sibi videtur Aegle emptis ossibus Indicoque cornu; sic quae nigrior est cadente moro, cerussata sibi placet Lycoris. hac et tu ratione qua poeta es, calvus cum fueris, eris comatus.

5

Do you think that you are a poet by means of my verses, Fidentinus, and would you have yourself considered one? Thus Aegle thinks that she has good teeth once she has bought bones and Indian ivory; thus Lycoris, who is blacker than a ripe mulberry, is pleased with herself all made up with white lead. In the same way that you are a poet, you will have a thick head of hair when you are bald.

As he does in Ep. 1.66, Fidentinus plagiarizes to become a poeta. His belief (or hope) is that by stealing from Martial he will be considered a real poet, with the talent and achievements that belong to his source. Martial then draws a parallel between the plagiarist and a scoptic commonplace, namely, women (in this case prostitutes) who use false teeth and cosmetics to hide their physical flaws.124 The analogy implies that Fidentinus has used Martial’s work to falsify who he really is and to present a fraudulently 124

Howell 1980: 150 addresses the theme of false teeth in Martial. See also Maltby 2006: 159–62. Vallat 2006: 137 notes that the name Aegle is a bilingual pun, as the word means “brilliant” in Greek, and that “the name is in conflict with the general sense of the epigram, which suggests (cf. emptis) that this brilliance is an artificial accessory.” On Lycoris, meanwhile, see Howell (p. 274).

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enhanced authorial Self to the public. The inferior plagiarist is the inauthentic writer, trying to get credit that was not really his. To punctuate the idea, Martial concludes with epigrammatic point equating toupees with plagiarism. Just as Fidentinus relies upon epigrams that did not originate with him to be a poet, so he will rely upon someone else’s hair to appear comatus despite really being bald.125 Obviously, the analogical structure of Ep. 1.72 equates Martial’s poetry and the cosmetic enhancements that he describes. Even though prostitutes use two of those enhancements in lines 3–6, Martial does not mean to taint his work by linking it to a seamy world. The rhetorical organization of the poem reveals as much. On one side stand Fidentinus and the prostitutes, and on the other the things to which they resort to make themselves look better than they are. Like the false teeth and the white lead, Martial’s poems are not implicated as degraded objects but are the beautifying agents through which a flawed individual aims to transcend himself. A lack of authenticity similarly marks the plagiarist in the final poem on plagiarism in Martial’s corpus. The piece appears in Martial’s concluding book of epigrams, produced when he returned to Spain after his roughly thirty-year stay in Rome (Ep. 12.63). In it, he sets upon an unnamed thief in Corduba who has been reciting Martial’s poetry as his own:126 Uncto Corduba laetior Venafro, Histra nec minus absoluta testa, albi quae superas oves Galaesi nullo murice nec cruore mendax, sed tinctis gregibus colore vivo: dic vestro, rogo, sit pudor poetae nec gratis recitet meos libellos. ferrem, si faceret bonus poeta, cui possem dare mutuos dolores. corrumpit sine talione caelebs, caecus perdere non potest quod aufert: nil est deterius latrone nudo: nil securius est malo poeta.

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Corduba, richer than oil-producing Venafrum, nor less pure than the jars of Istria; you who surpass the sheep of white Galaesus, not deceiving with shellfish or blood, but home to flocks colored in their actual hue; tell your poet, please, to have some 125

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Other poems on baldness are Ep. 2.66, 6.12, 6.57, 10.83, and 12.23. I take this list from the index of subjects in Wills 2008: 200. Once more, I have been stymied in my attempts to see a thesis on Martial, this time the commentary on book 12 of M. N. R. Bowie, written at Oxford (1988).

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shame and not to recite my books scot-free. I could bear it if a good poet were doing this, to whom I could do the same thing. A bachelor seduces without reprisal, and a blind man is not able to lose what he takes away. There is nothing worse than a naked robber, nothing more secure than a bad poet.

After calling attention to the fruitfulness and purity of Corduba’s olive oil and to its undyed flocks (1–5), Martial places his target in the acclaimed city (vestro . . . poetae [6]). The sequence of ideas contrasts the choice place with its author, who, we quickly discover, is an object of derision. Whereas Corduba is fruitful, its poet is barren;127 and while it produces pure oil and sheep whose wool color is real, its poet both adulterates his source texts by adding a foreign element to them and presents a false appearance to the world. An author who makes himself seem like something he is not bears all the markings of a plagiarist; and when Martial later associates the Corduban poet with a latro or “thief,” he confirms that plagiarism is his subject. The message is that the plagiarist improperly blends Martial’s epigrams and his own name – and this is presumably the adulterating agent just mentioned – to become mendax, i.e., an inauthentic semblance of the poems’ real creator.128 Upon pointing up the plagiarist’s failings by contrasting him with his homeland, Corduba, Martial proceeds to label him directly a bad poet (8, 13). This lack of ability enables him to plagiarize gratis, by which Martial means that the thief will suffer no reciprocal punishment by having Martial steal from him.129 Obviously, the irony is thick when Martial asserts that he could have borne his plagiarist’s actions if he could have responded in kind. The poet facetiously entertains the idea of stealing in order to impeach his thief’s abilities with biting derision: he will not plagiarize because he does not want to have his name associated with bad poetry. Martial’s decision stands in understood contrast to the plagiarist’s. The message is that the thief turned to Martial as a good poet, and that he stole 127

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By suggesting that the plagiarist is barren, Martial does not mean that he produces nothing whatsoever – later lines, after all, relate that he has bad poems that Martial could steal. The idea must be, instead, that he has no reserve of talent from which to draw and that he produces nothing of value. It could be that Martial wished to have his audience understand that his plagiarist stole from him when producing his own bad poetry by sticking too close to him. But the epigram also allows for the idea that Martial’s plagiarist recited his poems in their entirety while also writing separate bad verse of his own. Poeta in line 6, therefore, must be sarcastic. For the clear implication is that the plagiarist is not worthy of the designation and that he is instead a pseudo- and sub-author. For gratis meaning “scot-free,” see Ep. 1.73: nullus in urbe fuit tota qui tangere vellet / uxorem gratis, Caeciliane, tuam, / dum licuit (there was no one in the entire city who wanted to touch your wife scotfree, when it was allowed [Ep. 1.73.1–3]). Martial thus uses the word differently from the way he does in Ep. 1.29.3 (gratis tibi carmina mittam).

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epigrams in order to get credit for a literary achievement that lay beyond him. Martial is not only known widely enough to have a plagiarist in Corduba – a situation that varies Martial’s assertions elsewhere that he is read throughout the world130 – but is also so accomplished that he attracts the literary thief who wants to look like a better author than he is. As in Ep. 1.72 and other poems on plagiarism, Martial thus sets himself up as an author superior to his thief and puts himself in a rhetorical position to satirize from above. If we accept that Martial used his “performed I” in earlier poems of the Fidentinus cycle in part to tout his own merits, then we might reasonably extend that reading to his claims to superiority in Ep. 1.72, even though the autobiographical content in the poem is minimal, and less than in 1.52, 1.53, and 1.66. In 12.63, meanwhile, Martial forcefully fuses his speaker with his extratextual Self by making him an author of epigrammatic libelli living in Spain (so much, at least, is implied by his knowing about events in Corduba). This suggests that he wished to have the first-person poet whose quality verses tempted a credit-seeking plagiarist identified with him. But once more, that self-promotion occurs in performance, or while Martial creates the speaking conditions for amusing satiric derision. These last two poems on plagiarism join with Martial’s other pieces on the subject in identifying authorship, credit, and literary value as the assets that plagiarists steal. Fidentinus and the anonymous thieves plagiarize Martial’s epigrams to appear to be authors they are not, to win acclaim for talent they do not possess. Martial describes those efforts while always varying how he satirizes his plagiarists. But throughout the epigrams, he thinks in consistent ways about the components and objectives of plagiarism, about what is transferred from the real author to the fraudulent one. What emerges is a coherent set of ideas and, with them, an overall sense of plagiarism as a coherent concept and category. Marking all of Martial’s poems on plagiarism is the generically determined drive to entertain. It is true, I believe, that Ep. 1.52 touts Martial the client to his patron Quintianus, while other epigrams appear to advertise his authorial virtues. But fundamental to the Fidentinus cycle and the rest of the plagiarism texts is the way that Martial adopts a scoptic voice to give expression to the wit and humor that were his generic hallmark. The element of play, the epigrammatum lusus (Tacitus, Dial. 10.5), distinguishes Martial’s texts from a polemical accusation like Lenaeus’ against Sallust, which, as a vicious attack on an opponent of Pompey’s, was designed to do 130

See Ep. 1.1, with the notes of Howell 1980: 103 on line 2. Watson and Watson 2003: 8 also examine this theme, with examples.

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more damage than Martial sought to do when he exposed his plagiarists to derision through his mixture of fel (satiric bite) and sal (wit), even if we suppose that Fidentinus or another plagiarist was real.131 So, too, Martial differs from the authors of the prefaces examined in chapter 1, who formulated charges without his focus on wit and humor in order to do the rhetorical work of promoting their texts. What Martial reveals is a particular cultural space in which plagiarism remained a real and recognized offense, but in which charges of it could be played for satiric laughs. There were different settings for accusations in Latin antiquity; Martial’s permitted him to fit the wrong of plagiarism and disapproving reactions to it to entertaining verbal display and scoptic deflation. 131

I allude to Pliny the Younger, Ep. 3.21.1, eulogizing Martial: erat homo ingeniosus, acutus, acer, et qui plurimum in scribendo et salis haberet et fellis nec candoris minus (he was a gifted, keen-witted, and sharp man, and one who in his writing had a great amount of bite and wit and no less of clarity).

part ii

Denials of plagiarism

chapter 4

Plagiarism on the stage: Terence, literary controversy, and the theater

So far in our examination of plagiarism in Latin literature, the discussions have been all thrust without parry; the accusers have had the floor, while the accused have been silent. This changes in the remaining chapters, where attention shifts to those who deny plagiarism, whether for themselves or in defense of another. In showing that they or others were not plagiarists, the sources allow us to explore the substance of the charges they counter, because they describe that content or provide bases from which to reconstruct it, and demonstrate how they themselves conceptualized plagiarism as distinct from legitimate borrowing. What is more, the sources put their denials to a variety of sociorhetorical ends, thus expanding upon what we discovered in Part i about the uses of plagiarism in ancient Rome. One author who defended himself against plagiarism allegations was the second-century bce Terence. His six fabulae palliatae, or Roman comedies in Greek settings, join with Plautus’ plays to form the surviving corpus of complete Latin comedies.1 To each of his works Terence attaches a prologue, in which he abandons the plot exposition found in Plautus and deals with his own working life as a playwright.2 The focus in five of the six prologues (the Hecyra is the exception) is the criticism that, Terence reports, he received from his contemporaries, chief among whom was apparently his fellow comic poet Luscius Lanuvinus.3 According to Terence, one of the ways his critics attacked him was by charging him with plagiarism. It is these accusations that he sets out to answer in the prologues to the Eunuchus and 1 2

3

On the palliata, see, e.g., Wright 1974: passim and Duckworth 1994: passim. The literature on Terence’s prologues is vast. Among the useful works for me have been Fabia 1888; Flickinger 1927: 235–69; Beare 1964: 159–63; Klose 1966: 42–169; Gelhaus 1972; Arnott 1985: 1–7; Goldberg 1986: 31–60; and Sharrock 2009: 63–95. Duckworth 1994: 211–18, meanwhile, gives a helpful overview of the Plautine prologues. As Goldberg 1986: 31–2 notes, not every Plautine prologue was expository; but Terence moves entirely away from laying out the plot. Grimal 1970: 281–8, Garton 1972: 41–139, and Dér 1989: 283–97 discuss Luscius Lanuvinus.

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the Adelphoe, likely two of his later plays: the Eunuchus was probably staged in 161 bce (as was the Phormio) and the Adelphoe, his final play, in the next year.4 To reiterate a point made in the first chapter, it is tempting to suppose that the concept of plagiarism entered the Roman world from the Greek tradition through comedy, with furtum a translation of κλοπή.5 But as with so many literary ideas and practices that the Romans imported from Greece, tracing how the concept of plagiarism came into the Latin arena tells only a small part of the story. For the real history of literary theft in the Roman context lies in what Latin authors and audiences did with it – i.e., how the category of plagiarism came to be understood and used once it had arrived in Latin literary culture. As I will demonstrate, Terence’s accounts of his accusers’ charges and his responses to them in the prologues to the Eunuchus and Adelphoe provide vivid examples of how plagiarism became Roman. The passages demonstrate different ways of thinking about the offense. But they center upon charges that define plagiarism in exclusively Latin terms, limiting it to the reuse of material that had already been adapted in earlier Roman comedies. What is more, the accusations are made to cause trouble for the poet that is peculiar to his literary milieu and marketplace. Of course, Terence is not an objective or journalistic source on plagiarism. Not only are his prologues apologetic and, therefore, interested documents, but they are also performances, written for the stage and delivered to open the production. (I should make clear here that either Ambivius Turpio, Terence’s artistic director, business patron, and principal actor, or, more likely, another member of the theater company delivered the prologues to the Eunuchus and Adelphoe. But I presume that Terence sketched out the passages and wrote at least most of the lines for the person who spoke on his behalf and, consequently, attribute the ideas in the passage to the playwright.6) Because Terence created the texts for the stage, interpretation must deal with their theatrical pragmatics, or with 4

5

6

I follow the conventional chronology of Terence’s works, which derives from the didascaliae, or production notices, that were transmitted in manuscripts with the plays. These place the comedies between 166 and 160 bce. While there has been debate about their chronological order (see, e.g., Martin 1976: 10–11 n. 5 and Barsby 1999: 3 n. 10), I see no compelling reason to begin shifting them around. On plagiarism charges in Greek comedy, see Stemplinger 1912: 7–8, 12–14, 35, and 42; Heath 1990: 151–3; and N. Lowe 2007: 32, with further bibliography. To open the Heauton Timorumenos and in the second prologue to the Hecyra, Ambivius Turpio identifies himself as the speaker. But lines 11–15 of the prologue to the Heauton indicate that Terence wrote the material; in the passage Turpio states not only that he was advocating on Terence’s behalf but also that he hoped he could deliver aptly what Terence had written for him, thereby explicitly attributing the passage to the playwright. (In An. 5 the speaker also relates that Terence writes his own

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how they were to work rhetorically before and upon the live audience.7 My interest lies in building upon the recent work of Alison Sharrock in this area and examining how the discussions of plagiarism serve to entertain, to command the attention of the crowd, to win it over to the playwright, and to advertise and promote his plays.8 the targeted terence In three of his prologues, Terence makes it clear that the playwright whose criticism he was answering was a real person. This he does by giving precise information about that figure’s plays, although he does not identify him by name. The most detailed account appears in the Eunuchus, where Terence gives the title of a comedy of Menander that the rival had adapted as well as the title of the rival’s own play and a description of a scene in it.9 The presence of such verifiable facts implies the reality of the antagonist: Terence would have so concretized the identity of the author only if he was dealing with an actual person whom he wanted his audience to recognize. There then seems no good reason to doubt the fourth-century ce commentator Aelius Donatus’ identification of that poet as Luscius Lanuvinus.10 The suggestion from the prologues is that Luscius was an established, veteran playwright, as distinguished from the younger upstart Terence – although it is uncertain whether he was quite as old as Terence makes him out to be when repeatedly portraying him as a sour senex.11 prologues.) It is hard to imagine that Terence did not also write Turpio’s prefatory remarks to the Hecyra. Gilula 1989: 97 and Slater 1992: 90 call attention to how a junior member of a theater company might otherwise have delivered Terence’s prologues. At least with the Hecyra, the exceptional circumstances in which the passage was delivered – at a third staging of the play after the first two had been interrupted – seem to have led to the decision to have the more authoritative Turpio deliver the prologue. (On the interrupted performances, and on how they do not imply an unpopular Terence, see Parker 1996: 585–617.) This is not to suggest that the speaker must always speak only for Terence in his prologues. Indeed, as we will see (n. 74), aspects of the denial of plagiarism in the Eunuchus could well be applicable to Ambivius Turpio. But I still suppose that Terence was the author of that and the other prologues, and that the speaker was fundamentally the playwright’s mouthpiece in them. See also nn. 80 and 95. 7 Did the prologues continue to get delivered at performances after “opening night,” e.g., when troupes put them on outside of Rome or revived them within the city? It seems likely. But the key for me is that Terence wrote them for their initial productions (and in the case of the Hecyra, wrote new ones for new stagings in Rome); I want to explore the effects they were to have in that setting. 8 Sharrock 2009: esp. 75–95. While I will disagree with Sharrock on some details, I want to register at the outset how insightful I found her examination to be. 9 Eun. 9–14. Terence also describes a scene from another of his rival’s plays in the prologue to the Heauton Timoroumenos (30–2) and refers in the Phormio (6–8) to that poet’s overdone, tragic account of a youth delirious with love. Sharrock 2009: 82 discusses the latter. 10 See Donatus, ad An. 4 and ad Eun. 4. Luscius’ existence is also confirmed in a list of comic writers that Aulus Gellius preserves (NA 15.24, quoting Vulcacius Sedigitus). 11 An. 7, Heaut. 22, and Phorm. 1 and 13.

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Much scholarship has taken the further step of understanding the conflict between Terence and Luscius as a historical fact.12 Yet doubts about Terence’s accuracy and reliability on that front seem justified, as does the alternative position that he either staged the dispute with the actual Luscius (presumably with his approval) and unnamed others or, at least, embellished it to the point of distortion.13 This is first because of how Terence’s accounts of writerly strife fit with the tradition in classical literature, including in Greek Old Comedy, of introducing disputes between an author and his rivals into texts. We might reasonably suspect that Terence was making up or dressing up his struggles with his adversaries to conform to that tradition, even if we cannot know what particular models he had in mind.14 The performance contexts for Terence’s prologues then raise the suspicion all the more that he was fabricating or exaggerating his literary battles. Conflict, after all, makes for good theater; and I am inclined to believe that Terence made up or inflated his tensions with Luscius and his ilk for dramatic effect. If my interpretation is correct, it does not follow that everyone who watched the plays in the theater saw the conflict as a fiction or the fictionalizing exaggeration – although there must have been those who did so, including those connected to the playwrights in question. Later in antiquity, members of the literary public, including Terence’s commentators Aelius Donatus and Eugraphius, accepted the reality of the feuds.15 Presumably, there were people sitting in the crowd when the Eunuchus, Adelphoe, and other plays were performed who responded similarly and believed that Terence was providing (at least essentially) accurate glimpses into how his rivals attacked him. However these things may be, Terence would have surely wanted his descriptions of literary strife to function as entertainment. Prefacing his plays with that material would have been a way of grabbing the attention of the theater crowd, by presenting it with the spectacle of a quarrel (whether 12

13

14

15

Examples include Garton 1972: 41–73; Goldberg 1986: 59; Dér 1989: 283–97; Beacham 1991: 49–52; Barsby 1999: 15–16; and Marshall 2006: 23. Sharrock 2009: esp. 75–8 and 83–5 makes a good case for understanding the conflicts as fictional, while Gruen 1992: 213 n. 135 asserts that the quarrel was more “dramaturgical device than historical record.” The temptation is to posit a more specific connection between Terence’s programmatic prologues and Aristophanes’ programmatic parabases, where he attacks his rivals and describes their attacks on him, including through plagiarism charges. See Sharrock 2009: 77 n. 134, with, e.g., Hunter 1985: 30– 3 and Hubbard 1991: 1. But other models are possible, including Callimachus’ battle with the Telchines (so Sharrock [pp. 78–83], with Pohlenz 1956: 434–53). Entries in the commentaries of both on the prologues show this to be the case. Suetonius’ Vita of Terence, meanwhile, reveals that interpreters accepted the reality of Terence’s claim that his critics accused him of using aristocratic ghostwriters (Vit. Ter. 3–4). I will return to this subject.

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or not it was understood to be staged or embellished) between public figures.16 But the tales of conflict have other pragmatic purposes as well. The sense is that Terence found the polemics to be rhetorically useful in different ways, and suited to communicating varied things to his audience. How Terence represents the origin and development of the polemics with Luscius in the Eunuchus points to one of his broader purposes: to win the crowd over to him personally by making him appear sympathetic and meritorious, so that it was then favorably disposed to his text. This aim of securing goodwill marks prefaces in other Latin genres, as we have seen, and is one that Terence’s late-antique commentators Donatus and Eugraphius identified for comic prologues.17 As Terence tells it, he was countering Luscius’ unduly harsh criticism rather than initiating anything.18 The message corresponds to what he tells his audience at the opening of the prologue to his first play, the Andria (1–7), namely that he had been compelled to write prologues that responded to the slander of a malicious old playwright (qui malevoli / veteris poetae maledictis respondeat [6–7]). In placing the idea that he was merely answering a rival’s attack in such a vanguard position and, then, varying it in the Eunuchus and elsewhere,19 Terence signals its importance as a prefatory motif. The portraits of the poet as the aggrieved rather than the aggressor, as someone drawn into a fight, give the audience a choice of aligning itself either with mean-spirited malefactors or with the righteous and innocent victim of their malignancy. The better alternative is obvious. Terence encourages the crowd to take his side over that of his adversaries on the grounds that they are destructive and hostile, whereas his motives are clean.20 Even for those in the theater who recognized that the quarrel was a 16 17

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19 20

My discussion here owes much to Goldberg 1986: 59–60, Parker 1996: 603, and McElduff 2004: 125. So Donatus, De comoedia 7.2, and Eugraphius’ introduction to the Andria (Wessner 1962–3: iii 1.3.8–10), cited by Goldberg 1986: 59. (Eugraphius proceeds to argue, however, that Terence is only interested in controversia in his prologues, i.e., in dealing with the attacks of Luscius.) Duckworth 1994: 74–5 treats the appeal for goodwill (or captatio benevolentiae) in Plautus, as does Sharrock 2009: 69. See lines 4–6 (tum si quis est qui dictum in se inclementius / existumavit esse, sic existumet / responsum non dictum esse, quia laesit prior [furthermore, if there is anyone who thinks that this has been said with undue harshness against him, let him thus recall that this is a response, not an attack, since he lashed out first]) and 17–19 (habeo alia multa quae nunc condonabitur, / quae proferentur post si perget laedere / ita ut facere instituit [I have many other things from which he will now be spared, but which will be brought forward later if he continues to attack me as he has set out to do]). I use the text of Barsby 1999. The same message appears in Phorm. 12–23. Notably in Phorm. 13–23. The theme is also present in Heaut. 16–34. Sharrock 2009: 88 similarly interprets this aspect of the Eunuchus prologue.

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fiction or was something that Terence had exaggerated, the passages could still have illustrated to them that the playwright was peaceable and sympathetic.21 The ideal audience that Terence constructed was to receive and accept that message, no matter if it believed that he had actually met with the flak he describes.22 To frame things in the prologues so that Terence appeared as the innocent target of malign attacks was to discredit the criticism that, he says, his rivals lodged against him, including the charges of plagiarism. For the adverse responses come to stand as products of distorting bias, which caused Luscius and others like him to misread – an ad hominem message that Terence makes explicit in the Adelphoe when he comments postquam poeta sensit scripturam suam / ab iniquis observari et advorsarios / rapere in peiorem partem quam acturi sumus (since the playwright is aware that his works are being criticized by unfair critics and that his opponents are distorting the poem we are about to perform [1–3]). Plagiarism and the other alleged transgressions and flaws appear as erroneous critical constructs. They originate not from the author or text but from hostile audience members, who wrongly criticize out of rancor and spite.23 Like so many apologists in later literary history, including in the Latin tradition, Terence thus renders plagiarism a product of adversarial misinterpretation that obscures a work’s features and an author’s practices while purporting to expose a literary wrong.24

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By using his response to his critics to make him look good while making his rivals look bad, Terence would appear to create what Donatus calls the mixtus type of prologue. This combines two types of passages, the commendativus, which praises the author or his play, and the relativus, which attacks rivals and wins over an audience. See Goldberg 1986: 59 on Donatus’ categories. It would be nice to know how Luscius himself responded to Terence’s remarks. If he had agreed to having Terence fabricate a feud with him, though, one imagines that he would have also accepted how Terence painted him as a malevolent aggressor. (Otherwise, Terence would have likely had an actual feud on his hands.) I thank Robert Germany for leading me per litteras to think about how Terence constructed an ideal audience. The appeal thus implies an audience that could be softened to give its goodwill to Terence. The picture is different from that of the boorish crowd that some critics have posited for him (largely on the basis of the prologues to the Hecyra). Gruen 1992: 210–18, however, does much to counter those critics. Herrnstein Smith 1984: 18–23 guides this discussion. The further idea is that an objective critic, being free of malevolence, will not identify the same flaws that the malignant critics do. Terence makes this point clear in Heaut. 26–7 (on the charges of contaminatio and of relying upon ghostwriters): quare omnis vos oratos volo / ne plus iniquom possit quam aequom oratio (thus I ask all of you not to let a biased account carry more weight than an unbiased one). The unbiased audience member is here someone who will not find fault with Terence as, he claims, his biased rivals do. For other Latin examples, see chapter 5 (pp. 173–6) and chapter 6 (pp. 184–6). For examples from later literary history, see Kewes 1998: 97–9 and Randall 2001: 114–16.

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Terence’s suggestion that the criticism he faced sprang from his antagonists’ prejudice and consequently reflected their interpretive failings brings his attackers under attack.25 Terence pivots and represents them as malevolent misreaders who lash out where they should not, thereby attempting to sully the good name of the innocent.26 The countermove is an attempt to win over the audience in another way, by suggesting that Terence is a solid man of sound mind and trustworthy judgment, in contrast to the biased, fulminating critics. So, too, the ad hominem critiques indicate that Luscius and his allies saw Terence as a threat, on the principle that they would have been driven to malign him and to bring him down only if they viewed him in such terms. This implies that his star was rising to eclipse theirs27 and, correspondingly, promotes his authorial merits by relating that he was the kind of accomplished author to prompt spiteful attempts at sabotage from jealous, stewing rivals.28

plagiarism, greek new comedy, and a new roman comedy According to the prologue of the Eunuchus, Luscius went to some significant lengths to undercut Terence. After relating that the play he and his fellow actors were about to perform derives from Menander’s Eunuchus, the speaker reports that Luscius arranged to be present at an earlier performance, which a magistratus also attended. This occurred after the curule aediles had purchased the comedy for production at the festival games they were overseeing.29 It was there that Luscius accused Terence of being a “thief, not a poet” (19–24): 25 26

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I echo Randall 2001: 117. Worth citing is the epigrammatic manner in which Terence conveys that his critics are misreaders in line 17 of the prologue to the Andria: Faciuntne intellegendo ut nil intellegant? (Do they not make it that they understand nothing by how they understand this?). The emphasis on Luscius’ old age also indicates that he was on the decline, while the message that Terence was a new voice on the scene (see, e.g., An. prol. 1; Heaut. prol. 23; and Phorm. prol. 13–14) suggests an ascendant playwright. To reiterate an important point, I suppose that even audience members who saw that the quarrels were fictional or exaggerated would have been able to take away these messages. For them, the accounts of polemics could have stood as fictions/distortions that contained truths about Terence and his place on the literary scene. According to the didascalia to the Eunuchus, the games were the Ludi Megalenses and the aediles L. Postumius Albinus and L. Cornelius Merula. On the Roman festival games and the place of dramatic performances in them, see, e.g., Barsby 1999: 6–7; Kruschwitz 2004: 21–4; and Marshall 2006: 20–1. The aediles – or perhaps just one of them – would have optioned Terence’s play, which a troupe would have then put on in order to provide some of the entertainment at the games.

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Denials of plagiarism Quam nunc acturi sumus Menandri Eunuchum, postquam aediles emerunt, perfecit sibi ut inspiciundi esset copia. magistratus quom ibi adesset, occeptast agi. exclamat furem non poetam fabulam dedisse, et nil dedisse verborum tamen.30

The play we are about to perform is Menander’s Eunuchus. After the aediles bought the play, he saw to it that he was given a chance to see it. The performance began when the magistrate arrived. He [Luscius] cried out that a thief, not a playwright, was putting on the play, but that his effort to put one over had failed.

It stands to reason that the magistratus in line 22 was one of the aediles mentioned two lines earlier, and that Terence was describing a rehearsal performance that the official took in after he had optioned the Eunuchus for the games, but before the ludi themselves.31 This is the only place where Terence describes such a staging of his work before a magistrate. The anomalous quality of the detail lends support to the idea that the performance was historical; because we cannot ascribe the scene to Terence’s standard practice or find a parallel for it in his prologues, it comes to take on the idiosyncrasy of the real. But even if the playwright did not fabricate the dress rehearsal, he could have made up the detail that Luscius was present, or he could have invented or distorted Luscius’ conduct there if he had been in attendance. In representing his rival’s behavior as he does, Terence implies that Luscius presented his criticism to and for the aedile. Certainly the observation that the performance began once the magistrate had arrived (magistratus quom ibi adesset, occeptast agi [22]) signals that Luscius either contrived to have the play staged for the official or insinuated himself into a rehearsal that was put on expressly for that figure, even though it lay outside of the selection process for the games.32 Terence, therefore, relates that Luscius chose to deliver his charge where he did precisely because he 30

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As Stein 2003: 206–8 shows, there has been disagreement over the punctuation of the passage. Stein (p. 205) punctuates perfecit sibi ut inspiciundi esset copia, magistratus quom ibi adesset. occeptast agi: exclamat . . .. Stein 2003: 205–12 convincingly argues that we are to understand the performance to be one that occurred before the play was staged at the games. Barsby 1999: 86 also holds that Terence refers to a preview performance of the comedy. The situation that Terence describes would imply a prologue that was written at least relatively close to the opening of the play, after rehearsals had begun. Brothers 2000: 160 contends that Luscius arranged the performance, while Stein 2003: 210 argues that the preview showing was staged independent of Luscius, who then must have set about to get access to it. I, of course, have questions that those critics do not voice about the historical reality of Luscius’ conduct. What is important for my purposes is how Terence depicts the scene, Luscius’ role in it, and the purposes of his adversary’s criticism.

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saw to it or knew that the aedile would be present, and because he wanted to cause trouble for Terence with the official. The lengths to which Luscius went to lay his charge before the magistrate were presumably meant to be entertaining. The detractor appears as someone behaving absurdly out of rancor, pushing things to an extreme in his effort to damage his fellow playwright. Terence proceeds to give the specifics of Luscius’ charge against him (23–6): Exclamat furem non poetam fabulam dedisse, et nil dedisse verborum tamen. Colacem esse Naevi et Plauti veterem fabulam: parasiti personam inde ablatam et militis.33 He cried out that a thief, not a playwright, was putting on the play, but that his effort to put one over had failed. There are, he said, a Colax of Naevius and an old play of Plautus. From these the playwright took the characters of the parasite and the soldier.

I accept the interpretation that Terence here means two separate Colaxcomedies, rather than a single work upon which Naevius and Plautus collaborated.34 Luscius’ allegation is that Terence stole when he took the characters of the parasite and the soldier from those Latin predecessors. The personae, Gnatho (the parasite) and Thraso (the soldier), appear in seven scenes in Terence’s play, beginning in act 2.35 Furtum must equate to deriving at least some of those scenes from Naevius and Plautus, which the playwright then incorporated into his adaptation of Menander.36 The problem is the very act of taking things from those earlier authors, rather than Terence’s failure to alter his Latin models enough to meet the threshold for legitimate reuse.37 This is implied in line 26, parasiti personam inde ablatam et militis: Terence’s offense consists simply in reusing the characters (inde ablatam), not in how he handled them. As Terence tells it, Luscius also brings authorial intention into his accusation when he cries out that Terence was unsuccessful in his efforts 33 35

36

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For auferre meaning “to steal,” see OLD s.v. “aufero” 5. 34 So Barsby 1999: 86. The scenes are 2.2, 3.1–2, 4.7, and 5.7–9. Because the characters do not appear until act 2, Terence clearly embellishes (at least) when he suggests that Luscius shouted plagiarism at the beginning or soon after the beginning of the performance. It is certainly the case that scenes with those characters come from a second play besides Menander’s Eunuchus – and as we will see, Terence goes on to claim in his prologue that the second source was Menander’s Colax (30–3). Barsby 1993: 160–79 explores in detail how Terence combined his sources and questions related to that topic. So Grimal 1970: 282.

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to deceive (et nil dedisse verborum tamen [24]).38 Asserting that Terence’s attempt had come to naught posits that attempt in the first place. Luscius charges him with deliberate dishonesty and fraud: Terence schemes to hide his reuse of Naevius and Plautus and, thus, to misrepresent the origins of his play. The actions that, according to Terence, Luscius ascribed to him constitute plagiarism, as we have seen it commonly defined in Latin antiquity and as it continues to be understood today. The accuser alleges the culpable reuse of textual material and maintains that the author sought to deceive his audience. This has to mean that he aimed to hide his debts so that he might pass off what he took from his predecessors as his own. To formulate such a charge is to show that it was possible in the 160s bce to think that Roman playwrights owned their comedies, to the extent that the plays they authored belonged to them as attributed works; plagiarism here presupposes private property upon which the plagiarist encroaches no less than it does in other passages we have examined.39 The notion of ownership abides even though scripts were unstable, being subject to changes at different productions, and even though the existence of written versions of comedies was erratic and uncertain.40 Despite the absence of secure and broad textuality, an accusation could be formulated that assumed the violation of a Latin playwright’s proprietary relationship to his work and to the characters/ scenes it contained.41 Why would someone suppose that an aedile might look askance upon Terence’s reuse of his Latin predecessors? The underlying belief would appear to be that the officials expected a play containing nothing from an earlier Roman source, and thus nothing that had previously appeared on the Roman stage. Luscius’ charge revealed to the magistrates that Terence had 38

39

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41

The wordplay in fabulam / dedisse, et nil dedisse verborum argues strongly against direct quotation and for Terentian embellishment (so Focardi 1978: 84) or fabrication. The playwright, though, or perhaps the actor–manager who had bought the play from the playwright (see Hec. 57), sold the production rights to the aediles. After the performance of a play, moreover, the production rights remained in the possession of the dominus gregis, the manager of a troupe; and the comedy then became part of the troupe’s repertory. This is as close as we get to copyright in antiquity (although the author received no royalties, and the rights, it would appear, were not necessarily exclusive [Phorm. 35–47]). Duckworth 1994: 73–6 and Marshall 2006: 83–6 deal lucidly and succinctly with this topic. On the scarcity of scripts, see Goldberg 2005: 49–50; and on their lack of fixity, see Marshall 2006: 257–61. That violation would also manifest itself (at least initially) in a live performance. But it seems reasonable to suppose that the audience was to think of the plagiarizing Terence as someone working from written texts of Naevius and Plautus. Playwrights, after all, certainly consulted scripts of the Greek plays they reused; it is hard to see why Terence would have been thought to do otherwise with his Latin predecessors.

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deceived them in that regard by incorporating Naevius’ and Plautus’ characters into his Eunuchus. This would logically be a problem if Terence claimed the originality for his work that I have just described, i.e., that it offered up material never before seen in a Latin play, and if the aediles then presented the comedy along those lines. Critics have argued that Terence uses the words nova and integra in other prologues to describe palliatae never before seen in the Roman theater.42 The suggestion is that the Eunuchus was likewise to be such a first-run play, and that the accusation of plagiarism challenged whether it was the original that its playwright said it was, because Terence had flouted the aediles’ anticipation of a nova palliata by lifting characters from earlier Latin comedies.43 This means both that the magistrates had not received what they had expected, namely, a play with content treated by no Roman forerunner, and that they would offer up a false bill of goods to the public, thereby risking disapproval and embarrassment.44 In this reading, then, Terence’s plagiarism has the traits of deception and credit-grabbing that continue to mark the transgression throughout Latin antiquity and that define it transhistorically. At the same time, the identification of illegitimate reuse in his account is tied to a particular cultural context. Not only does the charge he lays out give plagiarism features that it could only have had in the Roman setting, but it also has a polemical force that is specific to the business of Roman comedy. For an attempt to expose Terence’s deceptive practices in the Eunuchus to a magistrate who had optioned the comedy implies an imputation of commercial fraud: Terence deliberately misled the aedile and caused him to buy a play under false pretences.45 (Ambivius Turpio, Terence’s actor– manager, might well have been the one with whom the aedile[s] in fact 42

43

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45

Ad. 12 is a crucial example, and I will examine it below. See also An. 26; Heaut. 4 (a contested case: I accept the interpretation of Goldberg 1986: 135 over that of McElduff 2004: 123–4), 7, 29, and 34; and Phorm. 24–5. In Hec. 2 and 5, meanwhile, the point is that the audience is about to see a debut performance of the play. This could certainly include the idea that this was the debut of the play on the Roman stage (rather than just a debut for Terence). On this topic, see as well Beare 1964: 165 and Barsby 1999: 16. Critics who understand the plagiarism charge against Terence in this manner include Flickinger 1927: 250, Barsby 1999: 16, and Stein 2003: 196. Barsby 1999: 16 speculates on how the audience at the games “might well feel itself cheated if, instead of a brand-new play, it was presented with a further Latin version of a Greek play which had already been adapted for the Roman stage.” We might ask at this point what would have been the thinking in Naples and elsewhere when a play was performed after its initial staging in Rome. One possibility is that the producers and audience acknowledged that the play had been shown in Rome but accepted that it was new to the spectators in those places. I thank Toph Marshall for sharing his ideas on this topic with me. Goldberg 2005: 48 similarly interprets Luscius’ charge.

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dealt.46 But at the preview performance that Terence describes, Luscius would have laid the fraud at the playwright’s feet.) The understood aim was to compromise Terence’s standing in his literary world by driving a wedge between him and an aedile, thereby making him a persona non grata with the officials at the games and giving him a reputation as an untrustworthy poet to deal with. For the only time in extant Latin literature, an act of plagiarism is consequently seen to bring direct financial gain. At issue in Terence’s account is the identity and value of the Eunuchus as a play being staged in Rome for the first time. But along with giving him intangible credit for composing the comedy, the aediles paid to have it staged at their games. As Terence presents things, to make trouble for Terence in the comic marketplace, Luscius aimed to demonstrate to a magistrate that the dishonest playwright had duped him when he offered up his play to him for sale.47 Indeed, Terence might have even meant to suggest that his accuser sought to give the magistrates grounds for invalidating their agreement to produce the Eunuchus.48 We cannot know if the concept of plagiarism that Terence points to in the Eunuchus had already been established and was more broadly recognized in Roman literary culture, simply because no other source gives voice to that way of thinking. The alternatives are that he reveals a new way of defining what was a preexisting literary category in Rome, or that he was the first to apply the idea of plagiarism to a Latin text, presumably importing it from Greece and then adapting it to his cultural setting.49 If Plautus and his predecessor Naevius took their characters from the same Greek play – Menander’s Colax, it would appear, about which Terence will soon speak

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See n. 39, as well as Beare 1964: 164–6. As Parker 1996: 592 and Lebek 1996: 33–4 note, however, it is uncertain whether Turpio was necessarily always the middleman when the aediles purchased Terence’s comedies. Of course, Terence’s transgression is nothing like our copyright infringement. Vardi 2007: 1152 speaks of the first translator of a Greek comedy into Latin as “the owner of, so to speak, the ‘sole distribution rights’ of this play in Latin.” But the “so to speak” is crucial (and see, again, n. 39). Anyway, as I read things, Vardi does not really capture the problem, lying as it does with Terence’s claim of having given the aediles a new Roman play. I derive this point from Marshall 2006: 23. (He, however, pursues a more historical reading than I do – i.e., he seeks to identify Luscius’ actual motive rather than aims to get at the ideas behind Terence’s treatment of the charge.) Goldberg 2005: 49 suggests that the Caecilius who, according to Porphyry, identified plagiarism in Menander is the Roman comic poet of the previous generation to Terence (fl. 179 bce): δὲ, ὥς τι μέγα πεφωρακώς, ὃλον δρᾶμα ἐξ ἀρχης εἰς τέλος Ἀντιφάνους, τὸν Οἰωνιστὴν, μεταγράψαι φησὶ τὸν Μένανδρον εἰς τὸν Δεισιδαίμονα. (Caecilius, as if he had uncovered something great, said that Menander had plagiarized Antiphanes’ entire play Oionistes from beginning to end in his Deisidaimon [Porphyry, ap. Eusebius, Pr. Ev. 465d]). The verb φωρᾶν (“to detect,” but also “to search after a thief or theft”) and the appearance of this remark in a discussion of κλοπαίliterature indicate that Caecilius was referring to plagiarism. But it seems much more likely that this is ˘

46

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in his prologue50 – then it becomes plausible that the concept of plagiarism with which Terence was working was not in place when they wrote. Otherwise, at least, Plautus would have seemingly been vulnerable to the charge that he was repeating material that had already been used in a Latin play.51 Yet it is possible that some members of the literary public held to a particular principle – i.e., that a “new play” could contain nothing that had previously appeared on the Roman stage – that others flouted, perhaps with the idea that individual treatment produced the required novitas.52 After Terence, the only reference to plagiarism in Roman comedy appears in Macrobius’ fifth-century ce Saturnalia. At the opening of book 6, the speaker, Rufius Albinus, quotes Lucius Afranius, the author of fabulae togatae, or comedies set in Italy, who lived in the second half of the second century bce. Presumably in a prologue, Afranius responds to the charge that he plagiarized many things from Menander by admitting to the debts and adding that he also took material from Roman comedies that he admired.53 The rhetorical tactic is to undercut the derision by redefining it in one’s own

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Caecilius of Calacte, the first-century bce rhetor and historian, who wrote a book περὶ ὕψους (On the Sublime) to which pseudo-Longinus responded. Hence the notice in Porphyry cannot be used to show the Latin playwright Caecilius’ familiarity with plagiarism. On Menander’s play, see Pernerstorfer 2009. While there are other Greek candidates – for example, Alexis’ Parasitos, upon which Menander probably relied – Terence himself indicates that Naevius’ and Plautus’ plays are versions of Menander’s (Eun. 33–4, with Barsby 1999: 87; see also n. 64). So Barsby 1999: 87 (whose language on p. 16 I also echo). Duckworth 1994: 48 contends as well that the presence of the same titles in the lists of Naevius’ and Plautus’ comedies (including, he notes, the Colax), along with the fact that Caecilius might have based the Synaristosae upon Menander’s play that Plautus had previously reworked in the Cistellaria, implies the absence of the concept found in Terence. This is to presume that Plautus, like Terence, presented his plays initially as “new,” i.e., as works never before seen on the Roman stage. Of course, to adapt the same material from a Greek model that a Latin predecessor adapted is different from taking material from that Latin predecessor directly. But in each case, the later Roman playwright would still present things that had already appeared on the Roman stage. Even if the notion of plagiarism that Terence describes had broader currency, moreover, we cannot know how totalizing the ban on reusing Latin sources was and, specifically, how people would have reacted to perceived adaptations of individual lines from Latin models, without the concomitant reuse of macroelements like scenes and characters. (Nor do we know how Terence reconciled that kind of borrowing with the concept of plagiarism he describes.) Afranius enim togatarum scriptor in ea togata quae Compitalia inscribitur, non inverecunde respondens arguentibus quod plura sumpsisset a Menandro, “fateor,” inquit, “sumpsi non ab illo modo sed ut quisquis habuit quod conveniret mihi quodque me non posse melius facere credidi, etiam a Latino” (for Afranius, the writer of togatae, in that play which is entitled Compitalia, responded not brashly to those accusing him because he had taken many things from Menander. He said, “I confess that I have taken not only from him but also from any author who had anything that fit my purpose, and who I believed wrote something better than I ever could, even when he was a Latin author” [Sat. 6.1.4]). The Macrobian context, in which Albinus argues against the idea that Virgil plagiarized and uses Afranius to support his point, makes it clear that plagiarism is at issue with Afranius. It seems reasonable to suppose that Afranius’ account of the charge was a fiction or an exaggeration and an attempt to personalize either an agonistic theme he found in Terence specifically or a broader topos that he and Terence both used. It is certainly conceivable, too, that Afranius was responding to a model we do not have.

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way and turning the thing for which one is criticized into a virtue. Seeing that the charge is of plagiarizing from the Greek Menander, it is clear that criteria different from those operative in Terence were in place for identifying plagiarism. Afranius’ claim that he reused Latin models, meanwhile, seems meant to be provocative.54 As such, it could suggest his assumption that such borrowing was improper or could simply reflect how Afranius was being defiant by showing how widespread his debts were. In any event, the case of Afranius can tell us nothing about whether other comic poets after Terence, particularly those composing palliatae, faced the kind of charges he describes. What is clear about Terence’s discussion of the plagiarism charge is that he wanted it to be legible to his audience, regardless of how common the concept of theft that he describes was, and to win the crowd over to the author and his play. As we have observed, the account solicits the attention and the favor of the spectators by providing them with entertainment and by portraying Terence as a sympathetic object of his rival’s malevolent detraction. But it also does something more: it advertises the presence in the play of Gnatho and Thraso. These characters are traditionally funny ones in Roman comedy, and in the Eunuchus, they provide the kind of broad humor, farce, and playfulness associated less with Terence than with Plautus. Notable examples are the boasting scene that opens act 3 (391–453), the mock battle in act 4 (771–816), and the conclusion of the play, where Thraso is an object of mockery (1031–93).55 The results are increased comic effect and livelier stage action.56 Such elements seem designed to have easy appeal, to engage an audience with their accessible humor – and the sources tell us that the Eunuchus was Terence’s greatest success, which he earned after perhaps learning a lesson from the failure of the drier, almost somber Hecyra.57 Naturally, the audience does not yet know specifically how those figures will be treated in the play. But by referring to Luscius’ charge as he does, Terence is able to foreground characters that are customarily good for laughs. While still not offering up any plot exposition, he gives a slight glimpse into the play’s content in order to create anticipation for the arrival of the crowd-pleasing personae and, at the same time, to set the spectators’ attention on the figures that are vital to producing this most burlesque and “Plautine” of his comedies. Recent critics have found other links between the allegation of plagiarism and the content of the Eunuchus. One argument is that both Terence, an alleged textual intruder, and Luscius, who intrudes upon a production of the 54 55

56

Its position implies as much: the aim seems to be to end with a bang. I sidestep the question of whether all of this material (and particularly all of the conclusion) comes from Menander’s Colax. Again, Barsby 1993 deals with this issue. I echo J. Lowe 1983: 429. 57 So Beare 1937: 107 suggests.

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play, are doubles for the central action of the play, the intrusion of Chaerea, disguised as a eunuch, into the house of Thais to rape Pamphila.58 Others posit a looser connection between Terence’s furtum and the rape on the grounds that the plagiarism reflects the important themes of aggression and violation in the play.59 A challenge to the latter reading emerges when we consider that the repetition of the verbs laedere and lacessere in the prologue (2, 6, 16, and 18), which the critics understand to underscore the parallel between plagiarism and rape, also occurs in the prologue to the Phormio (11, 13, and 19; note, too, certare in 20). Because plagiarism does not figure in the Phormio prologue, and because the play itself does not feature a rape, the conclusion presents itself that Terence used the terms in the Eunuchus not to connect the theme of the prologue with the plot of the play, but simply to underscore Luscius’ hostility, as he does in his other work. The suggestion is of language that is not bound to the content of the Eunuchus, but that just emphasizes in different prologues the vehemence of the literary attacks that Terence endures. It is also the case that at least most of the audience would not have been in a position to note either of the links that scholars have drawn, since it had heard no exposition of the story.60 I find it unlikely that Terence drew any such connections when they would not have been readily communicable to his spectators. It was not subtle, even obscure thematic foreshadowing he was after but rather the attention and favor of his audience as a victim of entertaining unwarranted attacks and as an author of appealing new comic material.

winning the argument, winning over the audience Nearly all the rest of the prologue to the Eunuchus is occupied by Terence’s refutation of Luscius’ charge of plagiarism. The playwright begins his defense by asserting si id est peccatum, peccatum imprudentiast / poetae, non quo furtum facere studuerit (if there has been an offense, the playwright committed it unintentionally, not because he wanted to plagiarize [27–8]). Whatever id refers to,61 Terence excuses himself by asserting that he had no intention of plagiarizing from Naevius and 58 60

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Sharrock 2009: 90. 59 Dessen 1995: 137, with Gowers 2004: 157–8. It also seems safe to suppose that most audience members would not have known the plot of Menander’s Eunuchus. Gelhaus 1972: 50 n. 26 and Stein 2003: 197 n. 56 argue that id refers to the act of taking characters from a Greek play that turns out to have been already translated by Naevius and Plautus. But in my view, Terence was more likely focusing his attention on his Roman predecessors alone and on how they all

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Plautus.62 The apologetic tactic, which appears in Latin legal contexts,63 is to use the absence of any will to do wrong to show that one has not done wrong. After relating that Luscius accused him of conscious scheming and deceit (recall dare verba in line 24), Terence thus offers up some biographical criticism of his own. The point is to answer the intentionalist complaint he describes and to prove his innocence by proving the innocence of his thoughts and aims. Denying the studium furti serves as a first line of defense because Terence recognized that his intentions were crucial to determining his guilt or innocence when the issue was deliberate fraud. Hence the immediate refuge he takes in imprudentia, which obviously refutes the charge of a premeditated act of deception. Terence continues to proclaim that he had no intention of committing plagiarism as his apology proceeds (30–4): Colax Menandrist, in east parasitus colax et miles gloriosus. eas se non negat personas transtulisse in Eunuchum suam ex Graeca. sed eas fabulas factas prius Latinas scisse sese, id vero pernegat. There is a Colax of Menander, which contains a flattering parasite and a braggart soldier. The playwright does not deny that he has transferred these characters into his Eunuchus from the Greek. But he quite adamantly denies that he knew that those previous Latin plays existed.64

As Terence tells it, the parasite and soldier that lie at the center of the plagiarism charge against him in fact come directly from a Greek model other than that of the Eunuchus: Menander’s Colax. In admitting to this debt, Terence acknowledges having intended to combine two works of Menander to create a double plot. This blending of sources matches up with what Terence describes in other prologues as contaminatio: critics, he says, accuse him of “contaminating” his Greek models by using more than one of them in a single palliata.65 Of course, it is uncertain if Terence’s description

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shared characters. That is, one can paraphrase not with “If I committed a wrong by taking the characters from a Greek play already translated by Naevius and Plautus,” but with “If I committed a wrong by presenting the same characters as Naevius and Plautus.” On imprudentia meaning “absence of intention, inadvertency,” see OLD s.v. “imprudentia” 2. Gelhaus 1972: 51–2. I follow Barsby (1999: 87) in how I translate lines 33–4, and suppose with him that eas fabulas factas prius / Latinas means the two Latin versions of Menander’s Colax, i.e., “that the play had already been turned into Latin by Naevius and Plautus.” Quae convenere in Andriam ex Perinthia [two plays of Menander] / fatetur transtulisse atque usum pro suis. / id isti vituperant factum atque in eo disputant / contaminari non decere fabulas (he admits that he

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of contaminatio captures any actual responses to his work, because the historicity of the feud is in doubt. Many who accept the reality of the dispute, moreover, suppose that the content of the criticism differed from Terence’s account of it.66 But it is still the case that Terence responds to the charge of contamination by asserting the long-standing legitimacy of combining Greek models.67 This way of thinking manifests itself again in Terence’s explanation of where he found his parasite and soldier for the Eunuchus. His acknowledgment that he took those personae from Menander’s Colax and inserted them into an adaptation of Menander’s Eunuchus implies his belief that such activity, in being nothing to hide, was legitimate. Terence goes on to distinguish the reuse of Greek originals from that of Naevius and Plautus. The apologetic line is to establish two separate categories of reuse and to set the former pursuit against the latter by presenting the mixing of two of Menander’s plays as an alternative to adapting Naevius and Plautus, whose works Terence vehemently denies even knowing (vero pernegat [34]).68 As the late-antique commentator Eugraphius summed up the allegation against Terence, Graecam comoediam in Latinam transferre liceat, de Latina non liceat (one could translate a Greek comedy into Latin, but could not translate from a Latin play [Wessner 1962–3: iii 1.89.9–11]); although Eugraphius does not get into why this was so, he captures the fault line with which Terence was working when taking refuge in contaminatio. It was fine to admit to translating and mixing Greek models when plagiarism was a matter of reusing Roman sources. To defend himself as Terence did was to absolve him without, it would seem, actually denying that the Eunuchus contained characters that had already appeared in Latin comedies. For if he turned to the same Colax as Naevius and

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transferred whatever was suitable for his Andria from the Perinthia and used it freely for his own purposes. His critics upbraid him for it and argue against the right to contaminate plays in this way [An. 13–16]); and nam quod rumores distulerunt malevoli / multas contaminasse Graecas dum facit / paucas Latinas (as to the fact that malicious critics have spread the rumor that he has contaminated many Greek plays while making few Latin ones [Heaut. 16–18]). There is an abundance of criticism on contaminatio: examples I have found useful are Beare 1959: 7–11 and 1964: 96–108; Klose 1966: 86–8 and 108–13; Ludwig 1968: 171–5; Büchner 1974: 15–16, 21, 24, and 26; Goldberg 1986: 91–122; Duckworth 1994: 202–8; and Kruschwitz 2004: 179–80. Qui quom hunc accusant, Naevium, Plautum, Ennium / accusant, quos hic noster auctores habet, / quorum aemulari exoptat neglegentiam / potius quam istorum obscuram diligentiam (when they accuse me of this, they accuse Naevius, Plautus, and Ennius, whom our author takes as his models, and whose carelessness he prefers to imitate, rather than the obscurantist diligence of his critics [An. 18– 21]); and habet bonorum exemplum, quo exemplo sibi / licere facere quod illi fecerunt putat (he has the precedent of good authors, on the basis of which he thinks he can do what they did [Heaut. 20–1]). Thus I agree with D’Alton 1931: 15, Goldberg 1986: 93, and Sharrock 2009: 91, who all maintain that contamination and plagiarism form two separate pursuits.

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Plautus did, then he would still be presenting material that they had earlier put on the stage. According to Terence, though, he followed in their footsteps accidentally and therefore innocently, because he had not known about them; and this justifies the act of presenting the Eunuchus as a play that was new to the Roman stage, on the grounds that Terence wrote (and sold) it in the belief that it was nova.69 Terence’s contention that he was unfamiliar with Naevius’ and Plautus’ comedies may well have been accurate.70 To reiterate a point made earlier, access to earlier Latin scripts would have been limited in the 160s bce, which makes it conceivable that Terence would have had no contact with his predecessors’ works. But the key for Terence’s apology is not that his claim of ignorance was true, but that it be believed. This would make his defense unimpeachable: Luscius’ allegation would have no merit, because an author could not have taken anything from any Latin sources, let alone schemed to hide his debts to them, when those sources were unknown to him. Once more, the controversy hinges upon the poet’s inner state, as Terence seeks to continue to set the record straight about what his designs were and were not. The portrait is of the contestability of authorial intentions. Luscius and Terence engaged in a he-said/he-said debate based upon different reconstructions of what the latter had set out to do. Nowhere else in his prologues does Terence so vigorously deny the criticism of his detractors. Certainly he need not have been that forceful: to note briefly and breezily that he was unfamiliar with Naevius’ and Plautus’ plays would have been enough to preclude the possibility of plagiarism. The decision to offer an extensive and heated refutation causes the allegation to come across as a serious one.71 An apologist, after all, is apt to rouse himself to a robust assertion of innocence when he considers the 69

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Based on the criteria for plagiarism with which, I think, he was working, Terence would have consequently still been liable to a charge of plagiarizing due to how he recast in a nova palliata Greek material that had already been used in Roman plays. But his approach assumes that his ignorance and, with it, his innocent intentions work to absolve him of that wrongdoing. So Goldberg 2005: 49–50. (This would also help to explain si id est peccatum in line 27: Terence indicates that he could only assume that the characters had appeared in Naevius and Plautus, because he had not seen their plays.) See also Duckworth 1994: 63, who notes that earlier critics (Fabia 1888: 225 and Norwood 1923: 138 n. 3) had, on the contrary, looked upon Terence’s claim of ignorance skeptically, and even dismissed it as a lie – an approach that Sharrock 2009: 91 also takes. Flickinger 1927: 260, meanwhile, calls Terence’s excuse “transparent and clumsy.” Critics who recognize the seriousness of the accusation (though in historical terms, rather than as a matter of how Terence portrays it) are Fabia 1888: 223; Simon 1961: 491; Goldberg 1986: 94; Duckworth 1994: 63; and Barsby 1999: 16. Gratwick 1999: 3, moreover, notes that Terence is “at pains to refute the charge of plagiarism from Latin sources.” For the contrary view that the charge of plagiarism was trivial, see Klose 1966: 129. Sharrock 2009: 92, meanwhile, considers Terence’s account of the conflict to be “a piece of nonsense.”

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criticism he was answering to be a real and meaningful threat.72 When coupled with the detail that Luscius intended his accusation for an aedile, moreover, Terence’s vehemence suggests a charge intended to do real damage to him specifically in the literary marketplace. The playwright continues to represent the criticism as something that was designed to harm his standing with the authorities, to drive a wedge between them. By putting his vehement denial on the stage, however, Terence presumably meant for it to entertain no less than the rest of the conflict did. A crowd that took pleasure in the give-and-take of vitriol would likely find all the more appealing a passionate defense, since it would intensify the polemic all the more. The suggestion is of a potentially damaging line of attack that Terence answers with befitting attention and intensity. But when performed, the passions of the dispute acquire entertainment value, which works to draw in the audience all the more via the lively spectacle of heated conflict, however one understood the historicity of the situation Terence describes. At the same time as it entertains the crowd, Terence’s apology assures it that he did not intend to cheat it of a new play. The concern on this level is to create an identity for the author as an honest broker who respects his audience and cares about giving it the kind of comedy it expects. Through his defense Terence relates that he has not played the public false but has, instead, treated it with integrity and respect. This makes him a fitting recipient of its goodwill and support.73 To exculpate himself as he does is also to advertise his quest for and concern with originality, defined in specific terms. The apology underlines a trait that lends a play value and, in the process, gives the theatergoers all the more reason to look well upon the playwright and his work. Perhaps Terence directed his comments toward the aediles as well. In this scenario, the playwright uses his response to Luscius’ charge, in part, to relate that the magistrates could trust him to be true in his dealings with them, while continuing to justify how his new

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I disagree with Barsby 1999: 87 that pernegare in line 34 should be read against pernoscatis in line 45 (cum silentio animum attendite / ut pernoscatis quid sibi Eunuchus velit [pay attention in silence, so that you may get to know well what the Eunuch has to say]). In my judgment, the verb responds instead to non negat in line 31. In the move from the mild “he does not deny” to the strong verb, Terence underscores the vehemence with which he denies the charge of plagiarizing from his Latin predecessors. Again, even those who saw the controversy as a fiction or as a fictionalized exaggeration would have been able to take away that idea.

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play came to have characters found in earlier Latin comedies. Whether or not the aediles were present, Terence supposed that the message would get back to them, so that they took away a positive picture of the poet as a business partner. (Assuming that the ancient evidence is accurate and the aediles paid a record sum for the Eunuchus, this would have been an apt thing for Terence to convey.74) Denying any knowledge of Naevius’ and Plautus’ Colax-plays would seem to lend finality to Terence’s defense, providing as it does a definitive argument that he had not plagiarized. Nevertheless, Terence adds one more item to his apology (35–43): Quod si personis isdem huic uti non licet, qui magis licet currentem servom scribere, bonas matronas facere, meretrices malas, parasitum edacem, gloriosum militem, puerum supponi, falli per servom senem, amare odisse suspicari? denique nullumst iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius. qua re aequomst vos cognoscere atque ignoscere quae veteres factitarunt si faciunt novi.

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But if he cannot use the same characters, who can again describe a running slave, good matrons, bad prostitutes, a greedy parasite, a boastful soldier? Who can again describe a substituted baby, an old man deceived by a slave, love, hate, or suspicion? In the end, there is nothing said that has not been said before. Therefore, it is fair that you examine the situation and forgive new playwrights for doing what playwrights have always done.

Terence here engages in special pleading and shifts the terms of the debate. After stating that Luscius has accused him of stealing characters from specific models, he responds in his closing argument as though the issue were the presence of the same character types in his and his predecessors’ plays. This is to try to have it two ways. While Terence asserts that his flattering parasite and boastful soldier derive from a particular Greek model, which means that they are not merely stock figures, he also implies that similarities between his and his Latin predecessors’ characters result from their working with the same stereotyped personae and are accidental. The suggestion is of merely generic parallels, rather than direct 74

Suetonius (Vit. Ter. 2) and Donatus (ad Eun. praef. 6) relate that the aediles paid 8,000 sesterces for the play. On this topic, see Parker 1996: 591–2. Even if Ambivius Turpio did not act as the middleman in the sale of the Eunuchus to the aediles, and even if he did not deliver the prologue to the play, the assurances could also extend to him and reinforce that he was an honest dealer whenever he delivered up Terence’s or others’ plays to the magistrates.

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debts.75 The shift in rhetorical strategy brings a shift in how Terence represents the allegation. Having just treated it as a serious matter, he now tries to slough it off as silly. This is to convey that, while Luscius’ charge was meant to do real harm and, therefore, warranted Terence’s strong response, it was way off base. Terence’s stance reveals that he recognized the incompatibility between reworking traditional literary material and plagiarism. In his understood equation, elements of comedies that are conventional stand beyond the boundaries of theft. An author cannot plagiarize when reusing stock subject matter, because in that case he simply deals with generic types, which are open to all.76 As the comment denique / nullumst iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius (40–1) implies, moreover, repetition is involuntary and inevitable in Roman comedy. Although this apparently proverbial remark has been seen to offer a gnomic truth about the nature of language or of literary composition as a whole,77 Terence uses it simply to punctuate the idea that every comic playwright dips into the same common store when delineating standard characters and putting them in typical situations. One should not cry foul, therefore, if poets like Terence produce characters resembling those that the playwrights of old repeatedly produced (see 42–3). By asserting what lies outside of plagiarism’s domain, Terence indirectly relates what lies inside of it. Thus the playwright presumes the innocence of the chance parallels that appear when authors treat stock subject matter because he holds that plagiarism requires not merely textual resemblance, but a direct relationship between texts – in this instance, Latin texts. The presupposition is of a conscious borrower drawing material from a particular source or sources. So, too, Terence’s argument points to an understanding of the difference between personal, private literary property, which consists in an author’s particular expression of content, and public literary property, which includes traditional character types. It is strictly the former that comes within the orbit of plagiarism, where one takes improper 75

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I echo Duckworth 1994: 63–4, who comments on the “considerable sophistry” in Terence’s argument. It bears noting that the issue of stock characters also comes up in the prologue to the Heauton Timoroumenos (37–40, on which see Slater 1992: 93). But there the speaker, Ambivius Turpio, asserts when defending the mellowness of the comedy that he does not want in his old age to play again and again a “running slave, angry old man, hungry parasite, shameless swindler, and greedy pimp.” The argument that conventional material is incompatible with plagiarism continues to appear today in, e.g., Mallon 1989: 220–9 and Posner 2007: 13–14 (on copyright infringement, but with obvious application to plagiarism). Examples appear in Lindey 1952: 236, Shields 2010: 8, and Randy Kennedy’s article “The FreeAppropriation Writer” in the New York Times, 28 February 2010. Barsby 1999: 88 notes that the remark was evidently proverbial in antiquity, although no parallel has turned up in Greek and Latin literature.

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possession of what belongs to another. Meanwhile, any reuse of the latter, which nobody owns, is blameless. That the conventional material in Terence’s list contains a greedy parasite and boastful soldier must not be coincidental. The suggestion is that Terence was again using his discussion of plagiarism to advertise the Eunuchus, with an emphasis on how his play includes figures in the “flattering parasite” (parasitus colax [30]) and “boastful solider” (miles gloriosus [31]) that are always good for a laugh. Terence chooses to list characters and situations that he knows appeal to the public, including two that, as he has already made clear, will appear in the play to come. The argument contains another appetizer for the comedy, a final hint at the lively material in store.78 Once more, then, Terence uses his discussion for rhetorical purposes that include but transcend negating criticism. The denial that he plagiarized allows him to communicate with his audience about the play they are about to see, to excite them about it and to lay the ground for the positive reception of the text. silenced attacks and quiet assistance The plagiarism accusation that Terence describes in the Adelphoe also centers upon his relationship to a Latin predecessor. After relating that prejudiced critics – whose leader, we are presumably to understand, was Luscius79 – unfairly criticized his play (1–3), and after asking the audience to determine whether he merits praise or blame (4–5), the playwright lays out the basis for the charge.80 He begins by reporting that Plautus based his Commorientes upon the Greek Diphilus’ Synapothescontes but left out the opening scene, in which a young man abducts a girl from her 78

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Sharrock 2009: 92–3 contends that Terence’s list “actually highlights the ways in which Terence’s construction of character and plot in fact deviates from the norms at the same time as depending on them.” While it is certainly true that Terence does vary stock characters, and that several of those listed do not appear in the Eunuchus (as Sharrock notes), it seems to me that Terence would not have wanted his audience members to see how little he conformed to his list but instead would have wanted them to pick up on how his play had characters that did conform to it. This is consistent with using the prologue for the programmatic purpose of drawing the audience into the play, which Sharrock herself recognizes as a fundamental prefatory aim for Terence. Terence conveys that he was dealing with more than one critic by using the plural to describe his adversaries (iniquis [2], advorsarios [2], malevoli [15], illi [17]). Given the emphasis on Luscius in other prologues, it then seems altogether likely that Terence wanted his audience to recall his feud with that playwright and to see the critics as Luscius’ adherents. There may be a small lacuna after line 3; see Gelhaus 1972: 64. (I use the text of Martin 1976.) Regardless of who delivered the prologue, moreover, the remark in line 4 that “the poet himself will present the evidence for his trial” (indicio de se ipse erit) indicates that the speaker is Terence’s mouthpiece.

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pimp.81 Terence proceeds to assert that he reproduced Diphilus’ passage word for word in the Adelphoe, which he presents as a “new play.” The audience is then asked to consider carefully whether the playwright had committed plagiarism (furtum) or reclaimed a carelessly omitted scene (6–14). The train of thought indicates that the critics mentioned at the outset of the prologue were the ones who had charged him with stealing, in an effort to malign him:82 Synapothnescontes Diphili comoediast: eam Commorientis Plautus fecit fabulam. in Graeca adulescens est qui lenoni eripit meretricem in prima fabula: eum Plautus locum reliquit integrum, eum hic locum sumpsit sibi in Adelphos, verbum de verbo expressum extulit. eam nos acturi sumus novam: pernoscite furtumne factum existumetis an locum reprehensum qui praeteritus neglegentiast.

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Synapothnescontes is a comedy of Diphilus; Plautus based his play the Commorientes on it. At the beginning of the Greek play a young man steals a prostitute from her pimp. Plautus left the scene untouched, and our poet transferred it into his Adelphoe, translating it word for word. We are about to perform the work as a new play. Consider carefully whether you think that plagiarism has been committed or whether a scene has been reclaimed that was carelessly overlooked.

The central issue in Terence’s account is the way he presents the Adelphoe as nova (eam nos acturi sumus novam [12]) while including in it a scene from Diphilus that Plautus had left out when he adapted that Greek model;83 the problem is that Plautus stands between his new Adelphoe and Diphilus’ Synapothnescontes. By implication, the accusers cited Plautus’ earlier adaptation of Diphilus as evidence that Terence’s claim that his play was new was a bogus one. This strongly points to a situation where nova means a comedy appearing for the first time on the Roman stage, and where that designation is deemed incompatible with the earlier production of the 81

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The Commorientes is not included among the twenty-one comedies that Varro ascribed to Plautus in the first century bce from the roughly 130 that were circulating under Plautus’ name, thus creating the canon of Plautine comedy. For my purposes, though, it is enough that there was a Latin play of that name attributed to Plautus (if not actually written by him) that preceded Terence. Terence thus does not present the allegation as a hypothetical one, as Simon 1961: 490 and Klose 1966: 151 contend. Because there is such a clear link between the account of how Terence had been unfairly criticized and the account of the plagiarism charge, moreover, the aforementioned possible presence of a lacuna after line 3 is moot for my purposes. The word neglegentia in line 14 to describe how Plautus bypassed the scene in question need not have been negative. See An. 20, cited in n. 67, for a parallel. I would suggest that the term refers neutrally to Plautus’ looseness or casualness when adapting his model.

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Commorientes.84 Terence should not have claimed that his play was new, i.e., that it contained material never before seen in the Latin theater, given the existence of the Plautine work. To do so was to commit plagiarism, which Terence again designates with the word furtum, just as he had in Eun. 28 (with fur in Eun. 23). There are three ways of reconstructing more precisely the content of the charge with which Terence was working. The first is that the accusers saw plagiarism in the act of reusing Diphilus’ scene even though they knew and let it be known that Plautus had omitted it. This seems a very improbable way of thinking, however, since the charge in that case would not actually show that Terence’s material had already been staged in Rome.85 The second is that the accusers posited Plautus’ reuse of the Greek scene in question and then attacked Terence for recasting Diphilus in an ostensibly “new” play after Plautus had done so, rather than for adapting his Latin predecessor directly. But to me the most plausible idea is that Terence was dealing with the same formula for plagiarism in the Adelphoe that he had dealt with the previous year in the Eunuchus. However fictional or exaggerated the charges were – and the reasons for questioning the reality and accuracy of Terence’s account in the Eunuchus remain in place in the Adelphoe – they would match up in centering upon the playwright’s reuse of an earlier Roman comic writer: the implied situation is that the critics had Plautus adapting Diphilus’ scene and, then, Terence adapting Plautus. Just as in the Eunuchus, the conflict, now made explicit, lies between the debts to a Latin precursor and the claim that the Adelphoe was nova. The accusers deem fraudulent Terence’s assertion that he was presenting a play for the first time on the Roman stage, because a scene in it derived from Plautus. The indication is of dishonest authorial intentions, with Terence deliberately misrepresenting the place of his play in the Latin tradition and its newness in the theater. 84

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Critics who understand the charge along these lines are Fabia 1888: 107, Dziatzko-Kauer 1903: 10, Gelhaus 1972: 65, and (seemingly) Duckworth 1994: 64. Gratwick 1999: 179 offers a different and, to my mind, mistaken interpretation, arguing that “new” “is best taken to mean ‘an adaptation really quite different from the Greek original in some parts’ or, what would amount to the same thing, ‘different from a previous version by Terence.’” Such a charge would by logic suppose that reworking material from a Greek poet who had also served as a model for an earlier Latin playwright disqualified the later work from being called nova, since its Greek source had already been transferred to the Roman stage, even when that Latin predecessor had not adapted the particular material in question. This certainly would seem to be an overly severe stricture; for it would indict an author just for having the same Greek model as another Roman playwright, but not for recasting the same Greek content that the earlier playwright had, let alone for adapting that Latin model directly. As we will see, moreover, Terence assumes that there is no problem with having the same Greek source as Plautus when that Roman playwright did not adapt the material from the Greek play that he did.

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The audience is to see with all speed and clarity that Terence’s accusers got things wrong. The calm conviction is that the absence of the relevant scene from Plautus’ work ensured that Terence had not committed plagiarism. This means that the imperative pernoscite in line 12 is ironic. Terence supposes that the members of the crowd need not really ponder the matter of his guilt or innocence, but will easily come to the correct conclusion from the basic facts he has given.86 The emptiness of the charge allows Terence to be simple and brief with his defense, to suppose that his audience will see things as he does and conclude that, since Plautus’ play did not contain the scene in question, what he did with that scene was not a problem and, in fact, constituted reclaiming a locus.87 Terence might have wished to indicate that his rivals were themselves deceitful: although they knew that Plautus did not recast Diphilus, they suppressed that fact when charging Terence with plagiarizing. But the account need not imply this. For Terence could have been suggesting that the critics knew about Plautus’ turn to Diphilus but not about his omission of the relevant scene. The limited availability of written scripts in the 160s bce sets the conditions for this error. It is possible to imagine critics acquainted with the basic information that Plautus had adapted Diphilus’ Synapothnescontes but unaware of how he had left out the scene that Terence reproduced because they had no access to a manuscript of Plautus’ work. Perhaps Terence made up a charge with this backstory in mind, or perhaps he embellished some sort of comment on his scene that had been based on the assumption that he had followed Plautus instead of Diphilus. In either case, he would have been working with the idea that his accusers made the error of placing Plautus between him and Diphilus, and could have then understood their position to be that, as Plautus had adapted Diphilus, so he 86

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Pernoscere appears in the prologue to the Eunuchus (45; see n. 72) and the Andria (25). I would suggest that the Adelphoe repeats the apparently conventional term but invests it with an ironic tone that reflects its immediate rhetorical surroundings; one need not scrutinize things very closely at all to see that Terence was not a plagiarist. I would thus disagree with Duckworth 1994: 64, who contends that the “assurance of [Terence’s] manner shows that he now felt his position as a dramatist to be secure.” The situation as I understand it is, instead, that Terence considers the plagiarism charge to be entirely groundless. D’Alton 1931: 16 comes to the same conclusion: “Evidently Terence did not regard his action as plagiarism, inasmuch as the scene in question had never before been represented on the Roman stage.” It bears noting as well that Terence has no qualms about stating that he translated Diphilius “word for word” (verbum de verbo). While the Romans understood “exact” translation much more loosely than we do today (so Martin 1976: 102, with McElduff 2004: 122–3, cited in chapter 2 n. 58), it is still clear from Terence’s statement that his concern was not at all with how closely he stuck to his Greek model – a situation that makes sense when we accept that the plagiarism with which he was dealing was entirely a Latin matter in the ways I have suggested. (So, too, Terence once again admits to combining two Greek sources, which implies that he considered that practice perfectly legitimate.)

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had adapted Plautus.88 If this were the scenario that Terence wished to have understood, he would have still rendered his rivals overzealous misreaders, while absolving them of the conscious distortion of facts.89 Terence provides no information about the target audience for his critics’ accusations. It is tempting, however, to take the Eunuchus as a guide and to suppose that Terence was working with a situation where the accusers meant to have their charges come to the attention of P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus and Q. Fabius Maximus. According to the didascalia, these two put on the funeral games for their biological father, L. Aemilius Paullus, at which the Adelphoe was first performed.90 Based on the precedent of the Eunuchus, Terence would have imagined (or hoped) that his audience would postulate critics who aimed to alert Scipio and Fabius to how Terence had violated their expectation of a brand-new palliata and failed to provide them with what he claimed to provide. As in the Eunuchus, the understood goal would have been to cause trouble for Terence with those who had chosen his play for production, by alleging that he had deceived them willfully. Immediately after his remarks on plagiarism, Terence places Roman aristocrats at the center of a second allegation against him. In lines 15–16, he echoes a point made in the Heauton Timoroumenos91 and relates that his critics accuse him of constantly relying upon elites (homines nobiles) as ghostwriters (nam quod isti dicunt malevoli, homines nobilis / hunc adiutare adsidueque una scribere [as to their accusation that members of the aristocracy help the poet and constantly collaborate with him]). The charge thus 88

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This possibility is raised by Dziatzko-Kauer 1903: 10–11, as is the option that the accusers were distorting things by suppressing the information that Plautus had omitted the scene. I do not consider lines 2–3, in which Terence claims that his play is being subjected to unfair criticism (ab iniquis observari [2]) and is being picked to pieces by his rivals (advorsarios / rapere in peiorem partem [2–3]; see Martin 1976: 101, citing Sluman, for “picked to pieces”), necessarily to imply the intentional manipulation of facts. The point is simply that the play was meeting with malign and captious attacks. Scholars have accepted the evidence of the didascalia to the Adelphoe that the play was performed at Paullus’ funeral games. As Gowers 2004: 161 observes, moreover, the comedy, on the subject of brothers, seems particularly appropriate for games put on by Paullus’ biological sons, since both of them had been adopted, as Aeschinus was in the play. (One would not want to push this too far, however, and equate Paullus with the curmudgeonly biological father, Demea, in Terence.) For other observations on the appropriateness of the play, see Leigh 2001: 15. Tum quod malevolus vetus poeta dictitat / repente ad studium hunc se applicasse musicum, / amicum ingenio fretum, haud natura sua, / arbitrium vostrum, vestra existumatio / valebit (as to the fact that the malicious old playwright insists further that our author has come quickly to writing plays, relying upon the talent of his friends, not on his own skill, he leaves the matter to your judgment; your opinion will prevail [Heaut. 22–6]).

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saddles the playwright with another form of authorial falseness that is closely related to plagiarism. Indeed, how ghostwriting operates when an audience is unaware of the debt to a source author corresponds to how plagiarism operates. The nominal writer or speaker deceives his audience into thinking that he produced something he did not and, in the process, receives fraudulent credit.92 While Terence presumably concocted or embellished the accusations of ghostwriting, his biographer Suetonius makes it clear that ancient interpreters accepted the historicity of the charges. The questions then became whether the rivals were correct in their allegations and, if they were, who the ghostwriters were. According to Suetonius, while different candidates were put forth, the common gossip was that Scipio Aemilianus and Gaius Laelius, Scipio’s friend, were the collaborators (non obscura fama est adiutum Terentium in scriptis a Laelio et Scipione [it is a well-known story that Laelius and Scipio helped Terence to write his plays {Vit. Ter. 3}]).93 The Adelphoe provides a basis for at least part of that rumor to take hold. A prologue to a play that the aristocratic Scipio had chosen for his father’s funeral games would have been a fitting place to address a complaint of ghostwriting involving that noble.94 This was surely not lost on Terence. His assumption must have been that the thoughts of his audience members would naturally turn to those putting on the games when he alluded to the aristocrats who allegedly wrote for him, meaning that the performance context would place Scipio among the homines nobiles. Even though, Terence says, his critics took the accusation that he depended upon aristocratic ghostwriters as a serious reproach, he opts not to deny it in the Adelphoe. Instead, he states that he considers it the greatest compliment that he had won the support of such universally favored men (17–21):

92

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Very often, however, audiences will know that a person is relying upon a ghostwriter. Ghostwriting also differs from plagiarism in that the ghostwriter knows that another will take credit for his work, whereas a source author enters into no agreement with his plagiarist. On ghostwriting in republican Rome, see Clift 1945: 117–21. References to political ghostwriting in the imperial period appear in Tacitus, Ann. 13.3 and Hist. 1.90; Julian, Caes. 327A–B; and Historiae Augustae, Hadr. 3.11, Ael. 4.7, and Ant. 11.3. Suetonius goes on to give anecdotes illustrating the spread of the rumor and to relate that the firstcentury bce critic Santra argued against Scipio and Laelius and for G. Sulpicius Gallus, Q. Fabius Labeo, or M. Popillius as the more likely ghostwriters (Vit. Ter. 3–4). As Sharrock 2009: 86 n. 163 also observes. Barsby 1999: 2–3 is a good introduction to Terence’s relationship with Scipio (a topic that has generated much interest, particularly in connection with the so-called “Scipionic Circle”).

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Denials of plagiarism Quod illi maledictum vehemens esse existimant, eam laudem hic ducit maximam quom illis placet qui vobis univorsis et populo placent, quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio suo quisque tempore usust sine superbia.95

20

[An accusation that] they consider a very strong rebuke he takes as the greatest compliment, since it means that he has found favor with those who find favor with all of you and the general populace – those men, whose efforts in war, in peace, and in business are openly available to anyone whenever he needs them.

Suetonius, who notes the weakness of Terence’s defense and relates that the nondenial fanned the rumor, argues that the playwright responded as he did because the story “was not disagreeable” to Scipio and Laelius.96 But it is also clear that Terence saw an opening to turn the charge to his rhetorical advantage by building upon what the accusation itself suggested and using his response to promote himself as someone with links to great men. A stigma turns into a mark of distinction and authority, as Terence shifts the emphasis so that the controversy advertises his good relationship with the homines nobiles and conveys that he secured the support of the elite. At the same time, he is able publicly to acknowledge his powerful friends and patrons and to express his gratitude for how he won their backing, and in a way that he must have felt would entertain or at least not displease them.97 Again, it is altogether likely that Terence meant to highlight, in particular, his ties to the men who had chosen his play for Paullus’ funeral games – for the setting would have provided an unmistakable token of the aristocratic support he described.98 Indeed, by conveying that he appreciated how 95

96

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Eam laudem hic ducit in line 18 is another good example where the speaker in the prologue speaks for Terence, giving his thoughts and, thus, serving as his mouthpiece. Eamque ipse auxit numquam nisi leviter refutare conatus . . . videtur autem se levius defendisse, quia sciebat et Laelio et Scipioni non ingratam esse hanc opinionem (he himself fanned the rumor by never trying to refute it except in a tepid fashion . . . Here he seems to have defended himself quite lightly, because he knew that this story was not disagreeable to Laelius and Scipio [Vit. Ter. 3]). Sharrock 2009: 86 makes a similar point. This analysis is also applicable to the Heauton Timoroumenos, where Terence likewise fails to deny the charge that he relied upon ghostwriters (see n. 91, with amici in line 24 meaning “patrons,” although there the reasons to connect the rumor to Scipio are not in place). I disagree with the idea that Scipio cannot be among those described in the lines qui vobis univorsis et populo placent, / quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio / suo quisque tempore usust sine superbia [Ad. 19–21]). (So Gruen 1992: 200; Duckworth 1994: 58; and Barsby 1999: 3.) Scipio’s participation in the fighting at Pydna in 168 (see Plut., Vit. Aem. 22, and Polybius, 31.29.5–7) makes it that the phrase in bello could plausibly refer to him. Donatus asserts that this was, in fact, the case: “homines nobiles” Scipionem Africanum significat et Laelium Sapientem et Furium Philum (ad Ad. 15 [Wessner 1962–3: ii 11.14–16]); and “in bello” Scipionis, “in otio” Furii Phili, “in negotio” Laelii Sapientis (ad Ad. 20 [Wessner 1962–3: ii 12.1–2]). Modern critics who suppose that Terence could have been referring to Scipio are Klose 1966: 158 and Martin 1976: 99.

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generously the nobles behaved toward him, Terence would appear, in part, to be thanking Scipio (as well as Fabius) for selecting his comedy. Scipio stands by implication as a noble who would show his favor if he collaborated as the ghostwriting charge had him doing, and who did show his favor by choosing the grateful author’s play for the games.99 I am inclined to connect Terence’s remarks on the nobiles back to the plagiarism charge. By relating that he greatly values his relationship with the aristocrats who were said to have aided in the composition of his plays, Terence makes it evident that he would do nothing to endanger his standing with them. This would logically include depriving Scipio and Fabius of a “new play.” Having described charges that had him failing to deliver the nova fabula they anticipated, and, I would suggest, having in mind charges intended for those putting on Paullus’ funeral games, Terence confirms partly as a further line of defense against the accusations that he would in no way jeopardize the support the nobles showed him. This allows him to imply that they need not worry about his ever being dishonest in his dealings with them, including by falsely advertising his play as new. Such conduct would ill fit a person who, as he makes clear, was a thankful and trustworthy recipient of their favor.100 Of course, Terence’s denial of plagiarism also assures the general audience of theatergoers that he is on the up-and-up and that the Adelphoe is a “new play.” The message is that he has done right by the crowd and, therefore, that he is worthy of its trust and goodwill. This was to highlight one of the things that give his comedy value: its identity as a work being staged in Rome for the first time. The assertion is again of a particular brand of originality, of a work that was really what it was advertised to be (eam nos acturi sumus novam). By demonstrating the novitas of the play and the integrity of the playwright, Terence continues to follow the general

99

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The potential for members of the audience to involve Fabius as well in the ghostwriting rumor would certainly seem to be strong, as Terence presumably saw. In arguing that Terence wished to have Scipio understood as one of his alleged ghostwriters and aristocratic supporters, I do not mean that he necessarily thought that all his audience members would believe that the criticism and the ghostwriting were real (although, again, at least some apparently did, an outcome that Terence must have also foreseen). For those who did not understand the charges and assistance to be historical, the account could still operate to advertise Terence’s aristocratic connections and to thank the nobles for their support (as well as to allude to their literary leanings and abilities, as men who could have ghostwritten for him). This means that Terence would have supposed that his message would get to them if they were not at the performance of the play, as is entirely possible.

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principle that prologues were to make the audience view the author and text favorably. As in the Eunuchus and other plays, answering criticism is a means of conveying to the spectators why they should be excited about and well disposed toward the comedy they were about to take in. Also suggestive of a desire to secure the spectators’ attention is the way Terence describes the content of the scene in question, i.e., the abduction of a girl by a young man from a pimp (adulescens est qui lenoni eripit / meretricem [8–9]).101 The aim appears to be to highlight the presence in the play of some good, salacious comic fare, which Terence supposed would be pleasing material.102 This is a very selective glimpse into the Adelphoe, not to mention an unrepresentative one; the play is less rollicking than that scene would suggest. But like many movie trailers today, the prologue isolates lively content, with its presumed appeal. What Terence offers is a teaser for the play. The will to advertise leads him to provide just a little bit of information about what is to come, but for the sake of enticing the crowd rather than of providing it with exposition. Sit tight, Terence suggests, and you will be given a comic scene that you will like. But the members of the audience are not just to enjoy that scene; they are first to deliver their judgment that Terence was no plagiarist when he adapted it. How Terence elicits that response derives from oratory. Having earlier in the prologue put the crowd in the position of judges at a trial (indicio de se ipse erit, vos eritis iudices / laudin an vitio duci factum oporteat [he will represent himself at the trial, while you will be the judges who decide whether what he has done deserves praise or blame {4–5}]), he reactivates the conceit to lay at the theatergoers’ feet the question of whether or not he is guilty of stealing (13–14). This “playful parody of serious oratory” does not degrade forensic rhetoric but rather honors and elevates the audience.103 The effect is to give it an important role in determining the success that the author and the play will have. It is

101

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In the play, the girl is Bacchis, the young man Aeschinus, and the pimp Sannio; the passage appears at act 2, scene 1. Martin 1976: 99, Gowers 2004: 161, and Sharrock 2009: 92 n. 179 see the same purpose behind Terence’s account. Because the charge of furtum advertises a scene in which Aeschinus steals (eripit) the girl from the pimp, the suspicion also arises that the one theft, plagiarism, stands as a kind of double for the other. But even if this is true, the rhetorical purposes that I have identified in the passage are still observable, as are the ideas about plagiarism that I have traced. I quote Sharrock 2009: 85. The influence of forensic oratory on Terence’s prologues has been well covered. Sharrock 2009: 83 n. 156 cites important sources on the subject, to which I would add Focardi 1972: 55–88 and 1978: 70–89. McElduff 2004: 125 interprets the appeal to the crowd in the prologue similarly to how I do.

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to the crowd that Terence must appeal, because its members are the arbiters that, at least on that day, decide the fate of the comedy. The act of submitting matters to the audience is in itself another attempt to win a favorable hearing. Terence not only draws the crowd into the play but also creates goodwill by honoring it and the power it has over him. The suggestion is that the audience will exercise that power to stand on his side. This creates solidarity between it and the poet. Terence places his addressees and himself on the same side of a polemic, resisting the wrongheaded criticisms of his angry rivals. The benefits are mutual between the allies. The spectators will do their part by giving Terence their support and even praising him (vos eritis iudices / laudin an vitio duci factum oporteat) for “reclaiming a carelessly omitted scene,” while Terence will reward their favor by presenting them with an authentically new play that will entertain them, as the scene he describes promises. It is not just that the crowd is to pay attention and give the work a fair hearing, as Terence, like Plautus before him, asks it to do in other prologues as part of his captatio benevolentiae.104 Rather, they are to do justice and uphold “the right order of things in the ludic world,” in return for which he will give them the kind of original comedy they deserve.105 For a second time, then, plagiarism charges function as instruments of blame within the world that Terence describes and as a means of promoting his work and of creating the conditions for a positive response at the performance of the play. This links the playwright to the accusers we examined to open Part i, who likewise turned to the subject of plagiarism in prefatory passages to promote their texts and to set up a favorable reception for them. Of course, Terence goes about accomplishing these things differently from them. His approach is to display the argumentative lines on both sides of the debate over whether or not he plagiarized by bringing out the substance of the accusations against him before explaining why they should be null and void. This leads him to exhibit varied ways of thinking about the offense and what did and did not constitute it and to demonstrate how its contours could be shaped specifically to the context of Roman comedy and to the rhetoric of the stage. To counter plagiarism charges was not simply to establish Terence’s innocence; it was to try to forge bonds of goodwill with members of his audience, to win theatergoers over to him and his comedies, and to advertise why the plays deserved their friendly attention.

104

Ad. 24–7; Heaut. 8 and 35–6; Hec. 8 and 46–57; Phorm. 30; and Eun. 44–5.

105

Sharrock 2009: 69.

chapter 5

A spectrum of innocence: denying plagiarism in Seneca the Elder

One of the authors we examined in chapter 2 who included plagiarism charges in his preface to promote his work is also a source for denials of literary theft. This is Seneca the Elder, whose Controversiae and Suasoriae contain passages in which he or a speaker he quotes refutes the idea that a declaimer or poet plagiarized from a predecessor.1 There are only a handful of such passages.2 Still, they do much to fill out the story not only of how Seneca himself thought about and used plagiarism but also of how it was defined and how it functioned sociorhetorically in early imperial literary culture more broadly. Recent critics have mined Seneca for insights into Roman notions of cultural and personal identity and into the politics of the early empire.3 Yet Seneca remains a rich source on literary history and 1

2

3

For more on Seneca’s Controversiae and Suasoriae, see pp. 60–1 above. In nearly every passage in which Seneca or one of his speakers mentions plagiarism, he or a person he quotes either accuses others of plagiarizing or denies that someone has stolen from a predecessor. The exception is Con. 1 praef. 19. To give an example of a prodigious memory, Seneca tells the story of the man who could recite a poem he had just heard, whereas the author of the piece did not know it by heart. As a result, the audience member claimed that he was the actual author. The underlying belief, therefore, is that memory is the seat of literary property: a person who has committed a work to memory is apt to be the one who wrote it and, thus, the one who owned it in authorial terms. Suas. 7.14, meanwhile, tells of how the orator Hybreas recited a passage from Cicero to the letter when speaking before Cicero’s son. It is unclear, however, whether this was considered plagiarism, homage, or an attempt to put one over on the younger Cicero for the amusement of the assembled crowd. The Suetonian–Donatan biography of Virgil (VSD 29) quotes an anecdote from Seneca in which the poet Julius Montanus might refer to plagiarizing. Montanus states that he would have taken lines from Virgil, if he could have also taken his voice, expression, and delivery (vox, os, hypocrisis). The verb describing how Montanus would have treated Virgil is involare (involaturum se Vergilio quaedam). While this word can signify “to steal,” it can also mean “to swoop in and take,” i.e., to reuse enthusiastically, without plagiarizing. I am inclined to find the latter meaning in the anecdote, since the point is simply that Montanus was eager to reuse the poetry he admired when he heard Virgil deliver it. Zwierlein 1999: 265–6, however, sees a reference to plagiarism. It is also the case that we do not know whether the Vita quotes Seneca the Elder or Seneca the Younger. On this topic, see Grisart 1961: 202–8 and Kaster 1995: 355–6. Gunderson 2003; Habinek 2005: 67–72; Migliario 2007: esp. 17–31 and 121–49; and Bernstein 2009: 331–53.

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literary thought as well. The denials of plagiarism scattered among his pages exemplify the point. One of the things that this chapter will show is that the denials of plagiarism in Seneca emerge in a range of contexts, both historical and textual. The evidence, I will suggest, demonstrates that the concept of literary furtum was embedded in early imperial culture. Not only did Julio-Claudian audience members allege it, but it was also an established item in the cultural vocabulary that individuals utilized to make literary points that extended beyond the question of whether or not someone plagiarized from a predecessor. To investigate the varied uses that the subject of plagiarism has in the pages of Seneca is to continue to see that it was an adaptable sociorhetorical tool in Roman antiquity. A further aim in this chapter is to demonstrate the extent to which biographical details factored into how Seneca and others defined plagiarism. Specifically, I will show that those sources join with authors we have already looked at in making guilty and fraudulent authorial intentions a defining trait of plagiarism. The apologists also bring literary value and credit into their discussions of whether or not a person plagiarized, asserting that the lines under consideration were, in fact, legitimately produced by a writer who was not out to hide his debts and earn fraudulent esteem, and that the lines were legitimately meritorious. So, too, Seneca follows Terence in recognizing that plagiarism could be a false critical construct, or something that existed in the mind of the reader, who wrongly projected it onto a text, rather than in the mind of the author or in the text itself. In this instance, it is a tendency toward hypercriticism that leads accusers to find plagiarism in what Seneca considered an example of laudable imitation. These aspects of the Senecan passages reveal all the more the spread in Latin antiquity of common ideas about plagiarism, while also illustrating how those ideas could be fit to still another group of borrowings and to still more pragmatic ends. a well-turned rhetorical epigram, ill-gotten? The first of the denials of plagiarism in Seneca appears in Con. 9.1.13. The passage contains sententiae, or rhetorical epigrams, on the subject of how Cimon wronged his father-in-law, Callias, when he killed his wife, despite Callias’ pleas, after catching her in adultery. Seneca reports that the epigrams delivered by the Augustan declaimer Arellius Fuscus and the

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Greek Adaeus, an Asianist rhetor of “no mean repute,” were not merely similar but the same.4 After citing Adaeus’ example, Seneca states that Fuscus translated (mutavit) Adaeus’ line. Others, however, took a dimmer view of his actions (Con. 9.1.12–13): Illa non est similis sed eadem quam dixit prior Adaeus, rhetor ex Asianis non proiecti nominis, deinde Arellius Fuscus: ἀχάριστός σοι δοκω, Καλλία; οὐκ οἶδας, ποῦ τὴν χάριν ἔδωκας; hanc sic mutavit Arellius Fuscus: non dices me, Callia, ingratum: unde redemeris cogita. memini deinde Fuscum, cum haec Adaei sententia obiceretur, non infitiari transtulisse se eam in Latinum; et aiebat non commendationis id se aut furti sed exercitationis causa facere: do, inquit, operam, ut cum optimis sententiis certem, nec illas surripere conor sed vincere. That epigram, first delivered by Adaeus, an Asianist rhetor of no mean repute, and then by Arellius Fuscus, is not just similar but is, in fact, the same. “Do I seem ungrateful to you, Callias? Do you not know where I was when you bestowed on me your service?” Arellius Fuscus translated this as follows: “You will not call me ungrateful, Callias. Consider where you ransomed me from.” I remember that later Fuscus, when the epigram of Adaeus was thrown in his face, did not deny that he had translated it into Latin. And he said that he did it not to win credit for himself or as plagiarism, but for practice. As he said, I strive to compete with the best epigrams, and I try not to plagiarize them, but to outdo them. ˘

Through the word obicere, Seneca relates that Fuscus encountered hostile critics who cited Adaeus’ epigram as grounds for disapproval and condemnation.5 What follows then reveals that Fuscus faced a charge of plagiarism specifically. Only if Seneca recognized that the criticism had Fuscus intending to conceal his source would he have reported on how the declaimer admitted to his borrowing (non infitiari transtulisse se eam in Latinum); and this points to a charge that alleged the kind of deliberate authorial secrecy that was a hallmark of plagiarism in ancient Rome, just as it is today.6 Confirming the allegations are Fuscus’ ensuing remarks, in which he denies having plagiarized from Adaeus. The picture is of a speaker meeting a charge head-on and trying to dispel it.7 All of this lends credence to Castiglioni’s position that the sentence multa oratores, historici, poetae Romani a Graecis dicta non subripuerunt sed provocaverunt (Roman orators, historians, and 4

5 6

7

As I did in chapter 2, I use the text of Håkanson 1989, except where otherwise noted. On Asianists, i.e., those who favored a more florid, dramatic style, see n. 17. See OLD s.v. “obicio” 10. Other critics who see a plagiarism charge behind Con. 9.1.13 are Bonner 1949: 145, Sussman 1972: 208 n. 39, and, seemingly, Bloomer 1997: 146. See also Sussman 1978: 89–90 n. 186. Håkanson prints surripere for the manuscript reading corrumpere in nec illas surripere conor sed vincere. Even if we leave aside the term surripere, though, Seneca has Fuscus explicitly denying plagiarism with the words aiebat non . . . furti . . . causa facere.

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poets have not plagiarized many sayings of the Greeks but have vied with them) should follow immediately after conor sed vincere, even though it appears in only one manuscript.8 Fuscus continues to distance himself from plagiarism by expanding upon his foregoing defense and linking his behavior to that of other Latin writers who reused Greek models without plagiarizing from them. The plagiarism charge against Fuscus appears to have arisen at his declamation: the situation seems to be that Seneca, after recording the epigram that Fuscus delivered, recalls the flap that ensued at the performance. It is certainly conceivable that Seneca, an “adult enthusiast in the auditoria of the declaimers,”9 was in attendance that day, just as he might have been when Ovid declaimed at Fuscus’ school (see Con. 2.2.8–9, where Seneca also uses memini).10 A memory of that scene could have then remained some decades later when he put together his collection. At that point, Seneca could have also remembered the line of defense that Fuscus pursued to answer his critics,11 and/or could have relied upon his own notes or some other written source.12 The charge against Fuscus assumes that he had laid false claim to another’s literary property. To reformulate remarks made in chapter 2, the quotation of speakers’ sententiae presupposes that an epigram belonged to the person who produced it, inasmuch as he was given credit for its particular expression. Ownership consisted in recognized authorship, or in the form that a declaimer gave his sententia.13 One of the ways that speakers were then measured against one another was in their ability to formulate well-turned epigrams, whether by reworking a model or not. This helped to establish a pecking order between the declaimers. With the development of 8 9 10

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13

Castiglioni 1928: 112–13. The manuscript is E in Håkanson’s conspectus. Fairweather 1981: 77. Hanc controversiam memini ab Ovidio Nasone declamari apud rhetorem Arellium Fuscum, cuius auditor fuit (I remember this controversia when it was declaimed by Ovid at the school of Arellius Fuscus, whose student Ovid was [Con. 2.2.8]). Seneca proceeds to offer critical observations on Ovid and to quote lines in his poems (Met. 13.121–2 and Am. 1.2.11–12) in which he reused Fuscus’ sententiae. For memini in other passages describing live performances, see, e.g., Con. 3 praef. 16, Con. 9.5.15–16, and Suas. 2.19. A vexed question in the study of Seneca is the extent to which he relied upon his memory in putting together his collections, as he programmatically claims to do (Con. 1 praef. 1–5). Sussman 1978: 75–9 and Fairweather 1981: 37–42 address this topic. Lockyer 1970: esp. 1–26 and 158–94 is another crucial source on the issue; and though skeptical of Seneca’s claim to work entirely from memory, Lockyer (p. 192) acknowledges that he certainly could have been recalling at least some episodes. Fairweather 1981: 40–1 raises the possibility that, when producing his volumes, Seneca relied upon a private written record of declamations he had kept and finds the hypothesis “not improbable.” Collections put together by others are also plausible as sources for Seneca. See chapter 2 (p. 67), with Sinclair 1995: 121, as well as Berti 2007: 155–82.

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the rhetorical schools and declamation came opportunities for speakers to compete outside of the courts and the arena of politics.14 The competition was for standing and, often relatedly, for elite and nonelite students alike; some also found that skillful declamatory performances could lead to social advancement.15 In such a hothouse environment, sententiae were a kind of symbolic currency with which a declaimer might acquire respect and stature and raise his reputation over that of his competitors. As a leading speaker and teacher of his time, Fuscus seems a likely target for accusers who sought to challenge his standing by questioning his authorship of a sententia.16 Rather than having him win credit for the literary value of a well-turned line, the critics sought to taint him (see, again, obicere) by suggesting that the epigram was not really his, and that he had done something illegitimate when deriving it from his model. Perhaps the accusers were supporters of other speakers who wished to take a step toward devaluing a prominent competitor – and by logic, this would have included designs on having word of his plagiarism spread.17 Perhaps, too, they were adherents of Adaeus in particular. A possible motive for them would have been to show that the esteemed (non proiectum nomen) Greek declaimer deserved credit for the sententia and, thus, to identify an instance where he stood above the also notable Asianist Fuscus. If this was so, then Fuscus might have been seeking, among other things, to soothe those accusers by implying that Adaeus’ was example of the “best epigrams” he set out to rework.18

14 15

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Sinclair 1995: 122, on the social function of declamation, is relevant here. On competition among speakers and teachers, see Sussman 1978: 15–16, who also mentions the significant role that criticism must have played in that environment, and Sinclair 1995: 122–32. Bornecque 1967: 102–4 and Sussman 1978: esp. 69–75 are useful sources on Fuscus. Seneca himself places Fuscus among the four best declaimers he knew, with Marcus Porcius Latro, Gaius Albucius Silus, and Junius Gallio (Con. 10 praef. 13). This he does despite criticizing Fuscus as well; see Fairweather 1981: 245–51 and n. 54 in this chapter. In addition, Seneca relates that when he was young, some of Fuscus’ explicationes, or “expository treatments,” were quite famous (Suas. 2.10) and states that “no one was held to be a more elegant speaker” (nemo videretur dixisse cultius) than Fuscus (Suas. 4.5). Fairweather 1981: 305 wonders if the critics were Atticists, or those who favored a concise, classical rhetoric. The suggestion is that the charge was a jab in the tussle between the Atticists and Asianists, even though the criticism would focus upon something other than style. This would work better, though, if Fuscus took his line from an Atticist rather than from an Asianist. Fairweather (pp. 243– 303) remains an important source on Asianism and Atticism in the schools. I should note here that I disagree with the observation of Bloomer 1997: 147–8 that the “social qualities of the transgressers” are a concern in the Senecan passages on plagiarism. Bloomer’s specific suggestion that charges arose to deal blows to “Greeks, freedmen, the socially ambitious, and dangerous” is simply not borne out by the evidence. Certainly there is no sign of this with Fuscus. See also n. 53.

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The only passage in Seneca’s Controversiae or Suasoriae where he describes an Augustan audience accusing a speaker of plagiarizing an epigram is this one in Con. 9.1.13. Yet it strains all credulity that the scene with Fuscus exhausts the instances when spectators in that era issued such a charge against a declaimer. Of course, we cannot determine how widespread accusations were. Certainly, though, they seem suited to an environment in which the composition and, with it, the symbolic ownership of sententiae helped to make reputations and careers. In the competition for rank and prestige (as well as students), plagiarism allegations would work well as an attempt to contest another’s merits, measured in this case by the epigrams he produced, and to lower his position among speakers. Relevant at this point is Con. 10.5.20. The passage quotes sententiae from a speech on the Athenian painter Parrhasius, who, having used an old slave he had tortured as a model for Prometheus, hung the picture in the temple of Minerva. As a result, he stood accused of harming the state. After commenting on how the declaimer Triarius closely echoed the Greek Glycon’s epigram when adapting it to Latin, Seneca quotes the Augustan orator Cassius Severus:19 Graeci nefas putaverunt pro Parrhasio dicere; omnes illum accusaverunt. in eosdem sensus incurrerunt. Glycon dixit: πῦρ καὶ ἄνθρωπος, Προμηθεῦ, τὰ σά σε δωρα βασανίζει. Triarius hoc ex aliqua parte, cum subriperet, inflexit. hos aiebat Severus Cassius, qui hoc facerent, similes sibi videri furibus alienis poculis ansas mutantibus. multi sunt, qui detracto verbo aut mutato aut adiecto putent se alienas sententias lucri fecisse. Triarius autem sic vertit: corrupisti duo maxima Promethei munera, ignem et hominem. The Greeks thought it wicked to speak for Parrhasius: everyone accused him and fell into the same epigrams. Glycon said, “Prometheus, fire and man, your gifts, torture you.” Triarius changed this slightly when stealing it. Cassius Severus used to say that those who behaved like this struck him as similar to thieves who changed the handles on others’ cups. There are many men who think that they have gained an epigram for themselves when they have taken away, changed, or added a word. But Triarius thus translated the epigram: “You have abused the two greatest gifts of Prometheus, fire and man.” ˘

What troubles Cassius Severus as well as Seneca is the fidelity with which certain speakers follow their sources when reworking their sententiae. The 19

Seneca (Con. 3 praef.) describes in lively terms how differently this figure spoke when he delivered speeches in the courts and when he declaimed. Other ancient sources on him as a speaker are Tacitus, Dial. 19 (where it is said that Severus ushered in the style of first-century ce prose) and 26.4–5, and Quintilian, Inst. 10.1.116–17. A provocateur, Severus was exiled under Augustus; Tiberius upheld the banishment until Severus’ death sometime around 35 ce. Given the exile, the comments in Con. 10.5.20 must come from sometime in the Augustan Age.

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problem is a formal one. While the declaimers might think that they made an epigram theirs by how they modified it, Severus and Seneca maintain that they have come up short of productive and, in the critics’ eyes, permissible reuse; the implication is that the thefts belong to a kind of repetition that was different and separate from legitimate borrowing.20 This defines plagiarism, which Severus activates as an idea through a simile that equates stealing intellectual property with stealing material property, by the insufficiency of the textual changes. Elsewhere in Seneca, the close, even inert borrowing of a sententia does not constitute plagiarism, even when critics object to the lack of change and creativity.21 But Con. 10.5.20 demonstrates that it was possible in early imperial declamatory culture to approach the strong resemblance between epigrams differently and to contend that a speaker plagiarized because he stuck too close to a model.22 Rather than accusing anyone directly of plagiarism, Severus simply issues a barbed bon mot about a class of declaimers. Still, he points to the recognition beyond Fuscus’ audience in the Augustan Age that one could use plagiarism accusations to police the origins and, with them, the ownership of rhetorical epigrams. This was the case even though it was completely normal to reuse sententiae: a space was made for illegitimate borrowing, which fell outside of that norm.23 The aim is to expose a 20

21

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Seneca goes on to charge four Greek declaimers with plagiarizing the same sententia (Con. 10.5.21). Severus’ picture of how the thieves change the handles on their stolen wares, meanwhile, shows them intending to hide their actions. But Severus’ concern is not with the plagiarists’ intention to deceive and defraud their audiences but with how little they change their sources. This means that we should take the parallel between the plagiarists and cup-stealers only so far, and that Severus was criticizing the speakers on aesthetic, not intentionalist, grounds. Berti 2007: 259 also highlights the textual, aesthetic focus of Severus’ comments. See Con. 9.3.12: indignabatur Cestius detorqueri ab illo totiens et mutari sententias suas: quid putatis, aiebat, Argentarium esse? Cesti simius est. solebat et Graece dicere: ὁ πίθηκός μου. fuerat enim Argentarius Cesti auditor et erat imitator (Cestius was angry that Argentarius so often distorted and changed his epigrams, and said, “What do you think Argentarius is? He is Cestius’ ape.” And he used to say in Greek, ὁ πίθηκός μου [he is my ape]. In fact, Argentarius had been Cestius’ student and was still his imitator.) While Fairweather 1981: 284 finds a reference to plagiarism in Cestius’ remarks, the language in the passage (particularly imitator but also mutari) is of imitation. The indication is, consequently, that Cestius criticized Argentarius for imitating him too closely. On the ape metaphor in later literature, see Curtius 1953: 538–40. In Con. 1 praef. 10, Seneca also implies that plagiarists stick too close to the sententiae of the great declaimers of the past while also contending that they intend to deceive and to defraud their audiences. Of course, one could justifiably argue that Triarius changes Glycon more than just a little, as Berti 2007: 259 recognizes. But what Con. 10.5.20 demonstrates is that a critic could emphasize the similarities between texts and make that closeness the basis for a plagiarism charge. Naturally, the origin of this practice must remain uncertain. But because we can gather from Cicero, Vitruvius, and Horace (as well as Sallust’s lampooner Lenaeus) that the concept of plagiarism was active in Latin culture in the first century bce, we can surmise that audiences in the rhetorical schools were familiar with the idea in the broader Latin context and applied it to the reuse of sententiae.

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declaimer for garnering fraudulent credit for an epigram; this is a way of asserting that he is not all that he might seem to be and that he deserves less consideration than one who appreciates his sententia might give him. That plagiarism allegations had been a part of declamatory culture from the Augustan Age helps to explain why Seneca chose to accuse current speakers of plagiarizing epigrams in the introduction to the first book of the Controversiae. Seneca would have known that he was activating an established mode of branding declaimers and would have believed based upon precedent that charges of plagiarism could carry bite. When he then referred to plagiarism in Con. 9.1.13 without feeling the need to define the practice, the reason must have been more than that he had treated it in his introductory preface. Certainly his offhand references fit an author who assumed that plagiarism was a legible concept and category; and that assumption seems best explained by his knowledge that the practice of plagiarizing was generally recognized in his cultural milieu. Still another thing to bear in mind when considering Seneca as a source on the spread of plagiarism charges in early imperial declamation is the fragmentary nature of the evidence he provides. It is not just that, by focusing upon divisiones (the main lines of argument), colores (the “spin” or “complexion” that the speaker gives his case), and sententiae, he can tell us nothing about the reach of allegations to other elements of speeches.24 Even when we limit ourselves to rhetorical epigrams, we need to bear in mind that Seneca obviously could not have captured the work of an entire literary epoch, and that he was uninterested in doing so. This means that so many early imperial sententiae and reactions to the lines are missing from his volumes – and there is no reason to exclude plagiarism accusations from that body of possible unrecorded responses. So, too, the ragged state of Seneca’s text raises the possibility that he issued or referred to more charges of plagiarizing epigrams than the record shows. Because so much of his work is lost (significant amounts of books 3–6 and 8 of the Controversiae, as well as bits of individual Suasoriae and, apparently, a second book of those speeches), it is at least very hazardous to maintain that what survives captures all that was originally there.25 24

25

To repeat a point made in chapter 2 n. 90, we certainly might wonder if plagiarism charges extended beyond epigrams, even though Seneca gives us no clear indication that they did. Edward 1928: xxx discusses the evidence for a second book of Suasoriae. For more on the textual history of the Controversiae and Suasoriae, see Winterbottom 1974: i xix–xx and Håkanson 1989: v-xv. It bears observing that three of the five full books of Controversiae contain something on plagiarism. The temptation is to suppose a similar distribution among the other books.

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Despite the gaps and omissions of Seneca’s text, he is still the valuable source on literary and cultural history that I described earlier, because of what he does preserve for us: rhetorical material, stories from the Julio-Claudian schools and literary culture more broadly, and his own and others’ critical observations about authors, texts, and literary practices. Controversiae 9.1.13 illustrates that value. Along with quoting sententiae and laying out a scene in which Fuscus endured plagiarism charges, Seneca records the declaimer’s response to the criticism. Fuscus endeavors to demonstrate what about his borrowing from Adaeus distanced it from plagiarism. As Seneca first tells it, his argument is that he recast the Greek epigram into Latin not with an eye to winning praise (commendatio) or to committing plagiarism (furtum), but for the sake of practice (exercitatio).26 This would appear to be Seneca’s rewording of Fuscus’ remarks that follow (do, inquit, operam ut cum optimis sententiis certem, nec illas surripere conor sed vincere). The pursuit to which Fuscus refers is (to use Seneca’s term) the exercitatio of translation. Both as students and after their school-days had ended, Romans translated as an exercise to hone their command of subject matter and of the Latin language.27 Because this was an allowed and even desirable pursuit, citing it as an objective was a way for Fuscus to exculpate and to legitimize his conduct. The idea is that plagiarism and translation constitute different categories of textual reuse; and by linking his epigram to the latter, Fuscus contends that he did not engage in the former. As Seneca paraphrases Fuscus’ argument, the binary that the declaimer sets up creates a contrast between seeking public approval and writing for personal edification in an effort to become the best declaimer he could be. Connecting furtum to the former of the two thus makes it a means of winning acclaim: plagiarism is the particular means through which a speaker might seek to earn bogus commendatio.28 By stating that all he actually wanted to do was to translate, Fuscus affirms that his intentions were 26

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Worth noting is how the word id in the passage (aiebat non commendationis id se aut furti) refers to transtulisse (non infitiari transtulisse se eam in Latinum). This indicates that the verb transferre could signify plagiarism – i.e., one could “transfer” material in order to plagiarize – along with legitimate modes of reuse. On translation as an exercise in ancient Rome, see Beall 1997: 215–19, who mentions Con. 9.1.13 on p. 218. Translating Greek epigrams into Latin was, of course, permissible: see, e.g., Con. 7.1.25, 9.6.16, and 10.4.23. But the example of Fuscus demonstrates that audiences did not necessarily consider every instance where a Latin speaker reused a Greek model to be a case of translation. This complements my earlier observations on how critics in the rhetorical context distinguished plagiarism from acceptable, normal kinds of textual reuse. Aut thus appears to introduce a more precise alternative to the first term, as it elsewhere does (see OLD s.v. “aut” 6b).

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innocent, just as he does when not denying his turn to Adaeus in the first place. To return to an earlier point, the suggestion is that he had been faced with an accusation that posited his desire to conceal his debt, logically so that he might get credit for originating the sententia.29 Fuscus distances himself from plagiarism by distancing himself from any such thoughts. In the process, he absolves himself of the dishonesty and fraud that our sources recurrently ascribe to Latin plagiarists, including Seneca in the preface to book 1 of the Controversiae. Assumed in Fuscus’ argument is that a speaker could intend different things when he reused a sententia, including plagiarizing. Likewise, he operates on the belief that audience members could understand authorial intentions differently from how the author himself did, and that what they thought of his mindset could determine whether they saw plagiarism or an acceptable borrowing in a resemblance between texts. The ability to find either of the two in a perceived debt rests upon something we have already observed in this book: no clear and hard verbal dividing line separated plagiarism from legitimate categories of reuse in ancient Rome. Distinctions could be made and were made on textual grounds, as Fuscus himself shows when, to give an example of a Latin author who properly recast a Greek model, he cites a line in which Sallust outdid his model Thucydides in writing with brevitas.30 It was just that the criteria were not fixed and objective, which made the border a potentially blurry one. For Fuscus, 29

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The assumption, therefore, would have been that Fuscus, as a plagiarist, exploited his listeners’ understanding that declaimers at times did not imitate a model and, instead, formulated sententiae on their own. See chapter 2 (pp. 63–4), for related comments. Tunc deinde rettulit [qua] Thucydidis sententiam: δειναὶ γὰρ αἱ εὐπραζίαι συγκρύψαι καὶ συσκιάσαι τὰ ἑκάστων ἁμαρτήματα, deinde Sallustianam: res secundae mire sunt vitiis optentui. cum sit praecipua in Thucydide virtus brevitas, hac eum Sallustius vicit et in suis illum castris cecidit; nam in sententia Graeca tam brevi habes, quae salvo sensu detrahas: deme vel συγκρύψαι vel συσκιάσαι, deme ἑκάστων; constabit sensus, etiamsi non aeque comptus, aeque tamen integer. at ex Sallusti sententia nihil demi sine detrimento sensus potest (then he quoted an epigram of Thucydides: “Success is great at hiding and obscuring everyone’s faults.” Then he quoted Sallust: “Success is a great screen for vice.” Although brevity is the principal virtue in Thucydides, Sallust has bested him in this and defeated him on his own ground. For you can take away things from the Greek epigram – which is, indeed, short – while preserving the sense: remove “hiding” or “obscuring,” remove “everyone’s,” and the sense will remain. It may not be as nice, but it will be complete. But nothing can be taken from Sallust’s epigram without harming its sense [Con. 9.1.13]). Clearly, the critical focus has shifted to formal analysis. But the point is to bring out via a reading of the text Sallust’s legitimate intention to translate and to improve upon his Greek predecessor. (While the analysis of why Sallust outdid Thucydides would appear to be Seneca’s rather than Fuscus’, moreover, the very act of citing that example, which was Fuscus’, presupposes that Sallust accomplished his goal of besting Thucydides and that his text demonstrates as much. Finally, because Seneca shows that it was Fuscus who quoted Thucydides and Sallust, we might reasonably suppose that multa . . . provocaverunt – assuming that Castiglioni is right and that the sentence belongs here – is a direct quotation of Fuscus.)

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this meant that his sententia had the formal mutability to be considered an example of either plagiarism or translation, depending on how one reconstructed his intentions.31 What he then sets out to do is to assure his listeners of the correct reading, to give them reason to conclude that he translated rather than plagiarized. Fundamental to Fuscus’ assertion that he was anything but a plagiarist is his declaration that he was driven by aemulatio, or the urge to compete with and surpass an admired predecessor. In Latin antiquity, to improve upon a source was a recognized goal in translation just as it was in imitation.32 The aim was to transfer the force of the original while making it better by adding some of the translator’s own touches.33 To claim to emulate, therefore, was to argue for the innocence of a borrowing by further linking it to a cultural norm. Aemulatio was fundamentally psychological in character, even as it naturally manifested itself in texts (as in the example of Sallust that Fuscus cites): the emulating author was someone who thought in a certain way about how he reused his model.34 By calling attention to his competitive frame of mind, Fuscus consequently makes his aims innocently and thus legitimately aggressive and casts himself as a declaimer who wants to win the intertextual battles he takes up; his goal is not earning false credit, but achieving real superiority. To understand things differently was to misread what he had set out to do with Adaeus’ epigram and, as a result, to misidentify what he actually did with it. While Fuscus’ argument emphasizes his extratextual thoughts and aims, it also touts the literary virtues and value of his sententiae. His intentions are those of an authentic, commendable artist of the epigram: the sententiae he describes stand as the fruits of real authorship, in which he expends the effort to make new material from his predecessors and to stand out from them. The implication is clear as well that Fuscus’ efforts to surpass his models were successful, just as Sallust’s were when he improved upon Thucydides when vying with the Greek historian’s epigram.35 Fuscus explicitly disavows any desire for acclaim and states only that he tries to outdo his models. But this constitutes affected modesty, while he simultaneously promotes himself as a strong, improving author. 31 32

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Ruthven 2001: 133 and Randall 2001: 4 make similar points. Beall 1997: 217–19 and 222–6 examines the place of competition in translation. This is an example of how the categories of translation and imitation overlapped in Latin antiquity. Fuhrmann 1961: 445–8 deals with this topic. Berti 2007: 258 discusses the element of aemulatio in Fuscus’ apology. So McElduff 2004: 121. 34 Pucci 1998: 86–7 shapes these observations. Seneca goes on in Con. 9.1.14 to discuss how Livy, however, impugned Sallust for reusing Thucydides’ epigram and for spoiling it.

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It stands to reason that Fuscus would have defended himself by pointing to the emulative energy with which he translated his models and by implying his capacity to outdo them because he assumed that those things were incompatible with plagiarism and were deemed so by his accusers. The operative question in Fuscus’ apology is whether one was to see the intention to plagiarize or emulative translation behind his epigram; which path an audience member took would decide how he constructed the line in the act of reception. At the same time, Fuscus indicates that a reading of his intentions contains a reading of his text, and that anyone who accused him of scheming to commit plagiarism missed the creativity and originality he showed when adapting Greek sententiae. It would be nice to know how successful Fuscus was in his attempt to absolve himself of the charge of plagiarism. But seeing that he must have wanted his defense to take effect, he also must have supposed that his audience might accept his account and then view his innocent aims as proof of the innocence of his borrowing. The belief would have been that his account of his intentions, with its aesthetic implications, could carry authority and be taken as veridical and decisive.36 One audience member who was receptive to Fuscus’ self-justification was Seneca. Along with treating Fuscus’ epigram as an example of translation, Seneca gives the declaimer the last word in the controversy, thereby indicating that he accepted the argument Fuscus laid out. This means that Seneca saw creative aemulatio in the epigram at hand, even as he stated that Fuscus’ line was the same as Adaeus’. There is no contradiction in this; the notion of identity in translation was notoriously looser in Latin antiquity than it is for us, which would have left space for personalizing touches and competition.37 To sympathize with the declaimer’s argument is implicitly to abide by its intentionalist terms. In doing so, Seneca reinforces the impression he gives in Con. 1 praef. 10 that he recognized deliberate deception as an aspect of plagiarism, while also being able to understand it in purely aesthetic terms. Taking Fuscus at his word, Seneca rejects the idea that he had designs on plagiarizing. Instead, he views Fuscus as an emulator, a person whose aim was to engage in a legitimate authorial pursuit – and considering that Seneca considered Fuscus one of the leading speakers of his era, he presumably believed in his ability to outdo the excellent epigrams that he 36

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I am indebted here to Heath 2002: 66, on reading authorial intention. We might wonder, however, if any of Fuscus’ accusers held that he was being wise after the event (to use Heath’s language). See chapter 4 n. 87, with chapter 2 n. 58. Adaeus’ and Fuscus’ epigrams are, indeed, not the same. For Fuscus changes the modes of the sentences from questions to commands while also modifying the vocabulary a bit (i.e., not pursuing metaphrastic translation at all points).

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translated.38 The sense is that there was a right way and a wrong way of reading the declaimer’s intentions and, with them, his debt to Adaeus, and that Fuscus directed his audience to the correct response. ignorance and innocence Seneca himself declares another of his favorite Augustan declaimers, Marcus Porcius Latro, innocent of plagiarism in Con. 10.4.21. Latro was Seneca’s friend from childhood who retained his respect as well as his affection throughout their lives. Indeed, Seneca places him, along with Fuscus and two others, in the upper echelon of early imperial speakers.39 In Con. 10.4.21, Seneca states that Latro cannot be suspected of stealing a sententia from the Greek declaimer Artemon in his controversia on a man accused of harming the state because he had turned exposed children into “crippled beggars” (mendici debilitati) and had demanded a cut of what they earned. To prove his point, Seneca remarks that Latro both despised the Greeks and did not know them: ˘

Artemon dixit: τὰ μὲν των ἄλλων εὔρωστα, πλεῖ, γεωργεῖ. τὰ δ’ ἡμέτερα ἀνάπηρα. τρέφει ἄρ τὸν ὁλόκληρον. hanc sententiam Latro Porcius virilius dixit, qui non potest furto suspectus esse: Graecos enim et contemnebat et ignorabat. cum descripsisset debiles artus omnium et alios incurvatos, alios reptantes, adiecit: pro di boni! ab his aliquis alitur integer? Artemon said, “Others’ slaves are strong: they sail, they farm. Ours are crippled. Thus they support a healthy man.” Porcius Latro, who cannot be suspected of plagiarism, since he both despised the Greeks and did not know them, put this epigram more strongly. After he had described the crippled limbs of all the children and how some were stooped down and some crawled, he added, “By the gods! Is a healthy man supported by these creatures?”

It is tempting to think that Latro endured accusations of plagiarism due to his cognomen. The punning criticism would have been that in his speeches, Latro showed himself to be a latro, or “thief,” by stealing from 38

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Seneca did not feel that Fuscus always improved upon his sources. See, e.g., Con. 1.4.10 and 9.6.16 (on Haterius’ “more restrained” Latin epigram, not Fuscus’ translation of Hybreas). But because Seneca held Fuscus in high regard, placing him in the first quartet of declaimers (n. 16), his recognition that Fuscus could outdo his models seems assured. Again, see n. 16. Seneca, moreover, rated Latro more highly than Fuscus. Con. 10 praef. 13 demonstrates this, where Seneca states that Latro would have “gotten the glory” (while Junius Gallio would have won the prize) if the four great declaimers of his era had ever competed: hi quotiens conflixissent, penes Latronem gloria fuisset, penes Gallionem palma (if ever they [the quartet of Latro, Fuscus, Albucius, and Gallio] competed, Latro would have gotten the glory, Gallio the prize). A memorable portrait of Latro is provided in Con. 1 praef. 16–18, on which see Leeman 1963: 227–8. Kaster 1995: 329–31 and Berti 2007: 44–5 discuss Latro’s life and career.

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other texts.40 But we should hesitate before concluding from Con. 10.4.21 that Seneca was aware of such allegations, or that he was responding in that passage to the specific charge that Latro had plagiarized his line ab his aliquis alitur integer from Artemon. This is because a look at the preceding sections of the Controversiae uncovers an explanation for why Seneca referred to plagiarism in his remarks on Latro that requires no familiarity on his part with historical charges against the declaimer. In Con. 10.4.18, Seneca remarks that Latin speakers have not “kept their hands off” (non abstinuerunt nostri manus) either the many things that the Greeks expressed well or the many things that they said in bad taste in the controversia under discussion.41 His stance is critical, as he disapproves of how indiscriminately rapacious the Latins were in taking from Greek sources, and how their borrowings “often brought as much ill as good.”42 Seneca then goes on in Con. 10.4.20 to bring the Greek Adaeus into the discussion and to assess how certain Latin declaimers reworked Adaeus’ sensus, a term synonymous with sententia:43 hunc sensum quidam Latini dixerunt, sed sic, ut putem illos non mutuatos esse † arti † hanc sententiam sed imitatos. Despite the textual problem in arti, it is clear that Seneca contrasts two modes of literary repetition (non . . . sed). A natural pursuit to set against imitation (imitatos) is plagiarism; and Gertz’s conjecture furtim for the corrupt arti opens a path to identifying it as the first term in that binary, so that the line reads “Certain Latin declaimers delivered this epigram, but in such a way that I suppose they were not taking the line thievishly [i.e., in the manner of a plagiarist], but imitating it.”44 The suggestion is that Seneca was led to think of plagiarism because of how he referred to improper ways of reusing 40

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Such wordplay with cognomina occurs elsewhere in Latin antiquity, as we saw with Martial’s Fidentinus. Other good examples appear in Cicero’s De oratore 2.20 (on Catulus) and 2.257 (on Lupus). Kajanto 1965 and Uría 2006: 21–3 deal with this topic. On a related note, the term latrocinia also operates as a metaphor for plagiarism, as we saw with Priscian (GL ii.2.17). Recall also Martial, Ep. 12.66.12, in which latro is used by analogy for a plagiarist. Celebris haec apud Graecos controversia est. multa ab illis pulchre dicta sunt, a quibus non abstinuerunt nostri manus, multa corrupte, quibus non cesserunt nec ipsis (This controversia is well known among the Greeks. They said many things well that our declaimers have not kept their hands off, and many things in bad taste, which our speakers have not fallen short of either). Bonner 1949: 145 (although I do not think, as Bonner appears to do given the context of his remarks, that the reference in 10.4.18 is to plagiarism). Sensus also stands as a synonym for sententia in Con. 1.1.21, 2.2.8, and 7.6.24, and Suas. 1.13 and 7.11. For this use of the term, see OLD s.v. “sensus” 9c. Sensus and sententia are also distinguished in Latin antiquity; see Quintilian, Inst. 8.5.1, who states that prevailing usage makes sensus designate mental concepts and sententiae bright thoughts, expressed especially at the end of passages. Quintilian himself, however, does not always observe the distinction (Inst. 12.10.46.) Håkanson 1989: 313 gives Gertz’s furtim in his apparatus criticus, and tentatively endorses it over other conjectures.

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sources in Con. 10.4.18.45 While in the earlier passage Seneca does not actually describe Latin declaimers as plagiarists, his words there could have prompted him to continue with the theme of blameworthy reuse. He would have then switched from a critical to a supportive posture and supposed that the speakers under consideration were innocent of that particular offense. This means that mutuari, while commonly signifying legitimate borrowing, would display the semantic flexibility that the verbs transferre and sumere do elsewhere and, with the addition of furtim, would come to designate plagiarizing.46 In this reading, therefore, Seneca treats plagiarism and imitation as opposite pursuits and distinguishes between them by looking to the mindsets of the speakers in question. Biographical considerations are paramount, as the declaimers’ guilt and innocence rests upon whether or not they were hiding their debts to Adaeus. Seneca’s observation is just an aside occasioned by his earlier remarks. But if I am correct, it confirms all the more that he thought of plagiarism in intentionalist terms. Whereas in the preface to book 1 of the Controversiae he cited deliberate deception while accusing declaimers of theft, here he proceeds as Fuscus did (and as he did when accepting Fuscus’ argument) and uses innocent authorial aims to distance speakers from the offense. To see a reference to plagiarism in Con. 10.4.20 is to identify a reason that Seneca brings up the subject in Con. 10.4.21. In both passages the indication is that he understood plagiarism to be something he could refer to in a casual way, which, again, implies its legibility and, thus, its assumed familiarity among his readership. But I would suggest that the second reference follows from the first: instead of countering a line of criticism that he knew Latro faced, Seneca thought to deny the Latin declaimer’s plagiarism from a Greek model because he had just denied that other speakers were plagiarists. The prompt to defend Latro was internal, rather than stemming from Seneca’s knowledge of a charge against him. While not answering an actual accusation of plagiarism, the statement that Latro did not steal from Artemon still absolves him of what Seneca represents as a stigmatizing offense. This he does not only by using furtum, 45

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One could suspect, maybe, that the presence of Adaeus as a model in both Con. 9.1.13 and Con. 10.4.20 led Seneca to think of plagiarism in the latter passage. (Arellius Fuscus, we should note, is also the third Latin declaimer whose version of Adaeus’ epigram Seneca gives in 10.4.20.) But it seems much better to look to the immediate context of 10.4.20 to explain why Seneca might have referred to plagiarism at that moment. See n. 26 and chapter 1, p. 9. Using mutuari with furtim in this manner would contrast with the use of palam mutuandi in Suas. 3.7 to describe imitation as opposed to plagiarism. (More on this passage to come.)

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which connotes a culpable act, but also through the term suspectus. Seneca conveys that the plagiarism charge would bring Latro under a cloud of suspicion and make him an object of mistrust, only to show why such a charge would be baseless.47 Seneca proclaims Latro’s innocence in part to show that he had legitimately produced an excellent sententia. Having stated that Latro expressed Artemon’s epigram virilius, Seneca explains that he did so separately from the Greek declaimer, meaning that there can be no doubt that his was a bona fide quality line. This is to introduce the possibility of plagiarism as a foil in order to cast into relief Latro’s virtues as a speaker capable of creating a fine epigram. Whereas a person who charged him with plagiarizing the sententia would not acknowledge those virtues, Seneca affirms them by showing that the accuser would have it all wrong. At the same time, Seneca uses his denial to spin out a general observation from a local one and to call attention to Latro’s Hellenophobia. The claim of innocence sets up a broader statement: Seneca not only wants to show that Latro was an innocent and true author of a good epigram, but also formulates his argument to relate the neutral fact that the Greeks lay beneath Latro’s contempt and beyond his notice.48 In denying Latro’s plagiarism as he does, Seneca betrays certain assumptions about that practice. As the remark hanc sententiam Latro Porcius virilius dixit reveals, Seneca acknowledges similarities between Latro’s and Artemon’s lines,49 while at the same time contending that the former produced a better sententia than the latter did. But like Terence in the Eunuchus, who claims ignorance of the plays that he allegedly plagiarized,50 Seneca then sets up a dichotomy between chance resemblance and resemblance borne out of actual reuse. To presume that an accidental echo like Latro’s of Artemon is an innocent echo is to hold that plagiarism must involve an author’s deliberate reuse of a source. While a textual parallel is naturally essential to the charge, 47 48

49 50

OLD s.v. “suspectus” 1. Seneca’s respect for Latro indicates circumstantially but cogently that he was not sneering at his ignorance of the Greeks and his antipathy toward them. Fairweather 1981: 83 and 255 sees in Seneca’s remark a sign of how Latro (and, presumably, Seneca) was cut off from Greek-based literary culture during his education in Spain. But as Berti 2007: 260 notes, Seneca must be exaggerating when he claims that Latro was ignorant of the Greeks: he may not have known much, but he must have known some to form his negative opinion of them (and he would have encountered them in the Roman rhetorical schools). On Seneca’s own balanced attitude toward the Greeks, see Fairweather (pp. 23–6 and 524–5). The plagiarized Greek would thus be τὰ δ’ ἡμέτερα ανάπηρα. τρέφει ἄρ τὸν ὁλόκληρον. See chapter 4, pp. 129–32.

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one needs to move beyond the immanent features of a work and establish that the similarity results from conscious borrowing. Seneca allows that the resemblance between Latro and Artemon’s sententiae could occasion a plagiarism charge, but he then resolves the matter by introducing a biographical alibi designed to eliminate the possibility of the intentional turn to a model that plagiarism requires.51 Once more, extratextual considerations enable one to determine if a declaimer had stolen an epigram. The notion that a plagiarist must consciously reuse his source makes room for the secrecy and deception that define plagiarism elsewhere in Seneca and in Latin literature. The thief deliberately derives material from a predecessor and then tries to hide his debt in order to earn credit for it that he does not deserve. A sign that Seneca was thinking along those lines comes in his comment that Latro felt contempt for the Greeks (Graecos enim et contemnabat). In using this as exculpatory evidence, Seneca assumes that plagiarists as a rule felt the opposite about the models they took and reused what they considered admirable. The implication is that they stole from esteemed sources because they wished to receive credit for producing excellent stuff. A recurrent theme in Latin discussions of plagiarism is given new expression: plagiarists steal to win recognition for another person’s literary achievements. Their aim is to inflate their authorial value, to make others think more highly of them than they actually deserve.52 Since the purpose of plagiarism is to impress falsely, it follows that Latro would have never plagiarized from the Greek authors in whom he found nothing impressive. While Seneca has to speculate about how the Latin declaimers in Con. 10.4.20 meant to reuse their source material (ut putem), he speaks definitively when dealing with Latro, surely on the grounds that he, as Latro’s old friend, was in a position to know about his likes and dislikes. The key to biographical criticism is to have good biographical information; and the animating assumption is that the personal bond between Seneca and Latro provides Seneca with the firm extratextual evidence that proves Latro’s innocence. Controversiae 10.4.21 is the final passage in Seneca in which he or a person he quotes denies that a declaimer had stolen a sententia; the remaining discussions relate that poets did not plagiarize. The defenses of Latro and Fuscus, as well as the denial of plagiarism that I posit for Con. 10.4.20 and 51

52

This also presupposes the absence of a firm textual barrier separating plagiarism and chance resemblance, just as the controversy over whether or not Fuscus was a plagiarist presupposed no such barrier between plagiarism and translation. I echo Posner 2007: 19–20.

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the accusation in Con. 10.5.20, all feature Greek sources. We should not conclude from this that the concept of plagiarism covered only the reuse of Greek epigrams. Seneca’s own allegations against contemporary speakers in the preface to book 1 of the Controversiae illustrate the point, since he accuses his targets of stealing from their Latin predecessors.53 Seeing that Seneca makes dishonest intentions a defining aspect of plagiarism in that passage, moreover, it becomes clear that the author’s inner state could be crucial to determining if speakers stole both Greek and Latin sententiae. Plagiarism stands as something that an author deliberately pursues; and with that idea in place, Seneca, like Arellius Fuscus, holds that certain biographical facts make it impossible in certain cases. ovid and the intention to imitate The mentality of the author remains the crucial piece of evidence in a denial of plagiarism on behalf of the poet Ovid, which appears in Suas. 3.7. Leading up to the passage, Seneca discusses how Arellius Fuscus imitated lines of Virgil before going on to make the larger point that Fuscus took many things from the poet in order to win Maecenas’ favor (Suas. 3.4–5).54 Included among the borrowings was the phrase plena deo, which does not actually appear in the extant Virgilian corpus.55 As Seneca describes him, Fuscus’ goal is absolute transparency: he hopes that Maecenas will identify the Virgilian elements he adapts, apparently in the hope of ingratiating himself to the patron by taking his client as a literary model. Because Seneca simply reports Fuscus’ intentions in a matter-of-fact fashion, he points to 53

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That the surviving denials only involve cases where a Latin declaimer reuses a Greek source or writes an epigram resembling one consequently seems to be accidental. This is a good place to note, moreover, that the presence of the Greek sources would seem to undercut the suggestion of Bloomer 1997: 147–8 that a person’s Greek identity exposes him to plagiarism charges in Seneca. It is hard to understand how there could be such anti-Greek prejudice at work with Fuscus (even with his capacity for speaking in Greek as well as in Latin [Suas. 4.5]), since the accusers are calling him out for plagiarizing the Greek Adaeus. In the other cases, too, it is the reuse of a Greek epigram, whether actual or possible, by a non-Greek declaimer that is at issue. Seneca initially criticizes Fuscus’ borrowings (from A. 10.275, G. 1.427–9, and G. 1.432–3) as superfluous before noting solebat autem Fuscus ex Vergilio multa trahere, ut Maecenati imputaret (Fuscus, moreover, used to take many things from Virgil, so that he might win Maecenas’ favor for it [Suas. 3.4]). Aiebat se imitatum esse Vergilium “plena deo” (he said that he had imitated the Virgilian plena deo [Suas. 3.5]). We cannot know how the phrase dropped out of Virgil’s corpus at some point after Fuscus imitated it and Seneca cited it. Nor can we know where the phrase appeared in Virgil, although the passages featuring the Sibyl in Aeneid 6 are good candidates. On this topic, see Berti 2007: 282–90. See also Servius, ad Aen. 6.50 and 6.262. The appearance of imitatum esse, as well as of imitari in Suas. 3.4 (Fuscus Arellius Vergilii versus voluit imitari [Arellius Fuscus wanted to imitate lines of Virgil]) and of trahere, shows that Fuscus’ pursuit of imitation was at issue, not his pursuit of quotation, as Edmunds 2001: 134–5 contends.

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the legitimacy of imitating across the borders of rhetorical prose and poetry. The acts of imitation can pass without comment, since they fall within the bounds of standard behavior.56 Seneca goes on to relate that plena deo was a favorite conversational tag of his close friend Junius Gallio (Suas. 3.6).57 He then recalls Gallio’s remark that Ovid, too, liked the phrase and imitated it in his tragedy, which must be his lost Medea. Ovid’s handling of plena deo, Gallio continues, matches up with how he reworked many other verses of Virgil. It is in the description of how Ovid handled Virgil that Gallio denies the poet’s plagiarism: Hoc autem dicebat Gallio Nasoni suo valde placuisse; itaque fecisse illum, quod in multis aliis versibus Vergilii fecerat, non subripiendi causa sed palam mutuandi, hoc animo ut vellet agnosci. Moreover, Gallio used to say that Ovid really liked the phrase, and that he did with it what he did with many other lines of Virgil, reusing it not to plagiarize but to borrow it openly, with the intention of having it recognized.

The temptation might be to suppose that Ovid’s identity as the leading poet of the generation after Virgil opened him up to charges that he was a fur Vergilii. For critics of Ovid, the accusations seem conceivable enough as a means of exposing his silver (or maybe gold-plated) status vis-à-vis the Virgilian gold standard. But by all appearances, Gallio’s remarks are not tied to any actual charges of plagiarism. Rather, he is interested in bringing out how transparently Ovid reused Virgil – an observation that connects the poet with Fuscus and, thus, creates a further link between Suas. 3.7 and what preceded it. The thinking seems to be that setting imitation against plagiarism would sharpen that message and vividly bring out just how open Ovid was when he adapted lines from Virgil. The suggestion is consequently that Gallio was familiar with plagiarism as something distinct from and opposed to imitation and thought to use it in literary conversation (dicebat) for its contrastive force. This situates the subject all the more firmly in early imperial culture. Gallio refers to plagiarism with the assumption that his interlocutors would be familiar with it – just as Seneca does with his readership – and, in the process, offers a glimpse into how remarks on plagiarizing were woven into Julio-Claudian literary discourse, in this case on the conversational level. 56

57

Con. 2.2.8, on how Ovid recast Fuscus (n. 10), meanwhile, demonstrates the same point, albeit with examples in which an author imitates in the opposite direction, from declamation to verse. See, too, Con. 10.4.25, on the desirability of imitating Ovid’s Met. 12.607–8 in declamations. Berti 2007: 265–310 examines in detail the relationship between declamation and poetry. On Gallio, see Bornecque 1967: 173–4 and Fairweather 1981: esp. 10. See, too, n. 39.

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How Gallio contrasts plagiarism and imitation recalls Cicero, who in Brutus 76 also turns to plagiarism to make a broader literary point, namely that Ennius borrowed extensively from Naevius. As we saw in chapter 1, Cicero observes that Ennius imitated Naevius, if he were to admit to his debts to that predecessor, or stole (surripere) from him, if he were to deny them.58 There is not a strong enough resemblance on the verbal level between Cicero and Gallio to establish direct influence. The impression is, instead, that they arrived independently at similar observations, in which they distinguished between plagiarism and imitation by setting an author’s desire to conceal a borrowing against an author’s openness to having it be identified. Clearly, this is to look squarely to authorial intention to differentiate between plagiarism and imitation. The certainty with which Gallio lays out Ovid’s aims assumes that the poet’s intentions were accessible and clear and that citing them was enough to determine the character of his borrowings.59 Presumably, Gallio used his position as Ovid’s friend (note Nasoni suo) to establish his critical authority.60 Like Seneca’s relationship with Latro, Gallio’s closeness to Ovid would suggest that he had special insight into the poet’s inner state. Gallio might have even made it known that he had gotten firsthand information from Ovid about how he had sought to imitate Virgil, with the attendant idea naturally being that the information was credible. For Gallio, the specific issue is how Ovid wanted his readers to experience his poetry, with its pervasive debts to Virgil.61 On the one hand, Ovid the plagiarist would have set out to hide his reuse of Virgilian lines he found appealing,62 so that his borrowings went unrecognized by his audience. The purpose behind this seems straightforward enough: to induce “detrimental reliance,” or “[to make] the reader do something because he thinks the plagiarizing work original that he would not have done had he known the truth.”63 By logic, the person who fails to see that the pleasing poetry derived from Virgil will credit Ovid with originating the good work rather 58 59

60 61 62

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See p. 2. Berti 2007: 254 n. 1 also compares these passages. Because Seneca and Gallio were close friends, it seems reasonable to suppose that Gallio really did reflect on how Ovid reworked Virgil in Seneca’s presence, and that Suas. 3.7 accurately captures those remarks. Ovid, Ex Ponto 4.11, addressed to Gallio, confirms the relationship. Russell 1979: 12 and Hinds 1998: 22 discuss Gallio’s claims about Ovid in similar terms. The idea that Ovid liked plena deo is made explicit with the words Nasoni suo valde placuisse; and the connection Gallio draws between how Ovid reused that pleasing phrase and multi alii versus indicates that Ovid felt similarly about those lines. Posner 2007: 19–20.

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than judge him accurately on the basis of how he reused his model. On the other hand, Ovid the imitator aimed to have his readership recognize his ties to his source and, in the process, activate what modern criticism labels allusions.64 Gallio does not get into what exactly Ovid hoped to accomplish by sending his readers back to Virgil. This means that he is silent on the pragmatics of allusion, i.e., on what the references were designed to do.65 The claim is simply that, whereas a plagiarist schemes to keep his model out of his audience’s purview, Ovid was consistent and calculated in seeking to bring his model into it, so that he produced a bi-level reading experience.66 Yet the very desire to bring the canonical Virgil into the experience of reading Ovid implies a wish on Ovid’s part to add value to his text. Whether the audience is to enjoy simply the Virgilian air and linguistic coloring that the allusions bring to Ovid or to savor how Ovid transforms his predecessor, the imitating author aims to enhance his work by reusing the great poet in it. No doubt Gallio, as Ovid’s friend, sought to suggest that attentive readers should be responsive to those efforts and should deem them successful. Denying that Ovid plagiarized to win fraudulent credit, therefore, becomes a way of bringing out that he deserved real credit for how he deliberately and legitimately enriched his poetry for his readership to get more out of it – a kind of enrichment that, as Gallio had to have recognized, the plagiarism charges he describes would not acknowledge. In operating with the opposition he does, Gallio assumes that the reach of imitatio was not universal in Latin poetry, despite its predominance in poetic theory and practice. It is not just that the interpreter can imagine a poet engaging in plagiarism but that he can also suppose a situation where the plagiarist manipulates the public’s recognition of unborrowed discourse. According to Gallio, as a literary thief, Ovid would have understood that his audience accepted the possibility of unindebted composition and would 64

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Berti 2007: 254 makes this point as well. On allusion, see, e.g., Conte 1986: esp. 23–39; Pucci 1998: esp. 5–6, 30–8, and 40–4; and Hinds 1998 passim. Ricks 2002: 231–3 discusses the distinction between plagiarism, in which an author seeks to hide his debts, and allusion, in which an author seeks to have his debts recognized (or at least would be comfortable with that outcome). Any reader of Ovid would be hard pressed to deny that the poet, when he alluded to Virgil, wanted at least in some cases to have his reader activate the Virgilian narrative context and to bring it to bear upon Ovid’s poem. This means that he had a notion of substantive allusion, in which the later author seeks to bring his and his model’s narratives into dialogue. (Latin sources are notoriously silent on this topic.) But Ovid could have at times simply wanted his audience to see how he adapted Virgil, i.e., how he pursued transformative and personalizing adaptation (and perhaps aemulatio). Edward 1928: 123 supposes that Seneca (though properly he should have said Gallio) understood Ovid to have been borrowing “to give pleasure to his readers by echoing their favourite poet.” Tarrant 2002: 23–7 provides a useful overview of the vast (and vastly interpreted) topic of how Ovid reused Virgil. The phrase “consistent and calculated” comes from Kenney 1973: 118, on how Ovid “denatures” Virgil’s language when pervasively imitating it.

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have plotted to efface his reuse of Virgil in order to win credit for such originality. By suggesting that one might see either this or open imitation in Ovid’s borrowings from Virgil, Gallio implies that there was no hard and fast formal line to separate plagiarism and imitation and keep audience members from putting verses, like sententiae, in each category depending on how they read an author’s intentions. The same lines could be examples of plagiarism, if an interpreter held that the author sought to fool his audience, or of imitation, if an interpreter held that the author aimed to have the audience recognize his debts. Gallio’s remarks on Ovid further extend the reach of biographical criticism in the interpretation of plagiarism in the early imperial period. The sample that Seneca provides is, again, admittedly small. Still, the evidence points to an interpretive thread that stretched from declamation to poetry, in which discussing whether or not an author had plagiarized meant dealing with the author’s thoughts and aims. Gallio, Seneca, and Fuscus maintained that the only fallacy in reading plagiarism biographically lay in coming to the wrong conclusions about what the author had intended. His designs were not simply knowable, but they contained the firm information that settled the question of whether or not he had plagiarized from a model. plagiarism or imitation? the case of abronius silo A last denial of plagiarism in Seneca the Elder diverges from the others so far examined in looking to the mindset of the accusers, not of the author, to support the idea that plagiarism did not occur. It is also the case that the denial is implicit rather than expressed. Seneca, the speaker, shows that he rejects a plagiarism charge not by stating his objections to it but through the language he uses while dealing with other subjects. In Suas. 2.19, Seneca quotes the epigram si nihil aliud, erimus certe belli mora (if nothing else, we will be a brake on the war) that Latro delivered in a suasoria featuring the Spartans at Thermopylae, who deliberate over whether they should meet the advance of Xerxes or retreat.67 Seneca then relates that when Abronius Silo, Latro’s student, was later reciting a poem, 67

I follow Winterbottom 1974: ii 530, Fairweather 1981: 232, 312, 316, and 324, and Håkanson 1989: 347 in identifying the poet as Abronius Silo, although manuscripts of Seneca have arbronum and abronum. Edward 1928: 13, 53, and 114 and Bonner 1949: 141 and 161, however, call him Arbronius Silo. Courtney 1993: 331 and Hollis 2007: 330–1, meanwhile, tentatively give the poet the name Arbonius Silo.

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he and other members of the audience (note the first-person plural agnovimus) recognized Silo’s reuse of Latro’s sententia:68 Postea memini auditorem Latronis Abronium Silonem . . . recitare carmen, in quo agnovimus sensum Latronis in his versibus: ite agite, Danai, magnum paeana canentes, / ite triumphantes: belli mora concidit Hector.69 Later I remember that Abronius Silo, Latro’s student, recited a poem in which we recognized Latro’s epigram in these verses: “Go forward, Greeks, singing a great paean, go in triumph. Hector, the brake on the war, has fallen.”

Seneca continues by opposing audiences of the past, by which he must mean those of the early Augustan Age, when Silo delivered his poem, and those of the present – probably the late 30s ce, when he likely put together the Controversiae and Suasoriae:70 Tam diligentes tunc auditores erant, ne dicam tam maligni, ut unum verbum surripi non posset; at nunc cuilibet orationes in Verrem tuto licet pro suo .71 So assiduous were audiences then, not to mention so mean-spirited, that a single word could not be plagiarized. Now, by contrast, anyone can safely deliver the Verrines as his own.

Seneca’s primary point is to contrast the diligence of earlier audiences with the intellectual lethargy and inattention of contemporary audiences. The differences between the two groups reveal themselves in their reactions to plagiarism. Whereas the listeners of the past did not allow a single word to be stolen, those of the present would miss it if a person recited Cicero’s Verrines as his own. Neither of these assertions should be taken literally. Rather, unum verbum surripi non posset exaggerates matters to underline principally just how attentive earlier audiences were, while the picture of safely stealing the Verrines, which serves as a symbol of extreme literary bulk, 68

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As was the case with Con. 9.1.13, I am inclined to believe that Seneca really did take in the literary performance he describes and, consequently, that the first-person plural (as well as memini) is not meant simply to give the passage more immediacy, vividness, or narrative authority. Seneca uses sensus to describe Silo’s epigram apparently to achieve linguistic variety after having just used sententia in Suas. 2.19 (tum illam sententiam: si nihil aliud, erimus certe belli mora). See n. 43. Contra Hollis 2007: 330–1, a terminus ante quem for Silo’s poem and performance can be set at 19 bce, since in Suas. 2.20 we hear that Virgil expressed Silo’s epigram better in A. 11.288–90. (More on this to come.) It seems unlikely that Virgil actually took Silo as a model; a better bet is Homer’s Il. 6.77–80. Yet the fact that Seneca believed he did presupposes that Silo was the earlier poet. Trust in Seneca seems justified, meanwhile, because he was around in Augustan Rome, as well as because of his apparent firsthand familiarity with Silo. If Seneca knew that Silo postdated Virgil, moreover, he surely would not have given any credence to the idea that Virgil imitated his line. The text I print is basically Winterbottom’s 1974: ii 530 rather than Håkanson’s, though I use the latter’s pro suo and not the former’s pro suis. Several of Winterbottom’s editorial choices in this passage seem to me superior to Håkanson’s.

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satirizes the profound torpor of current auditores.72 The larger goal is to use the divergent responses to plagiarism to illustrate how Rome had undergone cultural decline. Seneca supposes once more that a plagiarist aims to conceal his debts from an audience; and in the change from audiences who made things very difficult for him to audiences who let gratuitous theft pass, Seneca finds a token of how the present falls short of the past. As he does in Con. 1 praef. 10, though without giving his passage the same programmatic significance,73 Seneca uses plagiarism to condemn the current age, now with a focus upon the listeners who let it happen rather than upon the plagiarists themselves.74 Why does Seneca go from noting that people identified Silo’s reuse of Latro at a recitation to reflecting upon how listeners in Silo’s era and later reacted to plagiarism? The sequence of topics implies that the crowd at Silo’s performance exemplifies the past auditores in general. From there, the conclusion presents itself that Silo’s audience members accused him of stealing belli mora from Latro, and that the memory of that event led Seneca to find decline in the responses to plagiarism by past and present audiences.75 The charge against Silo gives the movement between ideas coherence. With that allegation in mind, Seneca points to the past’s superiority by noting how conditions at the time of Silo’s performance were unconducive to plagiarism, rather than simply by referring to the listeners’ great attentiveness or by pointing out that they identified any and all moments of imitation. (This means that Seneca’s unum verbum surripi non posset only slightly exaggerates matters in the case of Silo, who, after all, reuses just belli mora.) The scene that we can reconstruct from Seneca’s passage thus finds Silo’s listeners keenly looking out for plagiarism and, as the appearance of the parenthetical maligni (ne dicam tam maligni) suggests, harshly impugning the poet for his perceived misdeed. The hostility that the accusers displayed impels Seneca to label earlier audiences ill-tempered while he emphasizes their diligence. 72

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I summarize McGill 2005: 340–3. Edward 1928: 114 is thus on the wrong track when he states in connection with Suas. 2.19 that “Seneca is not given to exaggeration.” Given that Suas. 2.19 cannot be seen to promote Seneca’s text as Con. 1 praef. 10 (with 6–9 and 11) does, and given where the passage falls in the Senecan corpus, it clearly does not have the same programmatic purposes as the prefatory account. To reiterate a point made in chapter 2 n. 97, it is true that in Con. 1 praef. 10 Seneca notes how easily the plagiarists get away with stealing epigrams in tanta hominum desidia, or among such lazy, inattentive audiences. Still, the real symbols of decline in the passage are the plagiarists who steal from their superior predecessors. My reading contrasts with the suggestion of Bloomer 1997: 145 that “perhaps Latro had been accused of plagiarism.” To me, this does not follow from the text.

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Because reusing a rhetorical epigram in poetry was by all appearances an accepted practice, there must have been something beyond the basic fact of borrowing that Silo’s critics identified in his epigram to occasion their charge. But whether the accusers cited excessive dependence, Silo’s fraudulent intention to have his audience believe that he had devised the sententia himself, or both things, we can assume that their criticism had the poet doing what plagiarists in Rome did by definition: getting credit to which he was not entitled.76 The feeling would have been that the student was improperly trading off his teacher’s work. It is easy to imagine as well that a part of what was fueling the accusers’ hostile criticism was a wish to keep Latro’s auditor Silo from acquiring the same claim to literary value in his line that Latro had in his. The charge would place the student at a proper level below his teacher and, in the process, would assert Latro’s predominance and authority over him. Seneca himself, however, disagreed with those who charged Silo with plagiarism. Indications of this come in Suas. 2.20, where Seneca moves from contrasting audiences of the past and present to showing that a well-said epigram can still be expressed better. The sensus bene dictus turns out to be none other than Silo’s line, which, according to Seneca, was also “very renowned” (valde celebre). In Seneca’s judgment, Silo’s fine and celebrated sensus found more attractive expression in Virgil’s Aeneid (Aen. 11.288–90):77 Sed ut sciatis sensum bene dictum dici tamen posse melius, notate †prae ceteris† quanto decentius Vergilius dixerit hoc, quod valde erat celebre, “belli mora concidit Hector”: quidquid ad adversae cessatum est moenia Troiae, / Hectoris Aeneaeque manu victoria Graium / haesit. But so that you may know that a well-said epigram can still be expressed better, take note particularly of how much more fitly Virgil expressed this very renowned line, “Hector, the brake on the war, has fallen:” “Whatever delay there was before the walls of stubborn Troy, the Greeks’ victory was stayed by the hands of Hector and Aeneas.” 76 77

I echo Ricks 2002: 240. Again, we should be sceptical that Virgil actually imitated Silo; but the important thing is that Seneca thought he did. Another poet who might have borrowed from Silo is Ovid, whose Met. 12.20 (Troia cadet, sed erit nostri mora longa laboris [Troy will fall, but there will be a long brake on our labor]) resembles Silo’s sensus, as Bornecque 1932: 570 recognizes. Later in the first century ce, Seneca the Younger echoes Silo even more closely (non sola Danais Hector et bello mora [Hector is not the sole brake on the war for the Greeks {Agam. 211}]), which raises the suspicion that he found that poet’s line in his father’s text and imitated it. Lucan, meanwhile, could have turned to Seneca or Silo, whom he might have located in his grandfather’s work, for his belli mora (Crassus erat belli medius mora [Crassus, in the middle, was the brake on the war {BC 1.100}]). For more on the Latin afterlife of belli mora, see Berti 2007: 280–2.

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There is no sign that Silo’s sensus was bene dictus because male surreptus, i.e., that Silo illegitimately presented Latro’s finely turned epigram as his own. Seneca instead describes Silo’s sensus so that it seems to be itself well composed and to have discrete aesthetic value. This is how Seneca uses bene dicta and related phrases in other passages where he describes lines he admires.78 The unagitated and unqualified remark that Silo’s effort was valde celebre, meanwhile, suggests that Seneca accepted the way that the epigram had earned independent renown. Neither of these perspectives accords with the belief that Silo engaged in plagiarism. Certainly it would have been odd for Seneca to be so positive rather than to suggest as he does elsewhere that a plagiarist misappropriates another’s meritorious material in an effort to earn spurious and undeserved credit.79 Like the presence of praise, the absence of blame in Seneca’s treatment of Silo points to his understanding that the poet did not plagiarize his line from Latro. Whereas Latro stands out in the Controversiae and Suasoriae as Seneca’s close friend and the leading declaimer of his age, Silo appears only here in the collections and in all our extant sources. This points to his marginality to Seneca and his minor position in Augustan literary culture, despite the fame that, according to Seneca, his belli mora concidit Hector achieved. The historical identities of the people involved make it extremely likely that Seneca’s sympathies would have been with the plagiarized Latro over the plagiarist Silo. This in turn makes it difficult to imagine that the poet would have escaped censure if Seneca thought that he had misappropriated his epigram. As a plagiarist, moreover, Silo would have done exactly what Seneca slams contemporary declaimers for doing in the preface to book 1 of the Controversiae – stealing a great Augustan speaker’s sententia. Even though 78

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See Con. 7.3.8 (melius dicta) and 7.4.10 (bene dicta); see, too, 10.4.18, for pulchre dicta (cited in n. 41). On textual and thematic grounds, I also prefer the reading P. Vinicius et pulchre dixit et nove (sumpsit ab omnibus bene dicta) in Con. 1.4.11 in Winterbottom 1974: i 118 to Håkanson’s (1989: 35) P. Vinicius et pulchre dixit et nove sum etsi ab omnibus bene dictum. (I disagree with Winterbottom’s translation, however, in which sumere signals theft: “Publius Vinicius said nicely, and also originally [usually he stole everyone else’s witty sayings].” I would render it “Publius Vinicius said nicely, and also originally [he was a man who borrowed witty sayings from everyone].”). On Seneca’s critical language, see Bardon 1940. In Con. 10.5.21, Seneca notes that Adaeus plagiarized from Glycon but expressed his epigram sanius, “in better taste.” This, however, is relative to an epigram that Seneca felt was in questionable taste; it is not the kind of praise we find in Suas. 2.20. (The sense in Con. 10.5.21 is also that Adaeus changed Glycon enough so that he improved upon him but still stayed too close to him, so that he committed plagiarism. This obviously leaves Seneca open to a counterargument, since improvement implies the creativity that is a defining aspect of imitation [and, as Fuscus relates, of translation]. It is evident from how Seneca proceeds that the distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate reuse could at times be untidy in ancient Rome, just as they can be today.)

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Silo does not play the same rhetorical role as the declaimers do (for living when he did, he cannot be a symbol of cultural decline), it is not at all unreasonable to expect that Seneca would have shown at least some consistency if he had considered Silo a plagiarist, and therefore that he would have disapproved of him as he did of them, if not necessarily with the same vehemence. The only person Seneca criticizes when dealing with Silo’s epigram, however, is Silo’s son, who makes a passing appearance as someone who profaned his “considerable talent” (ingenium grande) by writing mimes (Suas. 2.19).80 If Seneca conceived of that ingenium as an inherited trait, his rebuke would have indirectly complimented the elder Silo. But in any event, he presents Silo père in a friendly light, sparing him any harsh comment and simply memorializing him for his celebrated sensus bene dictus. Two distinct responses to Silo’s epigram, therefore, emerge from Suas. 2.19–20. On one side stand the critics who find something blameworthy in the poet’s dependence upon Latro and label it plagiarism. On the other side stands Seneca, who reacts favorably to Silo’s line and, in the process, indicates that he saw it not as the product of culpable theft but as an example of acceptable and even commendable borrowing. As happens in disputes generally over whether or not an author has plagiarized, Seneca points to how different acts of reception can create different texts. Audience members are able to see separate things in the same line and, indeed, to construct it in contrary ways.81 It stands to reason that Seneca looked to the cultural norm of imitatio to understand and define what Silo had done with Latro. Having linked the poet’s borrowing to that legitimate mode of textual reuse, he goes on to maintain that Silo imitated Latro well, by making a sensus bene dictus from his predecessor. (Presumably Seneca saw this as a matter of adapting Latro’s belli mora to a new narrative context, so that it acquired a different tone and different connotations.) Seneca did not go so far as to consider Silo’s epigram superior to Latro’s. If he had, he could have used belli mora concidit Hector rather than Virgil’s lines to demonstrate that it was possible to

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[Abronium Silonem] patrem huius Silonis, qui pantomimis fabulas scripsit et ingenium grande non tantum deseruit sed polluit ([Abronius Silo] the father of the Silo who wrote pantomime plays, thus not only falling short of his great talent, but polluting it as well). One might also suspect that Seneca was not one of the accusers because of how he labels past audiences maligni as well as diligentes. It seems to me unlikely that Seneca would have included himself among the maligni to show that he, too, was a severe plagiarism-hunter, given the meaning of the word malignus, and given other considerations that I will soon lay out.

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improve upon a finely turned phrase.82 Yet ancient sources, including Seneca, saw imitation in examples where the later author produced something good of his own out of a good model while falling shy of producing something better than that predecessor did.83 By using Silo’s line as he does, Seneca signals that he understood the borrowing in just those terms.84 This does not necessarily mean that the question of whether or not Silo plagiarized was in Seneca’s view strictly a formal matter. He might have felt that the poet did not want to hide his debt in an attempt to win false credit for coming up with the line and that he had commendably met the formal threshold for imitation. In taking the latter position, Seneca ascribes to Silo the quality and merit of a true author, after recalling a charge that called his authorial status into question and, it follows, denied his line any such literary virtues. To maintain that Silo imitated Latro instead of plagiarizing from him is to believe that the poet’s accusers got things wrong. Seneca indicates that he felt that way about the critics and, at the same time, hints at why they made the mistake they did when he remarks in Suas. 2.19 that past auditores were maligni as well as diligentes. As I previously noted, Seneca’s use of maligni gestures toward the earlier audiences’ darker side. Not only were the listeners attentive, but they were harsh and ungenerous as well. For a wide range of Latin sources, referring to audience members’ malignity was a way of blunting and countering their adverse assessments of texts. The idea is that the interpreters’ emotional bent caused them to read flaws into a work that in actuality did not exist.85 To take this ad hominem approach was to call into question their credibility as readers, to impugn the soundness and reliability of their judgment. What the maligni offer up is groundless, excessive criticism, which a more objective, right-thinking audience member would reject.86 82

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It is surely safe to suppose that Seneca quoted Latro’s epigram because he found it effective and memorable. Con. 2.2.8 appears to offer an example: the idea seems to be that Ovid expressed nicely the nice epigrams of Latro, rather than that he improved upon them. For non-Senecan material that clearly makes this point, see Macrobius, Sat. 5.12. Many passages in Seneca and elsewhere, in which a favorably disposed critic cites an imitator and his source without further comment, also imply this outlook. I disagree, then, with Berti 2007: 279, who understands Seneca to be observing that Silo reused Latro’s line in a manner “touching upon” or “on the verge of” (sfiorare) plagiarism. Examples with forms of malignus appear in Aulus Gellius, NA 4.15.1, and Tiberius Claudius Donatus, Int. Verg. praef. 5.25–6 (Georgii). For examples of this viewpoint with terms other than malignus describing the interpreters, see Phaedrus, Fab. 4 prol. 15–16 and Fab. 5 prol. 8–9; VSD 43; Aulus Gellius, NA 10.26.1, 17.1.1–3, and 18.11.1; Servius, ad Buc. 3.90; and Macrobius, Sat. 1.24.8 (with 1.7.2). Again (see chapter 4 n. 23), my discussion of such ad hominem responses to criticism in ancient Rome owes much to Herrnstein Smith 1984: 18–23.

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As we saw in chapter 4, Terence lies among the Latin writers who so personalized literary debates, as he cites his critics’ malignity when responding to their attacks, including plagiarism charges, in the prologues to his comedies. The argumentative tack is to refute the criticism by conveying that the animosity his critics (especially Luscius of Lanuvium) felt toward him skewed their interpretation. Other examples of ad hominem responses to plagiarism allegations appear in connection with Virgil.87 Of particular relevance to Seneca is Macrobius’ Sat. 6.1.2, where the speaker, Rufius Albinus, states his concern that the list he is about to present of lines and passages Virgil derived from his Latin predecessors will give the “foolish or hostile” (imperiti vel maligni) occasion to indict the poet for stealing material.88 The suggestion is that plagiarism-hunters’ private traits, which include rancor, cause them to find phantom transgressions in Virgil’s work. Obviously, the cultural and rhetorical contexts of Seneca’s ne dicam maligni differ from those in Terence and Macrobius, just as the contexts of those examples differ from each other. Still, the connection that Terence and Virgil’s defenders establish between errant plagiarism charges and interpreters’ ill will seems likely to be in place in a passage also concerned with literary theft that calls attention to plagiarism hunters’ asperity, and with a term found in the Virgilian comments. Like other Latin sources, Seneca uses the word maligni to convey that mean-spiritedness clouded judgment and resulted in false charges that rendered plagiarism a mistaken critical construct. The signs that Seneca’s remark develops from an allegation with which he disagrees, moreover, give us further reason to conclude that he was thinking along those lines. Having seen that Silo’s accusers were hostile, and having judged that they were off the mark with their charge, Seneca goes on to locate their error in their very hostility.89 The use of maligni invalidates their criticism and denies Silo’s plagiarism, albeit indirectly.

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See pp. 182–5. Etsi vereor ne . . . occasionem reprehendendi vel imperitis vel malignis ministrem, exprobrantibus tanto viro alieni usurpationem (yet I fear . . . that I should give to the foolish or malignant the opportunity to censure him, in that they may reproach so great a man for stealing what belongs to another). I will return to this passage, as well as to the subject of ad hominem defenses of Virgil against adverse criticism, in chapter 6. This is a good place to underline what should be evident: Seneca does not attribute the same personal animus to the accusers that Terence and Virgil’s defenders do. Rather than suggesting that the critics had it in for a particular author, Seneca implies that they were generally antagonistic, hypercritical interpreters. I should also note that Seneca’s comments do not show that the critics were being consciously tendentious or even that he believed they were aware of how their hostility was influencing their interpretation.

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Seneca’s full message about the Augustan past is thus that would-be thieves faced strong obstacles to getting away with plagiarism in a climate where audiences identified it not only diligently but also overzealously, as the response to Silo showed. This observation makes a place for both sharpeared and prickly plagiarism-hunting in the early Augustan Age. The audience members who accused Silo of plagiarizing Latro’s epigram are representative of the auditores of that era in how they policed plagiarism rigorously and alleged it erroneously. The sense is of a cultural tendency to look carefully for plagiarism and to find it even where it was not. This complements my earlier point that charges of literary theft were more common in early imperial declamation than the record shows. For the suggestion is that listeners turned accusers at least frequently enough to lead Seneca to represent the past as he does; and in a book concerned primarily with rhetoric, Seneca had to have been thinking more about reactions to speeches than about reactions to poems.90 The way that Seneca emphasizes the earlier audiences’ diligence takes the bite out of his message that they could succumb to distorting malignitas and could wrongly accuse authors of plagiarism. In what looks like a good-humored aside, the propensity for false charges stands as a venial flaw that a laudable trait overrides. Unlike Virgil’s defenders and Terence, whose treatments of overheated plagiarismhunters are contentious and dismissive, Seneca focuses upon what was good about the past audiences and goes on to train his disdain upon the leaden listeners of the present. The differences between how Seneca deals with baseless plagiarism charges and how Terence and Virgil’s supporters do so reflect the different rhetorical conditions under which he and they speak: Seneca neither defends himself against plagiarism charges nor shields someone he considers a cultural giant from them, but rather he expresses nostalgia for a past that the plagiarism-hunters exemplify. How Seneca deviates from

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When citing the Verrines, Seneca also indicates that his concern lies with speeches (albeit different kinds of speeches from Cicero’s), even though he introduces that particular text for its bulk. Obviously, in saying what he does about the past audiences, Seneca is being reductionist, as a person will be when generalizing. It would thus be a mistake to conclude from his remarks that he really considered all audiences in the earlier age to be like the ones he describes. Yet by making energetic and overheated plagiarism-hunting a tendency, Seneca still suggests that accusations of literary theft played a bigger role in early imperial literary culture than the surviving evidence reveals. In feeling free to refer to plagiarism once more in an offhand way, moreover, Seneca points again to his assumption that his audience would be familiar with the offense, just as the Augustan auditores had been.

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those other sources is revealing. By only secondarily labeling the Augustan audiences maligni while primarily holding them up as a golden precursor to cultural decline, Seneca shows that a Latin critic might treat meanspirited and misguided plagiarism-hunters without rancor and scorn of his own. Seneca need not have interrupted his praise of the past auditores to call attention to their malignity. By doing so, he indicates that the bitterness of Silo’s accusers and, by extension, of early Augustan audiences made an impression on him, and that he wanted his readers to register the role that their malignitas played in producing false plagiarism charges, including in the case of Silo. Yet for Seneca, disagreements over what constituted plagiarism did not lead to a breach or an attack. In remaining friendly and, indeed, respectful toward the auditores, Seneca offers a new perspective on an ad hominem mode of dealing with plagiarism accusers in the Roman world.91 His benign approach toward the maligni illustrates that in Latin antiquity to represent audience members as having misread texts out of gall did not necessarily mean expelling them from the ranks of good interpreters. Seneca’s use of maligni to describe Silo’s accusers provides still another glimpse into how early imperial sources turned to people’s inner states to deny plagiarism. Whether it is the malignity of an interpreter or the objectives of an author, personal considerations work in Seneca to determine that someone had not plagiarized lines from a predecessor. These accounts expand upon an important story line in this book by providing more examples in which an author or speaker in ancient Rome mobilized extratextual criteria to define what it was to plagiarize.92 Verbal parallels were only one part of what made and unmade plagiarism in Latin antiquity. To determine if furtum had occurred, one could look not just in a text, but inside the person who was writing or interpreting that text as well. The Senecan sources offer these insights into how they conceptualized plagiarism while giving their comments a range of practical and rhetorical roles. As the Controversiae and Suasoriae illustrate, denials of plagiarism, no less than accusations in the Senecan milieu and in Latin literature more broadly, did more than just dictate how to read perceived borrowings. 91

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Considering that Seneca has his own bias and promotional goals in Suas. 2.19, we should hesitate before supposing that his leniency was typical, just as we should recognize that the argumentative aims of Terence and Virgil’s defenders make them unreliable voices for broad cultural attitudes. What the differences between Seneca’s remarks and the other passages do demonstrate is simply that one could treat the malign plagiarism-hunters variously, depending upon context and the speakers’ rhetorical positions. I paraphrase Randall 2001: 5, on the identification of plagiarism generally.

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While they could counter charges, they also served to call attention to a declaimer’s or a poet’s literary value and to artistic dimensions of his text; to make neutral observations about a speaker’s literary tastes and practices; and to help to represent the past in a way that demonstrated cultural decline. For Seneca and the speakers he cites, as for Terence, to deny plagiarism was to say much else besides, to include varied messages within a no.

chapter 6

Saving the hero: Virgil, plagiarism, and canonicity

We do not know if Virgil’s borrowing from Abronius Silo that Seneca the Elder identifies ever elicited a plagiarism charge in Latin antiquity. But that accusation is conceivable as one among the many examples cited by the ancient Roman plagiarism-hunters who descended upon Virgil. The evidence we have for the accusations is indirect: sources either refer to them or appear to rely upon them for citations of the poet’s debts, but without being interested themselves in documenting his plagiarism. Notable among this material is the Suetonian– Donatan biography of Virgil (the VSD), which I discussed briefly in chapter 1.1 In a passage on Virgil’s obtrectatores, or “detractors,” Suetonius tells of how Perellius Faustus composed a tract that laid out the poet’s furta. He then continues that Quintus Octavius Avitus put together eight volumes also devoted, as the surrounding focus on plagiarism-hunting makes clear, to showing that Virgil plagiarized (VSD 44–6).2 It seems reasonable that the critics would have given the attention they did to their subject in order to lodge a stronger charge than that of metaphorical theft, and that they sought to establish in catalogued detail how Virgil’s debts constituted plagiarism, understood as a distinct and culpable mode of reuse. The indication is of some ancient hostility toward Virgil and of plagiarism accusations as an outlet for that hostility. Presumably taking their cue from Hellenistic κλοπαί-literature, Faustus and Avitus appear to have put together their works at some point in the 1

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The fourth-century ce Aelius Donatus is the source for this biography. But critics have plausibly argued that Donatus largely, if not entirely, reproduced the Virgilian Vita of Suetonius. McGill 2010: 154 briefly deals with this issue, with bibliography in n. 4. Herennius tantum vitia eius, Perellius Faustus furta contraxit. sed et Q. Octavi Aviti Ὁμοιοτήτων octo volumina, quos et unde versus transtulerit, continent (Herennius gathered only his defects/mistakes, while Perellius Faustus gathered examples of his plagiarism. What is more, Quintus Octavius Avitus’ eight volumes, entitled “Resemblances,” give the verses he took, and where he took them from). I use Stok’s 1997 edition, but I replace his Ὁμοιοτελεύτων with Ὁμοιοτήτων (thereby following other editors, including Hardie 1954). The text there is very uncertain. Reifferscheid 1860: 65–6 proposes homoeon elenchon, “blame for similarities,” which at least captures what had to have been the adversarial tone and purpose of an obtrectator’s book.

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century after Virgil’s death. For Suetonius suggests that they elicited a reply from the first-century ce Asconius Pedianus.3 After mentioning Faustus and Avitus, the biographer relates that one of Asconius’ primary concerns in his work “contra obtrectatores Vergilii” was to counter allegations that Virgil had stolen a great deal from Homer.4 The flow of Suetonius’ account gives the strong impression that Faustus and Avitus were among the critics that Asconius took on.5 While Asconius’ work does not survive, another defense of Virgil against charges that he was a plagiarist has come down to us via Macrobius’ fifth-century ce Saturnalia. Set probably in 382, Macrobius’ work presents the fictional conversations of actual Roman “nobles and some learned men” (Romanae nobilitatis proceres doctique alii [Sat. 1.1.1]) during the Saturnalia.6 Virgil is a prevalent subject of discussion in several of the Saturnalia’s seven books; and much of books 5 and 6 are devoted to his imitation of literary models (Greek in the former, and Latin in the latter).7 At the opening of Saturnalia 6, Rufius Albinus, one of Macrobius’ interlocutors, pre-emptively rebuts anyone who might accuse Virgil of literary theft upon perusing the catalogue he is about to provide of lines and passages that the poet borrowed from earlier Latin authors.8 As, again, I mentioned in my first chapter, this passage surely did not originate with Macrobius and, instead, came from an earlier piece of literary criticism, which 3

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Enciclopedia Virgiliana 1.366–7 s.v. “Asconio Pediano,” is a useful source on Asconius Pedianus. Asconius may have lived from 9 bce to 76 ce or from 3 to 88 ce. Whether contra obtrectatores Vergilii was the actual title of the work is uncertain. Asconius Pedianus libro, quem contra obtrectatores Vergilii scripsit, pauca admodum obiecta ei proponit, eaque circa historiam fere et quod pleraque ab Homero sumpsisset (in the book he wrote against the detractors of Virgil, Asconius Pedianus dealt with only a very few of the criticisms against the poet, and mainly those concerned with history and the fact that he had taken many things from Homer [VSD 46]). If Manilius had Virgil’s plagiarism-hunters in mind in the preface to the second book of the Astronomica, as I suggest he did (pp. 58–9), then he would provide a terminus ante quem for the origin of that criticism. This need not mean, however, that Faustus and Avitus predated Manilius. On the fictional date of the dialogue and the date of composition, see Cameron 2011: 239–72, who revises Cameron 1966: 25–38. Christo 1977: 314–27 is also worth consulting. The comparison of literary passages appears elsewhere in Latin antiquity (following the Greek precedent) as a form of sympotic entertainment. See Aulus Gellius, NA 9.9.4 and Juvenal, Sat. 6.436–7 (both of which involve Virgil). I owe this point to Patrick Glauthier. Bretzigheimer 2005: 151–3 discusses Macrobius’ passage and related issues. On Albinus, see PLRE 1:37– 8 and Kaster 2011: xxix. I follow several critics, including Kaster 2011, whose text I use, as well as Cameron 2011: 231, in giving the name Rufius rather than Furius, which appears commonly in the manuscripts. Willis 1970, however, prints Furius. Macrobius lays out how this Albinus will praise Virgil’s reuse of early Latin writers in Sat. 1.24.19.

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Macrobius reproduced closely.9 Such extended citation, with varying amounts of personalizing touches, was common in the Saturnalia. Producing the work ostensibly for the education of his son, Macrobius took material from disparate sources and molded it into a user-friendly coherent body.10 The argument that Macrobius reproduces to open Saturnalia 6 could well come from around the middle of the first century ce.11 Supporting this position is the way that the reference in Sat. 6.1.5 to how the veteres, or “poets of old,” have begun to be neglected and a source of ridicule matches up with the attitude toward early Latin authors that prevailed in the ages of Claudius and Nero.12 This dating would also place the apology in a period when, according to the VSD, the question of whether or not Virgil 9

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A piece of internal evidence that Macrobius was reproducing an earlier discussion likely lies in the quotation in Sat. 6.1.4 of Lucius Afranius, the second-century bce writer of fabulae togatae. As Jocelyn 1964: 282–5 contends, Macrobius’ firsthand knowledge of republican authors was patchy at best, in keeping with the tendency in his historical period. (The late fourth-century Ausonius does cite Afranius in Praef. 4.5, Ep. 75.4, and Cento Nuptialis praef. 6 [Green]. But as R. Green 1991: xxi observes, “This need not mean that he knew more than the odd line.”) The chances are consequently good that Macrobius, rather than quoting Afranius at first hand or from memory, found the lines in an intermediate text that he was using. From there, we can surmise that the same text provided Macrobius with the introductory comments in which the citation appears. See, too, n. 18. Among the critics who suppose that Albinus’ discussion derives from earlier criticism are Nettleship 1898: xlv and l and Regel 1907: 36, who argues for attributing the passage to “auctori alicui librum scribenti de iis quae Maro de poetis Latinis transtulerit (some author writing a book on the things that Virgil imitated from Latin poets).” Kaster 2011: xlv–xlvi and Cameron 2011: 583–4 discuss Macrobius’ handling of his sources, along with, e.g., Bernabei 1970: 3–5. For Macrobius’ dedication of his work to his son Eustachius and comments on his purposes and methods, see Sat. 1 praef. 1–11. In chapter 2 n. 92, I observed that it was a topos in Latin literature to claim to be producing a work for the benefit of the author’s son or sons. Lockyer 1970: 195–9 deals with that topos. How Macrobius gathers and presents his material would obviously be unacceptable today. But just as obviously, he and his audience would have seen no irony in how he reproduced a source closely, but without citing it, when he covered the subject of Virgil’s plagiarism. Macrobius’ source must not have been Asconius Pedianus, if Suetonius is right and Asconius dealt with Virgil’s Homeric debts, not his reuse of Latin models. Besides, the author upon whom Macrobius relied appears to have been concerned with illustrating what Virgil legitimately borrowed from his Latin predecessors and to have brought in arguments against the poet’s plagiarism to frame that study. Could Macrobius’ source, however, have relied upon Asconius for any of his arguments? This is not impossible, although we are now plumbing the dark depths of Macrobian Quellenforschung. So Regel 1907: 36 and Norden 1915: 4 suggest. (Regel and Norden go on to propose that perhaps M. Valerius Probus is the original author, a conjecture that has to remain just that [although see n. 85].) The caveat voiced by Jocelyn 1964: 284 (and echoed by Wigodsky 1972: 7 n. 24), that Macrobius “would hardly . . . have represented this [the growing distaste for the speakers of old] as the common view of his own time unless it was in fact so,” seems no threat to Regel’s and Norden’s position. (See as well Kaster 1980: 249, who links Sat. 6.1.5–6 to Macrobius’ own cultural context.) Macrobius, after all, could have simply found an observation in a first-century ce source that was applicable to his own time. Jocelyn himself (p. 289) seems by implication to date the opening remarks in book 6 to the first century ce as well.

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plagiarized generated some heat in literary circles.13 The silence about plagiarism charges among Virgil’s ancient commentators, notably Servius, and among others who discussed his borrowings from his predecessors, such as Aulus Gellius, indicates that the line of criticism was not a prevalent one in the poet’s reception.14 But it was at least visible enough in the first century ce to trouble the important grammarian and writer Asconius and to be memorialized a bit later by Suetonius. We should also keep in mind that Macrobius is unlikely to have had Albinus deliver an argument that was completely irrelevant to his own time.15 This suggests that Macrobius assumed his audience’s familiarity with plagiarism as an interpretive category and, quite possibly, with charges of theft against Virgil.16 Albinus’ defense of Virgil in the Saturnalia, which provides the most extensive refutation of plagiarism charges in extant Latin literature, will be the focus of this chapter. (For the sake of convenience, I will refer mainly to Rufius Albinus as the one making the arguments. The historical circumstances just mentioned, however, should be kept in mind.) A central aim is to get at how still more members of the Roman literary public conceptualized plagiarism, now in connection with a poet who stood highest in the Latin canon. These include not only the apologist captured in the opening of Saturnalia 6 but also Virgil’s accusers and other defenders of the poet. In addition, I will explore how Virgil’s very canonicity figured in the debate over whether or not he plagiarized. Albinus, like other critics, constructed 13

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Cameron 2004: 85 goes further than this, calling attention to the “widespread early criticism of Vergil as a plagiarist.” I prefer to be more cautious, although I join with Cameron in supposing that Faustus and Avitus in the VSD provide examples of what was a broader practice. Further evidence, in fact, of Virgilian plagiarism-hunting in the first century ce comes from Seneca the Younger, Ep. 108.33–4, to which I will return. See chapter 1 n. 100. Servius does tell the story about how Varius (whom Servius calls Varus) plagiarized a tragedy from Virgil (ad Buc. 3.20, a passage that I will discuss in the conclusion to this book). But of course, this is a different subject from accusations that Virgil was himself a plagiarist. We might wonder if Servius was simply suppressing charges against Virgil that he encountered; but he was open to citing negative responses to the poet. Starr 1995: 136–8 addresses ancient commentators’ (including Servius’) tendency to be inclusive in what they cite. For a different view, which emphasizes Servius’ suppression of alternative opinions in his pro-Augustan reading of the Aeneid, see Thomas 2001: 93–121. Passages in which Aulus Gellius deals with Virgilian imitation are NA 9.9, 13.27, and 17.10. The point made by Jocelyn 1964: 284 and cited in n. 12 above is relevant here. A rough contemporary of Macrobius who was familiar with the plagiarism accusations against Virgil is Jerome (see chapter 1 n. 51, as well as nn. 47 and 91 in this chapter). Presumably, Jerome heard about them through the VSD; Aelius Donatus, after all, was his teacher. Other sources fairly close in time to Macrobius who refer to plagiarism are, as we have seen, Ausonius (Ep. 13.8–11 and 103–4 [Green]) and Symmachus, one of Macrobius’ interlocutors (Ep. 1.31.3). One can at least imagine, moreover, an antiVirgil reader like Evangelus in the Saturnalia charging the poet with plagiarizing. (I will return to Evangelus.)

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the controversy over whether or not Virgil plagiarized as a struggle over his cultural authority and canonical value, while also making the defense a gatekeeping mission in which he protects the poet’s place in the canon from what he portrays as unworthy outsider critics who seek to chip away at his lofty reputation. a battle over the canon Albinus begins his apology by expressing his concern that in demonstrating how Virgil relied upon Latin predecessors,17 he will give the “ignorant or malicious” (imperiti vel maligni) a reason to charge the poet with alieni usurpatio (Sat. 6.1.2):18 Etsi vereor ne dum ostendere cupio quantum Vergilius noster ex antiquiorum lectione profecerit et quos ex omnibus flores vel quae in carminis sui decorem ex diversis ornamenta libaverit, occasionem reprehendendi vel imperitis vel malignis ministrem, exprobrantibus tanto viro alieni usurpationem. I worry that, while I want to show how much our Virgil profited from his reading of older writers and to identify the flowers he culled from them all, as well as the ornaments he took from diverse sources to lend beauty to his work, I will give to the foolish or malignant the opportunity to censure him and reproach the great man for stealing what belongs to another.

Albinus takes the word usurpatio from Roman law, where it signifies the act of taking hold of property without legal right.19 The technical term in the legal context becomes a metaphorical term in the literary context, as Albinus has it stand for plagiarism, i.e., another transgression in which one wrongfully appropriates what is not his.20 Along with figuring texts as property, 17

18

19 20

In Sat. 6.1.6–7, Albinus lays out that his interest lies specifically in the verses (versus), passages (loci), and sentences (sensus; for this meaning, see Davies 1969: 386 and OLD s.v. “sensus” 10) that Virgil derived from his models. The appearance of the words imperiti vel maligni argues for Macrobius’ direct quotation of his source. The use of the plural ill suits a conversation in which every interlocutor but one (Evangelus) is a Virgiliophile. The comment looks instead like something a pro-Virgilian author would offer in a preface to a book, which, he supposes, could come into the hands of readers hostile to the poet upon its publication. See OLD s.v. “usurpatio” 1. The way that Albinus later contrasts alieni usurpatio with legitimate imitation, as we will see, also shows that he was distinguishing between the two, or viewing them as distinct modes of reuse. Once more, therefore, we see that the lack of a separate term for plagiarism does not mean that Romans lacked the concept of plagiarism, understood as a separate and culpable form of textual repetition. Jocelyn 1964: 286 contends that the hostile criticism to which Albinus refers deals with Virgil’s thefts, but on p. 289 states that the problem lies with a modern poet imitating the republican poets, whose reputation was at a low point. The latter statement is at odds with his earlier one and, anyway, seems mistaken, given usurpatio and Albinus’ subsequent opening remarks.

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Albinus joins with other Roman sources we have examined in using a legalism other than just furtum in such a way that accusations vividly equate plagiarizing with wrongdoing. With the words reprehendere and exprobrare, Albinus offers up a picture of informal shaming penalties for plagiarism in a pre-copyright world, in which accusers punish an author simply by taking him to task. But he adds the further idea that the critics would stigmatize Virgil’s actions, however extralegal they may have been, with the disapproval that one brings to bear upon criminality.21 Albinus’ use of imperiti vel maligni to describe those who might cry plagiarism closely resembles the late fourth- or fifth-century ce Tiberius Claudius Donatus’ depiction of Virgil’s hostile critics in the preface to his Interpretationes Vergilianae: nec te perturbent inperitorum vel obtrectatorum Vergiliani carminis voces inimicae (and do not let the hostile voices of the foolish or of the detractors of Virgil’s poetry disturb you [Int. Verg. pro. 5.26–7 {Georgii}]). Because the parallel makes it clear that Albinus and Donatus were approaching anti-Virgil readers similarly, we might suspect that Albinus’ maligni referred to Perellius Faustus and Quintus Octavius Avitus, i.e., the plagiarism-hunters labeled obtrectatores in the VSD. Macrobius’ source would have had those critics in mind when visualizing the accusers that his list might produce and would have then simply used a synonym for the label by which he knew Faustus and Avitus were identified.22 The evidence we have for the existence of allegations against Virgil at the very least provides a historical backdrop for the reference to plagiarism charges in Sat. 6.1.2 and a sound basis for supposing that actual prototypes impelled Macrobius’ source to voice his concerns. With those precedents in mind, the speaker then implies that anyone who would consider Virgil a plagiarist on the basis of the catalogue of parallels he provides would have to fit a particular profile. Unlike in other passages in the Saturnalia, where speakers fault critics for wrongly finding problems in Virgil and other writers but still consider them intelligent and unprejudiced,23 Albinus leaves no room for the possibility that the poet’s accusers could be anything but blank-headed and black-hearted. The blanket conclusion is that the charges 21

22

23

I echo Macfarlane 2007: 44, who notes that plagiarism, while not itself a legal infraction, has “always carried [a] stigma of criminality with it.” This assumes, naturally, that those critics predate Macrobius’ source. Macrobius himself could have also been thinking of those obtrectatores when transcribing the passage, assuming he knew the VSD. But again (see n. 18), there is good reason to suspect that the phrase imperiti vel maligni comes directly from a predecessor. See, e.g., Sat. 5.19.2–4 and 5.22.9–10.

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come from a single class of reader, the bad one, which Albinus then divides into two subcategories. By characterizing Virgil’s accusers as imperiti vel maligni, Albinus creates an ad hominem first line of defense against any claim that the poet plagiarized. As we saw in chapter 5, the argument resembles those of Terence and of Seneca the Elder in conceptualizing plagiarism as an erroneous critical construct.24 Specifying that the critics are “ignorant or malicious” ascribes their criticism to their intellectual deficiencies and emotional biases, which cause them to see transgressions that do not exist. In taking this approach, Albinus also parallels Terence in disparaging those who use plagiarism charges to disparage an author.25 According to Albinus, to cite Virgil for stealing is to rebuke (reprehendere) and to reproach (exprobrare) him. But he then turns around and derides the accusers by suggesting that their charges against Virgil proceed from their own stupidity and malice.26 As opposed to how he maligns Virgil’s accusers, Albinus praises Virgil himself as tantus vir, “the great man.” The compliment combines with the use of imperiti vel maligni to make the critics grossly unequal to the one they criticize. Saddled with shortcomings and prejudice that impair their judgment and lead them into uninformed or mean-spirited error, Albinus’ plagiarism-hunters cast aspersions upon a pre-eminent figure in Latin poetry and, it is understood, challenge his high standing. Yet the critics only end up revealing the imbalance between themselves, the bad interpreters, and the lofty author whom they grossly misread. Several other ancient supporters of Virgil draw a distinction between the eminent poet and his defective detractors.27 Along with the comments of Tiberius Claudius Donatus already cited, the account of the poet’s obtrectatores in the VSD demonstrates the approach. The suggestion, which appears as well in Ovid’s Remedia Amoris (367–70), is that Virgil’s very loftiness made him a target for gratuitous carping: the pleasure that critics took in denigrating the great distorted their judgment, so that they became

24

25 26

27

I discuss Terence’s approach in chapter 4 (pp. 120–1) and Seneca the Elder’s in chapter 5 (pp. 173–6). As she did in those passages, Herrnstein Smith 1984: 18–23 influences my remarks. See chapter 4, p. 121. Of course, Macrobius’ source (and Macrobius) could have believed that he was simply capturing historical conditions. So, too, we might be inclined to agree with how he characterizes the critics. But it remains the case that the phrase imperiti vel maligni works rhetorically to deride and to delegitimize Virgil’s accusers no matter how much the words also reflect reality. This also occurs in connection with other prominent Roman authors in varied genres. For examples involving Cicero and Sallust, see Aulus Gellius, NA 4.15, 12.2.7, and 17.1.

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flawed, unreliable readers.28 Another example comes from Servius, who labels Maevius and Bavius “the worst poets” before remarking that they were hostile to Virgil and Horace (ad Buc. 3.90). The tacit message is that one should dismiss their disapproval as the petty spite of jealous inferior writers.29 In Macrobius’ Saturnalia, meanwhile, the characterization of Evangelus, who from time to time enters the scene to snipe at Virgil, functions as an ad hominem refutation of his positions. Evangelus emerges as a boorish uninvited guest whose prejudice and obtuseness cause him to reprehend the excellent Virgil foolishly.30 By making plagiarism charges against the poet he calls tantus vir the domain of the “foolish or malicious,” Albinus further fills out this pattern in Virgil’s ancient reception. At issue is the author’s high standing, which his champions seek to defend against the slings and arrows of unfavorable interpretation. To that end, they treat those doing the interpreting as pretended readers who lack appropriate faculties or operate under the weight of distorting malice. By implied contrast, the defenders are themselves real interpreters whose views are informed, impartial, and sound. The argumentative tack marginalizes Virgil’s critics and their adverse criticism by suggesting that their views clash with his noncontingent status as a great poet, which right-thinking interpreters acknowledge and certify. In Albinus’ reckoning, Virgil’s leading position in Latin literature is self-evident and natural, whereas attacks on his canonicity belong to the realm of misfit criticism.31 28

29

30

31

Suetonius indicates as much at the start of the section on the obtrectatores – a word connoting envious and spiteful critics – when he observes that Virgil, like Homer, never lacked such readers (obtrectatores Vergilio numquam defuerunt, nec mirum, nam nec Homero quidem [VSD 43]). See, too, the use of malevoli, “spiteful/ill-disposed men,” in VSD 46 to describe Virgil’s critics. Ovid’s remarks come when he responds to critics of his own; he cites captious readers of Homer and Virgil alike as parallels for those who criticize him out of livor or envy. A. Henderson 1979: 87–9 has useful comments on Ovid’s passage. Nam Maevius et Bavius pessimi fuerunt poetae, inimici tam Horatio quam Vergilio (for Maevius and Bavius were two very bad poets, hostile to both Horace and Virgil). The temptation is also to suppose that Suetonius considered the obtrectator Numitorius, who wrote parodies of the Eclogues that the biographer labels “very insipid” (VSD 43), a poet who was jealous of the superior Virgil. For Evangelus’ criticism of Virgil, see Sat. 1.24.2–7, 3.10–12, and 5.2.1. Sat. 1.2.15, 1.7.1–2, 1.11.1, 7.9.1, and 7.16.1 provide examples of Evangelus’ personal unpleasantness and cloddishness. On this figure, see Marinone 1977: 34–5 and Kaster 2011: xxxii–xxxiv. Kaster and Cameron 2011: 253–4 and 596–8 rightly, I think, argue against the idea that Evangelus was an invented character and a Christian. The evidence is instead that he was a real person (and a noble) who in the Saturnalia filled the roles of the uninvited guest and of the Cynic philosopher who opposed the views of the majority. Both roles were standard in the literary symposium and dialogue. Evangelus’ criticism of Virgil, meanwhile, reflects not his religious affiliation but his function in Macrobius’ text: he provides some measure of conflict to spur on discussion. The influence of Herrnstein Smith 1984: 22–3 is especially strong in this paragraph. I should add that Macrobius’ interlocutors apart from Evangelus do at times recognize that Virgil had his lapses (see, e.g., Sat. 5.13, 5.17.7–13). But his shortcomings and mistakes are considered compatible with his overall genius and lofty achievement.

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In the world of Macrobius’ dialogue, Albinus’ disparagement of those who accuse Virgil of plagiarizing helps to create the ideal community of likeminded cultured individuals that Macrobius fashions throughout the Saturnalia. His interlocutors (with the notable exception of Evangelus) share values, interests, attitudes, and knowledge in their idealized republic of learning; and their imperative is to eliminate any discordant behavior and ideas in order to produce a groupwide harmony.32 Asserting the truth of Virgil’s excellence and excluding his critics from the community of correct interpreters work precisely toward those ends. Albinus treats Virgil as the classic of Rome, as the canonical lodestone who unites sound readers in their shared support of him, while his accusers are pushed to the periphery.33 At the same time, if we assume that Albinus’ words come from an earlier source, then we can also leave behind the Macrobian context and see the ad hominem critique of Virgil’s plagiarism-hunters as part of an effort in earlier Latin literary criticism to construct the poet’s canonicity. The approach is to treat the authorial value that underpins Virgil’s pre-eminence as a fact that everyone should recognize. A person who denies his excellence, meanwhile, is a deviant reader whose existence actually confirms the rightness of Virgil’s place in the canon, on the grounds that only such a substandard interpreter would fail to comprehend the greatness that makes Virgil tantus vir. It does seem evident that Virgil’s accusers were set upon calling into question Virgil’s place in Latin literary culture. While we need to bear in mind that what we know of their criticism comes from sources hostile to them, the evidence is surely accurate in its insistence that the accusations were destructive in intent: it is natural, after all, for accusers to want to impugn and tear down a prominent target. An attendant idea would have inevitably been that Virgil was not all that he was supposed to be. This was to establish the critics as an alternative community of interpreters to the prevailing one and, indeed, to make them countercanonical readers who really understood what Virgil was about, who bucked mainstream opinion and saw things as 32

33

Kaster 1980: 219–262 and 2011: xli–xlv is a vital source on this aspect of the Saturnalia. I take the phrase “idealized republic of learning” from Kaster 2011: xlvi. Books 4–6, with their focus upon Virgil, generally bring Macrobius’ interlocutors together in their group interest in and regard for Virgil. Albinus’ comments are, therefore, part of a larger movement in the dialogue. My analysis has benefited from W. Johnson 2009: 327–8, on how Latin audiences constructed classic texts and the critical authority to evaluate those texts. It would be nice to know if Macrobius’ source was a grammarian, as Virgilian literary critics often were. In that case, we could read his defense in part as a means of asserting his own authority and of justifying his profession. (I derive this point from Lim 2004: 122–3, on the grammarian’s concern with authority and cultural guardianship, with debts to Kaster 1980: 201–30.) The purpose would have been to show that he was a sound reader of the central author in Roman culture, as well as to continue to proclaim the prestige of the text that had pride of place in the grammatical curriculum.

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they actually were.34 If the accusers were like the pedantic philologus in Seneca the Younger’s Ep. 108.33–4, who identifies thefts in Ennius and Virgil as an exercise in intellectual vanity, the desire (whether conscious or not) to appear to be smart would have been crucial to their charges.35 It is easy to imagine, too, that critics would have thought or hoped that the more they detracted from an authoritative poet, the more authoritative they would seem to others. But however self-aggrandizement entered into their criticism, they take a stand against Virgil’s cultural authority, only to have guardians of that authority push back by calling them out as readers of no legitimacy or even competence.

virgil the plagiarist, virgil the imitator When distancing canonical writers from plagiarism, apologists throughout literary history have fallen back on a circular syllogism in which one assumes that great authors do not plagiarize, that the figure in question was a great author, and that he therefore did not plagiarize.36 Rufius Albinus, however, formulates a more substantial defense of the poet he styles tantus vir. In the process, he demonstrates that he was intent on using more than ad hominem volleys against Virgil’s accusers to acquit him of plagiarism. In Sat. 6.1.2–3, Albinus calls attention to how those charging Virgil with plagiarism fail to bear in mind the existence of the fructus legendi, or the fruit of one’s reading in the Latin and Greek traditions: [Exprobrantibus tanto viro alieni usurpationem] nec considerantibus hunc esse fructum legendi, aemulari ea quae in aliis probes, et quae maxime inter aliorum dicta mireris in aliquem usum tuum opportuna derivatione convertere, quod et nostri tam inter se quam a Graecis et Graecorum excellentes inter se saepe fecerunt. . . . without considering that this is the fruit of reading, to imitate what you like in others and to convert to some use of your own through a happy divergence what 34

35

36

It is not at all impossible, moreover, that Faustus and Avitus, as well as other Virgilian plagiarismhunters, were themselves grammarians. This would mean that they would claim critical authority as readers who saw through the curricular and canonical lies that other grammarians were upholding. Felicem deinde se putat, quod invenerit, unde visum sit Vergilio dicere “quem super ingens / porta tonat caeli” [G. 3.260–1]. Ennium hoc ait Homero subripuisse, Ennio Vergilium (He then thinks himself fine, because he has found the source from which it occurred to Virgil to say, “Above whom the huge gate of the sky thunders.” He says that Ennius stole this from Homer and Virgil from Ennius). The words of the nineteenth-century J. Cuthbert Hadden (cited in Macfarlane 2007: 44) are relevant: “The great consideration of the pedantic pest is . . . not that you shall escape, but that his own skill shall not go undetected.” (Worth mentioning here as well is the way Montaigne and the eighteenth-century Marmontel separate the pedantic plagiarism-hunter from the envious and the foolish ones. See Randall 2001: 115.) So Randall 2001: esp. 23, 26–8, and 53–5.

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you really admire among the expressions of others. Our authors have often done this with one another and from the Greeks, as have outstanding Greek writers with one another.

Albinus first characterizes the fructus legendi with the words aemulari ea quae in aliis probes. While aemulari can mean “to emulate,” i.e., to engage in a generous rivalry in which one tries to improve upon admired predecessors, the competitive element appears to be lacking here. Instead, the verb seems to be a synonym for imitari, as it is elsewhere in Latin antiquity.37 The message is that authors are free to imitate things that they think highly of in other texts. Albinus continues by describing the fructus legendi further as an act of converting the dicta of earlier writers that one especially admires to some personal use by means of a “happy divergence.” While Albinus describes a more vehement admiration of models than he does in the preceding clause, the strong similarities between the two statements indicate that they treat a closely analogous process. Perhaps the aim was to introduce a general idea with aemulari ea quae in aliis probes. The thinking might have been that an author could rework not just his models’ expressions but also broader passages as well as tonal, structural, and plot features that he encountered in their texts.38 Albinus’ remark on dicta could have then represented a more circumscribed fructus legendi, in which one specifically adapts earlier authors’ expressions that he finds extremely commendable. The urge is to see the collocation of fructus and usus in the passage as another instance where Albinus adapted legal language to a literary context. Together, the words suggest usufruct (usus fructus), in which “one who was not owner but had the right to the use and fruits of a thing became owner of the fruits by the act of gathering or harvesting (fructuum perceptio).”39 The idea, therefore, would have been that an author who reuses his predecessors’ material does not steal but legitimately acquires literary property from another. 37

38

39

See Vardi 1996: 505 n. 42 and Furhmann 1961: 446–8 on Reiff 1959. An internal detail supporting this understanding of aemulari is the way that improvement upon a model comes into Albinus’ discussion in Sat. 6.1.6. (More on this to come.) It would be strange for Macrobius’ source to have been thinking of aemulatio in 6.1.2 but then to have treated amelioration as a new criterion for why Virgil was no plagiarist in 6.1.6. This observation holds even though, as Kaster notes (1980: 250 n. 93), “there is not the least suggestion” of authorial competition in 6.1.6. The focus, instead, is on reception and the audience’s aesthetic judgment. Nevertheless, for Albinus to approach improvement as a fresh topic if aemulari designated “emulation” in 6.1.2 still seems implausible. As I noted in chapter 1, such broader imitation was recognized in Latin antiquity. See n. 69 in that chapter for evidence. Carey Miller 1998: 64.

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Whatever the precise relationship between Albinus’ two glosses on the fructus legendi, the parallels are unmistakable between that “reward” and proper imitation, as it was understood in Latin literary culture. Specifically, Albinus echoes the idea that authors should choose models that are worthy of being imitated and rework the good qualities abstracted from many, and that they should then work to put their own stamp upon that admired material.40 The resemblance between these principles and Albinus’ comments, in which he describes the personalizing adaptation of multiple respected models (note the plurals aliis and aliorum), is so close that it seems altogether clear he had them in mind. To distance Virgil’s debts from plagiarism, therefore, Albinus enlists a cultural norm. It becomes apparent that he was alive to the opposition between stealing and imitating as kinds and categories of reuse; that he understood Virgil’s critics to separate the two; and that he understood how imitation could function as a firewall against accusations of plagiarism. The freedom to pursue imitatio in Latin antiquity presumably served as a powerful check on charges that Virgil plagiarized from Latin or Greek sources. We might suppose as well that members of the literary public widely dismissed plagiarism allegations that were made against Virgil by linking his borrowings to imitation as Albinus does.41 Certainly it seems very likely that the customary nature of imitatio in the Roman world greatly limited the accusations’ traction and, indeed, led people to disregard them. Despite the place of imitation in Latin literature, there remained interpreters who had to have denied that Virgil met the standards of proper imitation when reworking a predecessor, as Albinus realized. By definition, critics accusing an author of stealing segregate the borrowings they identify in his text from any and all legitimate categories of repetition; and as I have suggested, in the case of Virgil criticism, indications are that the detractors followed the lead of κλοπαί-literature and, like Albinus implied, labeled the poet a plagiarist rather than just a bad, slavish imitator. This line of interpretation implies more than that plagiarism-hunters found room to maneuver despite the cultural norm of imitation.42 Assuming that the 40 41

42

So Russell 1979: 5 and 16. Virgil even liked to borrow from Greek and Latin authors simultaneously. This varies chapter 1, n. 100. There are too many examples from ancient criticism in which an author/ speaker cites Virgil’s imitation of a model to give anything like an adequate accounting here. To get some sense of this material, the list compiled by Nettleship (1898: xliii–xlv) is a good place to start. To echo a point made in chapter 1 n. 72, it is very hard to believe that there were critics interested in the issue of plagiarism who were knowledgeable enough about Virgil’s poetry and his borrowings to issue plagiarism charges but ignorant of imitation. Albinus’ nec considerantibus hunc esse fructum legendi points to this state of affairs, as does his imperiti. But I very much hesitate to believe that Albinus, who, obviously, had an axe to grind, accurately reflects historical conditions in this matter.

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accusers aimed to have their charges meet with acceptance – as would, of course, have been natural – they demonstrate not only that they saw plagiarism as a recognized and viable critical concept but also that they envisioned readers who might view the poet’s debts as they did. Although presumably the usual response was to reject the claims that Virgil plagiarized, the critics imagine something entirely different: a larger group that would join them in limiting the reach of imitation and in maintaining that Virgil stole from his predecessors. Obviously, the loss of Virgilian furta-literature hinders our ability to determine how the poet’s critics proceeded when charging him with plagiarism – i.e., to discover what, if anything, they cited as a basis for their allegations. But all need not be textless speculation. This is because passages in Macrobius’ Saturnalia that, I would suggest, originate from studies of Virgil’s plagiarism provide insights into criteria his accusers used to identify his thefts. To explore those criteria is to build upon efforts taken earlier in this book to find what separated imitatio and furtum in Latin antiquity. The list of Virgil’s parallels with his Latin predecessors in Sat. 6.1–2, and quite possibly in 6.3 as well, is a prime candidate for having an ultimate origin in furta-literature.43 This would explain why the opening of book 6 deals with the topic of plagiarism: having relied upon a work documenting how Virgil plagiarized, Macrobius’ source began by countering that claim.44 Consistent with this reconstruction of the chapters’ history are details in Sat. 6.2.30–3. Macrobius opens the section by having Albinus state that it is tedious to “transcribe” (transcribere) Virgil’s and his models’ longer passages, despite the oral mise-en-scène of the Saturnalia.45 The clear situation is that he was repeating a written source verbatim and neglected to change it to fit its new context. At the end of the passage, Albinus then cites an instance where Virgil reused Cicero by stating nec Tullio compilando, 43

44

45

Nettleship 1898: l argues that the lists originate ultimately in a work on Virgil’s plagiarism but links all the parallels cited in Sat. 6.1–5 to that source. Sat. 6.4–5, however, seems clearly to come from a different text. Not only does the subject shift at that point to individual words that Virgil borrowed, but Sat. 6.1.7, which previews the material to come in the book, covers only what appears in 6.1–3. This suggests an original treatise comprised of Albinus’ introductory comments and of the lists in those chapters, but without the material in 6.4–5. See, too, Jocelyn 1964: 286–9 and Kaster 2011: lii–liii n. 54, who, however, separate the source of 6.3 out from the source of 6.1–2. So Nettleship 1898: l. To summarize, then, the idea is that the author upon whom Macrobius relied was himself indebted to a work on Virgilian plagiarism and responded to the accusations he found in his source when laying out why Virgil was no plagiarist. This does not mean, however, that he wrote a tract devoted to proving Virgil’s innocence. See n. 11, and Jocelyn 1964: 286–9. Et quia longum est numerosos versus ex utroque transcribere (and because it is tedious to write out the large number of lines from each). On the way Macrobius repeatedly breaks the fiction of his text and signals his reliance upon written material, see e.g., Marinone 1977: 53.

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dummodo undique ornamenta sibi conferret, abstinuit (Sat. 6.2.33).46 The fact that compilare can signify plagiarism, and that the phrase nec abstinuit befits hostile criticism in which the speaker blames Virgil for his lack of restraint in stealing, gives us reason to suppose that the passage comes from a work of furta-literature.47 Macrobius would have neglected again to remove or alter language suited to that original context, so that the polemical character of the source comes through.48 From there, we can surmise that the same source provided the other Virgilian parallels with his Latin precursors that appear in Sat. 6.2, as well as in 6.1 and, maybe, 6.3.49 There is no telling how often critics gave the reasons, however skeletal and declarative rather than analytical, why Virgil’s borrowings constituted plagiarism.50 But in this case at least, some textual bases for identifying plagiarism grow visible, if I am right and the list that opens book 6 originates from Virgilian furta-literature. For the close similarity between Virgil’s verses and passages and those of his predecessors occupies the speaker at several points in Sat. 6.2,51 including in 6.2.30–1.52 The emphasis on textual resemblance leaves room for an accuser who acknowledged, whether

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49

50 51

52

The Ciceronian passage comes from a lost treatise on Cato. Sat. 6.2.34 then gives a Virgilian borrowing (at A. 5.320) from Cicero’s Brutus 47. In chapter 3 (p. 88), we saw that Martial also uses compilare to signify plagiarism. Jerome, meanwhile, uses conpilator for “plagiarist” when referring to the charges against Virgil: conpilator veterum diceretur (he was called the plagiarist/plunderer of old poets [Hebraicae quaestiones in libro Geneseos praef. 1.8]). The verb could also refer to legitimate reuse, as it does in Sat. 6.1.3 (quantum se mutuo compilarint bibliothecae veteris auctores [how much the authors of old raided each other mutually]). Hathaway 1989: 23–6 discusses uses of the term compilare in antiquity, including in Macrobius. Wigodsky 1972: 143 calls attention to the neutral character of the language in Sat. 6.2.30 to describe Virgil’s adherence to his sources. But by their very nature, neutral terms can take on different registers, and with them different meanings. As noted in chapter 5 n. 26, moreover, the verb transferre, which appears in 6.2.30, can signify plagiarism as well as legitimate reuse. Clearly, the reference to Cicero differs from the other citations in book 6, since Cicero is a prose source and all the others poets. But it remains possible that the passage has its ultimate origin in the same treatise on plagiarism that generated the lists for the rest of 6.1–2 (and quite possibly, I think, 6.1–3), rather than that Macrobius attached comments on Virgil’s debt to Cicero from another source to a treatise otherwise concerned with Virgil’s debts to Latin poets. The discussion would, in part, diverge from the other evidence but would still obviously fit with the theme of how Virgil borrowed from Roman models. I echo Vardi 1996: 510. See Sat. 6.2.1, 6.2.4, 6.2.7 and 6.2.8. There are no similarly evaluative remarks in Sat. 6.1 and 6.3. But assuming that the lists in those chapters come ultimately from the same plagiarism-hunter as 6.2, then excessive similarity can reasonably be seen to be the criterion for the charges there. Sunt alii loci plurimorum versuum quos Maro in opus suum cum paucorum immutatione verborum a veteribus transtulit (there are other passages of many lines which Virgil transferred into his own work from earlier writers with the change of a few words [Sat. 6.2.30, echoing 6.1.7]). Later, we find the comment that A. 1.81–296 “was taken entirely from the first book of Naevius’ Bellum Punicum” (hic locus totus sumptus a Naevio est ex primo libro belli Punici [Sat. 6.2.31]).

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explicitly or implicitly, the cultural norm of imitatio and presumed that his audience did the same. The critic would have been working with the idea that imitation was a matter of putting one’s stamp upon a model, and would have suggested that Virgil did not do enough to make his source material his own. The charges contain no breakdown of exactly why Virgil’s changes are insufficient, let alone any sensitivity to how a perceived parallel might be accidental or generic. They instead confidently assume the author’s deliberate turn to a model and then simply assert that Virgil stuck close, too close, to what he reused. To claim that Virgil was a failed imitator, i.e., that he came up short of meeting the minimum requirements for personalizing reuse and, therefore, lapsed into plagiarism, is to impugn him as a literary artist. The point of such criticism is to show that he was derivative, whether to those who identified the borrowings and read them differently from the plagiarismhunter or to those who missed them; anyone in each group who admired the lines would then be in a position to take the credit for their excellence away from the poet. This would by logic call into question Virgil’s place at the apex of the canon. When an author’s name is equated with genius, as Virgil’s was even when he lived, decanonization seems unlikely.53 But a detractor who used charges of plagiarism to expose Virgil as a pseudo-author would appear to have been working toward that reordering of things. Given Albinus’ own rhetorical position, it is obvious that when he cites the strong parallels between Virgil and his models, he considers them to be compatible with imitatio. This outlook is also apparent at the end of his introductory comments in book 6, after he has argued against Virgil’s plagiarism, where he describes Virgilian borrowings that remain very faithful to their models.54 Albinus’ stance is consistent with the big-tent approach to imitation that obtained elsewhere in the Saturnalia and in other Latin texts.55 Sources see faithfulness to both Greek and Roman 53

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So Meltzer 1994: 79, on plagiarism accusations against Coleridge in a discussion of charges against Paul Celan. See Sat. 6.1.7: dicam itaque primum quos ab aliis traxit vel ex dimidio sui versus vel paene solidos, post hoc locos integros cum parva quadam immutatione translatos sensusve ita transcriptos ut unde essent eluceret (I will thus give first the half lines and almost whole lines that he took from others, then the whole passages transferred with just some small change, or sentences so copied that it is evident where they are from). For examples in the Saturnalia beyond those I have already cited, see Sat. 5.2.13, 5.3.16, 5.7.4, and 5.17.7. Aulus Gellius, NA 1.21.7, DServius, ad Aen. 3.10, and citations in Nettleship 1898: xliii–xlv, to which I referred in n. 41, show further that ancient interpreters considered Virgil’s close similarities to his sources to be consistent with imitation.

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predecessors as a feature of imitatio, with some even reconciling excessively close and flat borrowings with legitimate reuse.56 Yet tracing Macrobius’ lists to furta-literature reveals something else that we have repeatedly observed over the course of this book: there was no fixed textual barrier separating imitation and plagiarism, which made it so that one man’s faithful imitatio could be another man’s manifest theft.57 Albinus’ own definition of imitation as in aliquem usum tuum opportuna derivatione convertere shows the vagueness of the threshold for it (note the indefinite adjective aliqui and the subjective opportuna derivatio). This would have opened the door for a critic to construct a threshold of his own measure (whether stated or not) and – often by emphasizing similarities between texts and downplaying their differences58 – to assert that an author was a plagiarist because he had failed to meet it. What we have to recognize are the indications of some inconsistency in the record, of how different individuals approached what they made out to be strong parallels between texts in different and sometimes conflicting ways. The remarks in Sat. 6.2 suit a critic who looked only to how Virgil wrote and based his judgment strictly upon the poet’s failure to modify his source material adequately. The suggestion is of charges that are exclusively aesthetic in character and, therefore, that define plagiarism in textual terms. It is also possible, however, that an accuser who stressed the poet’s minimal changes also brought authorial intention into his charges, thereby activating a criterion for plagiarism found in so many of the other Latin sources we have examined. Although the focus lay upon how Virgil stayed too close to his predecessors, the accompanying assumption might have been that he had designs on hiding his inert borrowings from his audience in order to get fraudulent credit for them. Virgil’s intentions are the key topic in another Macrobian passage that appears to derive from the poet’s plagiarism-hunters, this time from an accusation that the poet plagiarized from Homer. In Sat. 5.16.12–14, the speaker, Eustathius, addresses how Virgil on occasion disguises his reuse of 56

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See chapter 1 n. 77 for examples, as well as chapter 5 n. 21. As I have noted, parallels are often not as close as critics make them out to be (and see n. 58). But the important thing is that the critics understand faithful and sometimes very faithful reuse to be compatible with imitation. I restate Randall 2001: 131. Macrobius and his immediate source vividly exemplify the point, assuming they took evidence originally designed to illustrate that Virgil plagiarized and turned it around to illustrate that Virgil imitated. As in chapter 1 n. 79, I paraphrase Lindey 1952: 60 on the methods of the plagiarism hunter. Certainly the accuser behind Sat. 6.2 would overstate the resemblances between Virgil’s lines and passages and those of his sources, just as, by necessity, Albinus does.

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Homeric material.59 As he tells it, Virgil “sometimes imitates his model covertly, so that he changes only the presentation of the passage he transcribes from that source and makes that model seem different” (interdum sic auctorem suum dissimulanter imitatur, ut loci inde descripti solam dispositionem mutet et faciat velut aliud videri). Illustrating the point is how Virgil turns a narrative passage in Homer’s Il. 20.61–5 into a simile in A. 8.243–6.60 Eustathius then proceeds to comment hoc quoque dissimulando subripuit, “he also borrowed this so as not be noticed, by hiding it,” to introduce A. 10.758–9: di Iovis in tectis casum miserantur inanem / amborum et tantos mortalibus esse labores (the gods in the halls of Jupiter pity the empty fate of both sides and lament that mortal men endure such labors). This, Eustathius claims, expresses “very obscurely” (occultissime) the Homeric θεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες, “the gods living at their ease,” in Il. 6.138. Eustathius’ use of surripere, which, of course, could mean “to plagiarize,” in a passage emphasizing the author’s drive to be covert, as discussions of plagiarism so often did, strongly suggests that Macrobius directly quoted a work either on Virgil’s thefts or stemming ultimately from furta-literature.61 (The original meaning would thus have been “he plagiarized this as well by hiding it.”) This would mean that in Sat. 5.16.12, which must come from the same source, the word imitari replaced a word that had fit with a discussion 59

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Cameron 2004: 258–60 contends that Sat. 5.2.4–5, as well as 5.3.1, also come from a pamphlet on Virgil’s plagiarism. I resist this conclusion, because there are no terms for plagiarizing in the passages as there are in Sat. 6.2.33 and (as we will momentarily see) in 5.16, and because I do not see the hostility in the emphasis on close resemblance in the passages that Cameron does. (Such an emphasis, after all, need not in itself be hostile or critical.) Cameron is also right to note that Sat. 5.13 comes from an antiVirgil source. Yet the concern there is synkrisis, or the comparison of imitator and imitated (see p. 207); and anyway, there is no reason to extend the negativity found there all the way to Sat. 5.2 and 5.3, particularly when pro-Virgilian material appears in the intervening chapters (Sat. 5.11–12), as does neutral material (Sat. 5.4–10). (To be clear, I would thus argue that 5.2 and 5.3 do not come from the same source as 5.13.) Other critics who do not see a treatise on plagiarism behind Sat. 5.2 and 5.3 are Linke 1880: 43 and Marinone 1946: 25. ἔδδεισεν δ’ ὑπένερθεν ἄναζ ἐνέρων Ἀιδωνεύς, / δείσας δ’ ἐκ θρόνου ἆλτο καὶ ἴαχε, μή οἱ ἔνερθεν / γαῖαν ἀναρρήζειε Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων, / οἰκία δὲ θνητοῖσι καὶ ἀθανάτοισι φανείη / σμερδαλέ’, εὐρώεντα, τά τε στυγέουσι θεοί περ (Aidoneus, lord of the shades, was terrified below, and in fear sprang up from his throne and cried out, that above him Poseidon, the shaker of the earth, not rip apart the earth and expose his home to mortals and immortals – his terrible and dank home, which the very gods hate). Virgil’s passage reads thus: non secus ac si qua penitus vi terra dehiscens / infernas reseret sedes et regna recludat / pallida, dis invisa, superque immane barathrum / cernatur, trepident immiso lumine Manes (just as if the earth, splitting open deeply through some force, should lay open the infernal dwellings and reveal the pale kingdoms, hateful to the gods, and the huge abyss should also be seen, and the Shades be afraid at the light shining in). Hinds 1998: 23 recognizes the polemical nature of the passage and its focus on Virgil’s plagiarism, as does Davies 1969: 357 n. 3.

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of plagiarism, whereas surripere in 5.16.14 was there in the original and reflects its content.62 Just as it was possible elsewhere to use the verb mutare to describe how plagiarists alter the appearance of their source material while stealing it,63 so the polemicist behind the Macrobian passage exposes the plagiarist Virgil’s efforts to change (mutet) Homer, in one case by altering the narrative mode, and in the other by expanding greatly upon the content. The implication is that he did so to cover the tracks of his theft: he made his model seem different (faciat velut aliud videri) in an effort to succeed in presenting what he plagiarized from Homer as his own. In a passage on Virgilian plagiarism, a writer who takes as his subject how Virgil conceals his model (see dissimulanter and dissimulando) would by all appearances be using the author’s intentions as his primary piece of evidence. While perceived textual parallels are a sine qua non, the critic looks more to Virgil’s mindset to show that he plagiarized. The charge that he schemed to keep his audience in the dark about his Homeric debts logically implies a desire to reap the benefits of copying from an unsuspecting audience, by hiding a source in order to receive acknowledgment for what he did not really produce.64 Like other intentionalist allegations in the Roman world, the one against Virgil points to a situation where the accuser presumes that readers will view the poet as an originating author. Despite imitation’s prevalence in Latin literary composition, the understanding is that audiences did not always expect him to have imitated and did not always assume imitatio in a given line. The critic maintains that Virgil manipulated this state of affairs in order to make his readers think that he had composed the lines he took from another – and presumably the attendant idea was that they were admirable lines. This is to contend that Virgil is not the author he claimed to be. The suggestion is of credit 62

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The unified subject matter and parallel between dissimulanter in 5.16.12 and dissimulando in Sat. 5.16.14 (as well as the use of quoque) indicate that the discussion in 5.16.12–14 comes from the same source. Davies 1969: 357 n. 3 suggests that Macrobius excerpted 5.16.12–14 from a work other than the one he relied upon for the rest of 5.16. See Seneca, Con. 10.5.20 (given in chapter 5, p. 151). Also worth citing once more is Cicero, De fin. 5.74 (Piso is the speaker): ei quidem non unam aliquam aut alteram