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1024px-Irish_Verse_in_Codex_Boernerianus — Irish monk from Sankt Gallen in Switzerland – Codex Boernerianus

I first met this poem when I was studying Old Irish in Cambridge. I have now forgotten the Old Irish, but I will always love this poem. The translation by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan runs as follows.

To go to Rome, much labour, little profit: the King whom thou seekest here, unless thou bring him with thee, thou findest him not.

Travel is of the soul, not the body. The ninth century Irish monk who wrote the lines seems to have travelled to St Gall in Switzerland and to a life of back-breaking copying, but he believes he can find everything he is looking for without leaving his cell. His poem like many remains of Old Irish, comes to us illicitly, scribbled on the edge of the important work that is supposed to be transmitted, in this case 1 Corinthians 2 & 3. You can see the change in handwriting as he fits in his three lines under the Greek text.

And so for a moment we hear the voice of an Irish monk, transported to a Latin-speaking Abbey in German Switzerland, thinking in Irish as he painstakingly transmits the thoughts of a Greek-speaking Syrian Jew. Is his a happy lot, or an unhappy one? We know nothing about him except what is most important – that his only journey is towards redemption, and that to him physical place is an illusion.

But nonetheless a whole world has gathered in his cell as he write. He is mixing Irish thoughts with Swiss air in the company of St Paul, and many invisible others, including Stokes and Strachan, me and now you. If physical place is irrelevant, there is no meaningful separation in space or time between those of one mind who travel together. The monk has exchanged the variegated distractions of change and event for the constancy of the presence of God. He is not lonely.

For a long time I was not able to travel in the body as much as I would like, and spent many days without leaving my home. It is not surprising that I have been very drawn to the thoughts of this monk. When I think of travelling, I am no longer attracted by the simple idea of novelty. I think more of returning to people and places I knew before or have visited in books.

I do literally live in my library, or rather, we as a family live in our library. Our house is small. Books are double stacked in the dining room, squeezed between the bannisters, piled on the landing and under beds. Our garage is likewise given over to bookshelves. The books form a large part of my real world, and most of all the texts from or about the Classical and Mediaeval world where I also work. I often find small things of interest which I would like to share with like minded people, without ever reaching the lofty bar of publishable scholarship. I use whatever I can in my teaching, but I will treat this blog as a common place book where I will publish notes from time to time on my work in progress, as if anyone who visits were dropping in on me in my library. You are very welcome to drop in.

Pietro Bongo: de Numerorum Mysterium – THREE 1-59

Here are a few pages of an original translation with all rights reserved to me, so acknowledge Alison Samuels MA Cantab if you use it. I am looking to upload this in a more sensible place but today I am going to upload a preview of a draft.

Concerning the Number III

1 We are approaching the triad, than which nothing is richer in mystic and hidden significations. Indeed, the triad is the first number; for the Pythagoreans maintain that the dyad is not a number, but, so to speak, a fusion of units. And Plutarch[1] records that the Pythagoreans call the unit Apollo, the dyad strife and outrage, the triad justice; this last is the highest form of perfection, and for this reason the virtue of justice too is a medium[2] between two vices and removed from both; one of the vices is the infliction of injury, and the other the suffering of injury; both of these extremes are to be avoided.

2 The uneven number P. 96 appears to be similar to what is incorporeal and undivided[3]. The first even is surely the dyad[4] which is a division – the first occurrence of diversity, and the first lapse from one; but the number three[5] is the first uneven number; we could say that there has been a return to the one, and to the principium[6]. Three, being uneven is of greater perfection than the even[7], since it contains the even, but is not contained by it. Being beyond the even, it abounds in oneness[8], and it is clearly because of this abundance that it is called masculine. The even, however, because of its poverty, division and retreat from perfection, appears to be a number of feminine type.

3 It is true that even numbers are highly regarded in human and moral matters, for the reason that distributive justice[9] consists in the just division of evens between two parties. But the uneven numbers receive the more sacred regard which belongs to the divine. For if justice were to be resolved within the even, it would have no hinge on which to turn; but it is a property of unevenness, that one is the medium[10], the centre, so to speak; and the governing spirit, by which equal distribution is regulated; and the finis[11] to which we refer.

4 Furthermore, the uneven, because it has a medium[12], possesses its own bond within itself. And because it has a centre, it has the properties of a circle, and because of the relation of the extremes to the medium[13], it is the principium[14] of the order of the universe. It is a property of the first triad[15] that between two extremes it admits a medium[16], by which it is bonded. For in the triad[17] are principium, medium, and finis, and for this reason too all things are three. And the divines of ancient times, used to make three-fold offerings in their sacrifices, in order to show that the principium, medium, and finis belong to God. And philosophers have specified three things in the worship of God; adoration to represent reverence; incense, to represent the spreading of the very pleasing knowledge of God, and of the celestial and terrestrial virtues; the hymn, which Pythagoras says represents the singing of heaven[18].

5 And, to avoid the criticism that we have proceeded by [empty] words alone, let us hear Aristotle testify to this same thing[19]: When we consider magnitude, a magnitude which can be divided in one [dimension] is a line; a magnitude which can be divided in two [dimensions] is a plane; but a magnitude which can be divided into three [dimensions] is a body. And there is moreover no other magnitude apart from these, because threeness[20] is all things, and threeness[21] is infused into every part. For, as the Pythagoreans say, the universe[22] and all things are defined in terms of three. For finis, medium, and principium contain the number of the universe; P. 97and the number they contain is the number of the triad. For this reason, since we have, as it were, received these laws from nature, it is our custom to use this number in performing sacrifices to the gods. This is the end of the quotation from Aristotle.

6 And so the number three is sacred, a most powerful number, most allied to the ceremonies of the gods and religion, with the result that under its auspices both prayers and libations are repeated three times, so that[23] they are performed too on the third day, or at an interval of three months. Nicomachus stated this in these words: those who wish their prayers to be granted by God pour the libations three times and sacrifice three times.

7. Virgil Georgics Book IV concerning the sacrifices to Oceanus.[24]

Three times she drenched the blazing fire with liquid nectar;

Three times the flame flared from beneath to the full height of the roof.

8. In Theocritus Idyll 2 [25]

e0j tri\j a0pospe/ndw kai\ tri\j ta/de po/tnia fwne/w:[26]

That is;

Three times I pour the libation, three times I utter the mystic words.[27]

9. Valerius Flaccus in the Argonautica[28]

He himself pouring goblets three times in honour of father Ocean.

10. The Oracles of Apollo:[29]

For triple are the offerings to the celestial gods, and they must be sacrificed shining white, triple too the offerings to the gods of earth, and they are black.

11. Likewise Aratus:[30]

The ancient ritual of perfect sacrifice requires the offering of three loaves in a basket.

12. In the ancient religious lore[31] of the Greeks the third bowl was offered to Jupiter the Saviour, the second to the demi-gods and spirits[32]. And in fact the following saying of Pythagoras is well-known: ‘we should sacrifice to the gods above with uneven numbers, and to the gods below with even numbers’. Taking this into consideration[33], the Egyptians and Thales of Miletus wanted the year to consist of 365 days; no doubt because of the command to observe uneven numbers, which Pythagoras advised should be mostly highly regarded in all things. Consequently, and because of the unequal number of its days, January is dedicated to the gods above, and, being ill-omened on account of the equal number of its days, February is assigned to the gods below. P.98

13 Homer, whose depth of learning has never been surpassed, considering the uneven numbers auspicious[34], always ascribed uneven numbers to the gods above, as Nestor does with regard to Neptune[35], and as Tiresias commands Ulysses[36]; in fact when Achilles makes sacrifices at the tomb of the dead Patroclus[37], they are all even numbered; that is to say, four horses, twelve Trojan youths.

14 Virgil, aware of this teaching, in Book VI of the Aeneid shows that even numbers are pleasing to the gods below, saying:

First he placed here four black-backed bullocks.[38]

And again in the funeral rites which Aeneas performs for his father Anchises in Sicily, he keeps to even numbers. In Aeneid V the verse runs as follows:

Here he pours in ritual libation two goblets of unmixed wine upon the ground; two goblets of new milk; two of consecrated blood.[39]

And in Eclogues 8 showing that the uneven is appropriate for the gods above, he writes thus;

The god rejoices in uneven numbers.[40]

15 However, Virgil did not mean that God rejoices in any uneven number, but most of all in the number three, then five and seven. The Christian religion has not ignored this. For Cardinal Carlo Borromaeo, a man of great learning and religious devotion, who did nothing without deep rational deliberation and who possessed the greatest command of all mysteries, held uneven numbers in such high regard that, when he was laying down the rules for the construction of churches[41], he decided that churches in the form of a cross should have either one nave[42] alone, or three, or five, that on the exterior[43] they should have as many doors as naves, and that the windows in the nave should be uneven in number. In larger churches, where a lamp-stand stretches the length of the building, he decided that seven or thirteen lamps should be affixed; in smaller churches, three or five. Cathedral churches should have seven, or at least five bells; collegiate churches three. Three steps should lead to the high altar; but where, on account of the size of the church and altar, there could be more steps, it was permissible for five to be built . To the chapel major there should be constructed one or three or five steps. The ascent to the floor of the church should be by three or five steps. If the church happened P.99 to be built on a steep site, making a staircase consisting of a number of steps necessary, then as many steps as were necessary to make the ascent practical and convenient should be built, but the following rule should be observed, that they should be uneven in number, and that the level ground should be on the seventh or fifth or third step. For that is what the architects[44] say, to the end that we should enter the place of worship on the right foot, a thing which they consider is conducive to good religious practice.

16 This same practice is observed most importantly by the priests during the holy mass, where they say either one collect, or three, or five, or at most seven. Now where they say one[45], it is so that where for a single mass only one reading, one gospel and one office are said, they may in addition say one collect likewise. Where they say three, it is because we read that the Lord prayed three times before his passion. Where they say five, it is because of the fivefold division[46] of his passion, in memory of which we celebrate these services.[47] Finally, where they say seven, it is because we read that the Apostles, when they consecrated these same mysteries, used frequently the Lord’s Prayer, which contains all corporal and spiritual necessities in only seven petitions. The Pontifex too, making sacrifice to God, has deacons as witnesses with him, on days of solemnity, either one in number, or three, or five, or seven, as we read in de Cons. Dist. I. C. Episcopus Deo. For one deacon serves at the altar, because one disciple, a young man, that is John, clad only in a wrapper and otherwise naked, followed Christ when the rest fled.[48] Three serve, because Christ ascending to the Mount of Transfiguration took three with him, that is Peter, James and John.[49] But when five serve it is because of the five whom the Lord took with him when he revived the girl,[50] the three mentioned above and the father and mother of the girl. Finally, where seven perform the duties, it is because of those seven to whom the Lord manifested himself after his resurrection while they were fishing.[51]

17 Likewise in dispensing signings of the cross over the oblation the virtue of uneven numbers is not neglected[52], since they make one or three or even five signings of the cross, and this is doubtless by reason of a particular mystery in each case. For in making five crosses, they signify the five-fold passion of the Lord. In one, and in three, they suggest the one and triune God. In the mystery of this number too, the priest breaks the most holy body[53] into three parts in the Mass. He says the Agnus Dei[54] three times, and cries with the Seraphs Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts[55]. Whoever wishes to be absolved of sin repeats his faults three times.[56] It is right to say three times with the Centurion[57], ‘Lord I am not worthy,’ if we wish to partake worthily in the Holy Eucharist. And furthermore it is fitting that uneven numbers are frequently used in the liturgies of the Church. For they are never divided into two equal parts, to the detriment of their unity, nor does God wish the division of his Church.

18 The Pythagoreans add that uneven numbers are stronger for all purposes, and the number Three above all. Pliny Natural History Book 28, Chapter 4[58]. It was the custom throughout medical practice to spit three times with prayer, and by this the results were improved. The case of the Vestal Claudia[59] is further proof of this fact. When she fell into suspicion of unchastity, in order to prove her innocence by some incontrovertible demonstration, she is said to have drawn by her girdle the boat in which the Mother of the Gods was travelling. Before she did this, she prayed using threefold repetition.

19 Three times she bedewed her head; three times she raised her hands palm upward to the heavens.[60]

20 According to the stories of those learned in the gods of old[61], the goddess Ceres wandered across the whole of the world, looking for her daughter Proserpina, and when she found herself in Attica, she was received hospitably be Celeus the Attican. In order to repay his kindness with an appropriate reward, Ceres took his infant son from his cradle and began holy rituals[62], intending to make him immortal.

Three times she drenched him with her hand; she sang three chants.

Chants which could not be uttered by human voice.[63]

21 Furthermore, after Hippolytus had met his death, and when Aesculapius, at the behest of Diana, set about recalling him from the underworld and restoring him to his former good health;

He touched his breast three times, three time he spoke the health-giving words;

The other lifted up his head which had lain on the ground.[64]

22 So too the goddess Carna or Crana, liberating Proca, son of the king of Alba, when he was beset by witches;

Forthwith she touched the doorposts three times in order with arbute leaves.

With arbute leaves three times she struck the threshold.[65]

26 Pliny[66] records that the Dictator Caesar, following a dangerous accident to his coach, ever after as soon as he sat down in a vehicle, used to assure the safety of his journey by repeating a charm three times, something which, says Pliny, we know many people still do.

27 Theocritus in the Bucolics;

Abcabc

28 The dominant idea of these songs is this; so that no malicious influence harm me, nor bewitchment injure me, I spit three times into my bosom. The scholiast adds that this custom continued among the women even of his own day, who spit into their bosom to avert malicious influence.

29 Also relevant here are Lucian’s words in the Necyomantia;[67]

tri\v a0/n mou pro\v to\ pro/swpon a0poptu/sav

that is;

After he had spat three times in my face.

30 From a similar ritual of expiation comes the practice which Athenaeus relates in the Deipnosophistae[68]; that people of ancient times were accustomed to make three aspersions to drive off evil. He relates the following verse of Callimachus of Cyrene;

tri\v de\ a0pomacame/noisi qeoi\ dido/asin a0/meinon

that is;

The gods give better things to those who have wiped themselves three times.

31 In this way, they used to make purification by washing themselves three times or by making a triple circuit before they touched the sacred things, a practice which Virgil clearly expressed in book vi of the Aeneid[69] where he says this;

Likewise he purified his companions three times with clean water,

Splashing them with the gentle dew, and with a branch of well-omened olive,

And he cleansed his men.

32 Ovid book vii Metamorphoses;[70]

Three times she turned himself about, three times with water taken from the river

She bedewed his hair, and opened her mouth in three howls,

And on the hard ground with bended knee …

33 And so too when they made purifications of the fields, they used to drive the sacrificial beasts three times around the crops, as Virgil tells us in Georgics i[71] in these words.

Three times let the sacrificial victim go around the growing corn.

34 Nor should we omit Columella’s account, that those malevolent small beasts which are called caterpillars, are killed if a menstruating woman with loose hair and barefoot walks three times around the area. The verses from book 10[72] run as follows;

And if no medicine can repel the pest

Let the Trojan rites be employed; and a barefoot

Woman, who, still governed by the just laws of youth,

Shamefast drips with obscene blood,

But in mourning state, with her robes and hair undone,

Is led three times around the beds and fence of the garden,

And when she has purified them with her steps (a wretched sight).

Just as when the tree is shaken a cloud rains down,

Either of smooth apples or of acorns in their cups,

So the caterpillar rolls to the ground with writing body.

35 Moreover the number Three is most appropriate for bindings, hence in the Pharmaceutria of the same poet we find this;

First I bind you three times with these laces of triple colour,

And three times I carry your image about this altar.

And a little later.

Amaryllis, tie three colour with three knots.

36 We also read about Medea;

She spoke three times the words that bring peaceful sleep,

Which still the raging sea and stop the swollen rivers.

37 Further, in the rustic rites of the goddess Muta we read the following in Ovid.

Behold the old crone sitting in the midst of the young girls,

Performs the rites in silence, yet she herself is not silent,

And with her three fingers she places three incense offerings on the threshold.

38 It is also said that the rite at funerals was in triple form. For they used to call upon the deceased by name clearly three times, perhaps because we respond to nothing more promptly than to our own name, and if some vital spark were still hidden within, the dead would give some sign of life. If no vital spirit showed its presence even then, they said that he had been ‘cried on’. Hence the dead used to be called ‘the cried on’.

39 On this subject, Proclus says;

We used to call upon the dead three times.

40 In Homer, Ulysses asserts that he had not boarded his ships before calling three times on his comrades who had fallen in battle against the Cicones.

Although, from that shore the ships

Could not set out thence upon their course with strokes of oars.

Before we summoned our lost friends, calling them three times,

The men who on the Ciconians’ bloody fields had

41 Homer preserved the same number in the death of Patroclus, in Iliad 6.

In a great voice fearful Achilles called out three times,

Three times stricken the armies of Troy gave ground

With their allies.

42 Virgil used these words as he composed his verses on the funeral of Pallas in Aeneid i. 1.

Three times girded in gleaming armour

They ran around the blazing pyre; three times on horseback

They purified the sorrowful funeral fire, and raised the cries of mourning.

43 Likewise in book six;

Then by myself I set up an empty tomb upon the Roethean shore

And I called upon the Manes three times.

44 But why do we attempt to bring forward the Pagans[73] to demonstrate the mysteries of this number? For even in the sacred scriptures, we see numerous arcana symbolised by the number Three. Among the Jews, indeed, this number was consecrated to funerary rites and the dead. For example, when King David was driven out of his kingdom by his son Absalom, and after a considerable time had regained his strength and gathered a righteous army, he recovered his kingdom with the help of his generals. But he had given orders to his generals as they went out to battle, that they should not kill his son Absalom. Nonetheless, they acted against David’s order; Absalom perished in the war, pierced with three spears by the general Joab. The father, sorrowing over the death of his son, began to lament him in these words;[74]

My son Absalom, Absalom my son,

Absalom my son, my son Absalom,

My son Absalom, Absalom my son.

45 In the third month[75] after they had gone out of Egypt, the people of Israel came to Mount Sinai, and offered a sacrifice to God, and on the third day they received the law. For this reason, the third day is a time of grace. For the Prophet Moses indicated this in Genesis, chapter I, when he said that God had made the waters into one gathering on the third day. For after the first day which belongs to Moses and the second which belongs to the ministry of the prophets, on the third day we Gentiles were gathered together into one congregation of faith, through the net[76] of the Gospel. For this reason, Christ, who rose of the third day from the dead said;[77]

Today and tomorrow I work wonders.

Note the two days. For by the wonders [of the first day] he means what was done in Egypt, and in the desert by Moses; these are (to sum up) the works of the first day. But the wonders of the second day are those done by Elias[78] and Elisha and those who followed them, the Prophets. But on the third day is accomplished the bright day of his coming, which shows forth through the Gospel his work[79], perfect and absolved of all numbers. For Christ is the fulfilment and completion of the law and the Prophets.[80]

46 And so too, the wedding which was celebrated in Cana took place on the third day. But Cana, according to its Hebrew meaning, is creation; in this creation by his descent was accomplished the uncorrupt marriage, which is the union of the Word with our [human] nature[81]. In this marriage on the third day, Christ performed his first miracle in water; for p.105 on the third day, he gathered the water of the Gentiles into one congregation.

47 Joshua[82], who as a type prefigures the Lord, coming to Jordan, ordered the people to prepare food for a three day journey. Jacob Geuschel explains this mystery in his Seven Books of Tropes in Sacred Scripture.[83] By the triple breath of the prophet Elias, life was breathed into the son of the widow of Sarephta; 3 Regum 17.[84] Three times too Elias poured water over the holocaust; 3 Regum 18. When Balaam beat his ass for the third time, the Angel appeared to him; Num. 22. Three times Balaam[85] blessed the people of Israel; Num. 23, 24. Three times David fell to the ground and worshipped Jonathan; 1. Regum 20.[86] Three times Samuel was called by God; 1. Regum 3.[87]

48 After being warned by God three times, Bishop Honoratus of Vercelli came to the Ambrose, Doctor of the Church,[88] who was in his death agony and offered him the holy body of the Lord. Three times the Angel of the Lord appeared to Peter, when an ecstasy of mind fell upon him.[89] Cornelius sent three men to Peter[90]. Three times in the year it was sanctioned by the law of Moses that every male should appear before God; that is, at Passover, at Pentecost and on the Day of Tabernacles.[91] Passover[92], which marks the passing of Israel from Egypt, or of the universe from not being to being, corresponds to the Father, who snatched us from the hands of the Devil. Pentecost, when the law was given to so great a gathering, corresponds to the Son. For the bringing together corresponds to the Son and the Word, in whom the law was, before it was given, according to Elchana.[93] The Day of Forgiveness and of Tabernacles, in memory of the shadow cast by the cloud in the desert, corresponds to the Holy Spirit, in whose power and number forgiveness is given.

49 Apart from this, we practise the worship of God in three ways; in our hearts, by our voices and by our works. Thus there are three forms of penance; contrition of the heart, confession of the mouth and reparation by works. And the forms of reparation are also numbered three; fasting, alms, prayer. So too we are commanded to love God with our whole heart, so that we offer all our thoughts to Him; from our whole soul, so that we offer all our life to Him, with all our mind, so that we offer all our intellect to Him, from Whom we have what we offer. P.106

50[94] There are three fingers, by which God suspended the mass of the earth.[95] Sins can be wiped out in three ways. For they are remitted by baptism, covered by charity and not imputed in case of martyrdom. Now indeed although the things which we either have from God, or will in future have are many and great – so many and so great that no one can embrace them all in one discourse – yet there is this one thing in which His beneficence to the human race shines out, the fact that we direct our souls to Him and are united to him by direct relationship[96], as if by some sort of necessity. The triple number of the theological virtues particularly displays this. For by these the human mind is raised from the things of earth to the things of heaven, and is joined to God. And without the connexion and coherence of these virtues, there is no salvation [97] for humankind. And where they are found, they bring the gift of salvation through the power of God.[98]

51 Concerning these [theological virtues] the Apostle spoke to the Corinthians[99], writing;

But now there remain Faith, Hope and Charity, these Three, but the greatest of these is Charity.

So that there may rightly be this triple cord of virtues, which, according to Ecclesiastes[100], is hard to break.

52 In three ways God invites the sinner[101] to Himself, by the power of miracles, by secret compunction[102], and by the speech of the scholar. In the Book of Job we read with wonder that God, who greatly pitied human weakness, desired to teach human beings to turn to Him, convicting them once, twice and a third time, that is to say, by words, dreams and sicknesses. If they return to wisdom on the third occasion, all will be well with them; if not, the spirit of God gives urgent warning that it is about to leave them, and desert them forthwith.

53 But much more wonderful is the fact that in his temptings, the Devil has been three times overcome by us, and departs so weak and confused that he is either unable to attack us again, or blushes to do so. This is why we read that Satan is rightly compared to a leopard, which in hunting its prey falls back and is ashamed to continue the attack unless he catches it on the third leap. So great is the strength and power of this number.

54 And I tell you, you can learn this in numerous passages of the sacred Scriptures. When the third and last well had been dug, the quarrelling of the herdsmen ceased, as we read in Genesis, chapter 26.[103] In just the same way, Elias[104] the prophet, soaked the wood three times, at the time when he caused the sacrifice to be consumed by fire sent from heaven and killed the false prophets who were not able to do the same P. 107 when he demanded it of them..[105]

55 Furthermore, we read in the Book of Judges[106] that when the whole of Israel arose to avenge the crime of Benjamin in Gibeah, at the command of the Lord, they were defeated once and a second time, but victorious on the third occasion. From this we learn that God’s custom is to award perpetual rest and triumph by means of the third battle. Thus the Apostle Paul after his third victory, obtained through his third prayer, rested in safety, saying;

Because I asked the Lord three times, and He said to me; My grace is sufficient for you.[107]

56 Thus Pharaoh’s mages, Iamnes and Mambres[108], changed sticks into serpents and water into blood, and made the water seethe with frogs, since they were evildoers and empowered by the corruption of their minds, but they were completely unable to bring forth lice.[109] And so they said that the Holy Spirit was against them. And thus they failed in the Third Plague, because the first miracle they worked was not a plague, so they are said to have failed in their third miracle,[110] Glos. 1. Q. 1. with reference to the verse about the mages [111] and Augustine On the Celebration of Easter.

57 By reason of this mystery, when Satan made war on Christ, he was repulsed three times and conquered.[112] And so after the third battle and victory, Jesus Christ, at rest and triumphant, said, according to John;

The prince of this world has come and he has no part in me.[113]

And so too when he had battled down his enemies in Hell, on the third day the Lord rose in glory and peace. For this reason, in the Church, on the most holy day of the Resurrection, the Gospel according to Mark is read, to whom Father Jerome, out of the four animals,[114] attributed the face of the lion. Adamantius Phisiologus writes this about the lion cub; as soon as it is born, it sleeps for three days and three nights, and then its father makes a terrifying roar and shakes the cub’s den, and it awakes from sleep. And from that comes the saying of Jacob in the holy Scripture;

Judah is a lion’s cub, you have ascended to the prey my son, you have lain down and rested like a lion, and like a lioness, who will wake him?[115]

58 And there is also Balaam’s second response;

He shall rest, lying as the lion, and like the lioness; who will dare to wake her?[116]

This beyond doubt refers to the burial and resurrection of Christ.

59 Thus far P. 108

For everything which has been created is either an extreme or a mean. If it is an extreme, it is an intellect, either angelic or human. If it is a mean, it is a sensible creation, created after the angels but before humanity.[117]

The angelic intellect is the active being[118] of all things, and universal actuality of all things.[119] For just as it is separate from all matter, so too it understands without species[120], and knows all things, not through the objects of its knowledge themselves, nor through their species, but simpliciter[121], of its own nature,[122] intuitively, and by contemplation of its own active being[123], before the universe comes to be.

Human intellect is the possibility of all things, and the universal potentiality of all things.[124]

And all the things which remain between both these kinds of intellect, are all according to substance a mixture of actuality and potentiality.

For the angelic intellect is so to speak the simple actuality of all things; the human intellect, as it were the simple and universal potentiality of all things. Whatever there is apart from these intellects, is sensible, and their medium, mixing actuality and potentiality.[125]

And so it happens that the whole universe can be divided into only Three; that is the two intellects which are the two extremes, and which both comprehend everything; and, on the other hand everything else, which is included in the medium[126] of these two intellects.[127] And anything you can name is in one of these categories, P. 112 and all together they comprehend everything.

And so everything [in one category] was created before the universe; that is to say the angels. Everything [in the median category] was created in the universe; that is the remainder. After the universe, everything [in the last category] was created that is to say, humanity. This is visualised in in the following table.

[1] The Latin text contains the marginal reference Plutarc. De Pyth. Disc. The intended source may be Pseudo-Plutarch Placita Philosophorum 1.7.

[2] Here mean. This is the Aristotelian doctrine of virtue as a mean between two vices.

[3] This is plural in the Latin – incorporeal and undivided things.

[4] dualitas. However, no distinction is intended between this term and diada, translated dyad in s.1. The direct allusion to Pythagoreans makes this terminology certain.

[5] ternarius

[6] Here, possibly first principle, foundation.

[7] In this section, PB is considering the even as equivalent to the binary and by extension the concept two. All uneven numbers share the property of masculinity, and all even numbers the property of femininity, but three and two cannot be seen merely as numbers in a sequence. One, as we have established ad loc. is not strictly speaking a number. Two, as well as being a means of numbering objects, represents binary form universally: perpetual separation and disunity. Three represents the resolution of the binary into a compound unity: as the first uneven number in the number sequence, it also represents unevenness per se and exemplifies its properties. It is therefore not surprising that in PB’s trinitarian theology, three may turn out to be one. Although we can go on counting beyond the number three, all the fundamental concepts of organisation – the one, the binary or even, the uneven – are figured in the relations of one, two and three. Later numbers in the series will be understood in relation to these fundamental distinctions. The fluidity of PB’s language at this point enables him to move very swiftly through this complex set of relationships.

[8] uno

[9] distributio

[10] Here mean, in the Aristotelian sense.

[11] The end or goal.

[12] Here, middle term.

[13] Here PB seems to be looking forward to the idea which he is about to develop that the compound principium, medium, finis (beginning, middle, and end) is equivalent to the universe.

[14] Possibly foundation, principle.

[15] ternario

[16] Here middle term.

[17] ternario

[18] i.e. the music of the spheres. The Latin word concentum indicates a shared or communal singing.

[19] The Latin text contains the marginal reference Lib. I. de de coelo & mundo.

[20] ipsa tria

[21] ipsum ter

[22] ipsum omne

[23] The sense might be improved by reading aut instead of ut giving three times or additionally on the third day. The sequence of tenses is also peculiar – there seems no reason for the switch to the imperfect in peragerentur.

[24] Georgics IV 384-5

[25] Idyll 2. 43

[26] B.’s Greek text is somewhat corrupted by printing, beginning with a capital epsilon, having an acute accent, not a grave on trij and kai and contracting the final vowels of ew with a superscript mark intended for a circumflex. I have substituted the standard version.

[27] B. omits the word potnia (lady) in his translation. This is an invocation to Hecate.

[28] B.’s text is slightly corrupt, giving charchesia for carchesia and patre for patri. There is a marginal reference Lib. 1. The full reference is Argonautica I. 193

[29] The lines appear in Eusebius de Evangelica Praeparatione 14. 4D.

[30]PB means Arator. The lines are from his sixth century work de Actibus Apostolorum 2. 894-5.

[31] Latin theologia.

[32] Latin daemonibus.

[33] A marginal note here gives the sources Ioseph Moleti de correctione Kalendarii lib[er] I. c. 4. Laertius de vitis Philosophor[um] Li[ber] 1. The first of these refers to a treatise on the correction of the calendar by the sixteenth century mathematician Giuseppe Moletti. The second is a reference to Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers Book 1., and especially to chapter 1, on Thales.

[34] in sorte boni. The coming references to Homer suggest that the Greek text, which he does not quote, is not PB’s source, as it does not exemplify the preference for even numbers he ascribes to it.

[35] Nestor sacrifices a hecatomb to Neptune in Odyssey 3.

[36] In Odyssey 11. 129-133 the shade of Teiresias advises the sacrifice of single animals (a ram, bull and boar) to Poseidon and hecatombs to the other gods.

[37] Iliad 23. 21-22. In these lines Achilles dedicates the 12 Trojan youths, and later unnumbered sheep, goats and oxen are slain. The horses are not mentioned in the standard Greek text, and are not a usual Homeric sacrifice.

[38] Aeneid vi. 243.

[39] Aeneid v. 77-8.

[40] Eclogue 8. 75

[41]

[42] B adds ut dicunt = as they say, since the Latin word for nave literally means ship. This difficulty is obviated in English.

[43] in fronte

[44] Marginal reference: Leo Baptista Alberti, de Lineamentis c. 13.

[45] Marginal reference: Microlog[ia] de Eccles[iae]. observa[tionibus]. c.4

[46] The five wounds of Christ.

[47] i.e. the mass.

[48] Ev. Marc. 14. 51-2

[49] Ev. Marc. 9. 2; also Ev. Matt. 17.2; Luke/Ev. Luc. 9.28;

[50] The raising of Jairus’ daughter; Ev. Marc. 5. 40-41; /Ev. Luc. 8. 51. The story is also in Matthew (Ev. Matt. 9. 25), but without the relevant detail.

[51]

[52] PB provides the marginal reference Microlog[ia] de Ecclesi[ae] observ[ationibus] c.14

[53] The ritual division, or Fraction of the Host, representing the body of Christ.

[54] Agnus Dei – a tripartite invocation to Christ as the Lamb of God associated with the rite of Fraction (see n.52)

[55] Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth. The Sanctus hymn forms part of the ordinary of the Mass, and is sung before the Consecration of the Elements (bread and wine).

[56] The threefold repetition of the phrase mea culpa (by my own fault) forms part of the Penitential section (the Confiteor) of the 1570 Roman Rite.

[57] PB provides the marginal reference [Ev.] Matt. 8. The full reference is Ev Matt. 8.8. The Centurion does not repeat the saying three times – the repetition has a complex history but appears as a congregational response in the Roman Rite before Distribution.

[58] Pliny NH 28.4 deals with portents and prodigies. The only relevant section seems to be Pliny’s description of Julius Caesar’s habit of repeating a charm three times before travelling.

[59] PB includes the marginal note Herodianus lib. 1. Herodian, I. x. 6 mentions the spring festival of the ‘Mother of the Gods’ (Cybele) in the context of an attempted assassination of the Emperor Commodus. He digresses to tell the miracle of the Vestal Claudia, whom he does not name. She was divinely enabled to tow the ship containing the sacred image to shore on the occasion when the cult was first brought to Rome (Herodian I xi. 3-5). The threefold prayer does not feature in Herodian’s account.

[60] PB includes the marginal note Ovid Fast. Li. 4.

[61] priscorum Theologorum.

[62] sacrificia.

[63] PB includes the marginal reference ibidem.

[64] PB includes the marginal reference Fast. li. 6. The full reference is Ovid Fasti vi. 773-4 (June 21^st).

[65] PB includes the marginal reference Ovid Fast.6. The full reference is Ovid Fasti vi. 155-6 (June 1^st).

[66] PB includes the marginal reference Lib. 28. Cap. 2.

[67] Lucian, Necyomantia 7.

[68] Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 1. 3.

[69] Virgil, Aeneid vi 229-231.

[70] Ovid, Metamorphoses vii 189-191.

[71] Virgil, Georgics i. 345

[72] Columella, de Re Rustica x. 356-366.

[73] Ethnicos.

[74] Marginal note 2. Reg. 18 & 19. Older versions of the Vulgate count the Book of Samuel as Reges 1-2, so that Reges runs into 4 books. In the later division of the Vulgate, David’s lament occurs twice, in 2 Sam (2 Reg.) 18. 33 and 19. 4, but in neither case in the triple form quoted by PB. It is reasonable to suggest that he may have formed his idea of the text from ecclesiastical music such as the setting of the lament as a motet, attributed to Josquin de Prez.

[75] Marginal note: Exho. 19 (Exod. 19)

[76] PB employs the common Christian metaphor of fishing to denote conversion.

[77] Marginal note: Luc. 13. The full reference is Ev. Luc. 13. 32. The Vulgate version reads ; ecce eicio daemonia et sanitates perficio hodie et cras at tertia comsummor.

[78] Elijah.

[79] Studium.

[80] Marginal reference Iohan. I. The full reference is Ioh. 1. 16-17.

[81] That is, the Incarnation, in which Christ, the Word of God, descends from heaven and takes human form.

[82] Marginal reference Ios. I. 3. The text intended seems to be Ios. 1.11.

[83] Called by PB Iacobus Geuschelius; a Swiss scholar originating in Winterthour.

[84] Or 1 Reg. 17 in editions which number the two Books of Samuel.

[85] Marginal reference 2. q. 7. c. nos. ? .itē Balaam.

[86] 1 Sam. (1. Reg.) 20. 41.

[87] 1. Sam. (1. Reg.) 3.

[88] D. Ambrosium. The story relates to the deathbed attendance of Honoratus on his patron Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, d. 397 AD. Ambrose shared observance as Doctor in the Western Church with St Gregory the Great, St Augustine and St Jerome. Other Doctors were added in 1568 and subsequently.

[89] Marginal reference Act. 10. Full reference is Act. 10. 10.

[90] Also Act. 10.

[91] Marginal reference Exho. 23 34. Deut. 16. The full references are Exod. 23. 17; ibid. 34. 23; Deut. 16. 16, where the three festivals are mentioned by name. PB uses the Greek terms Pascha and Pentecost, representing Passover and the Feast of Weeks respectively.

[92] Because PB uses Pascha he refers equally to Passover and Easter.

[93] Of the several people this could be, I would bet on Elkanah, father of Samuel, but the reference escapes me.

[94] Marginal reference Esa.40. Hier. In Psal.31.

[95] Isaiah 40.12. Found in Vulgate-based versions.

[96] cognatione.

[97] Literally safety (salus).

[98] auctore Deo.

[99] Marginal Reference 1. Cor. 13. The reference is to verse 13.

[100] Marginal Reference Cap. 4. The full reference is Eccles. 4. 12.

[101] Marginal Reference Cap.33. Vide Iohanem Bodinum Daemonom. Lib 1. Capi. 4. & Catenam auream in Iob, quam e Greco in Latinum transtulit Paulus Comitolus Perusinus Societatis Iesu. The Scriptural reference is to Job 33. There follows a reference to Jean Bodin’s 1580 publication De Magorum Daemonomania, and another toPaolo Comitoli’s Catena in Beatissimum Iob Absolutissima, Venice 1587. The inclusion of Bodin is interesting, as his work was placed on the Index of prohibited books in the 1590’s although it continued to circulate in Catholic regions(Jonathan Pearl’s introduction to the translation by Randy A. Scott, Toronto, 1995).

[102] This phrase secret compunction refers to instinctive remorse and has a long theological history.

[103] The digging of the well of Rehoboth ends Isaac’s conflict with the Philistines.

[104] Also known as Elijah.

[105] Marginal reference 3 Reg. 18; 1 Reg.18 in versions which number the Books of Samuel.

[106] Marginal reference, Cap.20.

[107]Marginal Reference 2.Cor.12. The passage refers to Saint Paul’s pleas to be relieved of the ‘thorn in his flesh’ which PB takes to be successful at the third time of asking.

[108] Marginal Reference Exho. 7 (Exod. 7)

[109] Marginal Reference Exho. 8 (Exod. 8)

[110] PB is flowing atradition of creative accounting: the mages achieved 3 miracles, but the first does not count, as it does not belong to the sequence of Plagues of Egypt. The word used for plague is actually plaga, a blow, in the usage which gives us the word plague meaning a disease.

[111] This seems to be a reference to the Glossa Ordinaria ad loc. but I am as yet unable to locate the version PB is using. The words quia per ipsam mentis corruptionem iniquissimi fuerunt are a virtual quotation from the version in Migne Patrologia Latina 113, but the meaning-changing substitution of iniquissimi for inquieti shows a departure from this. If PB’s primary reference is to the tradition of saying the mages failed in the third miracle and expounding this in a trinitarian form, this is attributed to Augustine ad loc. in the Strasbourg 1480 edition.

[112] Marginal Reference Matt. 4

[113] Marginal Reference [Ioh.] cap. 14.

[114] Marginal references Ezech. 1; Apoc. 4 [6-9]. The four animals which surround the throne of God in these passages are seen as types of the four Evangelists and have the attributes of a lion, calf, man and eagle respectively.

[115] Marginal reference Gen. 49. [9].

[116] Marginal Reference Num, 23. The reference is actually Num.24. 9, and the quotation is inaccurate.

[117] Aquinas Summa Theologica 1a 87. a. 1. arg. 2. Both the angelic and human soul belong to the genus of intellectual substance. No other created things do so.

[118] esse.

[119] The angelic intellect is constantly in active engagement with the being of the universe. If knowing is, literally, to have a thing in mind, then the angelic intellect actively comprehends the active being of everything that is, all the time. This is its activity, and it is not in the nature of the angelic intellect for it ever to cease. It is always actual, never potential. However I do not understand why it is a simple actuality – simplex omnium actus omnium: this seems to contradict Aquinas. Angeli autem essentia est quidem in genere intelligibilium ut actus, non tamen ut actus purus neque completus …sed cognoscit alia a se per eorum similitudines. ST 1a 87 a. 1.

[120] In Aquinas’ sense of ‘mental representations’, which might be understood to have a material aspect. The angelic soul does not have to learn through contact with the sensible universe as the human soul does. But vide Aquinas supra. PB seems to be using the attributes of God here? Because the angels should know through similitudines. Or are they different from species?

[121] As opposed to secundum quid; angelic intellect understands the universe unconditionally, in virtue of being what it is., Is that not God?

[122] per se.

[123] esse.

[124] The human mind has the capacity to become all intelligible things through thought.

[125] Is this not true also of human intellect?

[126] That is, the mean between the extremes. The sensibles are knowables, but have no power to know. The intellect of either kind knows or has the power to know, but is not sensible.

[127] The created universe is composed of angelic and human intellect and their objects.

Too Long Didn’t Listen: the perils of Renaissance oratory

In 1515, Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Kings of Poland and Hungary, physically met at Vienna, with suitably large entourages, to conclude a treaty of alliance sealed by a double wedding uniting the Habsburg and Jagiellonian dynasties. Latin was essential as the medium of exchange at the Congress, which met to form an alliance between Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Kings of Poland and Hungary, all present with their armies. It concluded with a double wedding designed to unite the Habsburg and Jagiellonian dynasties. The commentators repeatedly remark on the ethnic and linguistic diversity. The intense negotiations, which continued actively right up to the final arrival in Vienna were conducted mainly by high-ranking representatives and ambassadors (called oratores, precisely because their job was to speak in Latin) who continued to lead negotiations even after the principals met – the deal was far from done.

Dr Helen Coffey of the Open University commissioned me to translate two reports on the Congress of Vienna. One was by the Bavarian Johann Spiessheimer, a scholar of the Court of Maximilian I, Prefect of Vienna, who used the pen name Johannes Cuspinianus – I’ll call him Cuspinian. The other is the Odeporicon of the Italian humanist, Riccardo Bartolini. Cuspinian is self-effacing and reverential. Bartolini has a much stronger authorial voice, and includes whatever interests him, from tourist destinations to personal reminiscences. To reach the widest educated Christian public, they both write in Latin.

The first thing that struck me while reading these accounts of the Congress, is that you would hardly expect a serious political report on the G7 to place so much emphasis on the gold chains, the high quality textiles, the quality of the trumpets. These things mattered, because they were assurances of power. The insistence on high quality and lavishness ran through the whole event – processions, display, lavish gifts and entertainment. Shows of courtesy were important too. In all this Latinists did double duty, both as practical communicators and as part of the pomp and show Ceremonial summits required dignified exchanges of speeches expressing the proper sentiments of the occasion in Latin. Renaissance humanism had brought high standards of refinement in Latin compositional style, and nothing less than the best scholarly Latin – the linguistic equivalent of silk and velvet – could be offered to princes on these great occasions.

Fortunately, there were people who were good at this. We have said that of the business of the Congress of Vienna was done by Latinist negotiators. It’s quite striking that one of the most important imperial aides ‘Cardinal Gurk’ (Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg) and his Hungarian counterpart ‘Cardinal Esztergom (Tamás Bakócz) were of relatively humble origin, but had risen through the Church as scholars and administrators who could do business for the blue-blooded elite. These same people could also keep the speech making at an appropriate level of dignity and splendour. It is notable that the speech making at key events is not usually done by the key political participants in person, but by their representatives.

As I translated speeches and indeed poems written for delivery to the great princes, I became very bored. Were the Court and the Kings not bored to death with all this flowery sycophancy? The Latin is certainly very scholarly. Renaissance style demanded the abandonment of non-Classical vocabulary, and the adoption of complicated sentence structures found in the Classical prose writers. So now it was sophisticated to call churches temples and put the main verb so far back in the sentence that by the time you meet it, you can’t remember what you needed it for. And then, this Latin was part of the spectacle. A a speech on a majestic occasion required a certain amplitude – the greatness of the topic must be reflected by the number of words spent on it. Expressions of devotion, respect and loyalty needed to be made in well chosen Latin words, including large numbers of redundant superlatives. Glorification of the prince was a topic which could hardly be hurried over – clearly adequate glorification would take a considerable time. But in real life, was anyone listening?

I think not

Even allowing for the fact that the oratores were used to conversing in Latin, I would suspect that listening to a long declamation was pretty challenging. I am quite good at Latin, and think I would follow the gist and key messages. People who didn’t speak Latin regularly, who were not oratores, – how well would they understand spoken Latin? And what about the princes themselves. Officially of course, they were paragons of all manly accomplishments and enjoyed listening to long Latin orations, sometimes even in verse, as much as a good joust and defending Christendom from the Turks. But really? Then make allowances for different pronunciations, lack of microphones, open air crowds. Really?

Well let’s take a real life example. Poor Bartolini suffers a terrible disappointment in St Stephen’s Cathedral Vienna. It is his big moment.

When Mass was over, Caesar left his throne and went to the tomb of his father Frederick which was close by, in order to put on his Pontifical robes. Then I was supposed to make a speech, although a very small space had been allocated me for it, and I got up to speak. However, the scoundrels were making so much noise everywhere, there was such a prevailing din of dissonant people and voices (not to mention the clattering of the carpenter who had come to mend Caesar’s dais) that I was compelled to give up without making even a third of the speech – my friends actively encouraged me to do so. (M iv a)

Poor Bartolini. But he remained hopeful, and redeemed himself in his own eyes by showing he could speak Latin fluently enough to extemporise on the spot.

Nonetheless, since I saw the King of Poland pay some slight attention, I achieved this much; though I was vanquished by the outrageous behaviour of those monstrous people, I made an extemporary conclusion. (M iv b)

Bartolini is not of course a major player. There were people who could command silence. In Cuspinian’s account, at 12 A, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian himself makes a speech of an hour to the visiting Kings.

Altogether, he spoke for almost an hour, so nobly and with such great wisdom that he kept all eyes and faces turned to him, and so won them over that many who were not loyal Caesarians [supporters of the Emperor], but were quite hostile to him, now said openly that they would submit; they said they had never expected such courtesy, wisdom and adroitness in Caesar, being so great a prince as he was.

Since large numbers of oratores, prelates and so on were present, it is no surprise, that the speech may have been well understood. However, the fact that the Emperor gives it personally and his manner in giving it may be an important part of the intended effect. At this point, Maximilian is stage managing an opportunity for the kings, in a gorgeous setting, to have almost an hour to try out the feel of this new fraternal relationship with the Emperor, as the undivided leaders of Latin Christendom, diverse by ethnicity, but united against the heathen menace of the Ottoman Turks.

Nowhere do Maximilian and the Kings show an ability converse directly in Latin, except for brief formal exchanges. For example at Bratislava. (6A Cuspinian) the Emperor’s representative Gurk makes a speech and Esztergom replies for the Kings. Clearly Maximilian actually had very good Latin, so why doesn’t he make the speech? I suspect from many other things in the text that the representatives have to be used because neither Sigismund of Poland nor Vladislaus of Hungary were capable of extended Latin conversation, although the only royal who is explicitly said to need an interpreter is Queen Anne. She is aged 12 (Bartolini’s Odeporicon O iii b). But even if the royal parties had Latin comptence, others didn’t.

When the Kings are preparing to depart (Cuspinian 16 B) Maximilian again makes a prepared speech to them at a grand feast. Now Cuspinian has his moment of glory. It is his job to give a short account of the treaty that his been concluded in Latin and in German. If Cuspinian gave his speech very clearly, and slowly, it was probably fairly intelligible, but he still backed it up in German. What does this tell us about the general intelligibility of the Emperor’s Latin oration?

Bartolini takes great interest in speech making generally. From him we get a much stronger picture of the lesser role of Latin speech-making in formal ceremonies. In A iii b Gurk arrives in Ingoldstadt – the Rector of the University makes a speech of welcome (badly) and the Bishop of Acerra (for reasons of etiquette) replies for Gurk. Then he enters Vienna, where Sebastianus Binderlius speaks an encomium of him, and the Bishop of Acerra again replies. When anyone of major importance goes anywhere, there must be an official welcome party where someone must make a speech and someone else must reply. These speeches are purely ornamental. If they go well, the orators present will appreciate them, but they are quite likely to go badly. Like the interminable speeches at weddings and funerals, it is easy to see how these could become a public menace.

Bartolini is scathing about the unfortunate Rector of Ingolstadt, but admires Binderlius. Maybe he thought his words were wasted, because he digresses into some heartfelt and revealing comments on oratory (B i a).

Concerning the impatience of princes in listening [to speeches]

For princes at this time do not enjoy digressions and ceremony, but prefer a rapid exposition; they want the speech over in a short space, even if the topic is their own praises. If we remain faithful to the precepts of the ancients, and make our aim the urn of Cicero, the princes are either doing something else, or are napping. If we adopt a more concise style of speech, because we have to some extent adopted new principles, either we are ‘getting it wrong through ignorance’, or, even if we say something good, they still say that the speaker is inexperienced, just because the speech was brief.

The orators are between a rock and a hard place. If they obey the rules of oratory, and produce something that measures up to the standards of the orators present, they bore the princes. If they keep it brief, they look incompetent. And as the speeches might need to be presented in written form too, there was no hiding place. Elaborate Renaissance prose with complex sentence structure and all those delayed main verbs was the only language that could satisfy the leisurely scrutiny of scholars.

It wasn’t only the princes who were easily bored. In K i b Bartolini himself is bored by one of the senior negotiators for the kings.

The Archbishop of Pécs began a speech in response to this intricate letter; he spoke with the elegance due but perhaps at greater length than the occasion required. After rejoicing in the coming of Caesar and the great happiness it afforded the Kings, and discoursing on their affection and services towards Caesar, he continued with magnificent praise of the Emperor; then he changed the topic to the necessity of entering into peace, and concord, and taking up an expedition against the Turks – this was no doubt learned enough, except that this last part, which I would rather have reserved for the joint meeting with the Kings, dealt with relations with the Turks at excessive length.

The Kings’ ambassadors have just offered their formal credentials to Maximilian. The Archbishop could have confined himself to endorsing this fairly simple document with a few well chosen words. Instead, he made pointless false start on the formal presentation, missing many opportunities to sit down. Maximilian could hardly interrupt the Archbishop once he got going. But Bartolini goes on to show how it should be done.

Praise of Mota’s response

When the oratorical formalities were finally over, Caesar, had summoned Gurk, who was sitting next to him as usual, Szydłowiecki and Doctor Mota to consult with him. He gave the task of making a response to Pedro Mota, the Spaniard, as learned and imposing a man as any to come out of Spain. In order to free Caesar from tedium, he first mentioned Caesar’s happiness at the arrival of the ambassadors, and expanded his theme with praise of no mean order... He responded so successfully and briefly, that Caesar could not have been more pleased with his economy of organization.

So princes hate them, etiquette demands them, but what is the point of all these speeches. The written distribution of the speech was an age old strategy – Bartolini on his attempt at speech at the wedding

It is true that although the speech was hardly heard, it can at least be read. I have decided to append the speech below, although in a brief and summary form.

As the ceremonies carried on Maximilian resorted to direct methods when he found the University of Vienna had turned up to offer formal congratulations on his conditional marriage to Anne of Hungary.

Since Caesar was pressed by important business he ordered them to speak briefly, indicating that he would read the speeches presently if they were presented in written form. When my friend Vadianus, a man of the brightest talent, learned this – he had been given the task of speaking – he addressed Caesar briefly as follows.

Holy Emperor Maximilian, I think it should well suit your wishes that, at your command, we have condensed into one page, the speech which I was to give before you on behalf of the University, since important and demanding matters of imperial business require it; the fact that we have done this must demonstrate our common duty and devotion to you. When you have leisure to read this, please remember that these words are in no way sufficient to commit to the literary records the true extent of what we feel about your majesty and power and merit, given our ardent love towards you, and our overwhelming admiration of what you have done.

Vadianus neatly makes a virtue of necessity – no number of words are adequate to express the devotion of the University. And Caesar will read the whole speech when he has leisure. When the Congress is over, and the Peasants’ Revolt of the moment suppressed, and the Ottomans crushed, when the Muscovites and the King of France have been taught better manners, then Maximilian will sit down to read the effusions of loyalty from the University of Vienna. He isn’t the only one with scrolls piling up in his to do tray. The King of Hungary receives a poem on his greatness from Bartolini, accompanied by a very short speech.

I beg and beseech that you will be pleased to accept the poem which I wrote in praise of the marriage of the Most Serene Louis and Mary and of your own Majesty a full three days ago. If I find that you have enjoyed it in some opportunity for leisure furnished by the wise and valiant conclusion of your projects, it will then have the appearance of a prelude. Meanwhile I hope for happiness for your Majesty and your delightful son. May you live long alongside him, and may he seem your likeness, both in his manner of life and the glory of his deeds.

Bartolini then publishes the poem. At this point it is clear what is happening. The complimentary speeches have to exist for reasons of honour on the side of the princes, and preferment on the part of the authors. But the princes don’t actually want to listen to them. In fact, the elite at any gathering may not be able to follow the elaborate Latin very well, and there may even be problems of audibility. The solution is to publish; then the administrators can read the speeches in print, and the princes can be assured that they exist without having to waste any time on them. That leaves them free for more important uses of time, which in the case of Maximilian and the Kings include two days of tournament, where the people who really matter can forge relationships and make vital demonstrations of power and unity.

The moment of speechmaking is an important element of ceremonial, but princes like to keep it short – unless they are speaking! But the speech writers like to write elaborately and at length. The important thing is that the speeches should be read by other oratores, weighed, appreciated, competence applauded. Speeches are not just for the benefit for the great and good. The honour of making them is an important achievement and the skill with which the the task is done marks a man’s ability out to the ecclesiastical and diplomatic community, attracting notice, patronage, and promotion. For people like Bartolini and Cuspinian, speeches are, in effect, applications for jobs in the Civil Service, processed possibly by the kings and princes themselves, but more usually by their administrators. Clearly the Rector of Ingolstadt is not going anywhere very fast. But Bartolini hopes his final flourish has caught the eye of the King of Poland.

Augustus and Autism 3: Octavian -brilliance behind the mask

Post 2 laid down a lot of claims about the career of the young Augustus. In the next few posts I am going to use it as the base for raising autistic issues. In this post, I am going to focus on a very well known trait of High Functioning Autism: I am going to state that people considered autistic, or who consider themselves autistic, typically experience some sort of challenge in communicating with others – and indeed, that other people, neurotypical or autistic, may have trouble ‘reading’ them. All presentations of all people are unique. But where high intelligence is not matched by easy communication, where there are challenges in ‘reading’ others, following social cues, presenting an accessible face, you and I, my sympathetic reader, start thinking about High Functioning Autism. A major and contested issue here is the idea that autistic people have impaired or untypical Theory of Mind, essentially, that they have problems with empathy, imaginative grasp of the viewpoint of others and with using common social cues, like expression. We will look at this in Post 4.

For this post, I want to stick with some basic traits associated with High Functioning Autism: social awkwardness, struggles in handling emotional and social demands, communication challenges which can result in others forming unreliable impressions of character and ability. Leaving empathy on one side, I want to bring in alexithymia and slow processing, often part of an autistic profile.

Alexithymic people have difficulty reading and communicating their own emotions. An alexithymic person may process emotional impulses as intense feelings of well or ill being. They may even manifest things like sadness or fear as physical illness: the need to stay in bed, the stomach ache may be real, but the alexithymic person won’t make the link with, say, experiencing social media bullying or being anxious about exams. Alexithymia can be accompanied by ‘flat affect’ – a lack of readable emotional signalling – and this can cause a double empathy gap, where the alexithymic person can appear not to empathise, but possibly not to emote at all, making them inscrutable, outwardly cold, and giving others who want to understand them very little to go on.

Then, just before we go back to Octavian, there is slow-processing. This is not a feature shared by all autistic people, nor is it exclusive to autism, but it is often in the mix. Slow-processing people are not ‘slow’ – if ‘slow; is a polite word for ‘stupid’. People who have slow processing may have very high intelligence, but be slow to respond to stimuli – they just take more time to process new data, and to formulate responses to it. If, in a social situation, you ask me to multiply three three digit numbers in my head, I will laugh, and say I can’t do it, and then try a bit out loud, and generally socialise the task, while probably not completing it. If you ask an autistic mathematician, they may say nothing, look at you blankly, and after a silence which a neurotypical person finds uncomfortable, give the correct answer. That is slow processing. There is no chatter to cover the silence, because how can you chatter when you are processing?

So is any of this to do with the young Augustus any more? There is so little reliable data that you can’t diagnose the young Augustus. But we can ask whether there is room in his story for some of these features, and I think this is a worthwhile question, because, like it or not, he is going to go onto be such an enduring historical figure, that it is just impossible for nerds like us not to wonder what he was like.

I see the slow-processing and flat affect straight away. How? Well in the mismatch between how he seems and what he does. High functioning autistic people are often very striking characters within their own family and friendship group, where they may display great talents of one sort or another. To outsiders they appear quiet, slow, unobjectionable, uninspiring- in fact they don’t attract that much notice. Octavian did nothing interesting as a child, except live with Julius Caesar’s sister. His only public appearance was giving a family funeral oration (hers), as normal a rite of passage for Roman boys as a Bar Mitzvah. Caesar missed out much of Octavian’s uneventful childhood, being in Gaul throughout the 50s: some boys were actively mentored for power by their famous fathers, but that just can’t have been true for Octavian. Yet, suddenly, when he is 16, he is being conspicuously groomed for succession by Caesar.

At the age of four he lost his father. In his twelfth year he delivered a funeral oration to the assembled people in honour of his grandmother Julia. Four years later, after assuming the gown of manhood, he received military prizes at Caesar’s African triumph, although he had taken no part in the war on account of his youth. When his uncle presently went to Spain to engage the sons of Pompey, although Augustus had hardly yet recovered his strength after a severe illness, he followed over roads beset by the enemy with only a very few companions, and that too after suffering shipwreck, and thereby greatly endeared himself to Caesar, who soon formed a high opinion of his character over and above the energy with which he had made the journey.

Suetonius Life of Augustus

The trip in Spain seems to be in 46 BC. That is Caesar had already given Octavian the Pontificate (47 BC) and Triumphal honours (46 BC). Octavian also led ceremonies in the dedication of Caesar’s new temple to Venus Genetrix. We can take it that Caesar had some contact with Octavian while he was in Rome. In Spain, Caesar made him a constant companion and rode with him in his carriage, according to Velleius Paterculus (who wrongly thinks he was as already old as 18). The honours, the attention, the place on the great Parthian campaign, prevented by the assassination. You would think that anyone who had ridden in Caesar’s carriage would be rather an interesting conversationalist. And yet the direct evidence of the Cicero letters we looked at in Post 2 is that there was nothing very impressive about Octavian – he seemed to have talent, but his stepfather disagreed. That’s it. Of course, in the Philippics Cicero praised Octavian to the skies – but that was the usual adulatory yadda yadda compulsory when you were promoting anyone, and we know that Cicero had decided to promote Octavian largely because he had Caesar’s name and could possibly be used to lure Caesarians away from Antony.

While Cicero credited Octavian with conventional virtues for rhetorical effect, Octavian made himself more and more indispensable by practical means – raising troops. If we can credit that to him and not some shadowy fixer, he was a very remarkable young man. But he was not immediately impressive even to a skilled judge of men like Cicero. In terms of respectable historiography this doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, but to me it is a Gotcha! moment. He has to have had amazing ability, although there is nothing to see in public. However, some sort of family awareness must have filtered to Caesar, who must have felt that Octavian wouldn’t embarrass him as a pontifex. Besides, you don’t call a prospective adoptee all the way to Spain in time of war on spec. Caesar was not disappointed. Octavian was able to impress by his grit in the practical task of making the journey, a practical achievement not affected by challenges with high level social communication And Caesar gave the young man lots of focussed time, one to one, in private. That makes complete sense. Then Caesar commits – the adoption. Pontificate, the Triumphal Honours, Spanish wars, the Parthian Expedition; he isn’t just making a private adoption for sentimental reasons, he is setting up a fast track to power.

Cicero, on the other hand, had no expectations when Octavian turned up. The adoption wasn’t known to the public until Caesar died, and in any case Octavian was abroad. On a first meeting Cicero thinks Octavian is polite, later he thinks he might have some talent, by the Autumn, he is trying to explain to him that he really can’t get him made a Senator and Commander until January.

Am I just making all this up. Well, no, there is support in Suetonius Life of Augustus 79

His expression, whether in conversation or when he was silent, was so calm and mild, that one of the leading men of the Gallic provinces admitted to his countrymen that it had softened his heart, and kept him from carrying out his design of pushing the emperor over a cliff, when he had been allowed to approach him under the pretence of a conference, as he was crossing the Alps.

Later, he talks of Augustus’ preference for simple words, and, in chapter 34 ,the care he took to prepare his speeches.

In fact he never afterwards spoke in the senate, or to the people or the soldiers, except in a studied and written address, although he did not lack the gift of speaking offhand without preparation. 2 Moreover, to avoid the danger of forgetting what he was to say, or wasting time in committing it to memory, he adopted the practice of reading everything from a manuscript. Even his conversations with individuals and the more important of those with his own wife Livia, he always wrote out and read from a note-book, for fear of saying too much or too little if he spoke offhand.

He wrote down what he wanted to say, and read it out, even to his wife!

High Functioning Autism, Augustus, here you come!

Augustus and Autism 2: an excellent boy

This post is mainly about the meteoric rise of the young man who became the Emperor Augustus. I’m going to use details from original sources wherever I can – but some are more reliable than others. We really do need all this historical detail, because otherwise we are only comparing a cartoon Augustus with an autistic stereotype. It is only when we think about things he actually did, or probably actually did, and how he did them, that we can start to think about his mindset.

By all standards, Augustus had an extraordinary youth. He was born in 63 BC, the year of Cicero’s consulship and an attempted coup at Rome led by the disaffected noble, Lucius Sergius Catilina. For whole of the 1st century BC, the Roman state combined expansion abroad with internal political collapse. There had been outright Civil War in the 80s, ending in the temporary installation of a sole ruler, Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The Civil War that erupted in 49 between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, and which ended with Caesar acting effectively as sole ruler was only re-treading an earlier course. The fact was, that Republican government at Rome was unfit for purpose. the Roman constitution originated in Rome’s days as a tiny city state. The aristocrats who made up the Senate were now tearing the state apart as they fought over the immense personal rewards and opportunities which came from wielding power in a mighty empire. Some fought to retain the old republican constitution, with government by an elected Senate; this system had democratic elements, but had essentially failed. The only practical alternative which presented itself was limited autocracy, and that is the route which Rome, under Augustus, was to take.

Our best source for the early years of Augustus is his contemporary Cicero; Cicero’s letters, although he varies his views to suit his correspondents, and the set of speeches called the Philippics in which Cicero backed the future Augustus as an antidote to Mark Antony’s plans to make himself ruler of Rome. However, Cicero’s protege was making an astonishing amount of the running, as we shall see.

The future Augustus was born into a noble family of the Equestrian Order. He was not, of course, named Augustus, which was a title granted by the Senate in 27 BC. He was Gaius Octavius Thurinius. His direct ancestors, while distinguished, had never aspired to the Senate, not least because the family seat was at Velletri, about 40 km south of Rome. It is possible that the young Octavius’ father may have had higher ambitions for his son but he died in 59 BC, leaving his children in the care of their grandmother in the family home town. There was nothing to suggest that this orphaned boy was going to be anything more than a local dignitary, like his fathers before him.

Gaius Octavius’ journey towards power began with being noticed, as a teenager, by an important relative. The grandmother in Velletri happened to be the sister of Julius Caesar. Caesar had launched himself on a spectacular career, as a soldier and Senator, and held the consulship in 59. Crucially, he lacked an heir. Although he had lived as consort to Cleopatra of Egypt and had a son by her, those relationships remained outside his public life at Rome. He had no living children born into a Roman citizen marriage, and his (third/possibly fourth) wife seemed unlikely to produce any. Divorce was easy for men at Rome, and desire for legitimate children was a perfectly good reason to replace a wife. But adoption was a very popular solution to the absence of an heir. Romans adopted adults, not children. The adoptee took the name of the new family, and, was believed to receive the in-dwelling spirit of the family, the genius, in a way which completely compensated for the lack of biological connection, though, in fact, adoptees were often relatives of some sort. The advantage of an adoption was the secure acquisition of a known quantity – a young man who had already survived childhood, and had the qualities desired in an heir. For some reason, Julius Caesar decided that Octavius had these qualities.

We know this because as soon as Caesar achieved ascendancy at Rome, he began to promote Octavian, who was elected to the College of Pontiffs in 47 BC at the age of only 15, and then given the position of Prefect of the City and a role in the dedication of Caesar’s new Temple of Venus. In 46 he spent time with Caesar in military campaigns in Spain, not fighting, but travelling in Caesar’s carriage and engaging in long conversations with him; this story comes from Velleius Paterculus 2. 59, a fairly good source. After Caesar’s assassination in 44, it became apparent that he had been grooming his chosen heir: he had adopted him in his will. Of course, Caesar didn’t know he was going to die so soon, but equally, he saw something very special in Octavius. Augustus’ detractors alleged that the liaison was sexual, but as even Suetonius thought this was a calculated slander, I am not going to pursue that line. What happened next makes it abundantly clear that Octavius was just very special.

At the time of Caesar’s murder, Octavius was studying abroad, and aged only 18. The name of Caesar was a dangerous inheritance – Octavius’ stepfather wanted him to repudiate the adoption and tried to keep him out of politics. But Octavius turned up in Italy, using his new name, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. In fact Octavianus was not a part of his name he wanted to use – we scholars call him Octavian[us] largely because we cannot face having two Julius Caesars. So how does a teenager move into the corridors of power?

Octavian did a lot to determine his own destiny. First, he came home from Greece and accepted the adoption. This was a highly dangerous thing to do. Rome was in a state of paralysis. Although Julius Caesar had been assassinated, and his ally and friend, Mark Antony remained consul, the highest office of state. Caesar was officially mourned, and honoured and Antony pushed through various laws which he said Caesar had drafted. And yet, many Senators supported the assassins, who were not prosecuted or removed from office. They were even allowed to take up their new commands of imperial armies. The ordinary people of the city had loved Caesar, but the ruling classes were divided and for the time being a strange pause prevailed. In reality, the next move was Civil War, and no one yet had a large enough army close enough to Rome to break the deadlock.

Cicero was most responsible for smoothing his path. He had grasped early on that Octavian and Antony could divide Caesar’s supporters between them. He praised him in speeches to the Senate, but initially saw him as a useful pawn, a figurehead, who would support the Senate in its new policy of ridding itself of Mark Antony. Through his letters we can see his private attitude to Octavian develop.

First, Octavian sought out Cicero – as soon as he arrived in Italy in mid April, we have a letter from Cicero saying Octavian is with him.

Octavius is here with me, very respectful, very friendly. His people are calling him ‘Caesar’ but [his stepfather] Philippus doesn’t, and so I don’t either. But I don’t think he can be regarded as a good republican. (Cicero Letters to Atticus 14. 12)

At this point Cicero was not accepting the adoption - that’s what he means about not calling him ‘Caesar’. He uses Octavius, the birth name because the name Octavianus was part of the adoptive name: the extra syllable indicated that the holder had been adopted from the named family. The phrase Cicero uses for ‘good republican’ is bonum civem: in the context it is clear he is expecting that once Octavian reaches Rome, he will get drawn by Antony and the supporters of Caesar into seeking vengeance for Caesar and obstructing the return to traditional Senatorial government.

By June, Cicero was changing his tune.

As far as I can see, Octavius has some ability and spirit, and is likely to be as sympathetic to our heroes as I could wish, but one has to wonder how far to trust someone of his age, his heritage, his upbringing. His stepfather’s opinion – I saw him at Astura – is ‘Not at all.’ Still, he needs to be looked after, if only to keep him away from Antony. (Cicero Letters to Atticus 15. 12)

Already Octavius is sympathetic to Cicero’s heroes – the assassins of Caesar! But has he exceptional talents? His father thinks not, but Cicero thinks he has some – in Latin, satis, ‘enough’. The situation developed during the summer.

Octavian had missed Caesar’s funeral, but in July 44 BC he held Julius Caesar’s funeral games. These games were a traditional part of celebrating a dead aristocrat, but in these circumstances were a powerful way to bolster the loyalty of the ordinary people of the city of Rome on Caesar and his heir. Mark Antony could have expected to reap the benefit of the good publicity, but Octavian created a separate focus. Would he make an alliance with Mark Antony, his father’s friend and self-proclaimed avenger, a man with actual power and a proven military record? Or would he do something else?

In September, Cicero re-entered politics at Rome with a series of speeches damning Antony and praising Octavian – the Philippics. Octavian kept writing to Cicero. Things were moving fast.

Just having Caesar’s name made Octavian a player in the competition for the loyalty of the legions. Officially, of course, the legions were loyal to the Senate and people of Rome. Unofficially, they had an unhealthy relationship with individual commanders, and Julius Caesar’s charisma survived him. Cicero hoped to use Octavian as a political pawn at least to neutralise mark Antony’s claim to Caesar’s name. But Octavian was ahead of him.

On the evening of the 1st [November 44] I got a letter from Octavian. He is entering upon a serious undertaking. He has won over to his views all the veterans at Casilinum and Calatia. And no wonder: he gives a bounty of 500 denarii apiece. Clearly, his view is a war with Antony under his leadership. So I perceive that before many days are over we shall be in arms. But whom are we to follow? (Cicero Letters to Atticus16. 8, trans. Shuckburgh)

Soon Octavian writes twice in one day. He is raising troops and he wants Cicero to get the Senate to make this an official levy. He has also formed an alliance with Decimus Brutus – one of Caesar’s assassins commanding an army in Northern Italy.

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
PUTEOLI, NOVEMBER
Two letters on the same day from Octavian! His present view is that I should come to Rome at once: and that he wishes to act through the Senate. I told him that a meeting of the senate was impossible before the 1st of January: and I believe it is really so. But he adds also: “And by your advice.” In short, he insists: while I “suspend judgment.” I don’t trust his youth. I am in the dark as to his disposition. I am not willing to do anything without your friend Pansa. I am afraid of Antony succeeding, and I don’t like going far from the sea: and at the same time I fear some great coup without my being there. Varro, for his part, doesn’t like the youth’s plan. I don’t agree with him. He has forces on which he can depend. He can count on Decimus Brutus, and is making no secret of his intentions. He is organizing his men in companies at Capua; he is paying them their bounty-money. War seems to be ever coming nearer and nearer. Do answer this letter. I am surprised that my letter-carrier left Rome on the 1st without anything from you. (Cicero Letters to Atticus16. 9, trans. Shuckburgh)

The impression is that Octavian is hustling the elder statesman. But equally Cicero is canvassing supporters – Varro is out but Brutus is in. Cicero stuck with Octavian and was rewarded. Before the year was out, Octavian had not only raised his father’s veterans (above) but two of Antony’s legions which landed in Southern Italy and then defected to him . And Cicero hoped he would use them against Antony, because the Senate were preparing for a coup by Antony and Civil War. Caesar’s son against Caesar’s friend – why not? Or why?

From Cicero’s letters we can develop rather a nice picture of the talented teenager gradually winning over the crusty elder statesman. That just shows what lack of data can do to history. While Cicero mulled over the situation – and he never confided everything to letters – Octavian was not idle. Two of out historians, Plutarch and Velleius Paterculus, claim that after his early meetings with Cicero, Octavian had approached Antony at Rome. Plutarch goes into details.

16 1 At this state of affairs the young Caesar came to Rome, a son of the dead Caesar’s niece, as has been said,21 who had been left heir to his property. He had been staying at Apollonia when Caesar was assassinated. The young man greeted Antony as his father’s friend, and reminded him of the moneys deposited with him. For he was under obligation to give every Roman seventy-five drachmas, according to the terms of Caesar’s will. 2 But Antony, at first despising him as a mere stripling, told him he was out of his sense, and that in his utter lack of good judgment and of friends he was taking up a crushing burden in the succession of Caesar. And when the young man refused to listen to this, and demanded the moneys, Antony kept saying and doing many things to insult him. For instance, he opposed him in his canvass for a tribuneship, and when he attempted to dedicate a golden chair in honour of his father by adoption, according to a decree of the senate, Antony threatened to hale him off to prison unless he stopped trying to win popular favour. 3 When, however, the young man made common cause with Cicero and all the other haters of Antony, and with their aid won the support of the Senate, while he himself got the goodwill of the people and assembled the soldiers of Caesar from their colonies, then Antony was struck with fear and came to a conference with him on the Capitol, and they were reconciled.

Plutarch Life of Antony

In other words, Antony and Octavian could have been allies, but Antony refused to give up Caesar’s gold, and tried to undermine the adoption, and Octavian’s use of Caesar’s name. Velleius Paterculus (2. 60) claims that Antony completely misjudged Octavian by allowing him a meeting of only a few minutes, and later, presumably on realising his mistake, made false allegations that Octavian was trying to assassinate him. Plutarch is always useless on timelines, but if Velleius Paterculus is right about Antony’s contempt beginning as soon as Octavian got to Rome, that puts it in early May 44 BC. So Cicero’s hopeful letter about Octavian’s sympathy to Caesar’s assassins came after Antony had turned Octavian down. The reconciliation with Antony at the Capitol must come before Antony’s legions defect to Octavian, but after the raising of the veterans, if we follow Plutarch. That would make it November, which seems all wrong: Cicero and Octavian were allied by then and Cicero had been blasting Antony in the Philippics. We could try the following timeline. Octavian arrives in Italy, and makes a tentative visit to Cicero, Antony’s enemy. Then he gets brushed off by Antony and resorts to cultivating Cicero. As a result, Antony has to appease him, and Octavian is able to conduct the Funeral Games in July as Caesar’s son. This doesn’t stop Octavian taking over Antony’s legions when they arrive in Southern Italy.

There is so much we don’t know. What we do know now suggests that Octavian played both sides. Hang onto this because it is going to be important. Octavian is not, in politics, loyal.

Suetonius puts it like this;

But when his designs were opposed by Marcus Antonius, who was then consul, and on whose help he had especially counted, and Antony would not allow him even common and ordinary justice without the promise of a heavy bribe, he went over to the aristocrats, who he knew detested Antony, especially because he was besieging Decimus Brutus at Mutina, and trying to drive him by force of arms from the province given him by Caesar and ratified by the senate. 3 Accordingly at the advice of certain men he hired assassins to kill Antony, and when the plot was discovered, fearing retaliation he mustered veterans, by the use of all the money he could command, both for his own protection and that of the State.

Suetonius Life of Augustus 10

Whether or not he had attempted to assassinate Antony, at the end of 44 BC Octavian, still a teenager, had two loyal legions – about 10-12,000 men – plus an unspecified number of veterans, and had taken the side of the Senate against Antony. These legions were especially valuable to the Senate, because they were in Italy, and therefore close to Rome – something which could be comforting or alarming depending on whose orders they were taking. Antony meanwhile had gone to join his loyal legions. The Civil War sides were forming.

Octavian and the Senate now had the same problem – how to secure control of the two legions which had defected to Octavian. The Senators had the power to appoint an official commander, but not the loyalty of the soldiers. Octavian had the loyalty of the soldiers, but he was a teenager with no military qualifications, and too young to enter the Senate, when only a senior Senator, of the rank of Praetor or above could command an army. Cicero had the answer. On January 1st, the new consuls for 43 BC entered office. Cicero used his political skills to get the Senate to vote through some extraordinary measures: Octavian was appointed to the Senate given ‘praetorian rank’: in other words, without ever being elected and at the age of 19, he got the same rank as a successful Senator in mid career. Now he could command his legions, and repay the Senate by taking instructions from them. The instructions came immediately. Antony was declared a public enemy and Octavian and his legions joined the consuls on an expedition into North Italy to defeat his forces and destroy him.

The events which follow swiftly after are some of the most startling in all of history. On April 21st at Modena (Mutina), the Senatorial forces defeated Antony. But both consuls died, and Octavian refused to cooperate with Decimus Brutus, as the last senior commander standing. Decimus Brutus, the man Cicero had said Octavian could count on, had been an assassin of Caesar. Now Octavian remembered. ’You killed my father!’ Decimus Brutus had to flee, and to secure their legions, the Senate voted Octavian a battlefield promotion to consul and command of all the Senatorial armies in Northern Italy. He was still only 19. This was a staggering achievement, but it is nothing to what comes next.

Octavian now did a deal with Antony based entirely on real power – the fact that between them they controlled enough armies to dominate Italy and intimidate the Senate. The result was the so-called Second Triumvirate: three commanders, Mark Antony, Octavian and Lepidus were now the most important men in Rome. Some Senators fled to join forces opposed to Antony; the Senators who remained made the powers of the Triumvirate official.

Proscriptions followed: that is, sanctioned murder of Antony’s enemies. Cicero was butchered in December. The volte face had been so sudden that Caesar’s assassins were still in official command of Senatorial armies. They were now declared traitors and in October 42 BC defeated at Philippi with the blessing of what was left of the Senate.

There is a good short article here on Cicero’s developing relationship with Octavian. https://ia601803.us.archive.org/16/items/Omnibus68/03TempestCiceroOctavian.pdf

So obviously Augustus was autistic. Isn’t this where we came in? Obviously all autistic people become consul at the age of 19 and massacre hordes of people on their way to supreme power. I said in Post 1 that there was going to be no superficial box ticking here. But I think we can agree that Augustus was not a typical teenager. I’m going to flag up some signposts and some pitfalls.

The first feature which stands out for me, is Octavian’s extraordinary ability at such an early age to ride the tiger. He may have had a certain amount of preparation for his public role from Caesar and even known about the adoption, but nothing could have prepared him for the assassination and the chaos which followed. As lack of resilience to change is often taken to be a key indicator of autism, it could look as if we should rule out autism at the starting gate, but that presupposes that Octavian himself found the situation chaotic. If he didn’t, perhaps that was because he was thinking differently.

Everything Octavian does has an internal logic. His role model adopts him. He claims the adoption and uses the default importance this gives him in Roman politics. He tests out Cicero and Antony. Antony rejects him so he rejects Antony. He raises veterans, and uses them as leverage. Two legions declare loyalty to him. He negotiates official command of them, and suddenly ranks alongside the consuls. Ten minutes later the other consuls are dead, he is made consul on the field of battle and ditches his Senatorial supporters to do a power-sealing deal with Mark Antony.

Poets who wrote to please Augustus, later made much of his divine destiny. This so obviously fills a propagandist role, that we almost automatically think of it as only a cynical propagandist ploy. But the facts helped the story. The flow of power to the young Augustus does appear nothing short of miraculous. Scholars can see the workings: deal-making and faction-forming, Cicero’s complicated plans, the tussle between Caesarians and non-Caesarians in the Senate, the terror of Antony and his armies, the need to placate the pro-Caesarian multitude in the city. But through it all, Octavian rises and rises – and fast. A week is a very long time in the rise of Octavian.

All of the people who channelled power to Octavian had their own complicated interpersonal relationships, trusted alliances, friendships, old enmities, long-held political loyalties, ideals and aspirations which kept them thinking inside the box – in short, they had the normal baggage of neurotypical people dealing with social situations. Suppose Octavian didn’t have this. Suppose he wasn’t constrained by things like trust and distrust, loyalty, personal and partisan obligations; suppose he never wondered about what other people were thinking, planning; suppose he didn’t care. That would certainly leave him free to keep an intense focus on his own position and the bare realities of what he could and could not control. He was not restrained by factional loyalty, seems to have felt very little for those who had constituted themselves his friends. Suppose Octavian only dealt in the practical realities of power. And if any of this were true would he begin to have an autistic profile?

Some of the answer depends on what you think about an autistic profile – or a high-functioning autistic profile, if that is the term for it this week. You could say that Octavian travelled light simply because he was so young and had never been in politics. His youth and inexperience also seemed to blindside Senators into feeling the powers heaped on him somehow remained under their control, and that the unknown boy could be a safe pawn in the project of weaponizing Caesar’s name against the known and hated Antony. If this were the whole story, Octavian would be more or less Cicero’s folly – but we can see from the letters that that isn’t quite what happened. Cicero wavered: it was Octavian’s success at presenting himself as a foil to Antony which convinced him – and, from November, the Senate’s simple need for the legions which Octavian could offer.

Another objection is that Octavian himself was not running his own campaign. As late as April 43, when Octavian was a Senator with praetorian rank and two legions, Cicero called Octavian an ‘excellent boy’ (puer egregius Cicero Letters to his Friends 12. 25, April 43). He had, said Cicero, been a praesidium, a ‘safeguard’, against Antony, and for Cicero and the Republic, by which he meant the Senatorial system of government. Cicero’s tone doesn’t suggest that there will be much but gratitude in store for the helpful young man, let’s face it, boy, whose name at least had ensured the destruction of Antony, and Cicero, as he wrote, was expecting news of Antony’s defeat and death at any time.

But if not Octavian, who was running Octavian? When he first arrives in Italy, Cicero says there are people with him who are using his new name. Who? His personal entourage, including enslaved and freed people with no choice, or citizens, sponsors, agents? There is an interesting article in Greece and Rome which claims his mentor was his stepfather, Philippus. The argument goes that, whatever the appearances, he brokered all the early phases before dying sometime in 43 BC, explaining why this political genius is never heard of again. You can think this thesis over for yourself: although it is true that Philippus probably facilitated the introduction to his neighbour Cicero. The fact is, though, that Octavian’s career just powers on through, with no sign of a missing mentor. He has to let Cicero go in Antony’s proscriptions. Still, nothing.

The strangest example of Octavian’s complete indifference to expectations, when he can have had very little advice, comes at the Battle of Mutina (Modena) in April 43. Decimus Brutus was his Senatorial colleague and according to Cicero, a believer in Octavian. Octavian could not possibly have planned for the death of the two consuls, he could not have known that the ‘You killed my father!’ moment would present itself. Antony was supposed to die – that was the Senatorial plan, and the two consuls were supposed to implement it. Cicero’s lavish favour to Octavian, the flowery praise in speeches, the support he had mustered for him in the Senate, the men who led him into his first battle – it was all against Antony. And then it was over. Antony and Octavian were coming back to Rome together, and Antony was collecting heads. It is insane. And yet, it was completely the right call for Octavian. Together with Antony the excellent boy could crystallise his gains; otherwise it was the stupid idea of handing over his father’s loyal legions to his father’s murderer (and good luck with that, Cicero!) and a return to Rome as a useful idiot – or a ‘good citizen’.

So is my point that autism is a form of psychopathy? No, that isn’t the point. Octavian did not betray his ideals, his friends, his allies. Being his adoptive father’s son, taking the name, committed him to the conflict. The most likely outcome was that he would die young. He was if anything, a Caesarian, and he certainly achieved vengeance for his father: it was be one of his favourite claims about himself in later life. The Republic was over – maybe Caesar had told him that, before Decimus Brutus killed him. Cicero’s dream of a restored traditional elite wasn’t anything to do with Octavian, and maybe not very connected with reality. The new consuls, the strong anti-Caesarian faction in the Senate (not the whole Senate), their factional histories, their determination to have a Civil War with Antony, that wasn’t anything to do with Octavian either. All this was a condition of life he found in Rome, his new dysfunctional ecosystem. Antony betrayed Caesar when he rejected Caesar’s heir: Octavian’s sponsors were using him to pursue their own goals.

Octavian’s choices face warlords all over the world, today as much as ever. When we judge them in terms of our own reference points, we have to be aware that we are just reasserting our own social aspirations against their reality; we are not identifying actual better choices available in their world. Was what Octavian did morally wrong? Was it sociopathic? The Roman state was in collapse, it was in a state of extreme violence – did he owe loyalty to any of the disastrous factions, whatever they happened to claim to be? And did he have personal obligations to these violent people he hardly knew?

In the Roman system, in any system, favour creates social obligation, or at least neurotypical people tend to assume that. But should it? ’Grooming’ is only a method for creating a sense of social obligation through favours. The groomer targets a vulnerable person with gifts and attention – and then they manipulate neurotypical susceptibilities to exact a return which reasonable people think is disproportionate, exploitative, and even criminal. That is an extreme example, but the concept shows that we distinguish self-serving favours from love and have opinions about the kinds of returns that selfish givers can expect. Political favours – it is a real topic as the New Year Honours come out in the UK. How far should they go? If I give a Prime Minister a boost, do I deserve to make law in the House of Lords for ever? Isn’t ‘pork barrel politics’ a bad thing? Paid lobbyists? Do we love them?

Cicero got his shot at what he paid for: if Antony had died in the Battle of Mutina and the consuls had lived, then who knows? But Antony lived and the consuls died, and Octavian got to make a choice, apparently without false sentiment, without consulting his sense of social shame, maybe without guilt. He chose power. In the circumstances, I don’t think that is clearly a psychopathic or sociopathic choice. Power is worth having, it was up for claiming and Caesar may even have told him what he needed to do with it. Augustus the Emperor had his autobiography displayed as an inscription in cities all over the Roman Empire; it is full of data – gifts, triumphs, buildings, achievements that can literally be counted. We get the impression that he expected to be judged by results.

What is unusual is Octavian’s extreme clarity, if that is what it was, his imperviousness to the doubt. Many of us, in moments of stress are tormented by conflicting thoughts and half-formed impulses, we waver, as our fluctuating grasp on vaguely held moral principles makes us cast and recast the runes, we look for precedents, and tell conflicting stories to ourselves about the essence of the situation , we are swept with concern for what others will think or feel. These are, I think, very neurotypical obstacles to decision-making. If Octavian seems disloyal, cold and power-hungry he is also without false loyalty and irrational sentiment, and has a completely realistic idea of what is actually in his power. His decision making may feel alien but it is intensely practical.

But what about Cicero? Octavian betrayed his political ‘friends’. He had no long history with any of them. It is hard to believe that he and Decimus Brutus ever bonded over more than the need for legions. Cicero seems different, but then again, scholars tend to form imaginary bonds with dead Romans who talk to us, and Cicero talks to us A LOT. So we all hope that Octavian regretted Cicero – but Cicero signed his own death warrant when he delivered the First Philippic. He knew it too. He pitted his life against Antony’s and lost. He did it on purpose with a lifetime of political experience behind him. It was his choice. The relationship between Cicero and Antony went far back into the past, and they played the end game out ruthlessly between the two of them. Cicero, Antony, Octavian. It is what it is.

Odeporicon idest Itinerarium reuerendissimi in Christo patris & domini. D. Mathei Sancti Angeli cardinalis Gurcensis coadiutoris Saltzburgensis … quaeque in conuentu Maximiliani Caes. Aug. … memoratu digna gesta sunt per Riccardum Bartholinum Perusinum and other stories

When I opened my email today, WordPress told me how successful my blog had been this year – and apparently the highlight was October 29th. This reminded me that I have a blog. If you are reading this, I presume you are lost, though it is nice to have you visit! Hi!

I think I last visited my blog in 2021, in a heroic effort to restart it after Lockdown.

I belong to the sector of the population whose lives got busier in Lockdown. I lost a job I had had for 20 years – no redundancy, no pension. I covered an exam class in a school. I became proficient at working (and running Brownies) on Zoom, and engaged intensely with family members living autistically.

A shout out to all the autistic people who suffered unfashionably in Covid. Children and young people who dropped out of school, who ceased to leave their room, to speak, to eat; children and young people in crisis whose services folded with Covid; children and young people in the UK left waiting for specialist referrals for both special educational needs and mental health diagnoses on a waiting list that grew to a FOUR YEARS wait from referral to assessment: we remember you.

By 2021 I was ready to start my epic series on Augustus and autism. That means, that for a short period in 2021 I was thinking that my life could achieve a new normal Well, I am now back to that point. At the end of 2023, I am again thinking that my life can achieve a new normal, and I am hoping to return to Augustus and autism. In the meantime, I have done some stuff I could blog about, sadly not the translation of Pietro Bongo, which still languishes.

Especially, I was commissioned to translate Odeporicon idest Itinerarium reuerendissimi in Christo patris & domini. D. Mathei Sancti Angeli cardinalis Gurcensis coadiutoris Saltzburgensis … quaeque in conuentu Maximiliani Caes. Aug. … memoratu digna gesta sunt per Riccardum Bartholinum Perusinum and also Congressus Ac Celeberrimi Conventus Caesaris Max. Et Trium Regum Hungariae, Boemiae, Et Poloniae: In Vienna Panoniæ, Mense Iulio, Anno 1515 Facti, Brevis Ac Verissima Descriptio, by a wonderful academic at the Open University. (PS if any other wonderful academics would like me to translate Renaissance Latin, I will be very happy to celebrate you in my newly reopened blog – so long as the new normal is attained.)

Back to the books with the very long titles: as is obvious (!) these are both eye witness accounts of the famous double wedding of 1515, when the son and daughter of the King of Hungary married into the Hapsburg dynasty, creating the foundations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As well as being very historically important, these accounts contain some wonderful anecdotes and descriptions, and I hope I will be able to share excerpts from them in blog posts.

While I have been away from the blog, I have also been more and more interested in historical costume, following the Tudor Tailor https://www.tudortailor.com/ and https://bernadettebanner.co.uk/ and I have some favourite 1515 fashion moments. I have also been running a reading group based on Gerald of Wales’ Journey through Wales and I might share some of him too. It is the sort of thing that washes over you if you just read through it, but has some gems if you look for them

If you are still reading and did not come here by accident, you are probably one of my students at Dreaming Spires Home Education (Principal, the renowned Dr Kat Patrick) which provides courses for home-educated young people. So hello, student! Did you spot me giving the Boss a big shout out there? Be sure to tell her! If you are not one of my students, I’m glad to meet you, and hope we will meet again, as long as your normal and my normal hold out!

Augustus and Autism 1: Introduction.

This is a post series dedicated to my autistic students.

When I graduated from Cambridge I hoped that I was going to become a specialist in some one topic, an academic. Instead, I have spent my life amateurishly acquiring small amounts of knowledge about lots of things; but sometimes I manage to collect a medium amount of knowledge about widely different but related things. So my only qualification for writing this series of posts is having acquired a medium amount of knowledge from a combination of reading and life experience about two different subjects which seem to be crying out to be thought about together – Augustus and Autism.

I have to write about Augustus and Autism as a series of posts, because I want to say something which is complicated enough to be interesting. I am not interested in the question; ‘Can you imagine Augustus’ being a bit like Sheldon off ‘Big Bang Theory’?’, or in other words, ‘Can we fit a meaningless stereotype of Augustus together with a meaningless sterotype of autism?’ It is only interesting to think about Augustus and Autism together, if we are actually a bit interested in Augustus and Autism already. So in this introductory post, I need to look at prevailing ideas about Augustus and Autism separately.

Augustus

It is easy to know not-very-much about Augustus, Rome’s first emperor. Wikipedia is a good place to start. After that it gets more difficult. There is no shortage of biographies, and no shortage of ancient literature and art created for or about Augustus. He even wrote his own autobiography which is strong on data, and political misdirection, but weak on personal detail – it was intended for monumental public display, which partly explains it. What is difficult, is to penetrate through what is said about Augustus to get any idea of what he was like as a person. The literature written in the ancient world for him was adulatory, part of a slick propaganda campaign with which he bolstered his claims to power. Most of what the relatively reliable historian Tacitus wrote about him is missing, and we are left with Suetonius and later writers. Suetonius was born after imperial rule had become established, more than 50 years after Augustus’ death and he is completely incapable of resisting a good story. All scholars roll their eyes when he is mentioned.

Fortunately there are many people trained to deal with this sort of difficulty. There are many biographies of Augustus written by Classical scholars, but these too disagree. Augustus rose as a teenage warlord. It is hard for any modern reader to regard someone so steeped in blood as a normal human being, but steeping in blood was a fairly normal qualification for high office at Rome. So before we even look at details of Augustus’ personal behaviour, his profile is alienating, particularly in these post-imperial times. Where Victorians regarded him as an archetype of the benign imperialist, bringing peace through conquest to a disordered world, the Second World War saw him crash into disfavour as a proto-fascist. The enthusiasm of Mussolini and other Fascists for Augustus was only a superficial reminder of the really disturbing features of Augustus’ career, which became central to the narratives of historians like Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, who brought us Augustus the ruthless tyrant.

Mussolini shows off the reconstructed *Ara Pacis* of Augustus

My own interest in this comes not as a specialist, but as a teacher. Far from having directed focused attention to intricacies of Augustus’ rule, I just can’t get away from him. Years and years of reading and teaching about him at all sorts of levels, reading in Latin thousands and thousands of lines written for him or by him or about him. There’ve been days when his is the face I have woken up to in the morning – the unchanging symmetrical face which goes back to the Meroe head, and is best known from the Prima Porta Augustus. I have shown my students images of Augustan buildings I can only dream of seeing. I have taken an interest in the drains of Cologne. Eventually, as thoughts about Augustus wandered round my brain they bumped into thoughts about autism and resulted in this series.

Autism

It is easy to know not-very-much about autism too. Autism is now a widely accepted umbrella term for a range of personal traits which are related to particular types of mental processing. Some individual autistic people run the world – Elon Musk, for example, identifies as having Asberger Syndrome. Others have severe difficulties with essential social activities, and struggle to access education, employment and the basic essentials of fulfilling living. This is a wide range for any label to cover, and autism has only existed as a diagnosis until the 1940s. As autism becomes widely recognised and diagnosed, people are still asking whether it really exists. Then, is it something new? Are there more autistic people now? Is it something caused by parental behaviour (the thesis of the 1950s) or damage at birth or some sort of pollution – chemicals, mobile phones, vaccines?

All of this assumes that autism is a bad thing, and the word was coined to describe a severe disorder. But while people are likely to be diagnosed with autism because they present with problems, is autism itself actually a disorder? Is it a disability? Autistic people are united by thinking ‘differently’ in some respects – but then who decides what is normal? At the far extreme are activists who claim that autistic people are simply an oppressed community of people victimised for thinking differently. Claiming autism as a positive identity has a real corrective value but like other forms of identity politics, it tends to polarise debate. It is very hard for people who regard autism as a disability and people who regard it as a positive identity to talk to each other. Meanwhile, the friends and family of autistic people find themselves expected to identify either as self-effacing carers or oppressors – sometimes both simultaneously.

I am writing here for my friends in the mixed community of autistic and non autistic people who are bound to each other by ties of love, family and friendship. If anyone is offended by my view of autism, this series isn’t for them. It’s for my friends, and anyone who wants to sit in. I am not personally diagnosed as autistic, although I have a number of autistic traits, which most academic types share – for example the capacity to write for 10 hours non-stop. In current thinking, autism is usually described as a non-linear spectrum: that is, nobody now thinks you can rate autistic people against an imaginary straight line on a scale ranging from being a little bit autistic (1) to a lot autistic (10). I see autism as a sun, with rays radiating out from a circular centre. What follows is my own very unofficial model – you can see I struggled with Paint too.

I don’t really believe that anybody is totally ‘neuro-typical’ so I put us ALL in the centre, scoring 1 for each ray that starts from there. Each ray represents a form of mental processing. The further outwards you move on each ray, the more intensely you show that form of processing and the higher you score. So me, and my 10 hour writing capacity – intense hyperfocus. That’s an extension of ‘normal’ that looks a bit like an autistic trait. I see that as moving me to a higher score on one ray, maybe a 2 or 3. However, I tend only to use this capacity in crisis; it doesn’t give me joy, and it isn’t combined with other traits which would make it dominate my personality in normal circumstances. This is because I am mostly ‘neuro-typical’ in other words I am going to score mostly ones or twos. Autistic people are the high scorers – they score a lot more than 1 on a number of rays. But autistic people don’t all score on the same rays as each other. You could be a high scorer overall, but score less than me on 10 hour writing. Autism may be an advantage or disadvantage to you, depending how you combine your high scores, and what your environment is like. If you score highly on hyperfocus, preference for routine and order, preference for facts and data, memory for detail, low vulnerability to emotional distraction, and having a restricted range of interests which you pursue intensely – why shouldn’t you become a billionaire and build a rocket? But if you score highly on aversion to noise, extreme sensitivity to light and texture, and slow processing of language, then you may not finish primary school.

Why Augustus and Autism?

As I said above, thoughts about Augustus wandered round my brain they bumped into thoughts about autism. I suppose they also bumped into thoughts about other things, like tea, but my thoughts about Augustus and autism coalesced, until I became unable to think of Augustus without the lens of autism. We will never know enough about Augustus to know whether he was autistic or not. On top of that, autism is not a very informative diagnosis in itself. The autistic spectrum includes people who build rockets and people who need 24 hour care. All in all, there is no real point in asking the academic question, ‘Was Augustus autistic?’ That’s why it is nice to have a blog where I can share more informal thoughts about why I think it is interesting to add autism into our view of Augustus.

While my slightly obsessive special interest in Augustus’ autism definitely ups my autistic trait score, there is a wider relevance to all of this. Firstly, it is significant for the debate around autism to understand that there have always been autistic people – or rather people who would now be placed on the autistic spectrum. Secondly, autism diagnoses cluster around people whose autism is causing them problems; if you prefer, you can say an oppressive neuro-typical society is causing their autism problems. Either way, the operative word is ‘problems’. As autism is ‘incurable’, a diagnosis can be a depressing thing – a gateway to a life of problems. Autistic people who experience severe problems with building an independent life are easy to spot; lives lived successfully, even brilliantly, with autism hide in plain sight. ‘Outing’ these lives helps us get a better perspective on autism.

Finally, real lives are mixed. Being autistic isn’t a super-power, no matter what it says on the tee-shirt. Being neuro-typical isn’t a super-power either. Augustus’ life is definitely writ large, not least in very large letters on the Monumentum Ancyraenum. His achievements and his disasters are public property. In talking about him we can balance the roles of autism as both advantage and disadvantage, depending on context. And Augustus has been dead a long time and can’t sue. I am leaving out the aspirational aspect of finding an autistic Emperor; ‘you too can be like the Emperor Augustus!’ This is because, I am not sure, after reading the posts, anyone will actually want to be like the Emperor Augustus. But if you do want to be like the Emperor Augustus, autism might be a bit of an advantage.

Saving Lucretia 5: Livy and Lotto

Livy is our original source for the Lucretia story. Ovid follows him but embellishes with lush detail which tends to emphasise Lucretia’s victimhood. This allows for lots of erotic sensuality and emotional drama which is the sort of thing Ovid likes. It is not the sort of thing Livy likes, but more than this, Livy is writing the story of Rome. Lucretia is a founding mother, commemorated as a female role model and political heroine. In a period of decadence, when the men fail to resist a vicious autocracy, Lucretia’s defence of the values of the home recalls them to their duty. The result is the institution of the finest form of government known to Livy, the Roman Republic.

Livy’s Lucretia sends for her men. When they arrive she is weeping, but full of purpose. She tells her story very briefly. She states that only her body is violated, not her mind and she demands that the men swear vengeance. She dictates the terms; she will kill herself, they will kill him – if they are men. The men then try to persuade her not to commit suicide. She tells them to mind their own business – their job is to deal with Sextus. We do not yet find out, but she is already carrying the dagger she will use – whatever the men say. She has resolved to die to preserve her honour – so that no woman shall live unchastely using Lucretia as an excuse (nec ulla deinde inpudica Lucretiae exemplo vivet).

This is really not what modern readers expect to hear Lucretia say. When I teach this text, I can’t stop students telling me that Lucretia is forced to kill herself by the rules of the patriarchy. Because she has been raped, she must die to save her men shame. Or she is so traumatised by the rape that she kills herself through misery and despair. These are assumptions people bring to the text, maybe because of Ovid and all those naked Lucretias in art galleries. But what Livy says is very different. It is Lucretia who does the enforcing. She chooses to reveal the rape, to do it in Roman fashion, before male witnesses, to assert her intention to die, and to demand an oath of vengeance from the men. Then she defies them and stabs herself unexpectedly. After her suicide, the men will be publicly dishonoured if they don’t exact vengeance. Thus Lucretia causes the fall of the Tarquins and the end of Roman monarchy. She becomes a model for all women and the foundress of the Roman Republic.

So what is happening here? Rape doesn’t exist as a concept for Lucretia. Her exchange with the men indicates that she is thinking in terms of adultery. All participants in the exchange seem to assume that an adulteress is punishable by death. In the early days of Rome the paterfamilias had rights of life and death over his children, and a husband was allowed to kill a wife taken in adultery. It seems to be this sort of life-taking within the family that we are talking about – nothing to do with the actual laws of Classical Rome. Lucretia and the men agree that she had no guilty intent, and therefore should not suffer even. Instead, Sextus, the perpetrator, will be made to suffer. They are formulating principles for dealing with rape which are quite enlightened for the period. Lucretia has satisfied her menfolk that she is not an adulteress; she can now leave it to them to take over and deal with the rapist.

Lucretia is resistant. She rejects the option of return into the private realm which the men offer. What she does next is not to do with distress, despair or coercion, but entirely to do with honour – her female honour. Romans were collective thinkers. For Romans, suicide in the face of dishonour was an act of personal success, not failure, because it preserved unity with the values of the community and the ancestors and left the suicide the same legacy of honour as those who died preserving those values on the field of battle. Having been dragged into public realm, Lucretia resolves to reclaim her honour from any taint of suspicion as a man might do, and earning a glory usually reserved for men. She stabs herself with a male weapon (female suicides often hang themselves with their girdles) and it is the men who raise the lamentation.

Lucretia’s motivation is completely bound up with Roman collectivity. She has lived as the perfect wife not because she is dominated by the patriarchy but because she is a strong soul dedicated to the values of the community. She has no sympathy with women who flout those values. She will not have her name which is also her family name associated with the ‘Lucretia defence.’ Her suicide is not an act of self-obliteration, but of transcendence, which asserts her own identity, not with her body, but with the values of her family and community and the spirits of the ancestors. Lucretia does not just clear her family name, she adorns it and creates an inheritance for her children, an unfailing memory for herself – she fulfils the ideal of Roman life, as much as if she fell on the field of battle. Her suicide shames the men, booting the Roman aristocracy into getting rid of the corrupt and repressive system of kingship, making her, for Livy, a genuine foundress of the Republic. What more could a woman want?

This is Lotto’s Lucretia. The unnamed noblewoman who takes on her example is a commanding self-assured figure. Her rich clothing sets off her beauty, but she refuses to be an erotic object – in fact the would-be viewer is the object of her stern gaze. She is there to instruct, not to titillate. Her right arm creates a straight horizontal line from her elbow, resting near the cradle, to her pointing forefinger, which creates a barrier between her and viewer. The line terminates in her forbidding motto – that no woman may be unchaste and live, using Lucretia as an excuse. Above the motto she holds a scrap of drawing showing a naked helpless Lucretia, but this private shame is literally only sketched in, as it is in Livy. And the sketch is crumpled and rolled away from the viewer. It creates a visual reference to the viewer’s erotic expectations of Lucretia but dismisses them too. It seems quite possible that this Renaissance Lucretia may have a dagger concealed somewhere about her person, and that the odds are not necessarily on Tarquin’s side.

Way to go Lucretia, early feminist! Or not. This is always the paradox with feminism. Are you a feminist because you are a strong empowered woman living by your own rules, or are you a feminist because you sign up to a charter of women’s rights, including things like compassionate treatment for rape victims? I often meet feminist men telling me what, as a woman, I have to think about women’s rights – and this gets me into awful trouble. Me and Lucretia both, because she is an empowered self-determining woman who grasps the prize of honour like a man. But, meanwhile, she derails the cause of women for a the best part of two thousand years. In practice, Romans did not demand that raped women kill themselves, but this remained the gold standard of female behaviour. The Church ban on suicide, when it eventually came, did nothing to remove the stigma, which continued to degrade raped women right up until – oh wait, has that not stopped yet?

EPILOGUE ON RAPE AND HONOUR SUICIDE IN THE ROMAN TRADITION

Livy was writing in the 1st Century BC as Augustus tightened moral legislation to try to restore the ancient virtues of the Roman home. Augustan ideology held that the Roman state had been strongest when it had been supported by the bravery and self-sacrifice of its warriors and the militant chastity of its strong homesteading women. Augustus tried to enforce marriage and childbearing, and increased penalties for female adultery, but he could not maintain traditional morals even in his own family. Nonetheless, interest in these ancient role models was rekindled, which is why our earliest versions of the Lucretia story (Livy and Ovid) date from the era.

Honour suicide continued to be esteemed at Rome as a response to rape to such an extent that it nearly got incorporated into Christian theology. the crucial moment came in the 4th Century BC when Bishop Ambrose of Milan, a man of aristocratic background wrote to his sister, Marcellina, who, with her mother, had formed an early community of dedicated virgins, nuns, in Rome. The Letter to Marcellina is here. In this letter, Ambrose recognises the act of suicide to avoid rape as an act of Christian martyrdom, citing the instance of a fifteen year-old girl, Pelagia, who had encouraged her mother and sisters to drown themselves to avoid rape by marauders. Ambrose recognised Pelagia as a saint.

So why didn’t the Church add honour suicide to its long list of female duties? For that, we have to thank St Augustine of Hippo. He retold the story of Lucretia in his City of God I. 19, but with disapproval. If a woman is raped in all innocence, then to kill her, is to kill an innocent. If she kills herself, she becomes a murderess. Perhaps, says Augustine darkly, Lucretia had secretly enjoyed the rape after all, and knew she did really deserve to die. Augustine’s barn-storming denunciation put an end to honour suicide as an act of female martyrdom. His thinking is not entirely sympathetic today; he suggests, for example, that women should consider whether they have been permitted to be raped as punishment for their excessive pride in their chastity.

Nonetheless, I give you Augustine, feminist theologian.

Bergamo and the Romans: a post dedicated to my Dreaming Spires students.

Posting pictures from Bergamo is really damaging to my cachet with my Dreaming Spires students, who expect me to devote all my love to the Romans and Athenians. There is a case for saying that the oldest parts of Bergamo, and many ancient Italian cities, are a better way of understanding the experience of walking a Roman street than any ancient site, with added ice cream.

Piazza della Cittadella, Bergamo, Photo AES

In this very photo, we are only steps from the best ice cream in the Città Alta, the UPper City, but more importantly we are near the Civic Archaeological Museum of Bergamo, which is where the small but very interesting collection of Roman period remains is beautifully curated. Photography is not encouraged, but I seem to have accidentally clicked my phone a couple of times while checking Whatsapp.

Bergamo was a city before the Roman era. Northern Italy, to the Romans, was not part of Italia, but Gallia – they called it Gallia Cisalpina, Gaul on this side of the Alps. This was a tribal area, and Bergomum was a hill town of the Cenomani. The Piazza in the photograph is on a high point which may have been the original citadel, as the name suggests; in the 14th Century, a new fortress was built on a spur and this became the citadel. The Romans called at least some of the Gauls ‘Celts’ and this has misleadingly become a term for Iron Age people in general. The Cenomani didn’t call themselves Celts. Livy records that the Cenomani had moved into Italy from France in about 400 BC, seizing and occupying Etruscan territory. They probably spoke a dialect of a language we call Celtic, and definitely didn’t speak Latin at that time.

In the 5th Century BC, Rome was still a minor power within Italy. In about 390 BC a Gallic tribe, the Senones, even sacked Rome. The Cenomani, however, were actively pro-Roman, and fought on the Roman side in the major Roman victory over hostile Gallic tribes at the Battle of Telamon in 225 BC. This battle ended the threat from the North, although Cisalpine Gaul was not formally organised into a province until 89 BC. The Cenomani, remained loyal even during Hannibal’s invasion of Italy (218-204 BC). Bergomum was granted full rights a Roman municipium in 45 BC, making citizens of the town full Roman citizens. Shortly afterwards, in 42 BC, Julius Caesar extended Roman citizenship to the whole of Cisalpine Gaul. The Bergamasks were now Romans.

The Cisalpine ‘tribal’ peoples on the edges of Rome’s growing Italian empire were not very different from the people within it. The Romans themselves were tribally ‘Latins’ who developed an empire, first of all over all local cities and then elsewhere. Even before the rise of Rome, the Northern Italians were living alongside the Etruscan empire, with its advanced social organisation, art and technology. The Cisalpine Gauls used writing – hardly any survives – and made fine metalwork. In the long period of cooperation between the Cenomani and Rome, there must have been a lot of cultural absorption and the number of Roman citizens in the territory will have increased both through migration and grants of citizenship to soldiers and the local nobility. By the time Julius Caesar extended Roman citizenship to them, teh Cisalpine Gauls were integrated into Italian identity, and Latin was the language of the educated class.

The Upper City of Bergamo is largely on top of Bergomum. The stones of the Roman period buildings are holding up the houses and Churches visible today. This makes the modern environment very rich, but it does limit the archaeology. If you want to find a nice Roman carpet mosaic, then the best place to look for it it is in a field, which has been grazed on by cows for two millennia. A place which has been developed and redeveloped again and again AND IS STILL BEING LIVED IN is not the obvious place to start wielding a trowel. But having said that, here is a carpet mosaic from Bergamo.

Bergamo mosaic.jpg — Bergamo Roman Mosaic, Photo AES

And here is an altar of Diana with a beautifully clear inscription.

The distinguished man (CV = Clarissimus Vir) who set it up in fulfilment of his vow (VS = Votum Solvit) was consul in 201 AD, when the consulship had become more of an honour than an actual job. Titles like Clarissimus Vir aren’t used on formal inscriptions from the Republic and Early Empire, but in the second century AD this becomes a standardised title for a Senator. The use of formal honorific titles grows in the later Empire and grade inflation even sets in, until a really important official has to be a Vir Gloriosissimus. In early Latin literature gloriosus means boastful, not glorious, which is quite pleasing.

Bull’s head from Roman Theatre Bergamo, Photo AES

This amazing bull’s head was part of a set of ornamental beam ends in the Roman theatre. The strange creature on the side will resolve itself into a dolphin if you concentrate. Dolphins were associated with Delphi and Apollo, God of Poetic Arts and the Romans tend to make dolphin beaks very big. My guess is that this came from people who hadn’t seen dolphins in non-dolphinous places like Bergamo copying popular motifs from drawings, but what do I know? Bulls are associated with festive occasions as sacrificial victims, aka lunch. Roman theatres were not commercial and did not have regular showings. They were used for a variety of civic events, and theatrical performances were staged on holidays with the sponsorship of high-ranking locals who took care to get maximum publicity for their generosity.

And finally, something which ties in with my posts on Germanicus, nephew of the wicked Emperor Tiberius, who was murdered in AD 19. He was an important member of the imperial house, and the founder of the dynasty, the Emperor Augustus, had intended Tiberius to be a caretaker ruler only. After Tiberius, Germanicus would take over, and the dynasty would pass on through his numerous heirs. In reality Tiberius clung onto power until 37 AD, more than a decade after the death of his own son, and nearly two after the death of Germanicus. His successor was Caligula, youngest son of Germanicus, and one of the most notorious emperors; the experience of having his father murdered and mother and older brothers openly persecuted to death by Tiberius may have contributed to his instability. All of this was court politics, recorded in vicious detail by Tacitus. But these fractures in the imperial house were not public property. Bergamo is 400 miles form Rome. Like other cities of the Empire, Bergamo culted the Emperor and the imperial house and monumentalised its members as the embodiment of Roman authority. Up and down the empire, cities commemorated the death of Germanicus with plaques, honouring the wish of the Emperor, who, Germanicus believed, had ordered his horrible death, and who certainly went on to wipe out his family. Here is Bergamo’s effort.

Germanicus 2 — Germanicus monument, Bergamo, Photo AES

Actually, that is a bit grim to finish on. Here is a nice picture of exceptionally yummy nibbles and non-alcoholic beverages in Clusone, being investigated by my research assistants.

Cafe Clusone.jpg — Cafe in Clusone, Photo AES

And here am I, smiling at you. Hey students, don’t forget to sign up. This year there’s The Making of Fifth Century Athens and New Testament Language and Culture. I’m also working on a GCSE Classical Civilisation course for 2020. Hope to see some of you there.

Clusone selfie.jpg — Mrs S selfie – scary or what?

Bye.

The Dance of Death, Clusone

Dance of Death Clusone 1 — Dance of Death, Oratorio dei Disciplini, Clusone, Photo AES

This post goes along with my Post on the Triumph of Death and the Three Living and the Three Dead. The Confraternity of Disciplini at Clusone were very keen that we should get the message about death. So they provided us with three separate images of the nearness of death, all of them popular at the time.

There is a lot of writing on the Internet about the Dance of Death, and I am only sharing this post in tribute to a lovely example. The Three Living and the Three Dead go back to the 13th Century, but the Dance of Death seems to take off in the 15th Century, after the Black Death. This example is from 1485.

The phrase ‘Dance of Death’ today suggests the bizarre and the horrific. These associations are encapsulated by the composer Saint-Saens who used the usual French version of the name, Danse Macabre, for his 1874 tone poem. He envisaged a skeletal death animating the corpses in a graveyard to dance to a frantic and sinister tune on the violin. This is very Gothic, and an interesting example of the 19th Century association of virtuosity, especially on the violin, and the dark arts – the Paganini connection. There are examples of fascination with mere horror in the older tradition, for example this lurid woodcut, which could illustrate Saint-Saens’ music, if only Michael Wolgemut had supplied his skeletal musician with a viol instead of a – is it a shawm? .

Although the prancing corpses are definitely dancing and dead, they don’t really have much to do with the Clusone Dance of Death and the 15th century family of moralising images to which it belongs. This Dance of Death is usually stately and relatively benign, taking the form of a chain dance, where each human participant is accompanied by a skeleton. The skeletons don’t appear predatory or malign nor the humans horrified or distressed. There is no violence or confrontation, the humans are not snatched away, rather, courtesy prevails in the manner of a courtly dance. I think this type of Dance of Death is really an image of human life; we should understand the skeletons as our own skeletons, the mortality which accompanies us and is inseparable from our earthly existence. Human life is literally a promenade with mortality – we seem to be one with our, we adorn and enjoy them, but they set a limit to our earthly existence, through fragility, decay and inevitable death. Our real life is elsewhere. As long as we understand this, there is no reason why we should fear the dance.

The Clusone Dance of Death is particularly amicable. On the left of the picture the hooded figure in white is one of the Confraternity, taking his place in the dance alongside prosperous citizens of different walks of life. Behind him is a richly dressed woman, the only one I could spot in the scene. In front of him the man in blue seems to have drawn a particularly friendly skeleton who turns towards him and inclines his head courteously, while delicately holding his first two fingers. The hand position seems to be a deliberate part of the dance motif. The skeleton partners do take the arm or hand of the mortals. I can’t make out the lady’s hold, but in the case of both the Brother and his neighbour, the skeleton reaches across to place its right arm over the right arm of its partner, but not fully touching the arm and holding fingers not the whole hand – very genteel. Where the mortal figures do not have a free right hand the hold differs. The man in the red stocking has the same hold, but on his left hand. The man in green leggings is lightly holding hands with his skeleton; the next couple have linked arms completely, and the skeleton is also using his spare hand to grasp his partner’s wrist in a particularly confiding manner.

Dance of Death Clusone 2.jpg — Dance of Death, Clusone, detail, Photo AES

There are no poor people in this Dance of Death – the point isn’t about Death the Leveller, but Death the Companion. The costumes indicate a range of occupations, which clearly feature being a woman and a confraternal Brother. Apart from that, I am not specialist enough to judge. My guess is that the dancers include a soldier, a huntsman, a merchant, a courtier and a man with a teapot and terrible dress sense.

The philosophy of the 15th Century Dance of Death reminds me of the cadaver tombs which occur in the same period. Alice Chaucer, died 1475 and styled Princess and Duchess at her death, has a magnificent example in Ewelme, which I must get out and photograph for you. There are two tiers. On top she lies in her pomp, underneath she lies a shrivelled corpse, but (I know this because I crawled) looking at her very own painting of the Annunciation on the ceiling of her death chamber. In Italy the tradition goes back to the 13th Century. In case anyone from Cambridge reads this, Hugh Ashton has a splendid cadaver tomb (1522) now in St John’s College Chapel.

Lovere in the rain

‘I am now in a place the most beautifully romantic I ever saw in my life,’ wrote Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, pioneer of smallpox innoculation and resident of Lovere for nearly 10 years. In 1755 she wrote these lines there;

Wisdom, slow product of laborious years,

The only fruit that life’s cold winter bears;

Thy sacred seeds in vain in youth we lay,

By the fierce storm of passion torn away.

Should some remain in a rich gen’rous soil,

They long lie hid, and must be rais’d with toil;

Faintly they struggle with inclement skies,

No sooner born than the poor planter dies.

The town of Lovere loves Lady Mary and their promenade is named after her. In temperatures of 33, 34, even 35, on July 9th 2019, we decided to hire a car and get out of Bergamo, head up into the pre-Alps, the Orobie and visit Clusone, with its amazing Triumph of Death fresco. Then we would cross into the next valley, visit Lovere on the shore of Lake Iseo and then drive down the side of the lake. It was a brilliant plan. Luckily we couldn’t get a car until 2 pm, which seemed like a shame at the time. Our outing coincided with a cloud burst which brought an hour of hail to Bergamo. Where we were, it brought bouts of torrential rain so heavy we couldn’t even leave the car in Clusone. In all honesty, I did, but noone else would.

We continued with the trip and managed to get out of the car in a period of drizzle and take some photos of Lovere in the rain.

Lovere rain 1.jpg — Lago d’Iseo from Lovere, Photo AES

Then I took my favourite video ever from under the awning of the Pasticceria Wender which served us drinks and very nice tiny pastries. I can’t show it because I don’t have a Premium Plan, but it is a live version of this photo with the added sound of torrential rain.

After that we did did drive down the amazing lakeside road, scooped out of vertical cliffs which overhang it in places. Part of it is tunnelled. There are helpful notices warning about rock falls, and nets hopefully cantilevered out of the cliffs, to catch the boulders as they head towards your car. Then we had really nice pasta in a trattoria in Sarnico, which for some reason thought it was an Irish pub, and then we went home.