Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE
under Augustus had passed. 1 Commissions had now to be canvassed among the
denizens of a new aristocracy of wealth. For many of the poets of the first century
known to us this difficulty did not arise: they were rich men themselves.
For them recitationes were more a self-indulgence than a necessity. One thinks
of the millionaire consular Silius Italicus who, according to Pliny, frequently
submitted his Punka to criticism by recitations (Epist. 3.7-5): it is improbable
that he encountered much candour. The contrast between two figures like
Silius and Statius is instructive: in this period, we see side by side the dilettante
and the professional. The climate of the times did not endow poets with the
status once enjoyed by Virgil and Horace. Martial bewailed the altered scene
(1.107).
If the 'silver' writers have been lambasted for their addiction to 'rhetoric',
their supposed pedantry has been no less thoroughly vilified. It is true that the
tradition of doctrina in poetry, deriving from the innovations of the republican
novipoetae and hence from the Alexandrians, could be taken too far, that allusiveness
and obscurity can be fatiguing for a modern reader. One sometimes gains
the impression that a poet such as Statius deliberately set out epater les savants.
This 'learning' too has been viewed as a facade: the outgrowth of an overzealous
culling of earlier authors and of handbooks. For the first century was a
time of encyclopaedism. The gathering of information on diverse subjects into
a convenient form was educationally helpful: for the rhetoricians liked to
pose as polymaths, to have ready to hand those exempla and anecdotes which
could easily be worked into their orations. To fill this need, digests and handbooks
were produced, an extant example of which is Valerius Maximus' Facta
et dicta memorabilia. This work, in nine books, was dedicated to the Emperor
Tiberius some time after the disgrace of Sejanus in A.D. 31. It comprises a
loosely-constructed collection of historical instances and quotable aphorisms.
Valerius makes it clear in his preface that the purpose of his work is to save the
reader from the arduous task of searching directly for such material in the many
distinguished authors he claims to have consulted. For the sake of easy reference,
each book is subdivided under various headings, with most sections
presenting Roman and non-Roman instances. As well as anecdotal expositions
on such topics as religion (Book 1), social, political and military institutions
(Book 2) and well-known legal causes (Book 8), he cites illustrations of moral
qualities both good (Books 3 to 6) and bad (Book 9), interlarded with disquisitions,
at a generally superficial level, on well-worn philosophical themes.
In such a work it would be wrong to expect deep insight or originality. Valerius'
approach is declamatory, his style often pedantically sententious, his ideas
1
C. Calpurnius Piso, forced to suicide by Nero in 65, may be seen, in his encouragement of a
literary circle, as a pale reflection of his Augustan forerunners. On the background, cf. Cizek (1972)
esp. 67—9.
501
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008