Pliny's Catalogue of Culture: Art and Empire in the Natural History (Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture & Representation)

OXFORD STUDIES IN ANCIENT CULTURE AND REPRESENTATION General Editors Simon Price R. R. R. Smith Oliver Taplin OXFORD ...

Author: Sorcha Carey

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OXFORD STUDIES IN ANCIENT CULTURE AND REPRESENTATION General Editors Simon Price R. R. R. Smith Oliver Taplin

OXFORD STUDIES IN ANCIENT CULTURE AND REPRESENTATION Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and Representation publishes signiWcant interdisciplinary research into the visual, social, political, and religious cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world. The series includes work which combines diVerent kinds of representations which are usually treated separately. The overarching programme is to integrate images, monuments, texts, performances, and rituals with the places, participants, and broader historical environment that gave them meaning.

Pliny’s Catalogue of Culture Art and Empire in the Natural History

SORCHA CAREY

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Sorcha Carey 2003 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2003 First published in paperback 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain by Ashford Colour Press Ltd, Gosport, Hampshire ISBN 0–19–925913–5 978–0–19–925913–7 ISBN 0–19–920765–8 (Pbk.) 978–0–19–920765–7 (Pbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Papa

acknowledgements I hope I will be forgiven for attempting to rival the subject of this book by beginning with a list of my own. This book began its life as a Ph.D. thesis at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and would certainly not have been written were it not for the invaluable guidance, advice, and above all, inspiration, of my supervisor Jas´ Elsner. Numerous people have contributed to its subsequent transformation from thesis to book, and I would like to thank all who have oVered comments and suggestions, in particular: my examiners, Professors John North and Roger Ling; the anonymous referees at OUP; the editors of this series, Bert Smith, Simon Price, and Oliver Taplin. Particular thanks are due to Hilary O’Shea and her team at Oxford University Press, including Lavinia Porter and Enid Barker, who have all helped transform a motley manuscript into gleaming print. I would like to express my thanks to the editors of the following publications for their permission to reuse material published in earlier forms: a version of Chapter 4 appeared as ‘The Problem of Totality: Collecting Greek Art, Wonders and Luxury in the Elder Pliny’s Natural History’, in the Journal of the History of Collections 12.1 (2000), 1–13 (for which I thank Arthur MacGregor); my discussion of Nero’s Colossus in Chapter 6 grew out of my article, ‘In Memoriam (Perpetuam) Neronis: Damnatio Memoriae and Nero’s Colossus’, in Apollo (July 2000), 20–31 (for which I thank David Ekserjiian). I received several welcome grants during the research and writing of this book, and would like to express my gratitude to the University of London Central Research Fund; the Courtauld Institute of Art; the Henry Moore Foundation and the British Academy who both awarded me post-doctoral fellowships, and contributed to the cost of illustrations; the Faculty of Classics and Christ’s College, Cambridge. I have based my translations of Pliny the Elder on Karl MayhoV ’s edition of the text (Leipzig, 1892–1909), with occasional emendations following more recent suggestions. Any errors, or infelicitous English, are my own. Finally, thank you to my parents, to Duínseach, and to Simon.

contents List of Colour Plates

viii

List of Illustrations

ix

Abbreviations

xii

1. In Search of the Invisible Man 2. The Strategies of Encyclopaedism

1 17

3. Representing Empire: Monuments and the Creation of Roman Space

41

4. The Problem of Totality: Collecting Greek Art, Wonders, and Luxury

75

5. The ArtiWce of Nature

102

6. Imaging Memory

138

7. Conclusion

179

Bibliography

184

Index

193

Index Locorum

205

list of colour plates 1. Reconstruction of the nymphaeum at Baiae, in Castello Aragonese, Baiae. Photo: G. Lattanzi. 2. Reconstruction of the rear peristyle of the House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii. Photo: Nicholas Wood. 3. Peristyle wall, House of Adonis, Pompeii. Photo: S. Carey. 4. View from the atrium through to peristyle garden at rear, House of Venus Marina, Pompeii. Photo: S. Carey. 5. Painting of Venus, rear wall of peristyle garden, House of Venus Marina, Pompeii. Photo: S. Carey. 6. Garden painting with statue of Mars, House of Venus Marina, Pompeii. Photo: S. Carey. 7. Garden painting incorporating lararium, House of Venus Marina, Pompeii. Photo: S. Carey. 8. West wall of garden shrine room, House of Venus Marina, Pompeii. Photo: S. Carey. 9. Garden paintings in cubiculum 8, House of the Fruit Orchard, Pompeii. Photo: ß Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

list of illustrations Abbreviations: DAIR ¼ Deutsches Archaölogisches Institut, Rome. 1. Tommaso and Giacomo Rodari (attrib.), Portrait of Pliny the Elder. Photo: ß Alinari/Art Resource, NY. 2. Tommaso and Giacomo Rodari (attrib.), Portrait of Pliny the Younger. Photo: ß Alinari/Art Resource, NY. 3. Tommaso and Giacomo Rodari (attrib.), Pliny the Elder’s arrival at Stabiae. Photo: ß Alinari/Art Resource, NY. 4. Tommaso and Giacomo Rodari (attrib.), Pliny the Elder in his study. Photo: ß Alinari/Art Resource, NY. 5. Inscription on s/e side of base of Trajan’s column (CIL VI 690), Rome. Photo: DAIR 71.2108. 6. Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie. Photo: Russ Collins. 7. Colonnade of Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie. Photo: Russ Collins. 8. Model of Formige´ ’s reconstruction of Augustus’ trophy. Photo: Russ Collins. 9. Inscription on west face of Augustus’ trophy. Photo: ß Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris. 10. Relief to the right of the inscription on Augustus’ trophy. Photo: ß Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris. 11. Reconstruction of Trajan’s trophy at Adamklissi. After F. B. Florescu, Das Siegesdenkmal von Adamklissi. Tropaeum Traiani (Bucharest and Bonn 1965), 3. 12. Arch of Augustus, Susa. Photo: DAIR 70.1287. 13. Case built in the 1930s to house the Ara Pacis. Photo: Silvia Frenk. 14. Res Gestae inscription in Latin, Temple of Augustus and Rome, Ankara. After Perrot & Guillaume, Exploration archeólogique de la Galatie et la Bithynie (Paris 1872), plates 25 and 26. 15. Trajan’s column. Photo: ß Alinari/Art Resource NY. 16. Scene from Trajan’s column. Photo: DAIR 31.329. 17. Metope XXI, Trajan’s trophy at Adamklissi. Photo: DAIR 69.3286. 18. Reconstruction of Agrippa’s map, after K. Sallmann, Die Geographie des Alteren Plinius in ihrem Verha¨ltnis zu Varro (Berlin and New York 1971), 208. 19. Brodersen’s tentative illustration of Agrippa’s map, ‘ Terra Cognita. Studien zur ro¨mischen Raumerfassung’, Spudasmata 59 (1995), 268–87, Wg. 43. 20. PersoniWcation of a nation (possibly Hispania), Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome (inv. 767). Photo: Rome, Musei Capitolini, Archivio FotograWco dei Musei Capitolini. 21. Inscription accompanying personiWcation of the Triumpilini, Sebasteion, Aphrodisias. Photo: Aphrodisias Archive, Institute of Fine Arts, New York.

x

list of illustrations

22. Reconstruction of personiWcation of the Piroustae with accompanying inscription. R. R. R. Smith, ‘Simulacra Gentium: The Ethne from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’, JRS 78 (1988), 54, Wg. 3. 23. Relief showing Claudius’ conquest of Britain, south portico, Sebasteion, Aphrodisias. Photo: Aphrodisias Archive, Institute of Fine Arts, New York. 24. Relief on the north-east side of the lower base of Obelisk of Theodosius, showing the raising of the obelisk. Photo: R. Lockett (Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art). 25. Relief on the south-east side of the base of the Obelisk of Theodosius, showing the emperor. Photo: DAIR 75.1421. 26. Triclinium of Villa of Livia at Primaporta, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme (inv. 126373). Photo: ß Alinari/Art Resource, NY. 27. Cave with island triclinium, Sperlonga. Photo: S. Carey. 28. The Blinding of Polyphemus, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Sperlonga. Photo: S. Carey. 29. Reconstruction of the sculptural display at Sperlonga. Photo: G. Lattanzi. 30. Figure of Odysseus from Polyphemus group, Castello Aragonese, Baiae. Photo G. Lattanzi. 31. Statue of Bacchus with a panther, Castello Aragonese, Baiae. Photo: G. Lattanzi. 32. Portrait of Antonia Minor, Castello Aragonese, Baiae. Photo G. Lattanzi. 33. Reconstruction of the nymphaeum, Domus Aurea. G. Zander, ‘La Domus Aurea: Nuovi problemi architettonici’, BCSSA 12 (1958), 47–64, at 57, Wg. 7. 34. Mosaic showing Odysseus oVering the cup of wine to the Cyclops, Domus Aurea, Rome. Photo: DAIR 70.2074. 35. Plan of the cave at Sperlonga. After Andreae in B. Conticello, B. Andreae, and P. C. Bol, ‘Die Skulpturen von Sperlonga’, AntP 14 (1974), Wg. 7. 36. Plan of Domitian’s grotto at Castelgandolfo, late Wrst century ad. G. Lugli, BullCom 41 (1913), Wg. 4. 37. Canopus, Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli. Photo: S. Carey. 38. W. Gell’s engraving of the House of the Tragic Poet (6.8.3), Pompeiana (London 1837), vol. ii, plate 36. 39. Cave Canem mosaic, House of the Tragic Poet (6.8.3). Photo: ß Alinari/Art Resource, NY. 40. Detail of upper zone of south wall of cubiculum 8, House of the Fruit Orchard (1.9.5), Pompeii. Photo: S. Carey. 41. Aedicula, garden of House of Loreius Tiburtinus/D. Octavius Quarto (2.2.2), Pompeii. Photo: ß Alinari/Art Resource, NY. 42. Dupondius of Nero. Photo: Akademisches Kunstmuseum, Bonn. 43. Dupondius of Nero. Photo: Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn. 44. ‘Barberini Togatus’, Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori (inv. 2392). Photo: DAIR 37.378. 45. Atrium of the Villa of the Poppaei, Oplontis. Photo: DAIR 74.2692. 46. Reconstruction of summi viri, Forum Augustum, Rome. After A. Degrassi, Inscriptiones Italiae 12.3 (Rome 1947), 4. 47. Funerary relief with portrait busts. Photo: National Museum, Copenhagen.

list of illustrations

xi

48. Sestertius of Alexander Severus, reverse. Photo: British Museum. 49. Multiplum of Gordian III, reverse. Photo: British Museum. 50. Wax impression of amethyst gem in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin. Photo M. Bergmann. 51. Reconstruction of Nero’s Colossus. M. Bergmann, Der Koloss Neros, die Domus Aurea und der Mentalita¨tswandel im Rom der fru¨hen Kaiserzeit. TrWPr 13 (Mainz am Rhein 1993), 26, Wg. 10. 52. Dupondius issued by Nero, obverse. Photo: British Museum. 53. Portrait of Nero. Photo: Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass. 54. Cast of Altar of Eumolpus, Museo della Civilta` Romana. Photo: F. Sinn/M. Bergmann. 55. Relief showing Caracalla, Gate of the Argentarii, Rome. Photo: DAIR 70.1000. 56. Drawings showing reconstruction of original Wgures. From D. E. L. Haynes and P. E. D. Hirst, Porta Argentariorum. PBSR supp. (1939), 21, Wgs. 11–13. 57. Relief showing Septimius Severus and Julia Domna, Gate of the Argentarii, Rome. Photo: DAIR 70.993. 58. Statue of Claudius, Museo Nazionale, Parma. Photo: DAIR 67.1582. 59. Cancelleria relief (Frieze B). Photo: Archivio FotograWco Musei Vaticani, XXV.9.48. 60. Portrait of Vespasian. Photo: National Museum, Copenhagen.

abbreviations Acme ActaArch AeR AJA AnalRom ANRW AntK AntP AntW ArchCl ArchJ ArtB Athenaeum AUMLA BA Besch BCSSA BdA BullCom CahHistMon Chiron CIL CJ ClAnt CollLatomus CP CQ CW EAA GaR GRBS Helios IG ILS JdI JHC JRA JRS

Acme: Annali della Facolta` di FilosoWa e Lettere dell’Universita` statale di Milano Acta archaeologica (Copenhagen) Atene e Roma American Journal of Archaeology Analecta Romana Instituti Danici Aufstieg und Niedergang der ro¨mischen Welt (Berlin 1972–96) Antike Kunst Antike Plastik Antike Welt. Zeitschrift fu¨r Archaölogie und Kulturgeschichte Archeologia classica Archaeological Journal The Art Bulletin Athenaeum. Studi periodici di letteratura e storia dell’antichita`, Universita` di Pavia Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association Bulletin antieke beschaving. Annual Papers on Classical Archaeology Bollettino del Centro di studi per la storia dell’architettura Bollettino d’arte Bullettino della Commissione archeologica Comunale di Roma Cahiers d’histoire mondiale Chiron. Mitteilungen der Kommission fu¨r alte Geschichte und Epigraphik des Deutschen Archaölogischen Instituts Corpus inscriptionum latinarum Classical Journal Classical Antiquity Collection Latomus Classical Philology Classical Quarterly Classical World Enciclopedia dell’arte antica, classica e orientale (Rome 1958–84) Greece and Rome Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies Helios. Journal of the Classical Association of the Southwestern United States Inscriptiones graecae H. Dessau (ed.), Inscriptiones latinae selectae (1892–1916) Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archaölogischen Instituts Journal of the History of Collections Journal of Roman Archaeology Journal of Roman Studies

abbreviations Klio Latomus LTUR MAAR MdI ´ FRA ME Mnemosyme NC NH NJbb NSc PBSR PCPS Philologus PPM RA RE ´L RE RendPontAcc RM Sellers

SBMu¨nch StArch StMisc StRom TAPA TAPS TrWPr WorldArch Wu¨rzJbb ZPE

xiii

Klio. Beitra¨ge zur alten Geschichte Latomus. Revue d’e´tudes latines E. M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon topographicum urbis romae (Rome 1999) Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaölogischen Instituts ´ cole française de Rome, Antiquite´ Me´langes de l’E Mnemosyne. Bibliotheca classica batava Numismatic Chronicle Pliny the Elder, Natural History [ Neue] Jahrbu¨cher fu¨r Philologie und Pa¨dagogik Notizie degli scavi di antichita` Papers of the British School at Rome Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society Philologus. Zeitschrift fu¨r klassische Philologie G. Pugliese Caratelli (ed.), Pompei. Pitture e mosaici (Rome 1990–6) Revue archeólogique Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopa¨die der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (1893–1963) Revue des études latines Atti della PontiWcia Accademia romana di archeologia. Rendiconti Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaölogischen Instituts, Ro¨mische Abteilung K. Jex-Blake and E. Sellers, The Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art (trans. K. Jex-Blake with commentary and historical introduction by E. Sellers and additional notes contributed by Dr Heinrich Ludwig Urlichs) (London and New York 1896) (repr. Chicago 1968 and 1977 with prefaces and select bibliographies by Raymond V. Schoder, SJ) Sitzungsberichte, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften [Mu¨nchen], Philosophisch-historische Klasse Studia archaeologica Studi miscellanei. Seminario di archeologia e storia dell’arte greca e romana dell’Universita` di Roma Studi romani Transactions of the American Philological Association Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Trierer Winckelmannsprogramme World Archaeology Wu¨rzburger Jahrbu¨cher fu¨r die Altertumswissenschaft Zeitschrift fu¨r Papyrologie und Epigraphik

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one

In Search of the Invisible Man

Except as an old worked-over mine to dig in at odd times for the extraction of curious information with which to complete the treatment of some special topic, the Naturalis Historia is not glanced at. . . . Pliny to us is no longer a man, but a dust-covered tome.1

Despite the practice, from the Renaissance onwards, of recognizing famous literary Wgures from the ancient world in the surviving portraiture,2 no ancient portrait has ever been identiWed as Pliny the Elder. His omission from this visual canon of Classical literature may be to do with the fact that, in bleak contrast to the likes of Cicero, Pliny’s prose has remained a model to be avoided at all costs.3 But the role which the Natural History enjoyed throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as a sourcebook to be consulted on anything from medicine to agriculture,4 must also have ensured that there was never any great need to Wnd an ancient face to Wt the name. Classed as nothing more than a compiler of information, Pliny was always destined to remain an anonymous Wgure. The aim of this book is if not to reconstruct an ancient face to imagine as Pliny, then to recover the individual aims and concerns of the author who produced the Natural History. The Natural History has always been an important sourcebook for scholars of the ancient world. Yet in its similarity to modern-day encyclopaedias, it has remained a work which is frequently consulted, yet rarely read. The central purpose of this book, therefore, is to show that it is only in considering the work in its entirety, that the Natural History becomes a truly valuable source on the ancient world. 1

H. L. Axtell, ‘Some Human Traits of the Scholar Pliny’, CJ 22 (1926), 104–13 at 104. F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique (New Haven and London 1981), 52. 3 See Goodyear’s damning assessment, in J. Kenney (ed.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature ii. Latin Literature (Cambridge 1982), 670. 4 See G. Becatti, ‘Plinio e Vasari’, in Studia di storia dell’ arte in onore di V. Mariani (Naples 1971), 173–82; C. J. Nauert Jnr, ‘Humanists, Scientists and Pliny: Changing Approaches to a Classical Author’, The American Historical Review 84.1 (1979), 72–85; C. Frugoni, ‘La fortuna di Plinio nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento’, in G. B. Conte (ed.), Gaio Plinio Secondo, Storia Naturale (Turin 1982), lix–lxvi; B. S. Eastwood, ‘Plinian Astronomy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance’ and R. French, ‘Pliny and Renaissance Medicine’, in French/Greenaway, Roman Science, 197–251 and 252–81; L. Barkan, Unearthing The Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (New Haven and London 1999), 65–117. 2

2

introduction

I am particularly concerned to demonstrate how a reading of Pliny’s art history within the wider context of the Natural History as a whole will lead to a greater understanding of the role of art within Pliny’s work. From this perspective the chapters on art cease to be an isolated collection of facts on the art and artists of the ancient world, and emerge instead as an essential part of Pliny’s sophisticated project to transform his encyclopaedic account of the world into a catalogue of Roman empire. This book argues that Pliny’s art history can yield many more complex readings than simply the potential for identiWcation of a particular artist’s works or dates (useful though this has been for art historians). It can provide us with a unique insight into how a high oYcial of the Roman empire and member of the Flavian imperial court responded to the art which so dominated both the public and private spheres of the society in which he lived. If no ancient portrait has ever been identiWed as Pliny the Elder, then later images portray the author as a compiler of information, a characterization which played an important part in the transformation of Pliny from man into ‘dustcovered tome’. Some manuscripts of the Natural History appropriate the Christian iconography of the scholar-saint to show the encyclopaedist seated at his desk, surrounded by his library.5 But perhaps the greatest tribute came from the people of Como, who in a proud declaration of their relationship with an author who was central to the Renaissance experience of antiquity,6 placed a statue of their pagan ancestor, along with his nephew, in pride of place on the façade of the cathedral at Como (Figs. 1 and 2).7 Probably sculpted by Tommaso and Iacopo Rodari,8 as part of the extensive remodelling of the cathedral in the later Wfteenth century, the two Plinies are shown seated in aediculae Xanking the central door of the cathedral. Nearly 2 metres high, the pagan writers loom large amidst a sculptural programme devoted to Christian icons (Virgin Mary, St John the Baptist) and local saints (Sant’ Abbondio)—an arrangement which was greatly to displease the apostolic visitor, Bonomi, who came to Como in 1579. The irony of such a prominent image is that it draws on the very accounts of Pliny the Elder which have done much to perpetuate perceptions of the scholar as an anonymous compiler. If, beside his nephew, Pliny the Elder emerges as the more Xamboyant of the two, his statue remains indebted to the picture of an austere scholar preserved in the letters of his nephew. Four bas-reliefs, a pair 5

e.g. the 15th-cent. Hartley MS 2677, fo. 1. Pliny the Elder was born in Novum Comum in late ad 23 or early ad 24. 7 On the cathedral at Como, see F. Cani, Il Duomo di Como (Como 1993) and F. Cani and G. Monizza (eds.), Como e la sua storia. La citta` murata (Como 1994), 272–302. 8 Some scholars have attributed the statues to the father, Giacomo Rodari. See Cani and Monizza (eds.), Como (n. 7), 279–80. 6

introduction

3

Fig. 1. An illustration of Pliny the Elder’s importance within Renaissance culture, this imaginary portrait situates the ancient author from Como in a wider decorative programme of local and national saints. Attributed to Tommaso and Giacomo Rodari. Portrait of Pliny the Elder. H: 2 m. c.1485. Como cathedral, façade.

under each aedicula, represent moments from the lives of the Plinies. And while Pliny the Younger is depicted through the legacy of his own writings (shown on the left, writing at his desk watched by a crowd of onlookers; and on the right, reciting his Panegyric to the emperor Trajan), the scenes from the life of the Elder Pliny show him as he was epitomized in the Letters of his nephew. The relief on the right (Fig. 3) captures in shorthand the events famously recorded by Pliny the Younger in a letter to the historian Tacitus (6.16)—then the commander of the

4

introduction

Fig. 2. Not just a famous pagan ancestor of the citizens of Como, Pliny the Younger’s Letters had a direct influence on the neighbouring portrait of his uncle (see Figs. 3 and 4). Attributed to Tommaso and Giacomo Rodari. Portrait of Pliny the Younger. H: 2 m. c.1485. Como cathedral, façade.

Roman Xeet at Misenum, Pliny the Elder is shown arriving at Stabiae, as the eruption of Vesuvius which was to lead to his death starts its Xow from the rear right into the foreground of the image. Pliny the Younger’s account of his uncle’s role in the tragic eruption of ad 79 remains one of the best-known passages of literature to survive from the

introduction

5

Fig. 3. Situated to the right beneath the aedicula of Pliny the Elder (Fig. 1), this relief draws directly on Pliny the Younger’s Letter 6.16, to show his uncle at the eruption of Vesuvius in ad 79. Attributed to Tommaso and Giacomo Rodari. Bas-relief showing Pliny’s arrival at Stabiae. c.1485. Como cathedral, beneath the aedicula of Pliny the Elder (Fig. 1).

ancient world. But it is Pliny the Younger’s account of his uncle in a letter to Baebius Macer (3.5) which has had by far the greater inXuence on receptions of Pliny the Elder in the modern day. Here Pliny is cast, not as the dynamic man of action and Wrsthand witness of natural phenomena who appears in the letter to Tacitus, but the archetypal armchair scholar, an omnivorous consumer and processor of knowledge. It is in this guise that Pliny appears in the second relief at Como (Fig. 4), where he is shown consulting a book in his library, attended by a group of assistants. The scene draws on the Younger Pliny’s account of his uncle’s working methods in his letter to Baebius Macer (3.5).9 Explaining how the Elder Pliny was able to achieve such a proliWc output 9

Cf. A. N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny. A Historical and Social Commentary (Oxford 1966), 215–25.

6 introduction

Fig. 4. Inspired by Pliny the Younger’s Letter 3.5, this relief, showing the encyclopaedist at work on the Natural History surrounded by assistants, provides an early example of how Pliny the Elder has persistently been cast as a compiler. Attributed to Tommaso and Giacomo Rodari. Bas-relief showing Pliny the Elder in his study. c.1485. Como cathedral, beneath the aedicula of Pliny the Elder (Fig. 1).

(encompassing, besides the surviving Natural History, a treatise on the art of throwing a javelin from horseback, a biography of Pomponius Secundus in two volumes, a history of the German wars in twenty volumes, a six-volume handbook on rhetoric, an eight-volume grammatical treatise, and a continuation of the history of AuWdius Bassus), Pliny the Younger describes him constantly attended by secretaries who read to him while he dined, or travelled in a sedan chair10—‘I can remember how he chided me for walking, saying I need not have wasted those hours; for he thought any time not devoted to study was time wasted’ (3.5.16). Pliny the Younger’s account of his uncle and his works provides us, not with a portrait of an individual, but a playful distillation of the quintessential character10

Letters 3.5.11–12 and 3.5.15.

introduction

7

istics of scholarship, in which the very style of presentation closely mimics the archetype of learning presented in the letter.11 Like his uncle’s writings, Pliny the Younger’s letter is also equipped with scholarly apparatus. In response to your request, I will provide a complete bibliography of his works, and arrange them in chronological order; for this sort of information is appreciated by scholars. (3.5.2)

While Pliny the Younger may feign modesty in the face of his uncle’s achievements (3.5.19: ‘I usually laugh when anyone calls me studious, since in comparison to him, I am the laziest of men.’), the enduring success of his creation lies precisely in the fact that it provides ‘the sort of information appreciated by scholars’. With its description of a life scrupulously devoted to the compilation of knowledge, Pliny the Younger’s letter has furnished modern readers with the ultimate justiWcation for approaching the Natural History as the Encyclopaedia Britannica of the ancient world.12 This is precisely the role which Pliny has enjoyed within the history of Classical scholarship. His Natural History is one of the most important sources of information for the historian of the ancient world, and, in particular, for historians of Classical art. The 20,000 noteworthy facts, which Pliny claims his work contains (Pref. 17), encompass a whole breadth of subject matters (geography, anthropology, zoology, botany, agriculture, medicine, mineralogy, and art), providing a mine of information on the ancient world. Indeed, it would be rare to Wnd a book on any aspect of the Roman world which did not include a footnote reference to the Natural History.13 But Pliny’s text has always been taken as a particularly crucial source for art history. It is not just that his discussion of art in books 33–6 has assisted in the identiWcation of particular artists’ works (for example, Praxiteles’ Apollo Sauroktonos),14 but more importantly, it has provided a chronological and stylistic framework for the writing of art history. Pliny’s discussion of art is by no means a complete history of Greek and Roman art up to ad 79 (bypassing, Greek art 11

Greg Woolf discussed this idea in his paper ‘Imperial Plinies’, delivered at the Institute of Classical Studies, 11 January 2000. 12 e.g. Sellers, xiii: ‘we must therefore regard his work as nothing more than a compilation from other records, in which personal observation plays no part outside the range of contemporary events.’ Although R. V. Schoder, in the 1968 reprint of Sellers, K, notes the need ‘to radically modify Sellers’ statement’. 13 e.g. K. D. White, Agricultural Implements of the Roman World (Cambridge 1967) refers to over thirty diVerent passages in the Natural History; J. F. Healy, Mining and Metallurgy in the Greek and Roman World (London 1978) cites Pliny over Wfty times; and R. Jackson, Doctors and Diseases in the Roman World (London 1988) mentions Pliny over thirty times as a source. 14 See NH 34.70, and Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique (n. 2), 105 and 151–3; A. Corso, Prassitele: Fonti epigraphiche e letterarie. Vita e opere (Rome 1988), 7 and 83–4; and B. S. Ridgway, Fourth-Century Styles in Greek Sculpture (London 1997), 265, who expresses reservations about the attribution. For other examples and ‘lost opportunities’ see Barkan, Unearthing the Past (n.4), 105–17.

8

introduction

before 500 bc, much of Hellenistic art, and most Roman art). But his presentation of the history of sculpture and painting as a process of development and reWnement moving towards increasing naturalism (especially NH 34.54–65 and 35.56–74) has undoubtedly had a profound inXuence on the history of Classical art, and indeed on the history of art in general. From Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, published in 1764, to the present day, it has become a standard framework for the discussion of art.15 Much of the scholarship on Pliny of the last two centuries has been devoted to retrieving the original authors on which his art history was based.16 The sculptor and author of a treatise on art, Xenocrates, active in the Wrst half of the third century bc (cited by Pliny in the indexes to books 34 and 35, and at 34.83 and 35.68) has been recognized as the source for Pliny’s presentation of art as a series of progressions towards naturalism, and his inXuence is evident in the bias which Pliny displays towards artists of the Sicyonian school. The account of Lysippus (NH 34.61–5) is especially favourable—at 34.37 Pliny notes ‘Lysippus is said to have made 1,500 statues, each executed with such skill, that even one alone would have made him famous.’ But it is generally accepted that Pliny’s reception of Xenocrates’ work was not Wrsthand, but originated with Roman writers such as Varro and Cornelius Nepos, who had themselves acquired the information Wltered through a succession of Hellenistic writers, including Antigonos of Karystos (writing in the second half of the third century bc), and Pasiteles (c.106–48 bc). Duris of Samos (born c.340 bc) is also credited as an important source for the anecdotes with which Pliny peppers his account of Greek artists. Pliny’s own admission in the preface that he has compiled the information contained in his Natural History from 2,000 volumes,17 coupled with Pliny the Younger’s description of his uncle’s working methods18 have always made it tempting to use the Natural History as a means to recover the sources used by Pliny and now lost to us (Quellenforschung). Eugenie Sellers was to encapsulate 15 See A. Potts, Flesh and the Ideal. Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (New Haven and London 1994), 38–9 and 72–4; S. Settis, ‘La conception de l’histoire de l’art chez les Grecs et son inXuence sur les theóriciens italiens du Quattrocento’, in E. Pommier (ed.), L’Histoire de l’histoire de l’art de l’antiquite´ au XVIIIe sie`cle (Paris 1995), i. 145–60; V. Naas, ‘L’art grec dans l’Histoire naturelle de Pline L’Ancien’, Histoire de l’art 35/36 (1996), 15–26 esp. 24; and Barkan, Unearthing the Past (n.4), 89–105. 16 See A. Furtwa¨ngler, ‘Plinius und seine Quellen u¨ber die Bildenden Kunst’, Jahrbucher fu¨r Klassische Philologie Supp. 9 (Leipzig 1877); Sellers, xvi–xxxvi; B. Schweitzer, Xenokrates von Athen (Halle (Saale) 1932), esp. 47–52; Settis, ‘La conception de l’histoire de l’art’ (n. 15), 150–1; and Naas, ‘L’art grec’ (n. 15), 16–19. 17 NH Pref. 17: ‘20,000 facts worthy of note . . . gained from reading about 2,000 volumes . . . by 100 carefully selected authors—all this, I have included in thirty-six volumes.’ 18 W. D. Coulson, ‘The Reliability of Pliny’s Chapters on Greek and Roman Sculpture’, CW 69 (1976), 361–72 draws on Pliny the Younger’s letter as evidence to counter the argument that Pliny the Elder was ‘an indiscriminate excerpter’.

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the desires and diYculties of such an enterprise in her introduction to The Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art. The result of such an analysis, if complete, would be nothing less than to isolate and restore to each writer his own contribution; nothing proves so well the diYculty of the task as the great amount of labour already expended in this direction.19

Despite the challenges posed by the intricate system of chain relay through which Pliny received his information, the attempt to recover lost texts was to remain the predominant focus of Plinian scholarship from the nineteenth century until comparatively recently. Scholars had begun as early as 1850 to investigate Pliny’s sources,20 but it was Mu¨nzer, in his Beitra¨ge zur Quellenkritik der Naturgeschichte des Plinius, published in 1897, who was the Wrst to approach Pliny’s use of sources in a systematic fashion. He isolated several diVerent ways in which Pliny used his sources, arguing that Pliny’s choice of source was not simply haphazard, but rather was based on a considered decision of which source would be best for which subject.21 One might have expected, then, that Mu¨nzer’s work would have led to a new consideration of Pliny’s authorial role within the text. Instead, scholarship continued to focus on identifying the sources for the Natural History (if in a more considered fashion), so much so that Detlefsen, investigating Pliny’s sources for his description of Italy, was able to conclude that only three passages could truly be called Pliny’s own.22 And this interest in Pliny’s sources can still be witnessed in some studies from the 1970s.23 This drive to recover the original texts drawn on by Pliny has not been entirely without value. Investigation of Pliny’s sources on the history of art has not only provided us with an important insight into how the Greeks themselves wrote about their art, but has also helped to explain some of the peculiarities and inconsistencies of Pliny’s text. Pliny’s much puzzled over statement at 34.52, for example, that after the 121st Olympiad (296–293 bc) ‘the art [of bronze statuary] died out (cessavit), and was revived again in the 156th Olympiad (156–153 bc)’ has been seen by some to reveal the combined inXuence of Antigonos of Karystos and Pasiteles as sources. This reading posits a Pasitilean reworking of the Xenocratic/Antigonid history 19

Sellers, xv. e.g. O. Jahn, ‘Uber die Kunsturteile bei Plinius’, Berichte u¨ber die Verhandlungen der ko¨niglichen sa¨chsischer Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig phil.-hist. Kl. 2 (1850), 105–42. S. Ferri (ed.), Plinio il Vecchio. Storia delle arti antiche (Rome 1946), 6–18 gives an excellent summary of the scholarship which has sought to recover Pliny’s sources. 21 F. Mu¨nzer, Beitra¨ge zur Quellenkritik der Naturgeschichte des Plinius (Berlin 1897), esp. 6–11. 22 D. Detlefsen, ‘Die Beschreibung Italiens in der Naturalis Historia des Plinius und ihre Quellen’, in W. Sieglin (ed.), Quellen und Forschungen zur alten Geschichte und Geographie i (1901), 1–62 at 61—NH 3.60, 3.65–7 and 3.119 respectively. 23 See K. Sallmann, Die Geographie des Alteren Plinius in ihrem Verha¨ltnis zu Varro (Berlin and New York 1971), who does however advocate an extremely careful investigation of the sources, and notes, 90, that such a practice should not be an end in itself. 20

10 introduction (ending with the 121st Olympiad) which incorporated a ‘renaissance’ in the 156th Olympiad, to enable the discussion of works by Greek artists active in Rome.24 The overriding eVect of a scholarship that focuses on the recovery of writers now lost to us, however, has been eVectively to bypass Pliny as the creator of the Natural History. Inherent to such an approach is the belief that the Natural History is fundamentally inferior to the sources used in its creation.25 And the process of eVacing Pliny’s authorship of the text which this concentration on sources initiated, has been compounded by a second, related, approach which has dominated the Plinian scholarship—the tendency to subdivide the text into segments based on modern categories of knowledge which are then considered entirely separately from one another. Thus we get the Elder Pliny’s chapters on geography, Pliny on botany, Pliny on zoology, and Pliny’s chapters on the history of art.26 The eVect of such an approach (which admittedly is partly necessitated by the sheer size of the Natural History) is to deny any active authorial role for Pliny. Just as the attempt to retrieve earlier sources reduces Pliny’s work to a (more or less objective) compilation, thus essentially negating Pliny as author, similarly the division of his work into apparently independent sections of knowledge, ignores the presence of consistent authorial concerns determining the structure and presentation of the work as a whole. Most signiWcantly, both approaches fail to account for the extent to which Pliny has moulded his sources into a new and meaningful narrative. Instead, the classiWcation of the Natural History as a compilation has carried with it suggestions of ‘second-rateness’, and, implicitly, a lack of any great subjectivity on the part of its author. And these suggestions have only been reinforced by assessments of Pliny’s work as not merely a compilation, but, at times, quite a bad one.27 The irony then, is that while Pliny the Younger’s letter to Baebius Macer left an ancient portrait with which to imagine Pliny the Elder (at Como), it also 24

The statement has been variously explained. See A. W. Lawrence, ‘Cessavit ars: Turning Points in Hellenistic Sculpture’, in Me´langes Charles Picard (Paris 1949), 581–5; M. Bieber, ‘Pliny and Greco-Roman art’ in Hommages Bidez et Cumont. CollLatomus 2 (Brussels 1949), 39–42; Coulson, ‘Reliability’ (n. 18); ´ L 56 (1978), 289–313; Isager, Pliny on P. Gros, ‘Vie et mort de l’art hellenique selon Vitruve et Pline’, RE Art and Society, 97–8; Settis, ‘La conception de l’histoire de l’art’ (n. 15), 148–9. 25 e.g. Sellers, xiv: ‘An irreparable accident, however—the total loss of the art literature which preceded Pliny—has given to the books with which we are here concerned [33–6] an unique value. It so happens that from his pages only can we now obtain something like a connected impression of the art-literature of the Greeks, as it lay open, if no longer actually to him, at any rate to his immediate predecessors.’ 26 ´ L 33 (1955), 297–318; and e.g. Sallmann, Geographie (n. 23); J. Andre´, ‘Pline l’Ancien botaniste’, RE most recently, Isager, Pliny on Art and Society. Sellers, xiii, does express an awareness of the problem: ‘Pliny’s larger and compacted purpose might thus, on the face of it, seem to condemn this present detachment of the History of Art for separate treatment.’ 27 e.g. J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art. Criticism, History and Terminology (London and New Haven 1974), 9, who describes Pliny as ‘a compiler of tradition’ and judges his chapters on art to be ‘a complex and often undiscriminating assemblage’. See also Sellers, lxxxiii, who notes that ‘the value of Pliny’s sources increases in the order, not of their nearness to Pliny, but of their approach to the distant fountain-head.’

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provided the means by which Pliny the Elder could be entirely detached from the Natural History. Through the equation of the individual with the action of compiling, whether in Pliny the Younger’s ancient account, or the Renaissance bas-relief of the scholar and attendants at Como, the bulk of scholarship on the Natural History has been concerned not with creating a picture of its author, but with the exact opposite—the abnegation of Pliny’s contribution to the text. It is really only in the last twenty years that Pliny the author has Wnally become a focus for studies of the Natural History. The beginnings of the move away from the study of Pliny’s sources can already be seen in Ferri’s assertion, in the introduction to his 1946 edition of the chapters on art, that Pliny should be seen as no longer simply ‘a compiler of information’ but rather ‘a highly original vir curiosus’, whose ‘work was as original and unique as his method of compiling it’.28 But Ferri continued to see Pliny’s ‘art history’ in Wrm isolation from the rest of the text. It was not until a series of international conferences at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s (Como 1979, London early 1980s, published 1986, Nantes 1985), that the focus of Plinian studies shifted Wrmly from attempts to identify his sources, to a new concern to elicit the dominant themes of the Natural History and to situate Pliny within his cultural and historical context.29 The predominant emphasis was on Pliny’s place within the history of science. And perhaps more important than the shift away from the focus on original sources, which had begun many years earlier, was the recognition of Pliny’s text as a coherent whole. This is most clearly witnessed in Locher’s discussion of the structure of Natural History, which argues that the merit of Pliny’s work lies in its ‘re-arranging a disordered and diVuse Xow of information into a meaningful sequence in a very short space of time’.30 There was also a change in emphasis in the discussions of Pliny’s ‘chapters on art’, with essays by Gualandi and Rouveret exploring the Romanness of Pliny’s art history, in contrast to the privileging of its Greek origins which lay behind studies of its sources.31 A new Einaudi edition of Pliny’s text, published in 1982, 28

Ferri, Plinio (n. 20), 5. The papers from the Como conference were published in four volumes—Tecnologia, economia e societa` nel mondo romano (1980), Plinio il Vecchio sotto il proWlo storico e letterario (1982), Plinio e la natura (1982), La citta` antica come fatto di cultura (1983). The papers from the Nantes conference were published twice, in Helmantica 37 (1986) and 38 (1987), and as Pigeaud/Oroz, Pliny. The London conference was published as French/Greenaway, Roman Science. 30 A. Locher, ‘ The Structure of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History’, in French/Greenaway, Roman Science, 20–9 at 27. See also S. Sconocchia, ‘La structure de la NH dans la tradition scientiWque et encyclope´dique romaine’, in Pigeaud/Oroz, Pliny, 623–32 for a discussion of the structure of the Natural History in relation to other Roman scientiWc works. 31 G. Gualandi, ‘Plinio e il collezionismo d’arte’, in Plinio il Vecchio sotto il proWlo storico e letterario. Atti del Convegno di Como 1979 (Como 1982), 259–98; A. Rouveret, ‘ Toute la me´moire du monde: La notion de collection dans la NH de Pline’, in Pigeaud/Oroz, Pliny, 431–49. See also A. Michel, ‘L’Esthe´thique de Pline L’Ancien’, in Pigeaud/Oroz, Pliny, 371–83 who argues that there is a coherent aesthetic in Pliny’s work. 29

12 introduction exempliWed these changes in the scholarship, with introductory essays on the themes, not sources, of the Natural History.32 In the last two decades, studies of Pliny have continued to build on the foundations laid by the conferences of the 1980s. Two important articles have again demonstrated the extent to which Pliny’s authorship (not that of his sources) is evident in the text. Howe’s article ‘In Defense of the Encyclopaedic Mode’ has highlighted the nationalist and imperial focus of Pliny’s work, while Wallace-Hadrill’s paper, published Wve years later, explores the conXict between Nature and luxury which dominates the Natural History.33 Even more important has been the publication of two monographs on the Natural History, both of which explore themes which are crucial to Pliny’s work. Citroni Marchetti’s book explores the Natural History within the context of the Roman moral tradition, demonstrating that Pliny’s moral agenda is not simply evident in the rhetorical outbursts which have caused some to describe him as ‘the most persistent of lamenters’,34 but rather permeates the entire work.35 Beagon’s Roman Nature is a detailed consideration of Pliny’s conception of Nature in the Natural History.36 And the fact that it was only in 1992 that such a book was published, a book on what is after all the principal subject of Pliny’s work, is evidence of the extent to which the Natural History has been neglected as a text. But while the literature on Pliny has clearly made important advances in the last thirty years, there remain gaps in the scholarship. Most striking is the lack of literature on Pliny as an encyclopaedist. There have been brief discussions of Pliny’s work in overviews of Roman encyclopaedias, Conte has explored the concern for totality in Pliny’s work, and there is a short paper by Roncoroni.37 But there has been no detailed consideration of, for example, how Pliny’s encyclopaedic concerns might dictate his presentation of his subject matter, or of the strategies which Pliny employs in creating his encyclopaedic text. Furthermore, despite the publication of several articles and books demonstrating the extent to which the Natural History is a coherent text, whose author’s concerns are evident throughout the thirty-seven books, there is still a tendency to view the ‘art history’ in isolation from the rest of Pliny’s work (although Leonard Barkan’s excellent, 32

G. B. Conte (ed.), Gaio Plinio Secondo, Storia Naturale (Turin 1982). N. Ph. Howe, ‘In Defense of the Encyclopaedic Mode: On Pliny’s Preface to the Natural History’, Latomus 44 (1985), 561–76; A. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Pliny the Elder and Man’s Unnatural History’, GaR 37 (1990), 80–96. 34 J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Rome. Sources and Documents (Cambridge 1983), xvi. 35 Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio. See also F. de Oliveira, Les Ideés politiques et morales de Pline l’Ancien (Coimbra 1992). 36 Beagon, Roman Nature. 37 P. Grimal, ‘Encyclope´dies antiques’, CahHistMon 9 (1965), 459–82, at 477–82; A. Roncoroni, ‘Plinio enciclopedista’, in Plinio e la natura (Como 1982), 9–13; Sconocchia, ‘La structure de la NH’ (n. 30); G. B. Conte, Genres and Readers: Lucretius, Love Elegy, Pliny’s Encyclopaedia (Baltimore 1991), 67–75. 33

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but brief, discussion represents an important departure from the trend).38 Jacob Isager’s book on Pliny’s art history does consider some of the larger themes of the Natural History, for example man’s relationship with Nature, but in carrying out a point-by-point commentary on the chapters on art, the wider concerns of Pliny’s text remain largely incidental to his discussion.39 It is these gaps in the scholarship which this book aims to address. My concern is to resituate the chapters on art within the wider contexts of both the encyclopaedic text which contains them, and the politics and artistic culture of imperial Rome. The next three chapters broadly consider Pliny’s discussion of art in relation to his encyclopaedic project. Chapter 2 explores the encyclopaedic project itself, examining the strategies which Pliny employs in order to transform his text into a catalogue of Roman totality, and considering why the medium of the encyclopaedia should be particularly suited to Pliny’s aims. Chapter 3 focuses on Pliny’s discussion of two monuments which fall outside modern editions of Pliny’s ‘chapters on art’, and considers the important role which they play in the transformation of geography into conquest. Chapter 4 examines the contradictory position which art holds within Pliny’s catalogue of Roman power, as both the material of empire, and the material of luxury. In an eVort to move away from an academic literature that has approached the Natural History purely as a source of information on the Greek and Roman world, and retrieve in Pliny a writer who was representative of the culture and times within which he lived, the Wnal two chapters consider important aspects of Pliny’s ‘art history’ in relation to contemporary Roman culture. Chapter 5 looks at the theme of art and Nature within the Natural History and Wnds parallels in the Roman fascination with material plays on art and nature whether in imperial grottoes, or Pompeiian garden paintings. Chapter 6 explores the theme of memory in Pliny’s account of portraiture, and considers it in relation to the material treatment of portraits in imperial Rome, with particular reference to Nero’s Colossus. One particularly important outcome of a broader contextual approach is the extent to which Pliny’s discussion of art increases in value in terms of the insights it can provide into contemporary Roman attitudes to art. For contemporary readers, Pliny’s ‘chapters on art’ can seem surprisingly familiar. With its catalogue of artists and works, arranged as a series of stylistic inventions and developments, Pliny’s discussion of Greek art (originating in earlier Hellenistic works) seems in many ways to conform to the now established model of art history. The reason for this, of course, is the central role which Pliny’s text played in the development of that model. Bernard Schweitzer once remarked on the strange resemblance between Xenocrates (via Pliny) and Winckelmann.40 38 39 40

Barkan, Unearthing the Past (n.4), esp. 66–89. Isager, Pliny on Art and Society, 15–17. Schweitzer, Xenocrates (n. 16), 44.

14 introduction But, as Salvatore Settis has argued, the resemblance is not strange at all, given that Winckelmann had a copy of Pliny on his desk as he was writing his history of art, and indeed the model had already inXuenced humanistic writers from the time of Ghiberti.41 With the establishment of Winckelmann’s (Plinian) model, scholars have done much to promote the idea of Pliny as art historian. Yet this has involved a complex process of editing Pliny’s original text to remove elements of the discussion that are deemed not to be art historical (as, for example, in Eugenie Sellers’ The Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art). While even the edited version falls short of modern expectations. Pliny’s discussion of Greek art lacks detailed visual descriptions, for example, making the task of comparing surviving Roman copies of the original Greek works Pliny saw in Rome next to impossible. There are also signiWcant gaps in Pliny’s chronology of Greek art—with little mention of work from the archaic period, and a gaping lacuna left by the statement at 34.52 that after the 121st Olympiad (296–293 bc) ‘the art [of bronze statuary] died out (cessavit), and was revived again in the 156th Olympiad (156–153 bc).’ Perhaps most striking of all, is the absence of a parallel account of Roman art and artists to match the ‘history’ which Pliny provides for Greek art. Pliny’s failure to match up to the model of art history which his own text initiated, has resulted in a generally negative assessment of his discussion of art. But Pliny himself, of course, never set out to write a history of art, let alone invent it. And it is through viewing his discussion of art against the backdrop of the broader aims of the Natural History as a whole that the true value of his work for the understanding of Greek and Roman art emerges. It helps to explain, for example, the overwhelming focus on Greek art in books 34–6 of the Natural History. The ostensibly ‘art historical’ account of Greek sculpture (which draws on the work of Xenocrates) emerges as a catalogue charting the incorporation of Greek art into the Roman landscape (discussed in Chapter 4). If this was Pliny’s motivation for including Greek art in his catalogue, then Roman art, whether republican or imperial, required no such parallel history, since it was already speciWcally created for a Roman audience. While elsewhere in the Natural History, Roman art and monuments could themselves serve as physical testaments to a world dominated by Rome (Chapter 3). Despite the image of a life devoted to learning which has dominated Plinian scholarship, Pliny the Elder was, in fact, deeply involved in the machinery of empire.42 An equestrian, he served in three campaigns in Germany (ad 47–57), at one stage with the future emperor Titus, and held several procuratorships. Pliny the Younger refers to a procuratorship in Hispanica Tarraconensis (ad 72–4),43 41 42 43

Settis, ‘La conception de l’histoire de l’art’ (n. 15), 151 and Barkan, Unearthing the Past (n.4), 89–105. See J. F. Healy, Pliny the Elder on Science and Technology (Oxford 1999), 1–31. Letters 3.5.

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while Pliny’s personal observations in the Natural History point to postings in Africa, Gallia Belgica, and possibly Gallia Narbonensis. Pliny’s strong antiNeronian stance in the Natural History has led some scholars to suggest a period of retirement during Nero’s reign, but certainly with the overthrow of Nero, and the rise to power of Vespasian, Pliny became an important Wgure in the imperial household.44 Much of our information about Pliny’s life is gleaned from references in both the Natural History and the letters of Pliny the Younger. But, as this book argues, it is the Natural History as a work of literature which is the most revealing testament to Pliny’s commitment to empire. In the preface to the Natural History, Pliny plays on his dedication of the work to the emperor, Titus. To dedicate this work to you formally is not the same as merely to publish it. In the latter case, I could have said ‘Why do you read this, imperator? It is written for the common crowd, the hordes of farmers and artisans, and Wnally for those with enough time to devote themselves to study. Why do you make yourself my judge? Your name was not on the list of jurors, when I committed myself to writing this work. I knew you to be too great, to think that you would descend to this! (NH Pref. 6)

The passage might seem to support the view, prominent in Plinian scholarship, that the Natural History is nothing more than a handbook for the Roman layman.45 But this is not only clearly a rhetorical expression of modesty towards Pliny’s patron, Titus. Within Pliny’s text, farmers are accorded ideal status, associated with an idyllic past before Rome’s decline through luxury. The precedents of Varro’s De Re Rustica and Virgil’s Georgics, might suggest that in his dedication Pliny is concerned to establish his book, from the very outset, as a classic work in the Roman literary tradition.46 Perhaps more importantly, as Citroni Marchetti has argued, in dedicating his work to both the princeps and the masses, Pliny presents his work to a public without limits, encompassing the highest and lowest of Roman society.47 In fact, the farmers and peasants to whom Pliny’s work is addressed will emerge in the Natural History as embodiments of Pliny’s ideal Roman virtues, simplicity (simplicitas) and a way of life

44 On Pliny’s relationship with the imperial family, see S. Ge´ly, ‘Nationalisme et cosmopolitanisme dans la penseé romaine a` l’e´poque de Titus’, P. Magno, ‘La dedica della ‘‘Naturalis Historia’’ di Plinio il Vecchio a Tito’, and B. Zucchelli, ‘Ci fu liberta di parola sotto il principato di Tito?’, Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi Xaviani Rieti 1981 (Rieti 1983), ii. 313–23, 331–5, and 427–32. 45 e.g. O. Gigon, ‘Plinius und der Zerfall der antiken Naturwissenschaft’, Arctos ns 4 (1966), 23–45, esp. 40–1; A. G. Morton, ‘Pliny on Plants: His Place in the History of Botany’, in French/Greenaway, Roman Science, 86–97. 46 R. T. Brue`re, ‘Pliny the Elder and Virgil’, CP 51 (1956), 228–46 argues at 244, that the closing sentence of the Natural History (37.205) is an echo of Georgics 2.173. 47 Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio, 15–17. On literacy in Roman society see W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, Mass. 1989), and responses to his work in JRA Supp. 3 (1991).

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rooted in Nature (rusticitas). But in embracing the highest and the lowest in his projected audience, we can see Pliny self-consciously aiming for the same totality in his readership as his own work claims to achieve. If Pliny addresses his work to all the citizens of empire, then the Natural History is an attempt to catalogue all that the empire contains.

two

The Strategies of Encyclopaedism

Like the sausage, the quality of the encyclopaedia tends to vary greatly according to the contents and to the skill with which they are arranged and presented.1

For the modern reader, Pliny’s Natural History may seem a far cry from the Encylopaedia Britannica.2 Written by a single author, and without the alphabetical system of arrangement which has become a deWning characteristic of modern ‘objective’ and ‘scientiWc’ compilations of knowledge, Pliny’s work bears little resemblance to contemporary conceptions of the encyclopaedia. But where Pliny’s Natural History most obviously converges with its twentieth-century descendants, is in its concern for totality, the attempt to amass all knowledge (either of one particular subject, or the whole world) within one work. The desire for totality may, of course, ultimately be futile, but it lies at the heart of the encyclopaedia and, indeed, gives it its name.3 The word ‘encyclopaedia’ (Wrst used by Rabelais in the sixteenth century) derives from the Greek expression enkyklios paideıâ meaning universal knowledge, the term which Pliny uses when describing his own work in the preface to the Natural History—‘I must touch on all the subjects encompassed by what the Greeks call enkyklios paideıâ (an allround education)’ (Pref. 14).4 Of course Pliny himself had predecessors. For some scholars the roots of encyclopaedism can already be seen in Plato,5 while the scientiWc taxonomies 1

R. Collison, Encyclopaedias: Their History throughout the Ages (New York and London 1966), 11. There has been surprisingly little detailed discussion of Pliny’s encyclopaedism. See P. Grimal, ‘Encyclope´dies antiques’, CahHistMon 9 (1965), 459–82; Collison, Encyclopaedias (n. 1), 25–6; A. Roncoroni, ‘Plinio enciclopedista’, Plinio e la natura (Como 1982), 9–13; S. Sconocchia, ‘La structure de la NH dans la tradition scientiWque et encyclope´dique Romaine’, in Pigeaud/Oroz, Pliny, 623–32; G. B. Conte, Genres and Readers: Lucretius, Love Elegy, Pliny’s Encyclopaedia (Baltimore 1991), 67–75. 3 On the urge for totality demonstrated by encyclopaedias and the problems of achieving it, see Collison, Encyclopaedias (n. 1), 3, H. Clark, The Fictional Encyclopaedia (New York and London 1990), 20–2, and H. Meschonnic, Des mots et des mondes. Dictionnaires, encyclope´dies, grammaires, nomenclatures (Paris 1991), 18–19 and 214. 4 For the subjects included under the heading enkyklios paideıâ, see H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. G. Lamb (Madison, Wis. and London 1982), 176–8 and 280–1, and T. Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge 1998), 33–9 and 50–89. 5 Collison, Encyclopaedias (n. 1), 21 calls him ‘the father of encyclopaedias’. 2

18 strategies of encyclopaedism developed by his pupil Aristotle are certainly important precursors of the modern encyclopaedia’s concern to systematize and classify knowledge.6 In Alexandria of the third century bc, we encounter the drive for totality in the famous library (to be seen, perhaps, as the three-dimensional realization of the ultimate encyclopaedia), and in the work of its cataloguer, Callimachus, not just his Pinakes, the inventory of the library, but also his collection of thaumasia.7 The clearest antecedents for the scope of Pliny’s work, however, are to be found in Rome, in the writings of the Elder Cato (the lost Praecepta ad Wlium, c.183 bc), Varro, and Celsus.8 Varro’s Antiquitates, numbering forty-one books in all (along with his shorter Disciplinae, a mere nine books) and Celsus’ Artes, Wlling twenty-six books, provide obvious precedents to Pliny’s work in the matter of size alone, and there are also parallels in the choice of subject matter—Pliny’s ‘natural’ subject matter is preWgured in both Varro’s De Re Rustica and in Celsus’ discussion of agriculture.9 But Pliny’s work diVers from that of his predecessors in one crucial respect. While Cato, Varro, and Celsus all aim to provide a complete and detailed account of certain subjects, Pliny’s work is truly universal, claiming to detail the entire world. This is not only evident in Pliny’s declaration in the preface that his subject matter is ‘the nature of things, or, in other words, life’ (Pref. 13: rerum natura, hoc est vita, narratur).10 It is also reXected in the very structure of the Natural History, which starts in book 2 by describing the universe (the Wrst word of book 2 is mundum—the universe), and goes on not only to detail the lands, peoples and animals (in descending order of size) which occupy the surface of the earth, but to delve into the earth itself, and describe the stones and minerals which emerge. The subdivision of subject matter seems designed precisely to emphasize the totality of Pliny’s work—it really contains the world in all its parts, starting with a description of its entirety in book 2, and then moving on to detail successively smaller components.11 6

Grimal, ‘Encyclope´dies antiques’ (n. 2), 460–1 and Collison, Encyclopaedias (n. 1), 23. On encyclopaedias and Alexandria see Grimal, ‘Encyclope´dies antiques’ (n. 2), 461–2. On Callimachus see C. Jacob, ‘Callimaque: un poe`te dans le labyrinthe’, in C. Jacob and F. de Polignac (eds.), Alexandrie IIIe sie`cle av. J.-C. Tous les savoirs du monde ou le reˆve d’universalite´ des Ptolemeés (Paris 1992), 100–12 and A. Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton 1995). 8 On these Roman encyclopaedists, see Grimal, ‘Encyclope´dies antiques’ (n. 2), 463–78; F. Della Corte, Varrone. Il terzo gran lume romano (repr. Florence 1970), 217–32; and K. Sallmann, ‘Enzyklopa¨die’, Der Neue Pauly 3 (1997), 1058–9. 9 Cato’s work probably discussed, among other things, agriculture, medicine, and rhetoric. Celsus’ Artes consisted of books on agriculture, medicine, rhetoric, philosophy, jurisprudence, and the art of war. Varro’s Disciplinae had books dealing with the ‘seven liberal arts’—grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music—and a further two on medicine and architecture. 10 See N. Ph. Howe, ‘In Defense of the Encyclopaedic Mode: On Pliny’s Preface to the Natural History’, Latomus 44 (1985), 561–76 at 574 and A. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Pliny the Elder and Man’s Unnatural History’, GaR 37 (1990), 80–96 at 82 on Pliny’s ironic description of his subject matter as sterilis materia. 11 M. Foucault, The Order of Things (London 1970), 37–38, and Meschonnic, Des mots et des mondes (n. 3), 214. 7

strategies of encyclopaedism

19

This relationship between the material and its arrangement is important. If both the content and structure of a work appear to replicate what the work describes (in Pliny’s case, the world),12 then the world as presented by the author in his text can be seen to reproduce the reality of the world external to his text. Indeed, a ‘systematic’ (as opposed to alphabetical) arrangement of knowledge already facilitates the development of themes important to the authorial agenda. Discussions of related issues can be placed side by side, unaVected by the fragmenting rigour of the alphabet, while the system dictating the overall arrangement of the text encourages the reader to consider the whole, not just isolated entries arranged according to letters.13 But these factors are greatly enhanced, when, as in the Natural History, the arrangement of information in a text seems to mirror what the text itself describes. Through this relationship between structure and content, a particular literary presentation of the world can appear directly to reXect the world itself.14 The ambiguous relationship between Pliny’s account of the world, and the reality external to his text is already present in the description of the world with which he opens book 2: It is sacred, eternal, immeasurable (inmensus), wholly within the whole (totus in toto), or rather, entirety itself; Wnite yet resembling the inWnite ( Wnitus et inWnito similis); certain of all things yet resembling the uncertain; embracing all things within and without (extra intra cuncta conplexus in se); and at once the work of Nature and Nature herself (idemque rerum naturae opus et rerum ipsa natura). (NH 2.2)

Pliny’s description has its origins in the cosmological theories of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.15 But it also provides an interesting gloss on the Natural History, itself, after all, a work which claims to describe the world in its entirety. The description deliberately plays on itself—the world is both Wnite and inWnite, certain and uncertain, within and without. Most signiWcantly it is both the work of Nature and Nature herself (rerum naturae opus et rerum ipsa natura). With a seemingly deliberate ambivalence, this last qualiWcation exploits the double meaning of opus (work) so that it can be seen to refer not only to the dual role of Nature as both creator and product, but equally to Pliny’s own 12 Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura displays a similar eVect in which the subject matter is mirrored by the form in which it is presented. See De Rerum Natura, 1.820–7, I. Dionigi, Lucrezio. Le parole e le cose (Bologna 1988), 11–38, and A. Schiesaro, ‘ The Palingenesis of the De Rerum Natura’, PCPS 40 (1994), ´ L 14 (1936), 58–64 lists examples in other Latin authors. 81–107. J. Maronzeau, ‘La leçon par l’exemple’, RE 13 On systematic and alphabetical arrangements see Collison, Encyclopaedias (n. 1), 3; Clark, The Fictional Encyclopaedia (n. 3), 18–19; and A. S. Arnar, Encyclopedism from Pliny to Borges (Chicago 1990), xi: ‘the production of an encyclopaedia is not a natural process but a deliberate and artiWcial ordering of knowledge that reXects a particular world view.’ 14 Clark, The Fictional Encyclopaedia (n. 3), 27: ‘ The encyclopaedia as mirror, then, can have an ambiguous relation to the truth, even while it maintains itself as a simple reXector of the world.’ 15 See Beagon, Roman Nature, 26–54.

20 strategies of encyclopaedism work. Pliny uses opus twice in the preface to refer to his own text,16 and we have already seen that his declared subject matter is rerum natura. The Natural History too, like the world which it describes, can be called rerum naturae opus, a work of Nature; and as a work which claims to recount the sum total of the world, there is always the possibility for conXation of the worlds external and internal to Pliny’s text, so that Historia Naturalis can appear to be rerum ipsa natura. Thus the description of the external world with which Pliny opens book 2, reads simultaneously as a description of the world in words which his own encyclopaedic project constructs—a world that is Wttingly described as ‘immeasurable’ (inmensus), and ‘Wnite and resembling the inWnite’ ( Wnitus et inWnito similis). It is this equation of external reality and internal representation which is the subject of this chapter. A powerful tool in presenting authorial agenda as ‘objective’ fact, the strategy pervades Pliny’s text, underpinning both his presentation of material itself, and the taxonomies with which he chooses to arrange that material.

constructing and controlling totality Totality was an important element in ancient conceptions of the world, so much so that the Greek and Roman words for ‘all/everything’ (to pan and omne) were often used to refer to the world.17 In Pliny’s work, totality is not only a deWning quality of the world he describes (totus in toto), but essential to the description itself. The entire narrative is dominated by a drive for totality (already identiWable in the encyclopaedic objective expressed in the preface). Using phrases such as non omittendum est (‘it must not be omitted’) and nec obliterari convenit (‘it is not proper to pass over’), Pliny instils a sense of entirety throughout the text consistently to remind us of the all-encompassing nature of his work.18 He is also quick to inform us when he has already mentioned something. Like non omittendum est, ut dictum est (‘as I have already said’) becomes a recurrent refrain which continually guides the narrative towards its ultimate goal of entirety; 19 as 16 NH Pref. 12: ‘quod levioris operae hos tibi dedicavi libellos’; ‘the books which I have dedicated to you are of a lighter nature’ and Pref. 19: ‘haec Wducia operis’; ‘this is the guarantee of my work.’ 17 e.g. Plato, Timaeus 27 c, and Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 1.419. Some relevant sources are collected in A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge 1987), sections 4–5, and 44. 18 For a selection from the art books alone see NH 33.37, 34.24, 34.137, 35.9, 35.115, 35.121, 35.138, 35.145, 36.15, 36.83, 36.106, 36.154, 36.204. 19 Again a selection from the art books: NH 33.125, 34.1, 34.62, 34.149, 35.29, 35.30, 35.101, 35.128, 35.145, 35.163, 35.174, 35.182, 35.190, 35.192, 35.202, 36.20, 36.115, 36.130, 36.149, 36.152, 36.157, 36.164, 36.189, 36.203, 37.2, 37.51, 37.62, 37.177; other strategies which Pliny uses to emphasize the enormity and completeness of his work include his repetition of est et and quoque to highlight that he is incorporating yet another fact into his list (e.g. 34.173, 35.29 V., 35.176, 37.99 V.), and his use of the word hactenus (so much for) (e.g. 33.41, 34.4), to indicate entirety.


21

if Pliny possesses a balance-sheet of the world, on which, one by one, he marks oV each item as he includes it in his work. But Pliny does not just remind the reader of the totality of his enterprise. He repeatedly and explicitly draws our attention to it, so that along with all the contents of the world, totality itself becomes a subject which must be catalogued in its entirety. At 33.130, for example, he notes that ‘in order that the whole subject of mirrors may be completed here’ (atque ut omnia de speculis peragantur in hoc loco) he must mention mirrors made at Brundisium. Again at the beginning of book 35, he emphasizes that he will have soon said all that there is to say about painting.20 Some one hundred and Wfty chapters later, at 35.151, he concludes that he has acquitted himself admirably, for he has detailed everything, and more besides—‘Enough and more than enough has been said about painting’ (De pictura satis superque). The opening sentence of the Wnal book (37.1), enlarges this tactic to highlight the soon-to-be entirety of the work itself: ‘So that nothing is lacking from the work that I have undertaken (Ut nihil instituto operi desit), there remains the subject of gemstones.’ The paradox of this quest for totality, is that, as Pliny himself admits, in order to catalogue the whole world, he has to leave things out.21 At 3.42, for example, he writes: In this section I must again do what I did when I was discussing the sky—that is to mention some particular points and a few stars. I only ask my readers to remember that I am rushing ahead in order to set out the details of the whole world (ad singula toto orbe edissertanda festinari).

With playful irony, Pliny cites totality as the justiWcation for brevity. But his confession serves not only as a defence, but once again to draw attention to the gargantuan nature of his project. The innumerability of totality is an idea to which he frequently returns. At 34.49, for example, he prefaces his list of sculptors who are famous for their smaller statues with this comment: It is almost impossible to count the myriad artists (innumera prope artiWcum multitudo) whose fame rests on Wgures and statues of a smaller size.

And yet this cataloguer extraordinaire goes on to enumerate not only those made famous by such art, but also those who were inferior to them (34.52: ‘far inferior to those mentioned above’). He can do the impossible—count the uncountable and more besides. Already, at the beginning of his discussion of bronze statuary, Pliny emphasized the enormity of the subject. 20 NH 35.2: ‘And Wrst I will say what remains to be said about painting’; also NH 36.1: ‘It remains for me to discuss the nature of stones.’ 21 Although, as I will argue in Ch. 3, totality can also lead to problematic inclusions.

22 strategies of encyclopaedism But [the art of bronze statuary] has proliferated ad inWnitum; if one wanted to give a full account of it, the subject would occupy numerous volumes (multorum voluminum opere); and as for a completely exhaustive account, who could manage that? (NH 34.35)

Recalling his description of the world itself, Pliny imagines bronze statues stretching to inWnity (ad inWnitum), oVering a subject which could, like his own work, occupy numerous volumes (multorum voluminum opere). Rhodes, he goes on to tell us at 34.36, has 3,000 statues, and there are at least that number in Athens, Olympia, and Delphi. What mortal could recount them all?; or what value can be felt in such knowledge? Still, it may be pleasurable (voluptarium sit) to touch on the most remarkable, and those which are well-known for some particular reason, and to name the most famous artists, although it would be impossible to catalogue the myriad works made by each individual sculptor (singulorum quoque inexplicabili multitudine); Lysippus, for example, is said to have made 1,500 statues.22

If elsewhere his aim to describe the entire world necessitated omitting certain things, then here too, Pliny impresses us with his skill at juggling irreconcilable opposites. The material for discussion is endless, impossible to enumerate or catalogue in its entirety, and yet Pliny is still able to dazzle us with an array of facts and Wgures—the thousands of statues in a range of Greek cities; the hundreds of statues made by Lysippus alone. A consummate master of his material, equally at home with inWnity and totality, Pliny artfully presents his omissions as an expression of authorial concern for both his reader’s pleasure and the quality of the knowledge he includes in his work. Instead of an endless list of bronze statues (‘what value can be felt in such knowledge?’), his summary of the most remarkable statues and famous sculptors will be pleasurable (voluptarium sit). Pliny’s narrative eVects a Wne balancing act between totality and exclusion so that his catalogue of the world often appears to be a game in which he plays at seeing how much of the world he can leave out in order to chart its entirety. And if Pliny constantly strives for comprehensiveness, then he is also keen to defend both the originality and quality of his enterprise.23 At Preface 14, Pliny claims (quite rightly) to be the Wrst person to have embarked on such a venture. Besides, my journey follows a road not often frequented by authors, nor one on which the mind is keen to wander. Not one of our Roman authors has attempted the same enterprise; there is not one Greek who has tackled the whole subject single-handed. 22 Cf. NH 36.55 where Pliny says that ‘it is pointless for me to discuss the types and colours of marble, since they are already so well-known, and they are not easy to list, being so numerous’ (nec facile est enumerare in tanta multitudine). 23 On Pliny’s defence of his work, see Beagon, Roman Nature, 61–2.


23

Pliny repeatedly compares his work with that of his predecessors, to assert its originality and superiority. At Preface 22 he contrasts his own practice of citing sources, with those who ‘have copied earlier sources, word for word, without acknowledgement’. While at 37.52–3, he includes this discussion of lyncurium merely to refute the suggestion that the substance exists. The stubbornness of the sources forces me to discuss lyncurium next. Since even if they do not contend that lyncurium is amber, they still want it to be a precious stone— maintaining, indeed, that it is formed from the urine of the lynx, but also from a type of earth . . . I myself consider the whole matter to be a fabrication, and believe that no precious stone of this name has ever been seen in our time. The reports of its medicinal properties (that, if drunk, it breaks down stones in the bladder, and that if taken with wine, or even looked at, it alleviates jaundice) are also untrue.

The passage at once validates the quality of the knowledge contained in the Natural History, and illustrates its totality—Pliny includes even things which do not exist in his survey of the world. But it also illustrates that Pliny is not simply interested in constructing his own representation of the world; he is also at pains to deconstruct earlier representations, and thus move his work from the realm of literary representation, ever closer to that of apparent reality. While Pliny criticizes his sources generally, he is particularly hostile towards the Greeks.24 Already in his claim to be the Wrst to attempt an account of the world in its entirety, Pliny singled out the absence of a Greek predecessor (‘there is not one Greek who has tackled the whole subject single-handed.’). At 35.1–2, Pliny again contrasts his own enterprise with earlier Greek examples. It remains for me to discuss the various types of minerals and stones. These represent an even more extensive series, each individual item having been discussed (by the Greeks, in particular) in numerous volumes. My discussion will be as brief as is appropriate for this project, but without omitting anything that is necessary or relating to Nature (modo nihil necessarium aut naturale omittentes).

As at 34.35, here too Pliny plays on the fact that his work occupies many volumes.25 The Greeks have written many volumes on the subject, but he will, single-handedly, Wll multiple volumes with the whole world, not just one subject. Once again he draws our attention to the delicate balancing act which the quest for totality requires—brevity is of the essence if he is to achieve his aim of charting all of Nature, but he will not leave out anything that is necessary or to do with Nature (modo nihil necessarium aut naturale omittentes). The passage recalls and reinforces his assertion in the preface, that his subject is ‘the nature of 24 Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Pliny the Elder’ (n. 10), 93–4; Beagon, Roman Nature, 18–20; R. French, Ancient Natural History (London and New York 1994), 219. 25 Cf. 37.59 where he speciWcally mentions his own volumes: ‘in all of these volumes’ (totis voluminibus his).

24 strategies of encyclopaedism things (rerum natura) or, in other words, life’. His objective of totality is justiWed, and his claim of originality is reinforced by setting the Greek corpus of works on stones and earth in clear contrast to his own volumes which encompass entirety. Here the superiority of Pliny’s work over that of the Greeks is implied. But on several occasions Pliny is openly critical of Greek scholarship. At 37.31, for example, in his account of amber, Pliny announces: ‘I will now take this opportunity to expose a Greek fabrication (vanitas). I ask my readers to bear with me, since it is vital to recognize that not everything the Greeks have written deserves admiration.’26 As Pliny’s proviso ‘not everything’ suggests, his relationship with Greek scholarship was an uneasy one. Much of the knowledge which informed his work came from Greek sources, as a glance at the bibliographies in book 1 will show.27 But the deeply critical attitude expressed here is typical of Roman culture of the time. Late republican and early imperial writers reveal a widespread suspicion of Greek culture in general, and Greek scholarship in particular. Pliny himself at 29.14 quotes Cato’s assessment of the Greeks, as ‘an ignorant race of good-for-nothings . . . when that lot gives us their literature, it will corrupt everything; and even more so, if they send their doctors here.’ Roman antagonism towards Greek scholarship was linked in part to a suspicion of philosophy, a predominantly Greek branch of knowledge.28 But it also formed part of the belief that contact with Greece and the Greek East was directly responsible for a decline in Roman culture and traditional practices (mos maiorum). Horace famously encapsulated this ambivalent relationship with the Greeks in his statement (Epodes 2.156–7) ‘captured Greece captured the Werce conqueror and brought arts to rustic Latium’ (Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis | intulit agresti Latio), but the sentiment is expressed in numerous Latin authors, including Pliny.29 In his discussion of medicine, for example (another area of knowledge dominated by the Greeks, and Wercely criticized by Pliny),30 Pliny notes at 24.5: ‘So it is certainly true that, as a result of our greatness, the traditional customs of the Roman people have been destroyed, that in conquering we have been conquered (vincendoque victi sumus). We are subject to foreigners, and in one of the arts they have mastered the masters.’ 26

For more censure of the Greeks see NH 7.174, 26.15, 36.91, 37.32–3, and 37.40–1. Beagon, Roman Nature, 19. At 7.8, Pliny pays homage to the scholarship of the Greeks. 28 See Cicero, De Finibus 1.1–4, Tacitus, Agricola 4.2–4. M. GriYn, ‘Philosophy, Politics and Politicians’, in M. GriYn and J. Barnes (eds.), Philosophia Togata. Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society (Oxford 1989), 1–37. 29 See G. Williams, Change and Decline. Roman Literature in the Early Empire (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London 1978), 6–51, on the theme of decline in Roman literature esp. 14–17 on Pliny, and 102–52 on Rome’s relationship with Greek culture. Also GriYn, ‘Philosophy, Politics and Politicians’ (n. 28), 13. 30 e.g. NH 34.108. On medicine in Pliny see Beagon, Roman Nature, 202–20, esp. 202–4; and French, Ancient Natural History (n. 24), 223–5. 27


25

Pliny’s attitude to Greek scholarship is an expression of the nationalistic current which underlies much of the Natural History. This is already evident in his division of the lists of sources in book 1 into ‘authors’ (ex auctoribus), and ‘foreign authors’ (externis), while at 3.122 he is openly grudging about quoting a Greek source in his account of Italy. When condemning the Greek explanation for the origins of amber at 37.31 (see above, p. 24), Pliny is triumphant that it is an Italian account which proves the Greek theory wrong (‘That this story is untrue is clear from the evidence of Italy’). The Wnal section of this chapter— ‘Constructing a Roman Totality’—explores how much of the knowledge that makes up the Natural History is associated with Roman power. But here we encounter a similar strategy, where in denigrating the Greek scholarship (which informed much of his work), Pliny asserts not only the originality of his project, but its Romanness. But if the Greek sources are criticized by default for being foreign, then they are also, Pliny implies, immoral. On several occasions, Pliny speciWcally refers to the vanitas (emptiness, falsehood) of Greek scholars, a term which he uses elsewhere to characterize expressions of extravagance and intemperance. In his discussion of amber quoted above, it was the vanitas of the Greeks which Pliny sought to expose. At 37.195, again Pliny refers to the vanitas of the Greeks, while interestingly, at 37.54 he uses the word in connection with another foreign and highly criticized source, the Magi.31 At 36.75, Pliny refers to the vanitas revealed in the building of pyramids which he describes as ‘a pointless and foolish display of royal wealth’ (regum pecuniae otiosa ac stulta ostentatio), while at 36.91 once again he condemns the vanitas of foreign kings. One of the reasons that the Romans were so critical of Greek scholarship was the perceived connection between Rome’s contact with Greece and the decline in traditional Roman customs (mos maiorum). In contrasting his own works with the Greek scholarship which is not only unreliable, but implicitly opposed to the ideal virtues embodied in the Roman mos maiorum, Pliny at once asserts the superiority of his own knowledge and his (Roman) morals. Censure of his sources is not the only strategy that Pliny uses to negotiate a precarious balance between totality and incompleteness, success and failure. Throughout his work, he is constantly aware of the need to develop and employ strategies to maintain the appearance of authorial control. At 33.112, for example, admitting that he does not know the reason for a particular practice, he adds ‘on account of which, I will be more careful (diligentius) when chasing up all the facts (omnia).’ Elsewhere, invenio (‘I Wnd’) is a word which Pliny often uses to assert his 31 NH 37.195: ‘ There is no end to the names given to precious stones—I have absolutely no intention of listing them all, innumerable as they are (innumera), thanks to the vanitas of the Greeks.’ 37.54: ‘for the greater beneWt of mankind, I will, incidentally, disprove the unspeakable lies put about by the Magi’ (Magorum infandam vanitatem), Beagon, Roman Nature, 19 and 74.

26


self-professed quality of diligence (perhaps, not surprisingly, accorded an ideal status in the Natural History)32 and enhance his claims to originality.33 And just as ut dictum est (as I have said) or diximus (we have said) are used to construct and enforce the illusion of totality, so the formulaic dicemus (I will speak [of this later]) and mox docebimus ([as] I will soon show) both insure Pliny against the accusation that he has omitted something and assert his control over his project—he will discuss it when he has reached the proper juncture in his work.34 He employs a similar tactic at the end of book 33, where he writes, at 33.164: I am not unaware (non ignoramus) that the prices that I have included at various points diVer from place to place, and change nearly every year . . . whether because of the cost of shipping, or because of the price paid by a particular dealer, or because some very powerful bidder whips up the price at auction; I have not forgotten (non obliti) that when Nero was emperor, the entire district of the Seplasia in Capua brought a case against Demetrius. I have, however, found it necessary to state ( poni tamen necessarium fuit) the prices usually fetched in Rome, in order to give an idea of the standard price for a particular item.35

Twice Pliny emphasizes his control over his project (non ignoramus and non obliti). And the concluding sentence of this passage, and signiWcantly of the book as a whole, makes his authorial position appear unassailable. His emphasis on the necessity of including this particular piece of information (Poni tamen necessarium fuit) looks forward to his assertion at the beginning of book 35 that he will not omit anything that is necessary or to do with Nature (nihil necessarium aut naturale omittentes). If Pliny’s work is to be seen to replicate the world it describes, then it, like its subject, must encompass totality.

classifying the world ClassiWcation is integral to the games of totality and incompleteness, of authorial control and chaos, success and failure, which Pliny plays with his reader.36 It is 32

e.g. NH 3.17 where he says of Agrippa, ‘Agrippa, a man who demonstrated such great precision and care in his work’ (Agrippam quidem in tanta viri diligentia praeterque in hoc cura). See Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio, 287 on Pliny’s perception of his work as a cura. 33 e.g. NH 33.121, 34.13, 34.15, 34.26, 35.168, 36.42, 36.49, 37.28, 37.103, 37.104. See Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio, 201–3 for a discussion of the negative resonances of the word invenio in Pliny’s work, when it is linked to discoveries which are perceived as luxurious. 34 e.g. NH 33.28, 33.116, 34.147, 35.16, 35.29, 35.60, 35.193, 36.76, 37.58. On formulas see J. Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge 1977), 112–28. 35 On the recording of prices in the Natural History see Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio, 268–77. 36 On classiWcation in general see C. Le´vi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (London 1966); Goody, Domestication of the Savage Mind (n. 34); and Foucault, The Order of Things (n. 11). On Pliny’s classiWcation of animals see L. Bodson, ‘Aspects of Pliny’s Zoology’, in French/Greenaway, Roman Science, 98–110 at 100–4. On his classiWcation of plants see A. G. Morton, ‘Pliny on Plants: His Place in the History of Botany’, in French/Greenaway, Roman Science, 86–97.


27

both the means by which Pliny appears to present a complete picture of the universe, and negotiates the paradoxical necessity to exclude things in order to report the universe in its entirety. Already in its overall organization (into an opening book detailing the universe, and subsequent books dealing with the contents of the earth both above and beneath its surface) the Natural History appears to encompass the whole universe. It is in Pliny’s presentation of information within the individual books, however, that we see this idea developed most clearly. The taxonomic arrangements appear to follow a pattern preordained by the world itself, and thus not only serve to maintain the illusion that the author is encompassing totality, but also suggest that Pliny’s text exactly replicates the world it describes. Having Wnished his discussion of copper in book 34, for example, Pliny introduces his account of iron, at 34.138, with the following statement: ‘Next I must give details (indicari debent) of iron mines and their products.’37 His account of sard and onyx is similarly introduced, at 37.91: I must not postpone the discussion of sard any longer (nec sarda diVerenda est), . . . and on the way, I must give details of the properties (indicanda natura) of all the ‘Wery’ gemstones.

In both these passages, Pliny’s classiWcation of his subject matter is given strong overtones of obligation.38 His introduction of new categories in his work is presented not as a personal choice, but as a requirement—the ores of iron must be noted (indicari debent), an account of sard must be given, and the properties of all the other Wery red gemstones must be described (nec diVerenda est . . . indicanda). The eVect is to suggest that Pliny is following a blueprint of the world. He simply divides his material according to a system which is already present in the reality he seeks to reproduce. On occasion, the reader is explicitly drawn into this stratagem. At 36.126, Pliny appeals to his audience directly. As we move from marbles to the the remarkable properties of the stones which remain (ad reliquorum lapidum insignes naturas), who would doubt (quis dubitet) that it is the magnet that Wrst comes to mind?

The transition from marble to magnets is deftly presented as a progression inherent to the reality external to the text—who could doubt that the magnet comes next in the natural order of things? That Pliny is charting the total order of

37 On mineralogy in the Natural History see J. F. Healy, ‘Pliny on Mineralogy and Metals’, in French/ Greenaway, Roman Science, 111–46. 38 For other instances of this see NH 33.95 dicantur; 34.156 sequitur; 36.75 dicantur; 36.121 dicantur; 37.90 exponenda est.

28 strategies of encyclopaedism things is once again emphasized in the words ad reliquorum lapidum (the remaining stones); we are to believe that he is leaving nothing out.39 It is signiWcant then, that, at 19.1–2, Pliny openly criticizes the systems of classiWcation followed by his predecessors. Many writers have discussed the care of gardens next. However, in my opinion, it is not the right moment to move directly to a discussion of this subject, and I am surprised that some writers (seeking from these subjects the satisfaction of knowledge or a reputation for learning) have disregarded so many plants, having made no mention of those that grow of their own accord, or from cultivation

It is, of course, yet another opportunity for Pliny to assert both the totality of his own project, in contrast to that of his predecessors, and the superiority of his knowledge—they, unlike him, have omitted an entire category of plants. But the passage also implies that Pliny alone knows the true order of Nature. Others may wish to pass on to a discussion of gardens, but Pliny knows that the subject which really comes next is ‘plants which grow of their own accord, or which are cultivated’. Already in the preface, Pliny highlighted the diYculties in revealing the classiWcations inherent in Nature. In a statement which, like the description of the world with which he opened book 2, deliberately plays on itself, he notes (Pref. 15) that ‘it is diYcult . . . to give nature to all things and all her qualities to Nature’ (omnibus vero naturam et naturae sua omnia). Here he is less modest, contrasting his success with his predecessors’ failures. Pliny’s presentation of his taxonomy as a system which Nature herself has preordained is enhanced by his continued insistence on discussing everything in its proper place. Just as he will not omit anything that is necessary or to do with Nature from his work (35.1), so he will discuss everything in the place it has been assigned by Nature. At 2.30, for example, he writes of the inXuence of the stars on the earth: their power exerts a strong inXuence on the earth; indeed it is precisely because of their eVect, their brightness and their great number, that it has been possible to come to know them in such minute detail, as I will demonstrate in the proper place (sicut suo demonstrabimus loco).

Again at 34.147, he says of the magnet, ‘I will speak about the lode-stone in the appropriate place’ (De magnete lapide suo loco dicemus). This emphasis on locating everything in its proper place (suo loco), not only allows Pliny to assert control 39

For another instance of this, see the indexes in book 1 where Pliny describes the contents of book 26 as ‘the remaining medicines by type’ (reliquae per genera medicinae) and those of book 27 as ‘the remaining kinds of plants, medicines derived from them’ (reliqua genera herbarum, medicinae ex his)—such is the enormity and totality of his enterprise, that he manages to Wll two books with remnants. See also 2.31–2: ‘Now, leaving the framework of the world itself to one side, I will discuss the remaining bodies found between the sky and the earth’ (Nunc relicto mundi ipsius corpore reliqua inter caelum terrasque tractentur).


29

over his text, but more importantly, enhances the illusion that his own representation of the world replicates its real model.40 This conXation of the worlds external and internal to Pliny’s text is extended to encompass the action of classifying itself. Pliny alone may know the true order of Nature, but in this he simply mirrors Nature herself, who is cast as the supreme classiWer (at least in Pliny’s representation). Yet the earth also provides us with medicines on her surface, in the same way that she provides us with corn—generous and ungrudging in all things which beneWt us. But those things which are hidden and buried underground, those things which are not readily found, these are the very things which destroy us and drive us to the depths. (NH 33.2–3)

Like her cataloguer, Nature has put everything in its proper place. That which is of beneWt to mankind she has placed on the surface, so that it is easily accessible, while that which is destructive she has hidden out of harm’s way.41 In prefacing his discussion of things hidden in the earth (which he places right at the end of his survey of Nature) with this discussion of Nature’s own classiWcations, Pliny suggests that his order follows that of his model. Just as Nature has buried things which are harmful to man deep in the earth, so these things are placed at the very end of Pliny’s account of the world, as if, having discussed everything on the face of the earth, Pliny Wnally delves beneath her surface to complete his catalogue of totality. Here it is not just the model and its representation which merge, but the respective creators themselves. In his own classiWcations, Pliny is replicating the actions of Nature herself. As if to emphasize that he alone knows the true order, divisions, and subdivisions of the world, Pliny deliberately draws attention to all the means of classiWcation at his disposal as he nears the end of his catalogue. His discussion of gems begins by classifying them according to colour.42 At 37.138, however, Pliny tells us that he shall classify the rest alphabetically,43 while later on in his account of gems he introduces another method of classiWcation: There is yet another way to classify (est etiamnum alia distinctio) precious stones, which I would now like to apply, having already changed my methods of presentation from time to time. For there are some stones which take their names from parts of the body . . . (NH 37.186)

40

For other instances of this approach see NH 33.28, 34.35, 35.60, 36.8, 36.30, 36.101, 37.91. On the providence of nature see Beagon, Roman Nature, 37–42, 189–90, 222–7 and French, Ancient Natural History (n. 24), 203–4. 42 NH 37.62, starting with green stones, then red, blue, and purple—e.g. 37.121: ‘At this point, I will begin on another category—purple stones and those which deviate from them.’ 43 NH 37.138: ‘Having set forth the principal gemstones according to colour, I will now describe the remaining stones in alphabetical order.’ 41

30


The new taxonomy is yet another item (est etiamnum alia distinctio) for Pliny to include in his catalogue of totality, so that he incorporates not only all the world in his work, but also all methods of cataloguing that world. ClassiWcation, along with the material which it orders, is annexed in the quest for totality.

achieving totality Pliny persistently emphasizes the completeness of his work, whether in drawing the reader’s attention to his inclusion of a particular piece of information, or in describing something as innumerable only to go on to catalogue it. The appearance of totality is crucial for the development of the themes and concerns which Pliny pursues in the Natural History. In seeming to detail the contents of the world in their entirety, while at the same time structuring his work according to a system apparently devised by Nature herself, Pliny can suggest that his own representation of the world exactly replicates the world as it exists outside of his text. The closing paragraph of the preface to the Natural History might seem to support the view that Pliny never intended the work to be read in its entirety. Since it is in the public interest ( publico bono) to spare your workload, I have appended to this letter a list of the contents of each book of my Natural History, and I have taken the greatest care that you should not have to read them all. With this index, you will be able to ensure that others need not read through the whole work either—they will simply have to look up whatever it is they want, and they will know where to Wnd it. (NH Pref. 33)

If in breadth alone, the Natural History has been seen to oVer an ancient precedent for the modern encyclopaedia, then these instructions only serve to strengthen the comparison. But the instructions are not as artless as they may initially appear. Presented with the same rhetorical modesty that underpins Pliny’s entire address to the emperor, they emphasize empire as the foundation stone of Pliny’s work. The ‘table of contents’ which he attaches to the Natural History is not simply an aid for the reader, but necessary for ‘the public good’ (publico bono). More signiWcantly for the reader’s experience of the work, Pliny has constructed the Natural History in such a way as to make such instructions essentially defunct. At a certain level there is, in fact, no need to read the work in its entirety, since throughout the Natural History, Pliny employs the same strategies to suggest that his work not only encompasses the whole world, but repeats a set of structures inherent to reality itself. So that if the ‘table of contents’ appear to oVer the reader the means by which to control their experience of the work, in practice it amounts to little. Wherever they might choose to


31

dip into the Natural History, they will always Wnd an image of the world as Pliny has constructed it. This is clearly illustrated in the ‘tables of contents’ themselves. Forming book 1 of the Natural History, this reader’s aid is perhaps most helpful in the way that it reproduces the textual strategies which govern the work as a whole; so that before we even embark on Pliny’s encyclopaedic account of the world, the outcome has already been captured for us in miniature. Here all the disparate forms of knowledge (from public records to hearsay, history to folklore) out of which the Natural History is constructed, are compressed in the one formula which religiously follows each index to the thirty-seven books: ‘Total: x facts, investigations, and observations’ (Summa: res et historiae et observationes x).44 For Locher, the formula points to three clearly identiWable categories of information which Pliny draws on in his work—‘undocumented factual information without further additions’ (res), ‘historical reminiscence’ (historiae), and Pliny’s own ‘eyewitness’ account (observationes).45 One can understand the temptation to combine this formula with Pliny the Younger’s claim that ‘he read nothing without taking notes’ (Letters 3.5.10) to imagine Pliny, as Locher does, surrounded by ‘a pile of little tablets, of scraps of papyrus, each of which contained one passage taken from the commentarii, be it res, observatio or historia’.46 This, after all, is the impression that Pliny presumably intended to give. Numbering the res, historiae, and observationes contained in each book is the ultimate expression of authorial control. It suggests that Pliny has not only included everything that is known about the world, but also all forms of knowledge. And if Pliny alone knows the true order of Nature, then the formula intimates that he can also identify each isolated element that goes to make up (his portrait of ) the world. Pliny emerges as the arch-mathematician, dazzling us with his powers of computation, as in the index to book 29: (xiv–xl): Remedies from undomesticated or wild animals (ram 5 and next book 7 ¼ 12, sheep 2 and next book 15 ¼ 17, mules 1 and next book 5 ¼ 6, horses 1 and next book 3 ¼ 4, dog 16 and next book 41 ¼ 57, . . . )

Here the contents of books 29 and 30 merge, both to be counted together to reach the ultimate equation—books 1–37 ¼ the world. But what the calculations and computations ultimately reveal is the extent to which totality and the world it represents are constructed entirely out of textual artiWce.

44

In the indexes to books 20–33 and 35 res is replaced by medicinae. A. Locher, ‘The structure of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History’, in French/Greenaway, Roman Science, 20–30. See also W. D. Coulson, ‘The Reliability of Pliny’s Chapters on Greek and Roman Sculpture’, CW 69 (1976), 361–72 and G. E. R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology (Cambridge 1983), 135–49. 46 Locher, ‘The structure of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History’ (n. 45), 22. 45

32


Given the intricate network of strategies on which Pliny’s text depends and out of which his world is constructed, it is interesting that at 2.8, Pliny highlights the dual meaning of the word mundus (the universe). For the Greeks have named the world with a word that means ‘ornament’, while we have named it mundus, because of its perfect and absolute elegance. As for the word caelum [the sky], it undoubtedly has its origins in caelati [engraved], as Marcus Varro has explained.

Pliny’s discussion of the Roman and Greek words for the world reminds us of their origins in artistry (both literary and visual). The Greeks, we are told, call their world after the word meaning ornament, while the Romans use the word which designates perfect Wnish and grace (a perfecta absolutaque elegantia mundum).47 Caelum (the sky) too, is rooted in artistic creation—Pliny repeats Varro’s (mistaken) etymology for the word in caelo, meaning to engrave (and to add ornament to a literary work).48 Pliny’s earlier description of the world (discussed at the beginning of this chapter) as ‘at once the work of Nature and Nature herself’ (rerum naturae opus, rerum ipsa natura) played on the relationship between his own literary account of rerum natura and its real model. Here again, Pliny’s discussion of words for the world can refer equally to the three-dimensional world external to the Natural History, and the world of the Natural History itself. Both, in Pliny’s representation, are Wnished and complete (absoluta). And like his own work, the world itself emerges as an extended ornament of speech, a perfect and absolute rhetorical Xourish.49

constructing a roman totality If Pliny employs taxonomy and classiWcation to suggest that his text encompasses entirety, then the mechanisms of the encyclopaedia are also rallied to present the world catalogued in his text as a world dominated by Rome. Like earlier writers such as Polybius, Pliny too was aware of the discrepancy between the Roman 47

For this meaning of mundus see Propertius 4.5.43, Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3.479, and Aulus Gellius 17.2.12; for kosmos used metaphorically to mean an ornament of speech see Aristotle, Rhetoric 1408a14, Poetics 1457b2 and 1458a33. 48 For caelo meaning to add ornament to a literary work see Varro, De Lingua Latina 5.18 and Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria 10.3.18. 49 On rhetoric in Pliny, see J. F. Healy, ‘The Language and Style of Pliny the Elder’, Filologia e forme letterarie: Studi oVerti a Francesco della Corte 4 (Urbino 1988), 1–24; and M. Beagon, ‘Burning the Brambles: Rhetoric and Ideology in Pliny, Natural History 18 (1–24)’, in D. Innes, H. Hine, and C. Pelling (eds.), Ethics and Rhetoric (Oxford 1995), 117–32.


33

claim to world-wide dominion, and the geographical reality of empire.50 He acknowledges the existence of a Parthian empire, and speciWcally uses the word imperium—a word which he elsewhere uses of Rome—when he introduces his account of it.51 Although he is also keen to tell us that the capital, Persepolis, was destroyed by Alexander the Great.52 But what is striking about Pliny’s geography elsewhere, is the way in which, through its compilation of sources, it arranges and classiWes the world as unequivocally Roman.53 In several passages of his geography, as in the Natural History as a whole, Pliny exhibits a blatant nationalism. His preface to the description of Italy, for example, is an undisguised eulogy of Italy and its people.54 But these intermittent assertions of Roman power alone are not enough to create an overriding sense that the borders of Rome stretch to the boundaries of the world. Instead, Pliny’s choice of taxonomies to describe the world work on a more subtle level to present us with a coherent picture of a world subjected by the Roman empire. Throughout books 3–6 Pliny uses a range of taxonomic devices to assert the ‘romanness’ and ‘imperialness’ of the world which he describes. Perhaps the most notable is his inclusion of lists enumerating the towns in each successive region. He writes of Baetica, for example, at 3.7: There are four jurisdictions: Gaditanus, Cordubensis, Astigitanus, and Hispalensis. Its towns number 175 in all, of which nine are colonies (coloniae), ten municipalities of Roman citizens (municipia), twenty-seven with ancient Latin rights (Latio antiquitus donata), six free towns (libertate), three bound by treaty to Rome ( foedere) and 120 paying tribute (stipendiaria).

It is generally accepted that these are excerpts from administrative lists, probably compiled under Augustus, which Pliny has inserted into his text.55 The docu50 See P. A. Brunt, ‘Laus Imperii’, in P. D. A. Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker (eds.), Imperialism in the Ancient World (Cambridge 1978), 168–72; C. Nicolet, ‘L’Empire Romain: espace, temps et politique’, Ktema 8 (1983), 163–73 at 163–6; R. Moynihan, ‘Geographical Mythology and Roman Imperial Ideology’, in R. Winkes (ed.), The Age of Augustus (Louvain-la-Neuve 1985), 149–62, and K. Clarke, Between Geography and History. Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World (Oxford 1999), 326. 51 NH 6.111: ‘I will now give a brief account of their [the Parthians’] empire.’ Cf. 5.88, where he also refers to Parthia’s empire. 52 NH 6.115: ‘which leads to Persepolis, the capital of the kingdom, which was destroyed by Alexander.’ On several occasions elsewhere in books 3–6, Pliny makes explicit references to the loss of empire. He refers to Macedonia’s former empire twice (4.33 and 4.39) and to the former Phoenician empire at 5.76. 53 See C. Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor 1991), K. Clarke, ‘In Search of the Author of Strabo’s Geography’, JRS 87 (1997), 92–110 and id., Between Geography and History (n. 50), on other romanocentric portrayals of the world. 54 NH 3.39–41. Strabo also includes a eulogy of Italy in his geography (6.4.1). See Clarke, Between Geography and History (n. 50), 295–9. 55 K. Sallmann, Die Geographie des Alteren Plinius in ihrem Verha¨ltnis zu Varro (Berlin and New York 1971), 95–106; C. Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 53), 176–8; M. Christol, ‘Pline L’Ancien et la Formula de la Province Narbonnaise’, in C. Nicolet (ed.), La me´moire perdue. A la recherche des archives oublieés, publiques et priveés, de la Rome antique (Paris 1994), 45–63.

34 strategies of encyclopaedism ments from which they derive would certainly have been longer and included more detail, and therefore the decision to include only these summaries seems highly deliberate. Within the list, everything is deWned by its relationship to Rome. Whether it be a free town, a treaty town, or a town with Latin rights, its presence and position on the list is determined by the status accorded it by the Roman empire. These sorts of lists are not just included in Pliny’s account of Spain, but pervade almost all of his geography.56 Taxonomy and empire become one and the same in Pliny’s account,57 so much so that in his description of southern Gaul at 3.36, the very process of listing is equated with conquest. Inland, the colonies are: Arelate, where the sixth legion is stationed; Baeterrae, station of the seventh legion; . . . The towns with Latin rights are: Aquae Sestiae, home of the Salluvii; Avennio, home of the Cavares; . . . There are nineteen towns of little importance (oppida vero ignobilia), as well as twenty-four paying tribute to the people of Nemausus. The emperor Galba added two Alpine tribes to the list (adiecit formulae Galba imperator)—the Avantici and the Bodiontici, whose town is Dinia.

Pliny’s aim to catalogue the world as imperial and Roman is revealed quite clearly here in his qualiWcation of nineteen towns which don’t Wt into the imperial administrative categories as ignobilia, unimportant.58 Even more revealing, however, is the equation of the list of towns with the expansion of empire. Galba’s conquests are explicitly presented as additions to the list (adiecit formulae Galba imperator); as if Pliny’s inventory of the world oVers a list to which each successive imperator can add his new triumphs. Conquest is transformed into the ability to catalogue. And implicitly, these terms are reversible so that the authorial process of cataloguing becomes in itself an act of conquest. Exclusion (as much as inclusion) too, acts as a means of asserting (Roman) control. In the last passage, towns which fell outside the administration of empire were counted as insigniWcant within Pliny’s narrative. Elsewhere in the geography books, Pliny employs the same tactic. In his lists of towns in Baetica, for example, some of which I have already quoted above, one of Pliny’s classiWcations, at 3.7, is ‘things that are worth mentioning or easy to express in Latin’ (ex his digna memoratu aut Latino sermone dictu facilia). At 3.139 we encounter an almost identical formula—‘few of these people are worth mentioning, nor are 56

e.g. NH 5.29–30 and 3.46 where Pliny speciWcally highlights his use of another imperial taxonomy— Augustus’ division (discriptio) of Italy into eleven regions. Discussions of the discriptio disagree about exact content, although it seems likely that it was some sort of an administrative document. Sallmann, Geographie (n. 55), 95–106 has a useful summary of all the scholarship. See also Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 53), 172–7. 57 Collison, Encyclopaedias (n. 1), 25: ‘Moreover, like many other early encyclopaedists, Pliny was an administrator accustomed to seeing the world in terms of divisions and subdivisions.’ 58 For other examples of Pliny classing towns/tribes as ignobilis see NH 4.74, 5.106, 5.135, 5.111, 5.123, 5.129, 5.131. See Christol, ‘Pline L’Ancien et la Formula de la Province Narbonnaise’ (n. 55), 58–61.


35

their names easy to pronounce’ (populorum pauca eVatu digna aut facilia nomina). This pairing of things ‘which are worth mentioning’ or ‘easy to express in Latin’ suggests a certain approximation of the two.59 The exclusions may, of course, be practical—why should Pliny’s readers wrestle with complicated barbarian names?60 But in a eulogy of Italy at 3.39, Pliny explicitly links the Roman language and world dominion.61 at once the foster-child and parent of all other lands (omnium terrarum alumna eadem et parens), Italy was chosen by the divine inspiration of the gods to make heaven itself yet more glorious, to unite scattered empires, to make customs more gentle, and through the sharing of a common language, to draw together in conversation the discordant and wild tongues of so many nations (tot populorum discordes ferasque linguas sermonis commercio contraheret ad colloquia), to bestow civilization on mankind. In brief to become the one homeland for all peoples throughout the world (breviterque una cunctarum gentium in toto orbe patria Weret).

In this rhapsodic vision of the Roman empire, Italy and the limits of the world are inextricably linked. Pliny imagines Italy as not only the conqueror of the world, but its very creator, the country which gave birth to all others (terra omnium terrarum alumna eadem et parens). Within this divinely sanctioned Roman world empire, language is assigned a crucial role. The signature of empire, it is through the Latin language that disparate elements of the world are bonded to become a cohesive entity (et tot populorum discordes ferasque linguas sermonis commercio contraheret ad colloquia). Indeed, elsewhere, barbarians are characterized speciWcally by their lack of language. At 5.45, we are told that the Atlas tribe ‘have fallen below the level of human civilization . . . they do not address one another by any names’, while cave-dwellers ‘have no voice’.62 For Lucretius (De Rerum Natura 5.1028–1090), man’s ability to speak placed him above animals and helped to deWne him as human.63 One could argue that Pliny transfers this Lucretian trope to an imperial setting, and thus suggests that the role of the Roman language in uniting all other countries sets the Romans not just above the animals, but above all other men. If language is crucial to Pliny’s vision of Roman world domination, then his own work appropriates this instrument of conquest, through the inclusion of barbarian names in latinized form. Pliny introduces his account of the province of Africa at 5.1, for example, with the statement that the names of its tribes and towns are ‘utterly unpronounceable (ineVabilia) except by the natives 59

See NH 3.28, 5.82, and 6.7 for further examples of this sort of classiWcation. At NH Pref. 13 Pliny apologizes for using barbarian terms. 61 See G. Woolf, Becoming Roman. The Origins of Provincial Civilisation in Gaul (Cambridge 1998), 57. 62 Also 6.188 on Ethiopian tribes: ‘Some tribes express themselves through nods and gestures, instead of speech.’ 63 See P. H. Schrijvers, ‘La penseé de Lucre`ce sur l’origine du langage’, Mnemosyne 27 (1974), 337–64. 60

36 strategies of encyclopaedism themselves’. Yet, by 5.30, Pliny’s summary list of towns and peoples is Wlled with Latin approximations of foreign names.64 His text itself seems to mimic the process that he has earlier set down for world conquest, in which there is an inextricable link between the uniWcation of many diVerent countries under the one, Latin, language, and Italy’s role as the parent of the whole world. The names of African towns and tribes were all apparently unpronounceable at 5.1, and yet by 5.30, a good many have entered his text in latinized form. The action of cataloguing the African province with all its unpronounceable names doubles as at once a process of conquest and romanization. The text itself epitomizes and displays the intimate connection between the action of cataloguing and the acquisition of empire. If the emperor Galba’s conquests could be expressed in terms of adding to a list (3.37, adiecit formulae Galba imperator), then in Pliny’s own Latin lists of barbarian towns, there is also a claim to conquest. Pliny’s taxonomies, then, whether by listing things on the basis of their legal relationship to Rome, or their ability to be expressed in the Roman tongue, mould the geography into an expression of Roman imperium. EVectively the world which Pliny’s geography creates is synonymous with empire, since his very taxonomy works to exclude that which is outside the bounds of empire (whether because it is ‘unpronounceable’ (ineVabilis) or ‘unimportant’ (ignobilis)). While the inclusion of things on the boundary of empire (such as unpronounceable names (ineVabilia)) becomes in itself a process of imperial acquisition, an assertion of the overriding power of Rome. The way in which Pliny’s geography assimilates all the countries of the world into the one Roman empire is evident in his discussion, at 5.58, of the rises and falls of the Nile. The largest rise to date (18 cubits/27 feet) was during the principate of Claudius, the smallest (5 cubits/7.5 feet) during the Battle of Pharsalus [48 bc], as if the river was trying to deXect Pompey’s murder with some sort of portent.

The tidal changes of the Nile are not simply measured in Roman time, they harbour portents for Rome’s own history. Foreign lands have been transformed into the one Roman fatherland (patria), so much so that the rise and fall of their rivers become linked to landmarks in Roman history. But it is not only the taxonomies which help to suggest a world dominated by Rome. Throughout Pliny’s geography the mechanisms of empire emerge as an important source for the knowledge which helps to construct his representation of the world. There are constant references to information obtained from exped64 NH 5.30: ‘There are thirty free towns, of which I must mention the following towns inland: Achollita, Accarita, Avina, Abzirita, Canopita, Melizita, Matera, Salaphita, Tusdrita, Tiphica, Tunisa, Theuda, . . . Of those which remain, most can, with reason, be called not just cities, but also tribes, for example: the Natabudes, Capsitani, Musulami, Sabarbares, Masslyi, Nicives . . . ’


37

itions made by the Roman army.65 At 4.102, for example, Pliny speaks of the exploration of Britain by Roman armies, while at 4.97 he notes ‘twenty-three islands known to Roman forces’ in the northern Ocean. The Roman army also Wgures strongly in Pliny’s account of northern Africa.66 At 5.9 Pliny tells us that Scipio Aemilianus, while in command in Africa, lent Polybius his Xeet in order to explore the area. We hear, at 5.11, of the Roman army in Mauretania, and at 5.14 Suetonius Paulinus is cited as the source for the altitude of the Atlas Mountains (‘the Wrst of the Roman generals to cross the mountain and go several miles beyond’). Similarly in Pliny’s account of Arabia, we are told at 6.141 that Isidorus of Charax and King Juba II were commissioned by Augustus to make explorations prior to Gaius Caesar’s campaigns against the Parthians and Arabians, and that Pliny will be guided by the Roman armies in his description of the country.67 The Roman army is used mainly as a source for distant parts of empire— northern Europe, Africa, and the Far East—and would presumably have been the main source of knowledge for these areas, as opposed to the glut of information available on more established parts of empire such as Spain and Gaul. One might argue that there is nothing particularly signiWcant in Pliny’s references to these military expeditions—they are simply his only source of information on the respective areas. But we have already seen the important role that oYcial administrative lists have played elsewhere in Pliny’s geography. Furthermore, Pliny frequently doesn’t name his sources, instead using more general terms such as alii (others), veteres (older writers), sunt qui (there are those who) or quidam (certain people), or simply presenting the information as a bald fact without crediting it to any one author.68 Here in naming the Roman army, he makes a deliberate choice to make his source known to the reader. Openly crediting the Roman army with much of the knowledge that informs his work, is important to his representation of the world on two levels. On a general level, it reinforces the Roman imperial focus of his geography—noting that countries on the fringes of the real empire, external to his representation, are known to the forces of Rome, helps to establish those countries as Roman. More speciWcally, it creates within the narrative a coherent link between knowledge of a country, and its conquest. Pliny himself explicitly acknowledges a relationship between geographical knowledge and conquest, at 5.51, in his discussion of the source of the Nile. 65

See Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 53), 85–94 and N. J. E. Austin and N. B. Rankov, Exploratio. Military and Political Intelligence in the Roman World (London and New York 1995). 66 See D. J. Mattingly, Tripolitania (London 1995), 68–89. 67 See also NH 5.38, 5.83, 6.23, 6.40, 6.184. 68 e.g. NH 3.82, 3.86, 3.95, 3.108, 3.121, 3.127, 4.65, 4.77, 4.90, 4.104, 4.115, 4.119, 4.120. See Sallmann, Geographie (n. 55), 22.

38


The sources of the Nile remain as yet unknown, since it Xows an enormously long way through scorching deserts, and has only been explored by unarmed travellers, with none of the wars that have brought all other countries to light (sine bellis quae ceteras omnis terra invenere).

According to Pliny’s account, all other countries (ceteras omnis terras) apart from Egypt, have been discovered through war. He doesn’t specify that they are wars with Rome, but certainly all the references to Roman military expeditions as sources for information about far-oV lands encourage us to infer it. Indeed, on occasion Pliny’s geographical account seems inseparable from the means by which the knowledge which informs it was obtained. In his discussion of Mount Atlas, for example, the territorial advances of the Roman army exactly mirror the advances made in knowledge about the area.69 The account begins at 5.5, where Pliny posits the mountain as a mythical, wild, far-oV land, situated on the edge of the desert, where the only sound is of the night-time revels of Satyrs and Pans. He concludes the section at 5.7 where he again emphasizes its distance, and, most signiWcantly, the lack of knowledge about it: ‘It is an immense distance away, across unexplored territory’ (spatium ad eum immensum incertumque). At 5.9 however we learn that Polybius, with the help of Scipio Aemilianus’ Xeet, has located the mountain, while by 5.11 it has been established as fact that the Roman army has been as far as Mount Atlas, in its pursuit of barbarians.70 Within Pliny’s narrative, Mount Atlas is becoming increasingly less distant and unknown. At 5.14 we learn that the Romans have now not only gone as far as the mountain, but have even crossed it and gone many miles beyond. Pliny goes on to provide us with information about the countryside, its strange plants, animals, and tribes who have the same diet as dogs, and adds that it is well known (constat) that the next tribe along the way are the Perorsi. He concludes his account with his usual assertion of completeness: ‘This is enough, or more than enough about Mount Atlas’ (et satis superque de Atlante).71 Within the text there is a simultaneous progress of knowledge and military advancement. We start with a remote and mythical mountain about which nothing much is known (incertum), and we Wnish with a mountain which has been reached, crossed and surpassed by successive Roman explorations, and about which much has been established (constat). The persistent emphasis on the ‘otherness’ of the area—inhabited by Satyrs and people related to dogs, 69

There is a similar eVect in Pliny’s account of Arabia, where twice (6.160 and 6.181) a list of towns known in the area is simultaneously a list of towns destroyed by the Roman army. 70 NH: 5.11 ‘It is well-known (constat) that our troops went as far as Mount Atlas in pursuit of the Xeeing barbarians (barbaris).’ 71 Cf. 35.151: ‘Enough and more than enough has been said about painting’ (De pictura satis superque).


39

covered with strange trees, and with forests full of elephants, wild beasts, and snakes—only serves to enhance the sense of Roman triumph.72 Perhaps the most striking instance of the powerful link which Pliny makes between geographical knowledge and territorial possession is to be seen in his discussion of the fringes of the world. In Pliny’s account of Mount Atlas, the increasing knowledge about the mountain and surrounding region exactly mirrored the progress of the Roman army. Where Pliny’s discussion touches on the boundaries of the world, we Wnd the opposite. Knowledge becomes vague and uncertain. Thus in his discussion of the areas in and around the Cimbrian promontory, one of the recognized boundaries of the world, the narrative continually jumps from certainty to uncertainty: And now I must leave the Black Sea to describe the outer edges of Europe. . . . Little is known (incerta) about the rest of these coasts. . . . From this point, our knowledge becomes clearer (clarior aperiri fama), beginning with the race of the Iguaeones, the Wrst we come to in Germany . . . the size of Scandinavia has yet to be ascertained (inconpertae) . . . (NH 4.94–6)73

As soon as Pliny announces that his narrative is moving to the fringes of the known world (extera Europae), the information becomes uncertain (incerta), yet as his account moves back towards Germany, more familiar Roman territory, the information once more becomes clearer (clarior). The whole narrative Xuctuates from the known to the unknown as it moves in and out of the northern boundary.74 The limits of the world exactly coincide with the limits of geographical knowledge. It is of course a practical restriction—Pliny can hardly write about parts of the world about which nothing is known. But in emphasizing the uncertainty of knowledge only at the boundaries of the world, Pliny suggests that the boundaries of the world are the boundaries of the knowable, of any self-respecting encyclopaedia. Knowing the world, then, is tantamount to conquering it. Pliny is not, of course, the Wrst or the only Roman to have made such a connection.75 But the medium of the encyclopaedia is peculiarly suited to creating such a link. It is a genre in which not only knowledge itself, but the instruments of knowledge—lists, taxonomies and sources—reign supreme. As we have seen, Pliny consistently employs such devices to create a cohesive link between cataloguing the world and conquering it; so much so that the two 72

On the ‘other’ see J. S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought (Princeton 1992). See Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 53), 21–2 on the boundaries of the Roman world, and Romm, The Edges of the Earth (n. 72), 13–44 on the boundaries of the Greek world. 74 This is also noticeable in the last few chapters of the geography books (NH 6.198–206), as Pliny approaches the southernmost edge of the world. 75 See n. 53. 73

40


become synonymous, and, in the case of Galba, adding to empire is represented as simply adding to a list.76 Pliny’s catalogue of the whole world then, which he is keen to tell us he has completed (‘And now that I have fully described the outer and inner regions of the earth’),77 is not just an account of all the world’s contents, but a catalogue of the world as empire. 76 77

NH 3.37. See pp. 33–4. NH 6.206. See 6.211 and 6.220 for further assertions of totality.

three

Representing Empire: Monuments and the Creation of Roman Space

Two years before I had discovered in a volume of a certain pirated encyclopaedia, a superWcial description of a non-existent country; now chance aVorded me something more precious and arduous. Now I held in my hands a vast methodical fragment of an unknown planet’s entire history.1

Borges’ short story ‘Tlo¨n, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ tells of a series of chance Wnds which lead to the discovery of a new planet. First, the uncovering of the only copy of Volume XLVI of the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia to have 921 pages instead of the usual 917, the extra four pages detailing the topography and history of an unknown country called Uqbar. Then, the appearance of A First Encyclopaedia of Tlo¨n. Vol. XI. Hlaer to Jangr, with no indication of the date or place of publication. The planet Tlo¨n, of which Uqbar is one of the countries, provides the scholars of Borges’ story with a whole new world to dissect, a new history to write, a new geography to map. And despite the fact that, as we learn at the end, Tlo¨n and Uqbar are entirely the invention of a millionaire called Ezra Buckley, the Wction of the Orbis Tertius supplants the reality of the hitherto known world.2 In Borges’ story, it is through the medium of the encyclopaedia that the Wction is propagated. The mechanism of objective knowledge, the repository of facts and Wgures, of universal information, is conveniently hijacked to create an entirely Wctional universe. The language of the encyclopaedia—the dry intonation of facts—is after all ideally suited for the fabrication of a plausible Wction. But material objects are also crucial to the credibility of this invented world. On two occasions, material objects from the imagined planet surface in the real world, and, interestingly, the author claims to be a witness to both. A compass, 1

J. L. Borges, ‘Tlo¨n, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’, in id., Labyrinths, trans. D. A. Yates and J. E. Irby (London 1970), 27–43 at 31. 2 See R. T. Swigger, ‘Fictional Encyclopedism, and the Cognitive value of Literature’, Comparative Literary Studies 12 (1975), 351–66 at 358–9; J. Barth, ‘The Literature of Exhaustion’, in J. Alazraki (ed.), Critical Essays on Jorge Luis Borges (Boston 1987), 87–93; and D. T. Jaeń, Borges’ Esoteric Library (Lanham, Md., and London 1992), 183–97.

42 monuments and the creation of roman space inscribed with letters from one of the alphabets of Tlo¨n, is found in the bottom of a box: ‘Such was the Wrst intrusion of this fantastic world into the world of reality,’ Borges notes;3 while a little later in the story, the author discovers a small metal cone, apparently an image of divinity in certain regions of Tlo¨n, by the body of a dead man. The discovery of these material objects are integral to the factionalizing of Tlo¨n, as Borges’ story openly admits. In a postscript he records the later discovery of a further forty volumes of A First Encyclopaedia of Tlo¨n in a library in Memphis. Some of the incredible aspects of the Eleventh Volume . . . have been eliminated or attenuated in the Memphis copies; it is reasonable to imagine that these omissions follow the plan of exhibiting a world which is not too incompatible with the real world. The dissemination of objects from Tlo¨n over diVerent countries would complement this plan4

In beginning with Borges, I do not wish to suggest that, like A First Encyclopaedia of Tlo¨n, the Natural History is the result of a desire to present a completely Wctional world as a three-dimensional reality. One cannot deny that most of the information contained in the Natural History deserves to be called fact, or was at least perceived by Pliny to be so. But Borges’ story illustrates how the medium of the encyclopaedia, the cataloguing of an entirety, can be used to present a literary construction as objective fact; and, in particular, it highlights the role that real objects external to that encyclopaedic discourse can play in its legitimation. Historians of Greek and Roman art have traditionally concentrated on books 33–7 of the Natural History when looking for a contemporary or nearcontemporary perspective on the art and monuments of the ancient world. But the Natural History is peppered throughout with references to ancient art and monuments; and while these often Xeeting references may not amount to the more cohesive ‘art history ’ which books 33–7 have been seen to provide, they oVer an important insight into how objects can be rallied as crucial devices in a literary text. In the last chapter (see Constructing a Roman Totality) we saw how Pliny’s citation of sources, such as oYcial administrative lists at Rome or even the Roman army, enabled him to suggest that the world he describes is a world dominated by Rome. This chapter focuses on Pliny’s geographical description of the world in books 3–6,5 and argues that, like the compass and cone from Borges’ imaginary Tlo¨n, monuments have a role to play in Pliny’s articulation 3

Borges, ‘Tlo¨n, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ (n. 1), 41. Borges, ‘Tlo¨n, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ (n. 1), 42. 5 On Pliny’s geography and its sources see K. Sallmann, Die Geographie des Alteren Plinius in ihrem Verha¨ltnis zu Varro (Berlin and New York 1971); A. Dihle, ‘Plinius und die geographischen Wissenschaft in der Ro¨mischen Kaiserzeit’, in Tecnologia, economia e societa` nel mondo romano (Como 1980), 121–37. Also the brief, but interesting, discussion by G. Woolf, Becoming Roman. The Origins of Provincial Civilisation in Gaul (Cambridge 1998), 50–3. 4

monuments and the creation of roman space

43

of imperial space. Two monuments in particular (Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie and Agrippa’s map), Wnd a place in the geography precisely because of their special aYnity with Pliny’s personal project; and as such, they not only lend an insight into how three-dimensional monuments could function as literary devices, but also provide us with an idea of how these monuments may have been interpreted by contemporary Romans.

building empire: augustus’ trophy at la turbie Pliny’s taxonomies subtly transform his account of the world into an account of the world as empire. And while the internal mechanisms of the encyclopaedia present a world conquered by Rome, the inclusion of monuments external to the text initiates an important strategy which locates Pliny’s world in reality. Monuments punctuate Pliny’s account of the world in books 3–6. They are frequently cited as landmarks amidst the lists of towns, rivers, lakes, and mountains which make up Pliny’s ‘geography’. At 3.151, for example, Pliny cites the monument of Diomede as a marker for Diomedes’ island, while he includes the temple of Zeus at Dodona (4.2), and a 1,000 foot bridge over the river Acheron (4.4) in his account of Epirus.6 Monuments and buildings may earn inclusion in Pliny’s account of the world because of their fame, or some remarkable feature, but they also play an important role as textual devices which anchor Pliny’s narrative in physical reality. By virtue of being tangible objects, which exist outside the narrative, they become ideal veriWers of Pliny’s work.7 Pliny himself was well aware of the power of the physical object to testify to a reality. At 6.200 he describes how the Carthaginian general Hanno deposited the skin of two women from the Gorgades in the Temple of Juno in Carthage to act ‘as proof (argumento)’ of his story that their bodies were covered with hair. While, on two occasions in the geography books, buildings are cited as evidence of the former existence of a town. At 5.148, Pliny notes that: ‘the town of 6

Also NH 3.119 canal of Augustus; 4.14 the shrine of Zeus Olympios; 4.18 the shrine of Asclepius at Epidaurus, and the temple of Poseidon at the Isthmus of Corinth; 4.21 shrine of Zeus Lycaeus; 4.49 ‘Bitches’ tomb’; 4.53 rock, into which Odysseus’ ship was apparently changed; 4.66 temple of Apollo at Delos; 4.111 Altars of Sestius dedicated to Augustus; 5.4 altar of Hercules; 5.62 the building of Alexandria; 5.68 temple of Jupiter Casius and tomb of Pompey; 6.49 altars set up by Hercules, Father Liber, Cyrus, Semiramis, Alexander, and Demodamas; 6.122 temple to Jupiter at Babylon; 6.135 temple to Diana. 7 Cf. J. Elsner, ‘From the Pyramids to Pausanias and Piglet: Monuments, Travel and Writing’, in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (eds.), Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture (Cambridge 1994), 224–54 at 224–5: ‘But monuments as ideas or ideological constructs always have the added dimension of having been real things.’ M. Jaeger, Livy’s Written Rome (Ann Arbor 1997), 104 envisages a similar relationship between descriptions of monuments and their real counterparts in Livy’s work, noting the ‘universalizing function’ which Livy’s discussions of monuments have in connecting his discussion to permanent landmarks in Rome.

44


Libyssa stood where now there is only the tomb of Hannibal’. At 6.122, he says of Babylon: ‘the Temple of Jupiter Belus still survives, . . . as for the rest, it has been reduced to desert.’ For Pliny, monuments prove that a place existed. As three-dimensional, durable facts, the monuments that Pliny includes in his geography act, on a general level, to support Pliny’s representation of the world. But several of the monuments mentioned in the geography books also bring with them speciWc associations which reinforce Pliny’s narrative of Roman world empire. On several occasions, in his discussion of foreign countries, Pliny mentions monuments that enjoy a speciWc link with Rome, whether because they have been set up by a Roman general, or are dedicated to the worship of a Roman emperor. At 4.5, in his account of Greece, he notes ‘Actium, the colony set up by Augustus, with the famous Temple of Apollo’, at 4.111, in his discussion of Spain, he mentions the Tamarci—on their peninsula are ‘the three Altars of Sestius dedicated to Augustus’, and at 5.68 he notes the tomb of Pompey the Great near Pelusium. At times, Roman monuments seem to insinuate themselves into the natural world itself, as in Pliny’s description of southern Gaul, where the canals built by the republican general Marius are cited, like a bald fact of the landscape, in a list which includes lakes, towns, and plains.8 These monuments assert a physical connection with Rome, acting as landmarks in Pliny’s text which testify to the extent of Roman power. Indeed, in his account of western Spain, at 3.18, Pliny speciWcally cites the trophies set up by Pompey in the Pyrenees as evidence of the extent to which the area has changed under Roman rule. The old form of Hispania Citeriora has changed considerably, as has been the case with many other provinces; for example, Pompey the Great made it known on the trophies that he set up in the Pyrenees, that he had brought 876 towns, between the Alps and the borders of Hispania Ulteriora, under our control.

The Pyrenaean trophies feature again in Pliny’s account of Pompey’s career in book 7. Here Pliny suggests that it is the monuments which make the victory, and not vice versa. He crossed over immediately to the West, and after he had erected trophies in the Pyrenees, he added to the list of his victories (victoriae suae adscripsit) the 876 towns between the Alps and the boundaries of Hispania Ulteriora that he had brought under our control. (NH 7.96)

In book 3, Galba’s conquests were speciWcally represented in terms of adding to a list (adiecit formulae Galba imperator) (see Ch. 2, Constructing a Roman Totality). Here too, Pompey’s victory becomes another entry on the inventory of 8

NH 3.34: ‘Beyond are the canals leading out of the Rhone, famous as the work of Gaius Marius from whom they take their name, then Lake Mastromela, Maritima the town of the Avatici, and above, the Campi Lapidei, commemorating the battles of Hercules.’


45

empire. In Pliny’s account, it is only after erecting the trophies, that Pompey adds (adscripsit) to the number of his victories. His choice of a verb rooted in the action of writing to describe Pompey’s latest conquest recalls his earlier reference to the inscription on Pompey’s Pyrenaean trophy, to suggest a monumental catalogue of empire inscribed in stone. Conquest is intimately related to cataloguing, as Pliny’s conclusion of his account of Pompey’s achievements implies. Comparing Pompey to Julius Caesar at 7.99, Pliny quips that ‘if, on the other hand, anyone wishes to make a similar tally of the achievements of Julius Caesar (considered to be greater than Pompey), they would surely have to list (enumeret) the entire world—and this, you must agree, would be an endless task’. This, of course, is exactly what Pliny has done in books 3–6, and if here the conquests are all ascribed to Caesar, then in his role as enumerator of the world, Pliny emerges as the greatest general of them all. Roman monuments abroad may testify to the power of Rome, but at home, too, the power of Rome can be gauged by her buildings. Rome as Romulus left it, had three gates, or if you believe those who record the highest number, four. The area encompassed by its walls, during the principate and censorship of the Vespasians, in the 826th year of its foundation [73 ad], had a circumference of thirteen miles and two hundred yards, and included seven hills. The city itself is divided into fourteen regions, with 265 crossroads complete with Lares. If you want to measure the distance from the milestone at the head of the Roman Forum to each one of its gates, which today number thirty-seven (provided that the ‘Twelve Gates’ are counted only once, and seven of the old gates that no longer survive are left out), it comes to a total of twenty miles and 765 yards, in a straight line. However the total distance to the extreme edge of the city’s buildings including the Praetorian Camp, starting from the same milestone and passing through the districts along all the streets, comes to little more than sixty miles. And if you were to add to this the height of its buildings, you would arrive at a fair estimate of its size; and you would have to admit that no city in the whole world can be compared to Rome in magnitude ( fateaturque nullius urbis magnitudinem in toto orbe potuisse ei comparari). (NH 3.66–7)

Pliny’s description of Rome is a list of measurements and speciWcations, which include the area encompassed by Rome’s walls, and the distance to and from her thirty-seven gates. The gates provide an important indication of the city’s expansion—only three or at most four at the time of Rome’s foundation, Pliny tells us they now number thirty-seven (and that is with some omissions). Implicit in this expansion of the city is a parallel extension of Rome’s empire.9 The statistics may simply refer to the physical space of the city. But the rhetorical artistry with which they are presented is clearly meant to dazzle the reader with the power of 9

Cf. NH 3.56 and 3.67. On the perceived link among Romans between the extent of the city and the extent of the empire see C. Nicolet, ‘Rome dans la carte: Cartes de Rome’, in F. Hinard and M. Royo (eds.), Rome. L’espace urbain et ses repre´sentations (Paris 1991), 9–16, esp. 10.

46 monuments and the creation of roman space Rome. It is a device which was later to be used on the base of Trajan’s column. An inscription giving the measurements for the height of the hill supposedly removed to install the column points to the magnitude of the emperor’s victory (Fig. 5). When Pliny throws in his Wnal measurement—the height of Rome’s buildings—we are to be in no doubt that Rome is the greatest city in the world.

Fig. 5. Like Pliny’s description of Rome at 3.66–7, this inscription, recording the height of a hill apparently removed to erect Trajan’s column, exploits the power of numbers. Trajan’s column. Inscription on south-east side of base (CIL 6 690). H: 6.155 m. ad 113. Rome.


47

Magnitudo neatly encompasses both the physical extent of the city, and its reputation. Like Marius’ canals, Rome’s gates, walls, and shrines are cited as neutral facts to demonstrate the overall greatness of Rome. In Pliny’s description of Rome, his list of statistics does much to conjure the power of Rome for the reader. Elsewhere, Pliny draws not on a list of monuments, but on two monumental lists—Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie, and Agrippa’s map—to reinforce his portrait of a world ordered by Rome. Pliny quotes the inscription from Augustus’ Alpine trophy, at the end of his discussion of the Alps. It seems appropriate to insert at this point the inscription from the Alpine trophy which runs as follows (Non alienum videtur hoc loco subicere inscriptionem e tropaeo Alpium, quae talis est): To the emperor Caesar Augustus, divus Wlius, pontifex maximus, fourteen times imperator, seventeen times tribunus plebis, dedicated by the Senate and People of Rome, to commemorate that under his leadership and auspices, all the Alpine races stretching from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean were brought under the control of the Roman people. Alpine races conquered: Triumpilini, Camunni, Venostes, Vennonetes, Isarchi, Breuni, Genaunes, Focunates, the four tribes of the Vindelici, the Cosuanates, Rucinates, Licates, Catenates, Ambisontes . . . (NH 3.136–7)

Unlike many of the monuments, statues, and paintings to which Pliny refers in the Natural History, Augustus’ trophy does survive. Situated at La Turbie, near Monaco, it was dedicated in 6 bc to commemorate Augustus’ successful campaigns in the Alps between 25 and 9 bc (Figs. 6–10).10 The dedication of the trophy to Augustus is highly unusual—trophies were normally dedicated to gods, as for example, in the dedication of Trajan’s trophy at Adamklissi to Mars.11 The dedication to the emperor Augustus, then, already points to the signiWcance of the monument. The campaign in the Alps was an important one. With their conquest, the west of the empire suddenly became accessible, as the Romans were quick to demonstrate by building a road leading to almost all parts of the empire. The Via Julia Augusta, begun in 12 bc, led, on one branch, to Spain, on the other through the Rhone valley to Gaul, Germany, and Britain.12 It is on this road that the trophy was erected, at the point where it crosses the Alps, and where roads from Gaul, the coast, and Rome converge. Set on an 10

The trophy gives its name to the surrounding area—hence La Turbie. The main works on the trophy are J. Formige´, Le Tropheé des Alpes (La Turbie). Gallia Supplement 2 (Paris 1949) and N. Lamboglia, Le Tropheé d’Auguste a` la Turbie (Bordighera 1964). See also G. Ch. Picard, Les Tropheés romains (Paris 1957), 291–301. 11 Picard, Les Tropheés romains (n. 10), 295–6. 12 Formige´, Le Tropheé des alpes (n. 10), 18 called it ‘the vertebral column of empire’. G. Alfo¨ldy, ‘Augustus und die Inschriften: Tradition und Innovation’, Gymnasium 98 (1991), 289–324 notes, at 301, the important role which milestones played—inscribed with Augustus’ name they regularly reminded the traveller that this road was the work of the emperor.

48 monuments and the creation of roman space

Fig. 6. Deliberately situated on an artificial plateau, Augustus’ Alpine trophy still dominates the modern landscape. Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie, general view. H: 49.68m (in reconstruction). Dedicated 6 bc. La Turbie, France.

artiWcial plateau to ensure maximum visibility (Fig. 6), the trophy stands as a vibrant punctuation mark to a road which leads from Rome to the rest of the western empire. A potent reminder of the power of Rome which enabled the building of the road on which its viewer travels, it is a monument which clearly deWnes the Alps as conquered space.13 The trophy consists of two square plinths, topped by a circular colonnaded drum, with classical entablature, and twenty-four niches which probably displayed statues of the imperial family, and possibly generals involved in the Alpine campaign (Figs. 6–8). No traces of the crowning structure survive, although Formige´ suggested a stepped pyramidal construction topped by a statue of Augustus (Fig. 8).14 But what is most striking about the trophy, or what remains of the trophy, is its inscription (Fig. 9). It was reconstructed by Formige´ on the basis of Pliny’s text, and placed on the west, most visible, side of the lower 13

Woolf, Becoming Roman (n. 5), 49 notes the ‘naturalization of Roman conquests’ represented by Pompey’s trophy in the Pyrenees and Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie. 14 Formige´, Le Tropheé des Alpes (n. 10), 74; Picard, Les Tropheés romains (n. 10), 294; Lamboglia, Le Tropheé d’Auguste (n. 10), 64. The only traces of a statue that excavations have produced is a small piece of bronze (possibly drapery).


49

Fig. 7. The colonnade was fitted with niches which probably displayed statues of the imperial family and generals involved in the campaign against the Alpine tribes. Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie, colonnade.

podium, where the majority of fragments were found (Figs. 8–9). Over 17 metres wide and nearly 4 metres high, the inscription dominates the main podium, and swamps the reliefs depicting trophies which enclose it (Fig. 10).15 In this respect 15

The precise placement of the reliefs is uncertain, but as they are exactly the same height as the inscription, an arrangement which combines the two is extremely plausible. For representations of

50 monuments and the creation of roman space Fig. 8. The inscription dominates the west face of the trophy. Model of Formige´’s reconstruction of the trophy, crowned by a statue of Augustus. Museé de la tropheé d’Auguste, La Turbie.

captives on other contemporary Roman triumphal monuments, see, on the Arch at Orange, R. Amy et al., L’Arc de L’Orange. Gallia Supplement 15 (Paris 1961), esp. pl. 64 and 82; on the Arch at Susa see E. Ferrero, L’Arc d’Auguste a` Suse (Turin 1901), and J. Prieur, ‘Les arcs monumentaux dans les Alpes occidentales: Aoste, Suse, Aix-les-Bains’, ANRW 2.12.1 (1982), 442–75 at 451–9.


51

Fig. 9. With its list of all the Alpine tribes conquered, the inscription draws on the visual power of the catalogue to symbolize conquest. Inscription on the west side of the trophy, flanked by reliefs showing trophies. W: 17.45 m.

it clearly diVers from Trajan’s trophy at Adamklissi in modern-day Romania (dedicated in ad 109), where the inscription is much less prominent, placed right at the top of the monument, on the pedestal of the statue which crowned the trophy (Fig. 11).16 The size and prominence of the inscription on Augustus’ Alpine trophy suggests that the monument is not simply interested in representing conquest per se—this has been reduced to the short-hand of the two side panels (Figs. 9–10). Rather, like a later Augustan monument, the Res Gestae (Figs. 13–14), the trophy is devoted to enumerating conquest, to being a catalogue of empire.17

16 On the Tropaeum Traiani see Picard, Les Tropheés romains (n. 10), 391–406; F. B. Florescu, Das Siegesdenkmal von Adamklissi. Tropaeum Traiani (Bucharest and Bonn 1965); A. Radulescu, Le monument triomphal d’Adamclisi (Constanta 1972); and P. MacKendrick, The Dacian Stones Speak (Chapel Hill 1975), 95–105. 17 On the Res Gestae see E. S. Ramage, The History and Nature of Augustus’s ‘Res Gestae’. Historia Einzelinschriften 54 (1987); C. Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor 1991), 15–27; and J. Elsner, ‘Inventing Imperium: Texts and the Propaganda of Monuments in Augustan Rome’, in id. (ed.), Art and Text in Roman Culture (Cambridge 1996), 32–53.

52 monuments and the creation of roman space Fig. 10. Eclipsed by the inscription with its list of conquered tribes (Fig. 9), the reliefs on either side picture conquest in more traditional form. Relief to the right of the inscription, showing enemy armour fastened to a tree. H: 3.66 m.

The clear form of the inscription encourages the viewer to discover its contents. Its division into two distinct sections, dedication and list, deliberately draws attention to the list of tribes, preventing it from getting lost amidst a wealth of formulaic phrases.18 Marked oV as a separate unit by its smaller letters, the list asserts the totality of Augustus’ conquest (the princeps has conquered not just some Alpine tribes, but all the Alpine tribes), and goes on to detail the tribes he has conquered, in no less than Wve lines. As in Pliny’s Latin lists of barbarian names (see pp. 35–6), here too, the catalogue of Alpine tribes enacts the process of romanization which is conquest. But the inscription is not simply a record of the tribes defeated by Augustus. It presents an inventory of conquest. No longer enough simply to claim total conquest, to have complete dominion is to be able to list and to preserve that list in stone. The trophy at La Turbie was not the only Augustan monument to make use of the inventory in the articulation of imperial power. Strabo refers to an altar of Rome and Augustus which was inscribed with the names of sixty Gallic tribes,19 while the Augustan triumphal arch at Susa, near Turin, dedicated in 9 or 8 bc, only three years or so before the trophy at La Turbie, displays a similar interest in 18 Alfo¨ldy, ‘Augustus und die Inschriften’ (n. 12), 297 notes that clear, well-proportioned letters were a new development in inscriptions under Augustus. 19 Strabo 4.3.2. The altar has not been found and its location remains uncertain. See R. Turcan, ‘L’Autel de Rome et d’Auguste ‘‘Ad ConXuentem’’ ’, ANRW 2.12.1 (1982), 607–42.


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Fig. 11. In contrast to Augustus’ Alpine trophy (Fig. 9), the later example of Trajan’s trophy at Adamklissi awards much less prominence to the inscription. Reconstruction of Trajan’s trophy, H: 40 m. ad 109. Adamklissi, Romania.

listing conquest.20 An inscription in the attic of the arch records the treaty made between Augustus and fourteen tribes led by King Cottius (Fig. 12). Like the trophy at La Turbie (in whose inscription some of the tribes mentioned at Susa reappear), the inscription at Susa presents a list of the defeated tribes. Here, however, there is no claim to totality, while the placement of the inscription in the attic of the arch means that it has little of the visual impact which was to be exploited so eVectively at La Turbie. 20 On the arch see Ferrero, L’Arc d’Auguste a` Suse (n. 15) and Prieur, ‘Les arcs monumentaux’ (n. 15), 451–9.

54 monuments and the creation of roman space Fig. 12. The triumphal arch at Susa anticipates the Alpine trophy’s interest in cataloguing, with its inscription listing fourteen conquered tribes. Arch of Augustus. H: 14.35 m. Dedicated 9/8 bc. Susa.

It is a later Augustan monument which develops the visual expression of totality already present at La Turbie, to its full eVect. The Res Gestae, inscribed after Augustus’ death (on his instructions) on two bronze columns in front of his mausoleum in Rome,21 and exported round the empire (Figs. 13–14),22 was a 21

Suetonius, Life of Augustus 101 and Elsner, ‘Inventing Imperium’ (n. 17). Three copies of the Res Gestae survive, all from Galatea. The most complete copy was inscribed in Latin on the inside of the pronaos of the temple of Rome and Augustus in Ancyra (modern Ankara), and in Greek on the external cella wall, while two other more fragmentary copies survive at Antioch-in-Psidia, and Apollonia. See Elsner, ‘Inventing imperium’ (n. 17), nn. 35, 39, and 42 for further bibliography. 22


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Fig. 13. Mussolini recognized the original intention of the Res Gestae to act as a monument, and reappropriated its claim to empire. Case designed by Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo to house the Ara Pacis, inscribed with Augustus’ Res Gestae. 1938. Rome.

highly emotive catalogue of empire, which not only listed the territories which Augustus had added to the empire (RG 26–30), but detailed the extensive building programme through which Augustus transformed the republican city into an imperial capital (RG 19–21). Augustus, as Claude Nicolet has shown, had put in place many of the mechanisms which enabled accurate inventories of empire to be drawn up.23 Censuses and surveys ensured that Rome was Wlled with facts and Wgures about her empire (indeed, it was precisely these statistics that Pliny was later to draw on), while the library attached to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine rivalled that of Alexandria.24 Monuments such as the trophy at La Turbie, and Augustus’ Res Gestae must have themselves drawn on this collection of public records. But, crucially, they do not simply replicate the information. They monumentalize it, recognizing and exploiting the capacity of the list to make a visual statement of power. The visual quality of the list was to be expanded in later imperial monuments—an indication of its success as a means to communicate an imperial message. Trajan’s column, for example, is a successor to the Augustan visual inventory (Fig. 15).25 Its spiralling frieze is a list of images, not words; but as in 23

Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 17). P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. H. A. Shapiro (Ann Arbor 1988), 69–70; K. Galinsky, Augustan Culture (Princeton 1996), 218. 25 On Trajan’s column see S. Settis, ‘La colonna’, in G. Agosti, V. Farinella, A. La Regina, and S. Settis, La Colonna Traiana (Turin 1988), 45–255 esp. 54–6; V. Huet, ‘Stories One Might Tell of Roman Art’, in 24

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Fig. 14. Augustus’ monumental catalogue of empire was not just displayed in Rome, but exported to the provinces. Temple of Roma and Augustus. Inner right-hand wall (anta) of the temple’s porch, with Res Gestae inscription in Latin. W: 10.40 m. First century ad. Ankara.

the Augustan monuments, it is the processes of empire which are crucial to the articulation of imperial power. If the Res Gestae was apparently an objective record of the deeds of an emperor, Trajan’s column too presents us with an exhaustive inventory of the actions of the emperor and his troops at war (Fig. 16).26 And yet as visual images, neither inventory needs to be followed in its entirety. It is enough to see that it is a complete inventory preserved in the heart of Rome, for it to act as a testament to the reach of empire. Interestingly, on Trajan’s trophy erected at Adamklissi in ad 109 to commemorate the same wars, the campaigns (detailed in 155 scenes on Trajan’s column) have been compressed into Wfty-four sculpted metopes,27 set round the circular base of the trophy (Fig. 11 and 17).28 If the frieze on Trajan’s column at Rome emulated, in its detailed

J. Elsner (ed.), Art and Text in Roman Culture (Cambridge 1996), 9–31; and F. Coarelli, The Column of Trajan, trans. C. Rockwell (Rome 2000). 26 Huet, ‘Stories One Might Tell of Roman Art’ (n. 25), 22–4 compares Trajan’s column with Augustus’ Res Gestae. 27 28 Only forty-nine survive. For bibliography on the Tropaeum Traiani see n. 16.


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Fig. 15. Elaborating on the use of the list in earlier Augustan monuments, Trajan’s column presents us with a visual list of the emperor and his troops at war. Trajan’s column. H: 38.40 m. ad 113. Rome.

depiction, the totality of earlier Augustan inventories, in the trophy at Adamklissi totality has been abandoned to abridge Roman conquest into a series of iconic scenes.

58 monuments and the creation of roman space Fig. 16. The column illustrates not just victorious battles against the Dacians, but the processes of an army at war. Trajan’s column. Detail showing Roman troops erecting fortifications (Settis LIX–LX, 145–6). Rome.

While the later example of Trajan’s column suggests that the visual nature of a list was appreciated and exploited within imperial monuments, in Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie, the inscription still hovers between text and monumental image. This dual status of the inscription, at once both monument and catalogue, is presumably what appealed to Pliny. As a monument which is not only openly concerned with expressing conquest, but also with listing totality, Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie sits perfectly within Pliny’s encyclopaedic project. One might even argue that the inscription at La Turbie, like that of Augustus’ Res Gestae, provided an ideological model for Pliny’s own encyclopaedic account of the world. Pliny doesn’t oVer the reader any description of the trophy itself—he simply quotes the inscription—and this may be the reason why his reference to the monument has never been included in modern compilations of his discussion of


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Fig. 17. The detailed depiction of the minutiae of war on Trajan’s column is condensed into fifty-four metopes on his trophy at Adamklissi. Trajan’s trophy. Metope XXI showing a Roman soldier in combat with a Dacian. W: 1.17 m. ad 109. Adamklissi, Romania.

art and architecture. Indeed Pliny may not even have seen the monument himself, but simply be quoting from an archive copy of the inscription. The centralization of knowledge under imperial administration ensured that autopsy was no longer a necessary proof. It was enough now, not to have seen something, but just to know about it. But his decision to include the inscription in his account of the Alps is instructive. Listing is, after all, one of the primary tools of the Natural History. And the list of conquered tribes inscribed on the trophy at La Turbie introduces

60 monuments and the creation of roman space Pliny’s readers to a monumental example, Wrmly located in reality, of the strategies which Pliny himself employs. As elsewhere in his geography (see pp. 33–4), Pliny classiWes the Alpine peoples according to their status within the Roman empire, while their very inclusion depends on their ‘worthiness’—Pliny begins his list of the Alpine races at 3.133, with the statement ‘The Alps are inhabited by a great many nations, but the notable (sed inlustres) are . . . ’ When he quotes the inscription from the Alpine trophy at 3.136, Pliny speciWcally highlights its inclusion: ‘It seems appropriate to insert at this point the inscription from the Alpine trophy which runs as follows.’ This list in stone oVers irrefutable proof of the truth of Pliny’s own version of Alpine geography. In his account of Istria, Pliny again quotes an inscription, this time from a statue, to support his account. Pliny tells us that Tuditanus who conquered the Istrians inscribed the following statement on his statue: ‘From Aquileia to the river Titius, 2,000 stadia.’29 The inscription which accompanies Tuditanus’ statue employs the same device as we have witnessed in Pliny’s own geography (see pp. 36–40)—in knowing the distance from Aquileia to the river Titius, Tuditanus makes his conquest indisputable. This unity of concern surely explains why Pliny included the inscription in his account. But if his quotation of Tuditanus’ inscription locates his narrative in the outside world,30 his quotation of the inscription from Augustus’ trophy in the Alps goes further. The very thing that made the inscription such an ideal authenticator of Pliny’s own text—that is, its concern to record and catalogue the Alpine conquest as a totality—becomes something for Pliny’s account to rival. Having quoted the inscription from the trophy at La Turbie, with its list of forty-Wve tribes, Pliny goes on, at 3.138, to name those that have been left out. The list does not include the Wfteen states of the Cottiani, who were not hostile; nor those annexed to municipia under the Lex Pompeia.

This addition, of course, serves to enhance the sense of Roman power—the trophy records the conquest of forty-Wve diVerent tribes, and even then it leaves some out. But it also demonstrates the extent to which the monument has been subsumed into Pliny’s rhetoric of totality. His encyclopaedic project is so successful that it can complete the oYcial and published lists that appeared, to the amateur eye, to be already complete. In continuing the list, which he has clearly stated at the beginning to be an inscription, he implicitly raises his text to the same level as that inscription, so that his writing too becomes monumental. Already in the preface to the Natural History, in a rhetorical expression of modesty, Pliny compared his own work to inscriptions accompanying paintings and sculptures. 29 NH 3.129. A dedicatory inscription from C. Sempronius Tuditanus (consul 129 bc) to the god of the river Timavus survives, which also mentions his triumph (CIL 12 652 ¼ ILS 8885). 30 Cf. NH 7.97–8, where Pliny quotes two inscriptions set up by Pompey.


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I make no apology for not having thought of a more exciting title; and so as not to seem to disagree with the Greeks on everything, I should like to be perceived according to the example of those founders of painting and sculpture who, as you will discover in my books, used to inscribe their Wnished works—even those which we never tire of admiring—with a provisional title such as ‘Worked on by Apelles’ or ‘Worked on by Polycleitus’, as if their art was always in its initial stages and never complete. (Pref. 26)

In Pliny’s additions to the inscription on Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie, the act of Roman world conquest becomes, like the masterpieces of Apelles and Polycleitus ‘which we never tire of admiring’ (a description which Pliny may well have been happy to apply to the inscription at La Turbie), a work of art in progress.

mapping empire: agrippa’s map In Pliny’s reference to Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie, we see how strategies of listing and taxonomy in Pliny’s text merge with a three-dimensional inscription to suggest that Pliny’s portrait of a world possessed by Rome is a portrait of the world as it really is. But if quoting the inscription from the Alpine trophy validates Pliny’s account of the Alps, it is another monument, a representation of the world in Rome, which dominates Pliny’s geography as a whole. At the beginning of his geography, during his discussion of some confusion in the measurements of Baetica, Pliny mentions the map of Agrippa (completed c.2 bc, but probably begun before Agrippa’s death in 12 bc): Marcus Agrippa reported that the total length of Baetica was 475 miles, its breadth 258 miles; but this was when its borders extended as far as New Carthage. Such changes in boundaries often give rise to grave errors in the calculation of distance. . . . Besides diVerent people take diVerent starting points for their measurements and follow diVerent lines. The result is that no two agree. At present, the length of Baetica from the town of Castulona to Gadiz is 250 miles . . . Who could believe that Marcus Agrippa, a man who demonstrated such great precision and care in his work (Agrippam quidem in tanta viri diligentia praeterque in hoc cura), could make such errors, when he put the whole world on view for the eyes of Rome to see (cum orbem terrarum urbi spectandum propositurus esset)? And that Divus Augustus was equally mistaken? For he completed the portico in which [Agrippa’s map] was housed, his sister having begun its construction following Agrippa’s design and commentarii. (NH 3.16–17)

What little we can say about the history and appearance of Agrippa’s map is mainly gleaned from this and other references in Pliny.31 Pliny’s statement that the map 31

Sallmann, Geographie (n. 5), 91–4, Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 17), 98–110, and K. Brodersen, ‘Terra Cognita. Studien zur ro¨mischen Raumerfassung’, Spudasmata 59 (1995), 268–87, all provide helpful summaries of the arguments. See also J. J. Tierney, ‘The Map of Agrippa’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 63 Section C (1963), 151–66 and C. Rodriguez, ‘The Porticus Vipsania and Contemporary Poetry’, Latomus 51 (1992), 79–93.

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was displayed in the Porticus Vipsania32 along with the strongly visual terms with which he presents Agrippa’s survey of the world (cum orbem terrarum urbi spectandum propositurus esset), has led scholars to assume a large-scale pictorial image, following in the Greek tradition of displaying monumental paintings in stoas.33 Suggestions for overall layout have included a circular representation, or a large-scale rectangular image along the lines of the Tabula Peutinger, running along the rear wall of the portico (Fig. 18). While theories about what would have been represented on the map have ranged from a simple coastal outline to a detailed to scale representation including towns, rivers, and mountains.34 We may have little deWnite idea of how Agrippa’s map looked, but what is certain is that the map was something new to the Roman world. There had, of course, been maps in Rome before Agrippa’s.35 Livy mentions a tablet in the shape of Sardinia set up by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus in the temple of Mater Matuta to commemorate the conquest of the island, on which were painted representations of battles;36 while in Varro’s De Re Rustica, a representation of Italy displayed in the temple of Tellus provides the starting point for a discussion of the excellence of Italy.37 But these were only maps of regions, although they show that there was already a triumphalist context for the display of representations of countries.38 Still, there had never before been a map on this scale, a map of the whole world.39 Pompey had included symbolic representations of the nations he had conquered in a portico attached to his theatre, built to celebrate his triumph in 55 bc. Pliny refers to them in his account of sculpture in marble, at 36.41, noting that Varro relates that ‘the ‘‘Fourteen Nations’’ which surround Pompey’s theatre are by Coponius.’40 And Cassius Dio’s description of Augustus’ funeral procession suggests that the Julio-Claudians may have tried 32 Various remains have been identiWed as the Porticus Vipsania, but most suggestions have now been disproved. See LTUR cv. Porticus Vipsania. 33 Most recently, B. Salway, ‘Travel, itineraria and tabellaria’, in C. Adams and R. Laurence (eds.), Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire (London and New York 2001), 22–66 at 29. 34 Brodersen, ‘Terra Cognita’ (n. 31), 269–70 provides a summary of all the diVerent suggestions. 35 See R. K. Sherk, ‘Roman Geographical Exploration and Military Maps’, ANRW 2.1 (1974), 534–62 esp. 545; O. A. W. Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (London 1985); Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 17); Salway, ‘Travel, itineraria and tabellaria’ (n. 33). 36 Livy 41.28.10. 37 Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 17), 99–100; A. Grilli, ‘La geograWa di Agrippa’, in A. C. Gastaldo (ed.), Il bimillenario di Agrippa. Giornate Filologiche Genovese 17 (Genova 1990), 127–46 at 130–1. 38 Cf. A. Rouveret, ‘Les lieux de la me´moire publique. Quelques remarques sur la fonction des tableaux dans la cite´ ’, Rivista internazionale per la storia economica e sociale dell antichita 6–8 (1987–9), 101–24 at 113–15. 39 On the tradition that Julius Caesar commissioned four sages to measure the whole world see Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 17), 95–8, T. P. Wiseman, Talking to Virgil (Exeter 1992), 22–48 and Brodersen, ‘Terra Cognita’ (n. 31), 262–7. 40 NH 36.41 and Suetonius, Life of Nero 46. F. Coarelli, ‘Il complesso Pompeiano del Campo Marzio e la sua decorazione scultorea’, RendPontAcc 44 (1971–2), 99–122 at 110–17 and id., L’Area Sacra di Largo Argentina (Rome 1981), 27 n. 3 where he retracts his hypothesis; M. Fuchs, Untersuchungen zur


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Fig. 18. Several scholars have drawn on Pliny’s references to Agrippa to reconstruct the visual appearance of Agrippa’s map. Sallmann’s reconstruction of Agrippa’s map.

to associate the Wrst imperator with these symbolic representations of empire. He notes that the procession included ‘a portrait of Pompey the Great, and images of all the ethne he had acquired, each represented by some local characteristic.’41 While the Romans may have been accustomed to symbolic representations of the world either in Pompey’s allegorical display of conquered nations, or in the globe which, from the Hellenistic period, had been part of the standard iconographic repertoire of power,42 Agrippa’s map (whatever its exact appearance) displayed the world in a completely diVerent light. It revealed everything that hid behind the smooth circular surface of the globe. Even greater than the sense of conquest evident in being able to hold the world in your hand, here the whole world was unfurled, measured and deconstructed, its anatomy placed on view in the centre of Rome. In representing the world as it has not been seen before, in detailing it where before it had simply been spherical, the map makes a strong claim to autopsy, which in turn implies conquest, particularly when linked to a man who had been a military commander in almost every part of the empire.43 Ausstattung Ro¨mischer Theater in Italien und den Westprovinzen des Imperium Romanum (Mainz am Rhein 1987), 5–11, esp. 9; R. R. R. Smith, ‘Simulacra Gentium: The Ethne from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’, JRS 78 (1988), 50–77 at 72. 41

Cassius Dio 56.34.2. See also Tacitus, Annals 1.8.4. See P. Arnaud, ‘L’Image du globe dans le monde romain’, MEFRA 96 (1984), 53–116; J. Vogt, Orbis. Ausgewa¨hlte Schriften zur Geschichte des Altertums (Freiburg, Basil and Vienna 1960), 151–71, Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 17), 35–6. 43 Grilli, ‘La geograWa di Agrippa’, (n. 37), 134–6. 42

64 monuments and the creation of roman space Already by 174 bc Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus’ map of Sardinia recognized that one way of demonstrating complete conquest, was by demonstrating complete knowledge. Agrippa’s map, one could argue, pushed this to its limits, in ‘knowing’ the whole world. Just as Augustus’ Alpine trophy Wrmly stamped the mark of Rome on what was one of the boundaries of empire (or at least of Italy), so Agrippa’s map gathered together the boundaries of the world and installed them at the heart of empire.44 In an eVort to picture Agrippa’s map against the background of surviving evidence of earlier Roman maps, scholars have pored over the minutiae of Pliny’s references in order to recover essential clues to the map’s appearance. Pliny’s mention of a relatively small Parthian town as represented on the map,45 for example, has plausibly been seen to indicate that the map showed not just the Roman empire, but the whole of the oikoumene (Pliny speciWcally uses the phrase orbis terrarum), and that the map must have been relatively detailed. Most scholars accept that, given the recurrent detailing of distance in Pliny’s references to Agrippa, the map would have included some system of measurement. But whether the measurements would have been written on the map itself, or indicated either by the proportions of the representation, or in an inscription set beneath or beside the map, remains a matter for debate. What emerges most clearly from all the discussions of Agrippa’s map, however, is the extent to which any hypothetical reconstruction of the map is entirely dependent on interpreting Pliny’s presentation of it. Like the trophy at La Turbie, it is a monument which has become completely integrated into the fabric of Pliny’s text. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa dominates books 3 to 6 of the Natural History—his name is cited by Pliny thirty times, in particular for measurements of particular regions. Thus at 3.86 we are given Agrippa’s measurement for the circumference of Sicily, while at 3.96 Pliny notes Agrippa’s measurement of the distance from the Lacinian promontory to Caulon.46 In introducing it at 3.17, Pliny places Agrippa’s map at the beginning of his geography, so that all future references to Agrippa, in a geographical context, become references to his map. His brief account speciWcally sets the map in a Roman and an imperial context. We learn that Agrippa’s intention was to show the whole world to the city of Rome (cum orbem terrarum urbi spectandum propositurus esset), a statement which in its 44 On images of boundaries and borders in Rome see M. Galinier, ‘La Colonne Trajane: Images et imaginaire de la frontie`re’, in A. Rousselle (ed.), Frontie`res terrestres, frontie`res ce´lestes dans l’antiquite´ (Paris 1995), 273–88. Also Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 17), 21 on the strange names which the Res Gestae is the Wrst to cite. 45 NH 6.139: ‘Charax was originally 10 stadia from the coast—even the Porticus Vipsania has it on the sea—but Juba places it 50 miles inland.’ 46 Also NH 3.37, 3.150, 4.45, 4.60, 4.77, 4.78, 4.81, 4.83, 4.91, 4.98, 4.102, 4.105, 4.118, 5.9–10, 5.40, 5.65, 5.102, 6.3, 6.37, 6.39, 6.57, 6.136–7, 6.164, 6.196, 6.207, 6.209.


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play on orbs/urbs has clear triumphalist overtones.47 Indeed, as we shall see in Chapter 4, it is a pun which Pliny himself enacts throughout the Natural History, where in his repeated references to foreign objects housed in Rome, he suggests that Rome has incorporated the entire contents of the orbs into her city. References to Agrippa punctuate the whole of Pliny’s geography, and the measurements themselves play an important role in establishing the relationship between knowledge and conquest which we have already encountered elsewhere in books 3–6 (see pp. 36–40). In Pliny’s geography, the provision of exact measurements implies that the Romans have completely explored a country’s length and breadth. And Wttingly, as Pliny reaches the end of his account of the world, the measurements begin to run out. Thus at 6.198, we learn that there are no measurements for the island Cerne, oV the coast of Ethiopia—Ethiopia was counted in Antiquity as one of the boundaries of the world.48 Agrippa’s map remains resolutely inextricable from Pliny’s account of the world. And yet if scrutiny of Pliny’s text ultimately proves fruitless when attempting to reconstruct the precise visual appearance of Agrippa’s map, it provides us with a crucial insight into both how Pliny himself deploys monuments in his discussion of the world, and how contemporary Romans may have viewed the monument. Here, one recent suggestion for the appearance of Agrippa’s map is particularly relevant. Kai Brodersen has argued that the map was not actually a pictorial representation of the world, but an inscription detailing measurements and distances (Fig. 19).49 Given the extent to which we are dependent on Pliny for any reconstruction of Agrippa’s map, Brodersen’s hypothesis is an attractive one. For, as we shall see, it not only Wts well into a surviving body of monumental inscriptions produced during the reign of Augustus, but perhaps even more importantly, it concurs with Pliny’s own use of inscriptions as devices within his text. Pliny is fond of quoting inscriptions. In his account of the life of Pompey the Great, he cites several inscriptions (7.97–8) to prove his contention at 7.95–6, that Pompey’s victories ‘equal in brilliance the exploits not only of Alexander the Great but even almost of Hercules and Father Liber’. We have already seen

47

On the frequent puns on orbs/urbs in Roman literature see E. Bre´guet, ‘Urbi et orbi. Un cliche´ et un the`me’, in J. Bibauw (ed.), Hommages a` Marcel Renard. CollLatomus 101 (1969), i. 140–52, Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 17), 110–11 and C. Edwards, Writing Rome (Cambridge 1996), 100. 48 Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 17), 22 and J. S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought (Princeton 1992), 49–60. 49 Brodersen, ‘Terra Cognita’ (n. 31), 275–86. Salway, ‘Travel, itineraria and tabellaria’ (n. 33), 29 disputes Brodersen’s suggestion, but see Brodersen’s response in the same volume (K. Brodersen, ‘The Presentation of Geographical Knowledge for Travel and Transport in the Roman World’, in C. Adams and R. Laurence (eds.), Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire (London and New York 2001), 7– 21 at 20 n. 9).

66 monuments and the creation of roman space Fig. 19. Brodersen’s suggestion that Agrippa’s map was not a pictorial image but an inscription, fits well with Augustus’ employment of monumental inscriptions (see Figs. 9, 13, and 14) as well as Pliny’s own quotation of inscriptions in the Natural History. Brodersen’s tentative illustration of how Agrippa’s map might appear as a monumental inscription.

(pp. 58–61) that the inscription from the trophy at La Turbie played an important role in Pliny’s account of the Alps; Pliny’s use of Agrippa’s map reveals the same textual strategy, but serves to reinforce Pliny’s account not just of one region, but of the whole world. In taking his measurements from Agrippa’s map, or at least in making it appear that he has done so, Pliny draws on a representation of the world external to his text to corroborate his own representation. What better guarantee of a text that, through its lists and taxonomies of conquest, represents the world as Roman, than a representation of the world, measured and labelled for all to see, on display in the centre of Rome? Indeed Pliny’s emphasis on the accuracy of Agrippa’s work (Agrippam quidem in tanta viri diligentia praeterque in hoc opere cura) only serves to enhance the authority of these references. Outside of Pliny’s text, too, Brodersen’s argument Wnds support in a range of monumental Augustan inscriptions, some of which I have already discussed (pp. 51–5). The inscription on Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie drew on the visual power of the list to assert conquest, and this act of conveying of power through a monumental list was perhaps most clearly articulated in Augustus’ Res Gestae. But the way in which Agrippa’s map enlarges the totality which was already present in La Turbie’s list of all the Alpine tribes to encompass the world, Wnds its parallel in another Augustan monument. According to Velleius Paterculus (2.39.2), Augustus’ Forum—which already drew on all corners of the empire for


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the materials for its creation—incorporated tituli of the countries conquered by Rome. Given the importance of the monumental inscription in the Augustan period, Pliny’s emphasis on the visual aspect of Agrippa’s map is revealing (cum orbem terrarum urbi spectandum propositurus esset). If Agrippa’s map was not a pictorial representation, but an inscribed list of places, measurements, and distances, then Pliny’s text suggests that the Wrst-century Romans appreciated the visual impact of inscriptions, as much as the written information contained within them.50 Ultimately, of course, bar some miraculous discovery, the appearance of Agrippa’s map remains buried in the niceties of scholarly argument. And yet the numerous articles and discussions which Pliny’s brief references to the monument have provoked, prove how successful Pliny’s text has been in tantalizing us with the material presence of ‘Agrippa’s map’. The map’s relationship to a series of Wrst- and early second-century images which symbolically represent the world, remains elusive, defying explicit comparison of form or iconography. The statues of nations included in Pompey’s theatre may have found a parallel in Augustan Rome. Servius’ commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid includes a reference to a Porticus ad Nationes, tracing the origin of its name to statues representing nations displayed there by Augustus.51 Pliny may also refer to the portico at 36.39, although Paolo Liverani has argued that the syntax should be read diVerently, making it a reference to a simple porticus, rather than a Porticus ad Nationes.52 These allusive references are all that survives of these images, although we can look to later representations of provinces in Rome, such as the series of reliefs associated with the second-century Hadrianeum in Rome, to get some impression of how the statues in the Porticus ad Nationes might have looked (Fig. 20).53 Recalling the juxtaposition of inscription and relief on Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie, the personiWcations of provinces were interspersed amidst more generic symbols of conquest—a series of associated reliefs showed piles of armour. But where the Alpine tribes at La 50 This concurs with recent studies of inscriptions which shift the emphasis away from inscriptions as visible sources of information, highlighting their symbolic role. See C. Williamson, ‘Monuments of Bronze: Roman Legal Documents on Bronze Tablets’, ClAnt 6 (1987), 160–83 esp. 165; Alfo¨ldy, ‘Augustus und die Inschriften’ (n. 12), 289–324; E. Thomas and C. Witschel, ‘Constructing Reconstruction: Claim and Reality of Roman Rebuilding Inscriptions from the Latin West’, PBSR 60 ns 47 (1992), 135–77; and G. Woolf, ‘Monumental Writing and the Expansion of Roman Society in the Early Empire’, JRS 86 (1996), 22–39. 51 Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid 8.721. See Smith, ‘Simulacra Gentium’ (n. 40), 72 and LTUR cv. Porticus ad Nationes. 52 P. Liverani, ‘ e , nella propaganda imperiale’, RM 102 (1995), 219–49, at 244–6 esp. 245 n. 134. 53 J. M. C. Toynbee, The Hadrianic School: A Chapter in the History of Greek Art (Cambridge 1934), 152–9; Smith, ‘Simulacra Gentium’ (n. 40), 76–7; M. Sapelli (ed.), Provinciae Fideles. Il fregio del Tempio di Adriano in Campo Marzio (Milan 1999), 7–25, 83–105, and 117–27.

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Turbie were made Roman through translation, in the reliefs associated with the Hadrianeum, diVerence (in dress and hairstyle) is an essential element in the portrayal of individual Roman provinces. It is a series of representations of nations which decorate a provincial building, however, which intimate how important these symbolic inventories of empire had become in the articulation of imperial power in the early Wrst century. The north portico of the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias in Asia Minor, included a series of Wfty representations in relief of the races of empire with accompanying inscriptions, including among them the Triumpilini, the Wrst Alpine tribe to be named on Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie (Figs. 21–22).54 Above were displayed allegorical representations of the universe, such as Day and Ocean, while in the opposite portico, side by side with representations of Greek myth, were several reliefs which represented the world explicitly in terms of imperial conquest. In one panel was represented Claudius’ conquest of Britannia (Fig. 23), in another, a symbolic presentation of Augustus’ rule over the whole oikoumene, land and sea. Erected by two local Aphrodisian families, during the reigns of Tiberius and Nero, the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias is not a monument about imperial conquest.55 Instead, its combination of Greek and Roman iconography and subject matter celebrates Aphrodisias’ imperial identity, even if rivalry between the builders of the north and south porticoes led to diVerent choices of Roman idiom.56 While the reliefs showing Claudius’ conquest of Britain (Fig. 23) or Nero’s conquest of Armenia in the south portico represent Rome’s empire in terms of violent suppression, the images of ethne in the north portico suggest a sense of common participation in the one empire (Figs. 21–22). And what better way to emulate imperial Rome than to symbolically represent the world, which Rome herself had incorporated in so many diVerent representations in her city—whether in the tituli of the Forum Augustum, the Porticus ad Nationes mentioned by Servius, or Agrippa’s map in the Porticus Vipsania? If these later representations picture the world through hair-do and costume, then the world of Agrippa’s map (whether a monumental inscription or an image, possibly labelled with names of places and measurements) was deWned through measurement. One can understand the obvious attraction for Pliny in such a monument. Like other Augustan projects such as the Res Gestae and the 54 R. R. R. Smith, ‘The Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’, JRS 77 (1987), 88–138, id., ‘Simulacra Gentium’ (n. 40), id., ‘Myth and Allegory in the Sebasteion’, in C. Roueche´ and K. T. Erim (eds.), Aphrodisias Papers. JRA Supp. 1 (1990), 89–100. 55 Smith, ‘Simulacra Gentium’ (n. 40), 77. 56 According to the dedicatory inscriptions, the propylon and north portico were built by two brothers, Menander and Eusebes, and Eusebes’ wife. The temple and south portico were built by Diogenes and Attalis Amphion. The temple and both porticoes were dedicated to Aphrodite, the Roman emperors (theoi sebastoi) and the Demos. Smith, ‘The Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’ (n. 54), 90.


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Fig. 20. A series of personifications of nations, associated with the Hadrianeum, may have their antecedents in two earlier series of statues representing conquered nations displayed in Pompey’s theatre, and Augustus’ Porticus ad Nationes. Personification of a nation (possibly Hispania). H: 2.13 m. Mid to late second century ad. Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori (inv. 767), Rome.

trophy at La Turbie, the map demonstrates a keen interest in cataloguing dominion. As such, it is an ideal object for inclusion in the ultimate catalogue, Pliny’s Natural History. But Pliny’s account of the world doesn’t simply replicate the Agrippan version. Just as the totality of the list on the trophy at La Turbie was something for Pliny’s account to rival and surpass (see pp. 60–61), so his geography competes with Agrippa’s representation of the world, as much as it draws support from it. At 6.207, for example, Pliny draws our attention to a mistake in Agrippa’s calculation of the distance from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Gulf of Scanderoon.57 57

NH 6.207: ‘Agrippa reckons the same distance (from the Fretum Gaditanum to the Sinus Issicanus) in a straight line to be 3,440 miles—I suspect that there is a numerical error here, since he has also reported the distance from Fretum Siculum to Alexandria to be 1,350 miles.’ See also 4.77–8 and 6.57

70 monuments and the creation of roman space

Fig. 21. The Triumpilini, the first Alpine tribe mentioned on Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie, were later incorporated into a series of reliefs representing the provinces of empire at Aphrodisias. Inscription which accompanied the personification of the Triumpilini (Ethne Trounpeilon). From Sebasteion, north portico. H: 29 cm. c. ad 14–68. Aphrodisias.

It is suggestive, then, that as he nears the end of his description of the world in books 3–6, Pliny refers to his own representation of the world in a phrase which recalls his introduction of Agrippa’s map at 3.17. At 6.211 he writes ‘so that nothing may be wanting in my survey of the world’ (ut nihil desit in spectando terrarum situ).58 Here Pliny’s account of the world is presented in the same terms as the image of the world contained in Agrippa’s map. Just as Agrippa set the world before the eyes of the city of Rome as a spectandum, as something to be looked at (cum orbem terrarum urbi spectandum propositurus esset), so Pliny’s own account of the world is rooted in the act of viewing (ut nihil desit in spectando terrarum situ). Already, in continuing the inscription from the trophy at La Turbie with his own additions, Pliny seemed to place his work on the same level as an inscription from a triumphal monument. Here, in referring to his own account of the world as something to be looked at, Pliny eVects a comparison between his where Agrippa’s measurement is included in a list of diVering measurements, and 4.91 where he records Agrippa’s measurement but adds that, in his own opinion, measurements for this part of the world are uncertain. 58

Brodersen, ‘Terra Cognita’ (n. 31), 278, cites this passage (as another example of Pliny using visual imagery to refer to his own text) in support of his argument that Agrippa’s map was not a map but an inscription.


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Fig. 22. The series of reliefs representing provinces married Greek inscriptions with personifications to represent the empire under Rome. Reconstruction of personification of the Piroustae with accompanying inscription from north portico, Sebasteion, Aphrodisias.

work and the monuments that have guaranteed his text. But the reader is no longer referred to a monument external to the narrative to verify Pliny’s account. Instead we are asked to look at Pliny’s geography as we would Agrippa’s map.

72 monuments and the creation of roman space Fig. 23. While the north portico at Aphrodisias drew on the Roman iconographic tradition of personification to suggest the harmonious unity of empire, several reliefs in the south portico represent the world in terms of violent conquest. Relief showing Claudius’ conquest of Britain. From Sebasteion, south portico. H: 1.72 m. c. ad 14–68. Aphrodisias.

It is perhaps not surprising then, that Pliny’s presentation of Agrippa’s map at 3.17 Wnds echoes in another vision of the world at 36.101. It is now time to move on to the wonders of our own city, to examine the strength gained from 800 years’ experience, and to show that in the matter of buildings also, we have conquered the world (et sic quoque terrarum orbem victum ostendere). As you will see, this has happened on numerous occasions, indeed almost as many times as the number of


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wonders which I will describe. For if you were to gather together all the buildings of Rome (universitate vero acervata) and place them in one great heap (et in quendam unum cumulum coiecta), the grandeur which towered above would be no less than if another world were described in the one place (non alia magnitudo exurget quam si mundus alius quidam in uno loco narretur).

The passage is a crucial one within the Natural History, and I will be exploring it in detail in the following chapter (see pp. 94–100). But what is particularly relevant in this context, is once again the similarity between the phrase with which Pliny here presents his own discussion (sic quoque terrarum orbem victum ostendere) and the way in which he introduced Agrippa’s map (cum orbem terrarum urbi spectandum propositurus esset).59 The passage which Pliny is introducing at 36.101 is not just any old list, but a list of Roman monuments which serve to establish Rome as one of the wonders of the world. At 3.66, the number of gates at Rome and the height of its buildings were used by Pliny to establish the extent to which the city had grown, in both physical and political magnitude (see pp. 45–6 for a discussion of this passage). Here again, yet on a far grander scale, Pliny is presenting us with a list of Roman architectural achievements, which include Agrippa’s Diribitorium, the Forum of Augustus and Vespasian’s Temple of Peace, to demonstrate the power of Rome—terrarum orbem victum ostendere (although as I will argue in the next chapter, the dynamic of totality which drives Pliny’s text also leads, ironically, to the inclusion in this passage of negative monuments). But it is not just as individual monuments that these buildings testify that Rome has conquered the world. In Pliny’s image, it is when they are seen all heaped together, that Rome’s true greatness emerges (universitate vero acervata et in quendam unum cumulum coiecta non alia magnitudo exurget quam si mundus alius quidam in uno loco narretur). Whether Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie, or Agrippa’s map, Pliny has drawn on monuments at several points in books 3–6 to support his presentation of the world as a world dominated by Rome. Here, we are presented with a highly condensed example of this strategy, where the monuments of Rome are no longer just cited as three-dimensional facts external to Pliny’s narrative, but are themselves heaped together to form a world in their own right. Of course, the image of the world at 36.101 is not displayed in a portico in Rome for all to see, but is a representation in Pliny’s own words. Yet Pliny invites us to look at both representations on the same terms: just as Agrippa showed the whole of the orbis terrarum to the people of Rome (cum orbem terrarum urbi spectandum propositurus esset), now Pliny invites us to look at his image of how Rome has conquered the world (sic quoque terrarum orbem victum ostendere). His text has 59

Brodersen, ‘Terra Cognita’ (n. 31), 275 notes the similarity between the two passages as evidence for his theory that the map was not a visual representation of the world, but an inscribed list of measurements.

74 monuments and the creation of roman space achieved the ultimate in authenticity—it has constituted itself as a monument in its own right. Books 3–6 are not speciWcally concerned with Roman imperial monuments. Yet monuments have had a part to play in Pliny’s carefully constructed image of the world as empire. And if Pliny’s choice and use of monuments as markers within his text tell us something about the concerns and strategies of his encyclopaedic project, they also provide us with an important Wrst-century response to those Augustan monuments. Pliny, I would argue, recognized that monuments such as Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie and Agrippa’s map draw on the visual power of the catalogue to transform empire itself into a monument; and in his incorporation of these monuments into his own text, he, in turn, exploited this capacity of the list to be a monument in its own right, to locate his account of the world in reality, and present his text as the greatest monument of all. Pliny’s geography frequently draws on the Augustan legacy—not just in its quotation of Augustan monuments, but also, as we saw in Chapter 2 (pp. 33–4), in the inclusion of administrative lists compiled under Augustus. One can see how Pliny’s project could enjoy a particular aYnity with a period in which Rome was engaged in compiling statistics about her empire.60 But Pliny’s account of the world is not intended as a portrait of the empire as it was under Augustus. There are frequent references to subsequent emperors (including Pliny’s own patron Vespasian) which suggest an empire that has been continually augmented and expanded.61 And if, at 3.37, the expansion of empire could be represented in terms of adding to a list (see p. 34), then Pliny’s own catalogue, the ultimate list, stands as a testimony to the continuing reach of Roman power.

60

See Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics (n. 17). e.g. NH 3.30 Vespasian, 3.37 Galba, 4.22 Nero, 5.2 Caligula, 5.3 Claudius, 5.11 Claudius, 5.14 Suetonius Paulinus ‘consul in our own times’, 5.19–20 Claudius and Vespasian, 5.38 Vespasian, 5.63 Claudius, 5.75 Claudius, 6.3 Claudius, 6.17 Claudius, 6.23 recent events, 6.84 Claudius, 6.128 Claudius, 6.181 Nero, 6.184 Nero. 61

four

The Problem of Totality: Collecting Greek Art, Wonders, and Luxury

Collecting is a theme with special reference for the Natural History. The Natural History is the collection par excellence, a collection, in writing, of everything the world contains.1 It was clearly recognized as such by the seventeenthand eighteenth-century creators of curiosity cabinets and Wunderkammern, who looked to Pliny, not only as a model of what to include in their collections, but also how to arrange them.2 Pliny himself draws on the image of collecting to describe his work in the preface. Quoting Domitius Piso, at Pref. 17, he likens his work to a treasury or storehouse: ‘it is storehouses (thesauros) that are needed, not books.’ Thesaurus could refer equally to a hoard of objects, and the place where they were stored, and both are applicable in Pliny’s case. The assortments of objects, amassed as booty and housed in the temples and porticoes of Rome, must have in many ways resembled the contents of the Natural History.3 Indeed, later at Pref. 19, Pliny compares his dedication of the Natural History to Titus, with the dedication of an object in a temple: This is the guarantee of my work, this gives an indication of its value. Many objects are regarded as extremely valuable precisely because they have been dedicated in a temple (multa valde pretiosa ideo videntur quia sunt templis dicata).

This is, of course, intended to Xatter his patron, Titus. But it also explicitly links Pliny’s encyclopaedia with the numerous objects (including the Greek art and 1 On the desire for totality inherent in the process of collecting see A. Lugli, Naturalia e mirabilia. Il collezionismo enciclopedica nelle Wunderkammern d’Europa (Milan 1983), 11; K. Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities. Paris and Venice 1500–1800, trans. E. Wiles-Portier (Cambridge, Oxford, and Cambridge, Mass. 1990), 58–9; A. Shelton, ‘Cabinets of Transgression: Renaissance Collections and the Incorporation of the New World’, in R. Cardinal and J. Elsner (eds.), The Cultures of Collecting (London 1994), 177–203. 2 Ludovico Moscardo’s collection was divided into three broad groupings taken directly from the Natural History, while in Worm’s arrangement of the objects in his collection according to material, we can again see parallels with Pliny’s work, esp. books 33–7 where art is subdivided into the material from which it is made. See E. Schulz, ‘Notes on the History of Collecting and of Museums’, JHC 2.2 (1990), 205–18, esp. 205: ‘the scholar also found in Pliny instructions concerning what was to be collected.’ Also P. Findlen, Possessing Nature (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London 1994), esp. 62–70. 3 On these early collections, see E. BonaVe´, Les Collectioneurs de l’ancienne Rome. Notes d’un amateur (Paris 1867), 6; J. von Schlosser, Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spa¨trenaissance (Leipzig 1908), 4–7; G. F. Koch, Die Kunstaustellung (Berlin 1967), 20–8.

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collecting greek art, wonders, and luxury

curiosities which Pliny himself records) dedicated in temples, and demonstrates his awareness of the value which could be attached to such collections. While the image of the thesaurus encapsulates the size and range of the Natural History, it also embodies one of its principal aims. The physical preservation of objects in a storehouse is matched by Pliny’s own concern, in his written collection, to preserve memory of things which would otherwise be lost.4 Book 14 opens with an extended exploration of this idea. Pliny laments the fact that some trees have been completely forgotten, and contrasts this with his own concern to investigate even those things which have passed out of memory. It never ceases to amaze me that the memory of certain trees has died out (interisse memoriam) and even the names recorded by authors. . . . I, however, will make a thorough investigation into even those things which have been consigned to oblivion (sed nos obliterrata quoque scrutabimur) (NH 14. 2–7)

In the geography books, knowledge of a country and its conquest by Rome were closely linked (see pp. 36–40). Here, ironically, Pliny connects the loss of knowledge with the expansion of Rome’s empire. He is keen to emphasize the beneWts of worldwide empire,5 but goes on to assert how, as a consequence, scholarship has been replaced by avarice.6 If Rome’s conquest of the world has resulted in a decline in her scholarship, then Pliny’s enterprise to catalogue the whole world and its contents encounters a similar problem. What should be the greatest expression of triumphalism, when one’s text (and implicitly, Rome) has collected the entire contents of the world, is, simultaneously, the initiation of a decline. For if (as the ideal encyclopaedia does) one takes possession of entirety, you inevitably include not only what is best in the world, but also what is worst (at least in Pliny’s view)— luxuria which leads to corruption.7 For Pliny, luxuria is a perversion of reason (ratio) and Nature.8 The materials of luxury (such as gold, silver, and pearls) 4

See Beagon, Roman Nature, 21 and 50–4. NH 14.2: ‘For who could not come to the conclusion that, now that communications have been established worldwide through the authority of the Roman empire (maiestate Romani imperii), the standard of living has been improved by trading in goods and a common participation in the joys of peace, and now that all those things which were previously hidden have become widely available?’ 6 NH 14.4: ‘The reality is that other customs have crept in, and the minds of men are engaged on other matters, and the only arts to which people devote themselves are the arts of avarice.’ 7 For a general discussion of luxury in Rome, see L. Friedla¨nder, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms (Leipzig 1881), iii. 6–152, trans. J. H. Freese and L. A. Magnus as Roman Life and Manners (London 1968), ii. 131–230; and C. Berry, The Idea of Luxury (Cambridge 1994), 63–86, esp. 64–7 on luxury as a corruption of nature. 8 See A. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Pliny the Elder and Man’s Unnatural History’, GaR 37 (1990), 80–96 esp. 85–92; S. Citroni Marchetti, ‘Iuvare mortalem. L’ideale programmatico della Naturalis Historia di Plinio nei rapporti con il moralismo stoico-diatribico’, AeR ns 27 (1982), 124–48 esp. 139–41, and id., Plinio il Vecchio, 69–75, 203–4 and 255–60; Isager, Pliny on Art and Society, 52–5; Beagon, Roman Nature, 40–2 and 76–7. 5


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have been hidden by Nature beneath the surface of the earth, beyond the reach of man. In digging for gold and silver, then, man is not only harming himself, but contravening the natural order.9 The tensions can already be detected in the indexes to the Natural History, where various manifestations of luxuria are included in the table of contents amongst the 20,000 noteworthy facts which Pliny claims his work contains (NH Pref. 17). In the index to book 33, for example, we Wnd ‘excessive wealth’, ‘when the Roman people Wrst began to squander money’ and ‘luxury in silver dishes’ listed as subjects for discussion along with the more innocuous ‘kinds of red lead; its use in painting’. Inherent in this set of juxtapositions is the problem of totality. When you collect the world, you inevitably include the source of its downfall. Interestingly, this microcosmic representation of the world, luxuria and all, Wnds an echo in Nature’s own microcosm, at least as represented by Pliny. At 7.18, Pliny notes how When Nature engendered in man the wild animals’ habit of feeding on human Xesh, she also saw Wt to create poisons throughout the body, and in the case of some men, even also in the eyes; so that there was no evil anywhere, that was not present in man.

In book 19, Pliny uses the term luxuria to describe the prodigious growth of the cabbage plant.10 But elsewhere, luxury is linked, not with the growth of plants, but with the expansion of Rome’s empire. Rome’s conquests (particularly in the East) introduced luxury to Rome, and this, for Pliny, is the direct cause of the decline in the Roman traditional way of life (mos maiorum).11 Book 24 opens with a clear statement of this paradox. So it is certainly true that as a result of our greatness, the traditional customs of the Roman people have been destroyed, that in conquering we have been conquered (vincendoque victi sumus). We are subject to foreigners, and in one of the arts they have mastered the masters. (NH 24.5)

Here Pliny is speciWcally referring to the arts of medicine—Romans now turn to the Red Sea for a cure for the simplest graze, rather than making use of the medicines readily available in their own gardens. But the message holds true in other Welds too. Conquest is at once a process of acquisition (hence the knowledge contained in Pliny’s encyclopaedia), and a process of loss. 9 Book 33 opens with a lengthy discussion of this idea. NH 33.1–3: ‘We hunt out all the earth’s innards, and live on top of the hollows we have made, amazed that on occasion the earth gapes open or begins to tremble, as if this could not possibly be an expression of indignation on the part of our sacred parent. . . . But those things which are hidden and buried underground, those things which are not readily found, these are the very things which destroy us and drive us to the depths.’ 10 NH 19.139. E. Gowers, The Loaded Table (Oxford 1993), 13 and 18–19. 11 On the resonance of mos maiorum within a moralistic discourse, see C. Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge 1993), esp. 4.

78 collecting greek art, wonders, and luxury The link between the supposed decline in Rome’s traditional values and the expansion of her empire was a familiar trope in late republican and early imperial literature.12 Livy dates the start of the decline to Marcellus’ conquest of Syracuse in 211 bc, while elsewhere Rome’s conquest of Asia in the second century is also blamed.13 For Pliny, the origins of decline lie Wrmly with Asia and a succession of Roman triumphs in the East (starting with Scipio’s triumph over Antiochus III in 189 bc) are credited with introducing luxury goods to Rome. In his discussion of silverware at 33.148–50, he lists the successive assaults on Roman morals resulting from Rome’s contact with Asia. Scipio’s conquest of Asia Wrst introduced luxury to Italy (Asia primum devicta luxuriam misit in Italiam),14 but the bequest of the kingdom of Pergamum to Rome by King Attalus III in 133 bc ‘inXicted far more serious damage on our morals’ (multo etiam gravius adXixit mores). At the auction of Attalus’ possessions, the Roman people ‘learnt not merely to admire foreign opulence, but also to desire it’ (erudita civitate amare etiam, non solum admirari, opulentiam externam), a taste which they had already acquired, from the statues and paintings which L. Mummius brought to Rome after the destruction of Corinth in 146 bc. This account of Rome’s exposure to luxury culminates in Scipio Aemilianus’ defeat of Carthage in the same year (146 bc).15 That nothing might be lacking (ut ne quid deesset), luxury came into existence at the same time as the destruction of Carthage, the fates having conspired to give us both a taste for vices, and the opportunity to indulge them. (NH 33.150)

The theme of the decline in the mos maiorum as a result of the expansion of Rome’s empire may not be new to Roman literature, but here it is adapted to Pliny’s encyclopaedic enterprise. Luxury, the new Roman possession, is subsumed into Pliny’s narrative of totality, so that it becomes another item which must not be omitted from the inventory of everything. The defeat of Carthage, and the consequent increase in Roman luxuria, are introduced by ne quid deesset 12

See G. Becatti, Arte e gusto negli scrittori latini (Florence 1951), 9–17; J. J. J. Pollitt, ‘The Impact of Greek Art on Rome’, TAPA 108 (1978), 155–74 esp. 155–60; Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio, 93–100; E. S. Gruen, Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome (New York 1992), 84–130. J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Rome. Sources and Documents (Cambridge 1983), 32–95 collects the relevant texts. 13 See Livy 25.40.1–3 and 39.6–7. Also Polybius 9.10.1–12, and Plutarch, Marcellus 21.1–5 on the fall of Syracuse. 14 See also 34.34, where Pliny says that cult statues were made of wood or terracotta ‘right up to the conquest of Asia, from where luxury originates’. At 34.14, Pliny (citing Lucius Piso) refers to Manlius Vulso’s display of tables and couches decorated with bronze in his triumph to celebrate the conquest of Asia in 187 bc. At 37.12, Pliny credits the triumphs of L. Scipio, Manlius Vulso, and L. Mummius for the introduction of a variety of luxury goods. 15 See N. Purcell, ‘On the sacking of Carthage and Corinth’, in D. Innes, H. Hine, and C. Pelling (eds.), Ethics and Rhetoric, (Oxford 1995), 133–48.


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(‘so that nothing might be lacking’). The phrase reinforces the dynamic of the passage—each Roman conquest results in an even greater defeat for Roman morals, and, ‘so that nothing be lacking’ (ne quid deesset), the defeat of Carthage completes this cycle. But ne quid deesset also belongs with the strategic phrases which Pliny employs throughout the Natural History to enforce and enhance the reader’s sense of its totality (see pp. 20–21). Like non omittendum est (‘it must not be forgotten’), or nec obliterari convenit (‘it is not proper to consign to oblivion’), it explicitly draws attention to the completeness of Pliny’s list. Nothing, not even luxury, must be omitted from the inventory of entirety. At 37.1, Pliny uses a similar expression to refer to his entire encyclopaedic enterprise—‘So that nothing is lacking from the work that I have undertaken (Ut nihil instituto operi desit), there remains the subject of gemstones.’16 Gems (which in the hands of certain individuals inevitably lead to luxury and excess) and luxury alike must both be catalogued in order for Pliny’s account of the world to be complete. This chapter explores the tensions which emerge when the limits of one’s text are simultaneously the limits of the world. My discussion will focus on book 36, where, one book away from Pliny’s declaration of encyclopaedic totality, the triumphant narrative of Rome’s worldwide possessions emerges simultaneously as an inventory of Roman decline through luxury. The book is devoted to an account of marble (a material which is innately luxurious, in Pliny’s view),17 and it is dominated by collections and images of collecting.18 At once the physical proof of Rome’s conquests, and of the luxuria which has followed, the collections of Greek sculpture and Roman wonders which Wll book 36 are metaphors for Pliny’s wider encyclopaedic enterprise, embodying precisely the problematic which governs his work as a whole.

collecting and conquest Pliny’s account of marble sculpture, which follows his exploration of ‘luxury in marbles’, is dominated by Rome—a recurrent method of classiWcation is artists’ works at Rome. At 36.13, we learn that the works of Bupalus and Athenis are to be 16

See also 6.211: ‘so that nothing may be lacking (ut nihil desit) in my survey of the world.’ In the index to book 36, Pliny speciWcally cites ‘luxury in marbles’ (luxuria in marmoribus) as the Wrst subject for discussion, while the book itself opens with a powerful diatribe against marble and its uses (NH 36.1–8). 18 On Pliny as a source for collections in Rome, see G. Becatti, ‘Letture pliniane: le opere d’arte nei monumenta Asini Pollionis e negli Horti Serviliani’, in Studi in onore di A. Calderini e R. Paribeni 3 (Milan 1956), 199–210; G. Gualandi, ‘Plinio e il collezionismo d’arte’, in Plinio il Vecchio sotto il proWlo storico e letterario. Atti del Convegno di Como 1979 (Como 1982), 259–98; A. Rouveret, ‘Toute la me´moire du monde: La notion de collection dans la NH de Pline’, in Pigeaud/Oroz, Pliny, 431–49; and Isager, Pliny on Art and Society, 157–9. 17

80 collecting greek art, wonders, and luxury seen in Rome (Romae eorum signa sunt) on the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine, and on ‘almost all the buildings exected by Divus Augustus’. Rome overshadows the sentence—it opens Romae eorum signa sunt—and Pliny seems deliberately to rival Rome’s collection with those of Iasos and Chios which he mentions directly before.19 The entire account of sculptors in marble, which continues until 36.44, is driven by this dynamic. There is a continual focus on the presence of works in Rome, and, at the same time, an implicit sense of rivalry with the collections of other world cities.20 At 36.15 we learn of ‘an exceptionally beautiful’ Venus by Pheidias in the Portico of Octavia, followed directly by the works of his pupil, Alcamenes, on display in Athens, which include a ‘famous’ Venus outside the city walls. At 36.23 Pliny lists the works of Praxiteles in Rome (Romae Praxitelis opera sunt), and at 36.24, those of his son Cephisodotus (Romae eius opera sunt). The formula which Pliny uses to introduce this category of sculpture lays a strong syntactic emphasis on Rome (Romae opera/signa sunt) and on Roman possession. SigniWcantly, in listing sculptures in other cities, the syntax is reversed, thus putting less emphasis on the name of the city (sunt opera Athenis).21 Pliny’s contemporary, Quintilian, and later, Menander Rhetor, both include as a constituent of the encomia of cities the praise of a city’s buildings and works of art.22 In Pliny’s text, this traditional component of the rhetorical encomium is adapted to the encyclopaedic enterprise, so that an encomium of Rome is carried out through listing the many famous works of Greek art to be found in her collections.23 In fact, so much so, that by 36.33 Pliny’s account of sculptors in marble shifts from its focus on individual artists and where their works were to be seen in Rome, to focus instead on collections of Greek art in Rome, and which individual artists are represented in them. At 36.33 Pliny lists the sculptures along with the names of their artists on display in Asinius Pollio’s collection, and then goes on to list those in the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, the Horti Serviliani, the imperial palaces, and Agrippa’s Pantheon.24 Pliny’s discussion of sculptors in marble has been transformed into an inventory of Rome’s possessions. 19

NH 36.12–13: ‘The people of Iasos also have a Diana on display, made by Bupalus and Athenis. It is said that the face of Diana in Chios is their work.’ 20 On collections in Rome see D. Strong, ‘Roman Museums’, in id. (ed.), Archaeology, Theory and Practice. Essays presented to W. F. Grimes (London and New York 1973), 247–64; G. Becatti, ‘Opere d’arte greca nella Roma di Tiberio’, ArchCl 25–6 (1973–4), 18–53; M. Pape, Griechische Kunstwerke aus Kriegsbeute und ihre oVentliche Aufstellung in Rom (Hamburg 1975), 143–93; Pollitt, ‘The Impact of Greek Art on Rome’ (n. 12), 170–4. Also bibliography in n. 18. 21 NH 36.16: ‘cuius [Alcamenes] sunt opera Athenis’; 36.20: ‘opera eius [Praxiteles] sunt Athenis in Ceramico’. 22 Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria 2.7.27 and Menander Rhetor 2.360.25–32. 23 Cf. N. Horsfall, ‘Illusion and Reality in Latin Topographical Writing’, GaR 32 (1985), 197–208 esp. 201 and A. Vasaly, Representations. Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1993), 15–39 on the inXuence of rhetorical training on the writing of topographical descriptions. 24 On the collections in Asinius Pollio’s Atrium Libertatis, the Horti Serviliani and Agrippa’s Pantheon, see LTUR, cv. Atrium Libertatis, Horti Serviliani, and Pantheon. On the Temple of Apollo Sosianus near


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This narrative of Roman possession and rivalry culminates in Pliny’s discussion of Scopas, at 36.25–6: The fame of Scopas rivals these. He made a Venus and a Pothos (which are worshipped in the most solemn ceremonies at Samothrace), also the Apollo on the Palatine, and the famous Seated Vesta in the Horti Serviliani . . . But his most highly regarded work is the group in the shrine built by Gnaeus Domitius in the Circus Flaminius . . . As it is, besides the works mentioned above and those which are unknown to me, there is also a colossal Seated Mars by the same artist in the temple built by Brutus Callaecus, close to the Circus Flaminius, and also in the same place, a nude Venus, that is far superior to the one by Praxiteles (Praxiteliam illam antecedens), and that would have made any other place famous but Rome (et quemcumque alium locum nobilitatura).

From the moment he introduces Scopas’ work, Pliny inserts a note of rivalry— Scopas’ works compete with those of the artists that Pliny has already mentioned. Implicit in this declaration of rivalry is the competition between Rome and the rest of the (Greek) world which informs Pliny’s account of marble sculpture.25 The ensuing list makes clear who is the winner—Pliny notes a mere two Wgures by Scopas outside Rome (a Venus and a Pothos in Samothrace), and then goes on to list, at great length, the works of Scopas in collections in Rome. The high point of this inventory of Roman possessions is the artist’s Venus, on display in the temple built by Brutus Callaecus in the Circus Maximus, a work which Pliny says ‘is far superior to the one by Praxiteles’ (Praxiteliam illam antecedens). Already at 36.20, Pliny declared Praxiteles’ Cnidian Aphrodite superior not only to all his other work, but to everything in the world (ante omnia est non solum Praxitelis, verum in toto orbe terrarum Venus). For Scopas’ Venus to surpass that of Praxiteles, then, is high praise, and praise which is clearly intended to reXect at least as much on its place of display, Rome, as on its creator. Particularly since, Pliny goes on to note that the Venus ‘would have made any other place famous but Rome’. This is a clear reference to Cnidos, which Pliny has already said was made famous by Praxiteles’ sculpture (illo enim signo Praxiteles nobilitavit Cnidum, NH 36.21). Rome, which houses works not only by Praxiteles, but by all the great artists has (unlike Cnidos with its single masterpiece) no need of Scopas’ Venus to assure its fame. Pliny reinforces the point when he goes on to note, at 36.27, that in Rome people do not have the time or space to admire works of art.

the Portico of Octavia on the Campus Martius, see Isager, Pliny on Art and Society, 162–3 and F. Coarelli, Guida Archeologica di Roma, new edn. (Bari 1995), 308–9. 25

This concurs with Pliny’s sense of rivalry with other Greek writers—see pp. 23–5.

82 collecting greek art, wonders, and luxury In Rome, the sheer quantity of art works, and those which are forgotten (obliteratio) as a consequence, and above all the piles (acervi) of oYcial duties and business matters, distract people from the contemplation of art, since such admiration requires time and profound silence.

In book 14, Pliny lamented the loss of knowledge and declared his intention to research carefully into things which had been forgotten (obliterrata) (see p. 76). Here the sheer quantity of Greek sculptures in Rome, along with the numerous oYcial duties which must be attended to, causes them to be forgotten (obliteratio). Pliny wishes to explain why the names of some of the artists responsible for works on display in Rome are unknown to him. But his explanation also draws our attention to Rome’s pre-eminence not only in art, but also in politics and trade. Interestingly Pliny uses the word acervus, ‘a heap’, to refer to the sheer quantity of business undertaken in Rome. Like the thesaurus or storehouse to which Pliny compares his own work in the preface, acervus has a particular relevance for the encyclopaedic enterprise. Elsewhere Pliny uses the verb acervo, ‘I amass’, speciWcally to refer to his own work,26 while in a passage in book 36 which I explore in detail below, Pliny is to present us with a triumphant image of all Rome’s buildings ‘heaped’ (acervata) together to create another world. Evidently ‘heaps’, whether referring to oYcial duties at Rome, or Pliny’s own catalogue of Nature, are meant to impress. Intrinsic to Pliny’s list of Greek marble sculptures in Rome is the sense that these works were acquired through conquest, and that in possessing these works, Rome simultaneously possesses their places of origin. As I argued in Chapter 2 (see pp. 36–9), Pliny creates a clear link in the opening books of his encyclopaedia between the acquisition of knowledge and conquest, and so already on some level there is the suggestion that everything that is included in his Natural History, every fact and Wgure, has been acquired through a Roman victory. Indeed, the vast majority of Greek art in Rome was brought back as booty from successive Roman conquests in the East, and Pliny is quite explicit about the connection between the presence of foreign art in Rome and Roman victories.27 At 35.24, the Roman taste for Greek art is openly linked to Lucius Mummius’ sale of booty from his conquest of Greece.

26 NH 26.21: ‘However I will also amass (acervabimus) from all the sources many more remedies for lichen (which is such a disWguring disease), although quite a few have already been mentioned.’ Also 4.69. 27 On foreign art brought to Rome as booty, see R. Du¨ll, ‘Zum Recht der Bildwerke in der Antike’, in Studi in onore di Emilio Betti 3 (Milan 1962), 129–53 esp. 132; P. Zanker, ‘Zur Funktion und Bedeutung Griechischer Skulptur in der Ro¨merzeit’, in T. Gelzer et al., Fondation Hardt pour l’e´tude de l’antiquite´ classique. Entretiens XXV. Le classicisme a` Rome (Geneva 1979), 283–306 esp. 290–3; and A. Rouveret, ‘Artistes, collectionneurs et antiquaires: l’histoire de l’art dans l’encyclope´die plinienne’, in E. Pommier (ed.), L’Histoire de l’histoire de l’art de l’antiquite´ au XVIIIe sie`cle (Paris 1995), i. 49–64.


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Lucius Mummius (who acquired the cognomen Achaicus as a result of his victories) was the Wrst to generate public recognition for foreign paintings in Rome.28

Pliny goes on to recount how, when King Attalus paid 60,000 sesterces for a painting at the sale of spoils, Lucius Mummius, realizing the painting must have some value that he had failed to recognize, recalled it and dedicated it in the shrine of Ceres. This was, according to Pliny, the Wrst example of a foreign picture becoming public property in Rome (quam primam arbitror picturam externam Romae publicatam). Pliny’s account is quite clear about Roman possession. The painting does not simply go on public display, it becomes public property ( publicatam).29 It is the Wrst foreign painting in what is to become a long list of Roman belongings.30 Elsewhere Pliny is again explicit about the link between the display of Greek art in Rome and Roman conquests. At 35.131, for example, a list of Nicias’ works is simultaneously a list of Roman victories. His works are: a Nemea, brought to Rome from Asia by Silanus, and erected, as I have said, in the Curia; also a Father Liber in the Temple of Concord; a Hyacinthus, which Caesar Augustus was so delighted with that he took it away with him after the conquest of Alexandria—and, for this reason, Tiberius Caesar dedicated the picture, along with a picture of Danae¨, in the Temple of Divus Augustus.

Nicias’ paintings of Nemea and Hyacinthus are explicitly associated with the Roman conquests of Asia and Alexandria, while there is the added implication that his Father Liber and Danae¨ are in Rome for the very same reason. Perhaps the most striking example of the intimate relationship between Rome’s collections and her empire is to be found at 34.14. Lampholders were also popular suspended from ceilings in temples, or with their lights arranged to look like apples hanging on trees, as for example, with the lamp in the Temple of Apollo Palatinus, which Alexander the Great had seized from his attack on Thebes and dedicated to the same god, at Cyme.

The lampholder’s display in the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine in Rome exactly mirrors its earlier history. Previously the object was part of the booty from Alexander the Great’s capture of Thebes and was dedicated by him also in a 28

Cf. NH 37.12–14: ‘It was, however, this victory of Pompey [over Mithridates] which made the fashion turn to pearls and precious stones; just as the victories of Lucius Scipio and Cnaeus Manlius had done for engraved silver, clothes made from golden cloth, and dining-couches; and that of Lucius Mummius for Corinthian bronzes and painted panels.’ 29 On art works belonging to the legal category res publicae see Du¨ll, ‘Zum Recht der Bildwerke’ (n. 27), 140–50. 30 Purcell, ‘On the Sacking of Carthage and Corinth’ (n. 15), 137: ‘The triumph of Mummius was made singular, as is too rarely recognized, by the fact that the artistic loot of Corinth replaced the normal display of humiliated opponents. This was a victory over things.’

84 collecting greek art, wonders, and luxury temple of Apollo, although in his case at Cyme. In the lampholder in the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine/at Cyme, we encounter the logical conclusion of the intimate connection which Pliny’s narrative establishes between collecting and conquest. The Roman possession of the lampholder (presumably as part of a larger collection of objects dedicated in the temple) is extended to become not simply a replication of the place of display (Temple of Apollo at Rome/Cyme), but, implicitly, an appropriation of Alexander the Great’s victory which led to the removal of the lampholder to Cyme. It is not just in the account of Greek sculptors in marble, however, that we encounter this narrative of conquest through object and collection. Pliny’s account of the wonders of the world (described in the index to book 36 as opera mirabilia in terris) which follows shortly after his discussion of marble sculpture is driven by exactly the same dynamic. Pliny’s statement, at Preface 12–13, that his work will not include any marvellous occurrences or unusual happenings (aut casus mirabiles vel eventus varios), is, of course, strongly ironic. The Natural History is dominated by mirabilia, particularly in Pliny’s account of man and animals (books 7 & 8–11),31 and it is a theme which is sanctioned by Pliny’s subject, Nature herself. An essential characteristic of Pliny’s account of Nature is her variety (varietas),32 and one manifestation of this is the marvels which she herself has produced. At 7.32, Pliny notes that Nature has included whole races of men among her marvels (inter prodigia), while at 11.6, he says that the more he observes Nature, the less he considers any statement about her to be impossible (incredibile). The presence of mirabilia in Pliny’s text, however, evokes a whole series of associations over and above the varietas of Nature. As we saw in Chapter 2, in the geography chapters, Pliny’s account of strange animals and plants at the edges of the earth created a strong link between his own knowledge and Roman conquest.33 In books 8–11, the dynamic is reversed. Now, instead of the Roman army going to the ends of the earth, the ends of the earth come to Rome. A recurrent method of classiWcation is when wild animals were Wrst seen in Rome.34 At 8.96, for example, Pliny notes that a hippopotamus was Wrst seen in Rome along with Wve crocodiles at the games which Marcus Scaurus held as aedile, in 58 31

See M. Vegetti, ‘Lo spettacolo della natura. Circo, teatro e potere in Plinio’, in Aut Aut 184–5 (Florence 1981), 111–25; E. Caprotti, ‘Animali fantastichi, fantasie zoologiche e loro realta` in Plinio’, Plinio e la natura (Como 1982), 39–61; I. Calvino, ‘Il cielo, l’uomo, l’elefanto’, in G. B. Conte (ed.), Gaio Plinio Secondo, Storia Naturale (Turin 1982), vii–xvi esp. xi–xiii; Beagon, Roman Nature, 8–11 and 127–9; and J. S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought (Princeton 1992), 82–108. 32 On Nature’s varietas see Beagon, Roman Nature, 89–91. 33 On mirabilia and empire, see F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London and New York 1977), 139–40 and R. Garland, The Eye of the Beholder. Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World (London 1995), 45–58. 34 See Vegetti, ‘Lo spettacolo della natura’ (n. 31), 116.


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bc. At 8.4, we hear that elephants were Wrst used in Rome to draw the chariot of Pompey in his African triumph, at 8.69, we learn that what Pliny calls a camelopard (a giraVe) was Wrst seen in Rome at games given by Julius Caesar, and at 8.70, we hear of a lynx and cephi (possibly baboons) in games given by Pompey.35 At 8.39, Pliny does note of the Scandinavian achlis (possibly a moose or reindeer) that it has never been seen in Rome, although many have told stories of it. But the fact that he speciWes that it has never been seen in Rome seems almost to suggest that everything else he lists has. Mirabilia are particularly associated with places on the edge of empire. In book 7, for example, where Pliny lists all the strange tribes of the world, he notes (7.21) that India and parts of Ethiopia are especially full of wonders. But mirabilia can also be found closer to home. At 7.9, when referring to the cannibal practices of the Scythian tribes, Pliny adds This might seem incredible, but we should bear in mind that similarly monstrous peoples—the Cyclopes and the Laestrygones—have existed in the central part of the world [and Sicily and Italy].

The reference to Sicily and Italy found in several manuscript editions is almost certainly a later gloss, accidentally incorporated into the text, since in ‘the central part of the world’ we already have a clear reference to Italy, which Pliny is to describe at 37.201, as ‘midway between East and West’ (inter ortus occasusque mediam). Not content simply with collecting the whole world into Rome, Pliny transforms Rome/Italy into a microcosm, in competition with the world she has conquered. The list of the wonders of the world in book 36, for example, is followed by a much more substantial list of Roman wonders. So that if Pliny’s encyclopaedia gathers the world into Rome, there is also the suggestion that the entirety of the world was already represented in miniature by Italy herself. Integral to Pliny’s presentation of mirabilia is the sense that they are something to be preserved, that they are objects to be collected.36 At 7.75, for example, Pliny tells us that during the reign of Augustus the bodies of two amazingly tall men, each 10 ft. 2 in. (305 cm.) high, were preserved (adservabantur) in tombs in the Horti Sallustiani, precisely because of their remarkable height (miraculi gratia); and he goes on to say that he himself has seen the bodies of two men only 3 ft. (90 cm.) tall preserved (adservatos) in coYns. At 9.93, Pliny notes an extremely large polyp, 700 lb. (307 kg.) in weight, whose remains were again kept speciWcally because of their remarkableness (reliquiae adservatae miraculo).37 And if not all the mirabilia which 35

See also NH 8.16, 8.53, 8.64–5, 8.84, 8.131. See Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities (n. 1), 21–2. 37 Cf. NH 7.20, King Pyrrhus’ miraculous toe preserved in a chest in a temple and 8.37, the skin and jaw bones of a 120 ft. (c.35 m.) snake remained (duravere) in a temple at Rome. 36

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Pliny records have been physically preserved in Rome, his written collection preserves them, preventing their obliteration, a role he was keen to highlight in his introduction to book 14 (see p. 76). At 7.34 Pliny records another example of the preservation of mirabilia, which like his own later text drew on wonders to demonstrate conquest. Pompey’s theatre, built in 55 bc to celebrate his triumphs in the East, included ‘images of famous marvels’ (mirabiles fama . . . eYgies).38 At 36.41, Pliny records another element of the theatre’s decorative programme—statues of fourteen conquered nations, by the artist Coponius (above, Ch. 3). Like Pliny after him, Pompey draws on the geographic and mythic to demonstrate the extent and range of Rome’s empire. But while Pompey’s theatre displayed mirabilia to the people of Rome through sculptural representation, Pliny’s catalogue incorporates them into an inventory of Roman possessions. Rome has been to the ends of the earth and now the ends of the earth belong to, and in, Rome (as demonstrated by Pliny’s catalogue). The mirabilia which Pliny includes in book 36 (unlike the earlier wonders which might be called ‘natural’), are man-made, and, as with Pliny’s presentation of mirabilia elsewhere in the Natural History, there is a Roman focus.39 The account of the wonders of the world begins with obelisks (although Pliny has already discussed the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, which he refers to, at 36.30, as one of the seven wonders of the world (inter septem miracula)).40 In the index to book 36, Pliny does, in fact, note the discussion of marvels (opera mirabilia in terris) as beginning with the Sphinx and the pyramids (these follow the account of obelisks), but it is clear from Pliny’s narrative that the obelisks are also to be considered as ‘wonders’ (miracula), and, as we shall see, as speciWcally Roman miracula. Pliny begins, at 36.64, by noting that obelisks, dedicated to the Sun, were made by Egyptian kings, ‘in rivalry with each another’, and goes on to list the various heights of obelisks erected by successive Pharaohs. By 36.69, however, Pliny indicates that Egypt is now Roman—we learn that an obelisk erected by Necthebis was moved by Maximus, governor of Egypt, and Pliny notes another two obelisks by the Temple of Caesar at Alexandria. Having clearly

38

These apparently included a statue of Eutychis from Tralles who had given birth to thirty children, and Alcippe who gave birth to an elephant. 39 The wonders which Pliny includes in book 36 are made from marble, or from stones, such as granite, which he includes under the heading ‘marble’. He has already included another of the seven wonders of the world, the colossus at Rhodes, in his discussion of bronze statues (NH 34.41). 40 On the wonders of the world, see P. A. Clayton and M. J. Price (eds.), The Seven Wonders of the World (London and New York 1988) and K. Brodersen, Reisefu¨hrer zu den Sieben Weltwunder (Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 1992). On Pliny’s list of wonders see J. Isager, ‘Plinio il Vecchio e le meraviglie di Roma: Mirabilia in terris e Romae miracula, nel XXXVI libro della Naturalis Historia’, AnalRom 15 (1986), 37–50 and id., Pliny on Art and Society, 186–203.


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suggested a Roman presence in Egypt, Pliny’s narrative, at 36.69, moves to the transport of obelisks to Rome.41 The greatest diYculty of all was the matter of transporting obelisks to Rome by sea, and the ships used for this task attracted considerable attention. The ship which carried the Wrst obelisk to Rome was dedicated by Divus Augustus in a permanent dock at Puteoli to commemorate this remarkable feat (miraculi gratia).

In Pliny’s account it is the transport of obelisks to Rome which emerges as the true wonder. Pliny has noted (36.66) the great admiration expressed for an obelisk erected by Ramses II, and (36.67) the tremendous achievement of transporting an obelisk commissioned by Necthebis down the Nile, but it is only when he is discussing the removal of obelisks to Rome that he actually uses the word miraculum. And it is clear that the real wonder is not the obelisk itself, but its transfer to Rome. This passage recalls others in the Natural History where Pliny notes the preservation of a miraculum (like the two giants at 7.75)—here the ship is preserved, again, precisely because it is worthy of wonder (miraculi gratia). The narrative plays on the processes of empire, so that it is no longer an object from a distant part of empire that is mirabile, but the ship that brought that object to Rome.42 The very means by which Rome takes possession of the world are to be preserved as mirabilia. Three centuries later in the new capital of the Roman empire, Constantinople, Theodosius’ obelisk (erected in the Hippodrome, ad 388–92) makes a similar play. Inscriptions in Latin and Greek, (on the south-east and north-west faces of the lower base, respectively) invite the viewer to wonder not at the obelisk itself, but at the raising of it, highlighting Theodosius’ daring and speed in erecting the obelisk in about thirty days. A relief, on the north-east side of the lower base, actually shows the raising of the monumental stone (Fig. 24).43 In Pliny’s account, it was the transport of the obelisk to Rome that was enshrined as mirabile. Three hundred years later, the wondrous removal of obelisks to Rome is rivalled in their erection in the new seat of empire, Constantinople. And just as Pliny’s narrative played on the very idea of mirabile, withdrawing wonder from the object itself and granting it, instead, to its removal, so the interaction between image and inscription on the base of Theodosius’ obelisk makes a similar play on wonderment. For while, on the upper part of the base, the sculpted relief Wgures of Theodosius and his entourage appear to look out on 41 On obelisks in Rome see E. Iversen, Obelisks in Exile, i. The Obelisks of Rome (Copenhagen 1968), esp. 65–75 and 142–60, and LTUR, cv. Obeliscus Augusti and Obelisci Mausolei Augusti. 42 The obelisks transported to Rome are included on an anonymous list of thirty marvels preserved in Codex Vaticanus 989, probably written in the 13th cent. 43 See B. Kiilerich, The Obelisk Base in Constantinople: Court Art and Imperial Ideology. Institutem Romanum Norvegiae. Acta ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 10 (Rome 1998), esp. 69–72 on the raising of the obelisk. For the inscriptions see CIL 3 (1973) no. 737, and IG 4 (1877) no. 8612.

88 collecting greek art, wonders, and luxury

Fig. 24. Like Pliny’s classification of the boats which brought obelisks to Rome as ‘wonders’, the Obelisk of Theodosius invites us to marvel at the processes which enabled its erection. Relief showing the raising of the obelisk. From Obelisk of Theodosius, north-east side of lower base. H: 0.85 m. ad 388–92. Istanbul.

the spectacle in the Hippodrome, Theodosius, wreath in hand for the winner (Fig. 25), the inscription on the lower base encourages the viewer to ignore the spectacle which so absorbs the Wgures shown above, and to revel instead in another spectacle, that of the raising of the obelisk, visible both in the small relief on the north-east face (Fig. 24), and in the stone itself standing upright on top of the inscribed and Wgured base. For Pliny, it is not just the transport of obelisks from Egypt to Rome that is mirabile. The uses to which they are put when in Rome are also established as wonders. Thus when Pliny refers at 36.72, to Augustus’ use of one of the obelisks in his horologium to mark the time by a shadow, it is Augustus’ ingenuity, not the obelisk, which is the real wonder (mirabile usum). And when Pliny goes on to record the transport of an obelisk up the Tiber, we see again the microcosmic role given to Rome in the Natural History. The depth of the Tiber is directly compared to that of the Nile (‘the river is no shallower than the Nile’), suggesting that in transporting the obelisks to Rome, the Romans are not merely appropriating Egypt’s monuments, but the landscape itself.


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Fig. 25. The Obelisk of Theodosius incorporates several plays on the concept of spectacle (see Fig. 24), including this image of the emperor about to award the wreath to the winner of the (real) games, which took place around the obelisk itself, in the Hippodrome. Relief showing the emperor Theodosius. From Obelisk of Theodosius, south-east side of base. H: 2.39 m. ad 388–92. Istanbul.

In Pliny’s discussion of the pyramids and the Sphinx which he lists in the same section,44 another form of Roman appropriation emerges—to control what may or may not be considered mirabile (wonderful). At 36.76, for example, Pliny writes: 44

On the pyramids as one of the seven wonders of the world (in particular, the pyramid of Cheops) see P. A. Clayton, ‘The Great Pyramid of Giza’, in Clayton and Price (eds.), Wonders (n. 40), 13–37.

90 collecting greek art, wonders, and luxury There are two more pyramids in what used to be Lake Moeris—this is, in eVect, a vast ditch ( fossa grandis), but the Egyptians record it among their remarkable and memorable achievements (sed Aegyptiis inter mira ac memoranda narrata).

The passage is recalled later in Pliny’s account of the wonders of Rome, when he refers to Claudius’ draining of the Fucine Lake, at 36.124, as ‘one of his most memorable achievements’ (inter maxime memoranda). The Egyptian lake is nothing but a big ditch ( fossa grandis), yet the Egyptians count it among their marvellous and memorable monuments (inter mira ac memoranda). Claudius’ works on the Roman Fucine lake, by contrast, are truly memorable (inter maxime memoranda).45 Pliny continues to play with the reader’s amazement in his discussion of the Sphinx at 36.77. Before the pyramids is the Sphinx, a local divinity, which is far more worthy of discussion (vel magis narranda), although the Egyptians say nothing about it (de qua siluere).

Unlike the ditch which is regarded by the Egyptians as a marvel worthy of record, the Sphinx, despite being far more worthy of discussion (magis narranda), is ignored in Egyptian accounts (de qua siluere). Pliny emerges as the real authority on mirabilia—he decides what is and isn’t mirabile. For Pliny, mirabilia, like the collections of Greek marble statues in Rome, are intimately associated with the narrative of empire, and this theme is often expressed in Rome’s appropriation of foreign mirabilia—thus Egyptian obelisks were transformed into miracles of Roman engineering, and Pliny’s Roman narrative decided that the Sphinx, not Lake Moeris, was truly wonderful. But the Roman focus of Pliny’s account of the wonders of the world can also take a diVerent form. Rome, and the patria which contains her, can also mirror the wonders of the world with its own structures. Thus Rome (and Italy) mirrors the world when Pliny describes the Pharos at 36.83 and at the same time notes two lighthouses in Italy, at Ostia and Ravenna;46 or when he notes of the Hanging Gardens at Thebes,47 at 36.94, that ‘this is less remarkable (hoc minus mirum) than a river Xowing through the middle of a town’, a clear reference to Rome (which Pliny is later to describe at 36.104, as an urbs pensile, a hanging city) and the Tiber. The most striking example of this triumphalist dynamic of Roman/Italian replication is at 36.91, where Pliny notes in his account of labyrinths, that, with King Porsena’s tomb, Italy has surpassed the vanity (vanitas) of 45 C. L. Urlichs, Chrestomathia Pliniana (Berlin 1857) read et for sed at 36.76—but Pliny’s negative view of Lake Moeris, which sed implies, clearly makes sense, as we have seen, in the context of Pliny’s later comments on the Fucine lake. 46 On the famous lighthouse at Alexandria, see P. A. Clayton, ‘The Pharos at Alexandria’, in Clayton and Price (eds.), Wonders (n. 40), 138–57 and Jean-Yves Empereur, Alexandria Rediscovered (London 1998). 47 See I. L. Finkel, ‘The Hanging Gardens of Babylon’, in Clayton and Price (eds.), Wonders (n. 40), 38–58.


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foreign kings. For Pliny, labyrinths are ‘the most unnatural structure ever paid for by man’ (vel portentosissimum humani inpendii opus (36.84)), and, as Pliny goes on to describe the monument in more detail, we see that it surpasses another example of foreign vanitas. Inside the labyrinth are pyramids piled on top of each other. At 36.75, Pliny called the pyramids ‘a pointless and foolish display of royal wealth’ (regum pecuniae otiosa ac stulta ostentatio). It is the natural conclusion to a narrative which has been consistently asserting both Roman supremacy over the world and Roman possession of the world. Even in matters of luxury, Rome outdoes all others. It is inevitable that the city which is the ultimate microcosm, Wlled to overXowing with its possessions from all over the world, should contain luxuria. Here, Pliny is referring to Italy. But when Pliny goes on to list the wonders of Rome, it is quite clear that they are just as luxurious as those of the world.

completing the collection of the world —luxury Luxury is still only implicit in Pliny’s account of Greek sculpture in marble. And yet the lists of Greek marble statues in Rome which dominate Pliny’s account are not just a statement of the beauty of the city, and a forcible assertion of the power and extent of Rome’s empire. They are also, as we have seen, explicitly linked with the Roman conquest of the East, and thus, by inference, belong with the luxury goods which, in Pliny’s view, the conquest of the East introduced to Rome. Furthermore, the Greek sculptures which Pliny lists are made from the very material of luxury, marble, which Pliny forcefully condemns as madness (insania) in the opening sentence of book 36. How, then, can the Greek sculptures in Rome not but be luxurious? It is a tension which remains unspoken, and yet which clearly underlies Pliny’s narrative of collecting as conquest. It is when Pliny turns to his account of marble, however, that this tension between Roman world conquest and the luxuria which Pliny views as directly responsible for the decline in Roman mores, begins to be voiced. As in the account of marble sculpture which directly precedes it, the narrative has a strong Roman and imperial focus. At 36.48 Pliny records the Wrst man in Rome to cover his walls with marble veneer, and goes on to give us an account of marble which is, in fact, an account of marble in Rome. At 36.49 we are told of the Wrst importer of Numidian marble to Rome, and we learn that Lucullan marble is so called because Lucius Lucullus imported it from Chios. The narrative moves on to include Ethiopian, Indian, Naxian, and Egyptian sands used in the cutting of marble (36.51–4), while at 36.55 we learn of ‘Augustan’ and ‘Tiberian’ marbles

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discovered in Egypt in the principates of Augustus and Tiberius. Again at 36.57 we are told that Claudius’ procurator brought statues of porphyry from Egypt to Rome, and at 36.58 Pliny notes that the largest example of the Ethiopian marble called basanites, transformed into a statue of the Nile surrounded by children, was dedicated by Vespasian in his Temple of Peace. Pliny’s history of marble is both a history of the Roman conquest of the world and a history of the world in Rome. In this, his catalogue mirrors Augustus’ Forum, where the extent of Rome’s empire was symbolized in the numerous diVerent coloured marbles drawn from all over the empire which lined the Xoors and walls.48 But Pliny’s Roman microcosm inevitably includes luxuria, not simply because of its totality, but because, as we have seen, the process of conquest which created totality is intimately related to the introduction of luxury to Rome. The account of marble in Rome is, then, also an account of the challenge to Roman morals through contact with luxuria. So we learn that Marcus Lepidus was strongly criticized for importing Numidian marble (magna reprensione), and that the marble was used in ‘a most disgusting fashion’ (vilissimo usu)—as door sills.49 What is revealing is the way in which the presence of luxuria on Pliny’s list of Roman possessions becomes progressively more noticeable as Pliny’s triumphant narrative approaches its peak; so that the climax of Pliny’s narrative of Roman greatness is simultaneously an expression of her demise. Luxury goes hand in hand with empire. In fact, since mirabilia are intimately associated in Pliny’s narrative with the acquisition of empire, which is, in turn, linked with the introduction of luxury to Rome, it will be no surprise that several of the wonders of the world that Pliny lists in book 36 are qualiWed as luxurious. We have already encountered Pliny’s qualiWcation of the pyramids as a ‘pointless and foolish display of royal wealth’. As we shall see, luxuria features heavily among these man-made mirabilia. Indeed, elsewhere in the Natural History, luxuria itself is accorded the status of a marvel.50 At 34.6, Pliny describes the mania for Corinthian bronze as ‘wonderful’ (mire), and interestingly, he attributes the creation of the compound called Corinthian bronze to the Wre caused by the Roman capture of Corinth by Lucius Mummius. Roman conquest, luxuria, and mirabilia all begin to overlap in this story. What emerges from Pliny’s descriptions of luxurious wonders is the way in which he openly plays on the language of mirabilia to establish as wonders, not the structures themselves, but their luxurious builders. At 36.82, for example, at the end of his account of pyramids, Pliny writes: 48 49 50

P. Zanker, Forum Augustum (Tu¨bingen 1968). NH 36.49. See also 36.51, 36.57, 36.60 and Isager, Pliny on Art and Society, 183–6. Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio, 183–4.


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Such are the wonders (miracula) of the pyramids, and the supreme wonder (supremum miraculum), lest anyone should marvel at the wealth of kings (ne quis . . . miretur), is that the smallest but most admired of the pyramids was built by the prostitute, Rhodopis. She was once the fellow-slave and concubine of Aesop, author of the Fables. And our amazement is all the greater (maiore miraculo) when we consider that such great wealth was acquired through prostitution.

Pliny sets up a hierarchy of wonderment (miracula, supremum miraculum, maiore miraculo) and then deliberately plays with it. The greatest wonder (supremumque illud) is the smallest of the pyramids (minima ex iis). And if we marvel at the wealth of kings (ne quis regum opes miretur), then we should marvel even more (maiore miraculo) at the wealth of this prostitute. Throughout the narrative, while apparently detailing the wonders of the world (opera mirabilia in terris), Pliny withdraws his wonderment from the monuments themselves and reconstitutes the actions connected with them as the true wonders. In Pliny’s discussion of obelisks, it was not the stones themselves that were worthy of wonder, but their transport to Rome, and the inclusion of one of them in Augustus’ horologium (mirabilem usum). Similarly here, we Wnd wonder not for the pyramids themselves but for the wealth of the kings that built them, and even more so, for the wealth of a prostitute. After describing the lighthouse at Alexandria, Pliny goes on to describe another negative model of wonder, the labyrinths, which we have already seen him describe as ‘the most unnatural structure ever paid for by man.’ As in his account of the pyramids, Pliny openly plays on what should be perceived as wondrous. At 36.86 he marvels (quod miror equidem) at the entrance and marble columns of the Egyptian labyrinth at Heracleopolis, but the real wonder is that the people of Heracleopolis have helped to preserve a monument which they detest (quod opus invisum mire respectavere). For Pliny mirabilia are objects which should be preserved, precisely on account of their wondrousness ( gratia miraculi). In his account of the labyrinth at Heracleopolis he ironically reverses this idea, so that, rather than that the labyrinth is a wonder worthy of conservation, the wonder is that such a monstrous structure should have survived. Throughout book 36 there has been a growing conXict between Pliny’s catalogue of the world as a catalogue of Roman world empire and the inclusion of luxuria, which the link between conquest and luxury has necessitated. In Pliny’s discussion of Greek marble sculpture, the problem of luxuria was still only implicit. But in the subsequent list of marbles from all over the world, luxury is no longer simply implied. Pliny’s account of the world in Rome becomes, simultaneously, an account of luxury in Rome. Most notably in Pliny’s list of the wonders of the world, the narrative not only pitches positive (imperialist) models of wonder against their negative (luxurious) counterparts, but through playing on the notion of wondrousness itself, Pliny seems to draw

94 collecting greek art, wonders, and luxury attention to the very dynamic which had necessitated such a formulation of opposites. This mounting tension between luxuria and the narrative of world empire culminates in Pliny’s list of the wonders of Rome, which follows his account of the wonders of the world and is, in many ways, the natural outcome of the strategies of Roman appropriation and replication which have dominated the account. And what is signiWcant is the way in which Pliny’s account of the wonders of Rome emerges as at once the triumphant conclusion of the theme of Roman conquest and possession which develops throughout the book, and the climax of the uneasy relationship between luxury and empire which has grown progressively more conspicuous in Pliny’s successive lists. Pliny opens his account of the wonders of Rome, at 36.101, with a striking image.51 He imagines all the buildings of Rome piled one on top of the other, forming another world: It is now time to move on to the wonders of our own city (ad urbis nostrae miracula), to examine the strength gained from 800 years’ experience, and to show that in the matter of buildings also, we have conquered the world (et sic quoque terrarum orbem victum ostendere). As you will see, this has happened on numerous occasions, indeed almost as many times as the number of wonders which I will describe. For if you were to gather together all the buildings of Rome (universitate vero acervata) and place them in one great heap (et in quendam unum cumulum coiecta), the grandeur which towered above would be no less than if another world were described in the one place (non alia magnitudo exurget quam si mundus alius quidam in uno loco narretur).52

We have reached the climax of the dynamic which has dominated book 36. Throughout the book, Pliny has catalogued Greek sculpture, foreign marbles, and the wonders of the world as Roman possessions, stored in Rome. For Pliny, in eVect, the whole world belongs in the inventory of Rome’s belongings. At 36.101, we Wnd a triumphant statement of this theme—Rome has not only conquered the world with her buildings (sic quoque terrarum orbem victum ostendere), but, even more than this, if one were to pile her buildings one on top of the other, it would be clear that Rome is, in fact, a world in her own right. As Pliny begins to list the buildings which constitute Rome as the world, it becomes clear that the image of Rome as the world not only mirrors Pliny’s concern to catalogue the world as Roman, but that it also embodies the ultimate paradox of this aim. The triumphant apex of Pliny’s narrative is also the embodiment of Rome’s decline. For if Rome is the world and possesses all that the world contains, then the contents of Rome necessarily include luxuria and decadence. The moment of greatest triumph, when Rome has conquered the 51

I have already brieXy touched upon this passage at pp. 70–3. For other discussions of this passage, see Isager, ‘Plinio il Vecchio e le meraviglie di Roma’ (n. 40), 42; Rouveret, ‘Toute la me´moire du monde’ (n. 18), 442; Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio, 136–7 and C. Edwards, Writing Rome (Cambridge 1996), 99–109. 52


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whole world to the extent that she has become the world, is inevitably, therefore, the beginning of decline. At 24.5, Pliny explicitly linked Rome’s greatness and her decline (magnitudine populi R. periit ritus), while at 3.66–7, Rome’s greatness was speciWcally measured through her monuments. In the image of Rome’s buildings as a world in their own right the two ideas merge, and encapsulate the ultimate problem for Pliny’s encyclopaedism—that what should be a narrative of Roman victory and possession, through its concern for totality, creates a parallel narrative of Roman defeat and loss. Pliny begins his list of the buildings which make up Rome’s world with some positive examples. Julius Caesar’s Circus Maximus, the Basilica Aemilia (whose columns are mirabile), the Forum of Augustus, Vespasian’s Temple of Peace, and Agrippa’s Diribitorium all Wnd a place on the list of Roman wonders; and their inclusion on the list is clearly related to the positive portrayal which their builders receive in the Natural History (with, perhaps, the exception of Julius Caesar, whose forum appears on the next, negative, list).53 But the list soon becomes an enumeration of the Roman buildings which surpass the vanitas of the pyramids and the labyrinths: We are full of admiration (miramur) for the pyramids of kings, when, as dictator, Caesar paid 100,000,000 sesterces simply for the ground on which to build his forum; and if anyone gets excited by price tags, now that greed (avaritia) has captured the public imagination, Clodius, who was murdered by Milo, paid 14,800,000 just for the house in which he lived. I am no less amazed at this, than at the madness of kings (quod equidem non secus ac regum insaniam miror). (NH 36.103–4)

As in his account of the wonders of the world, Pliny appropriates the language of mirabilia to marvel not at the buildings themselves, but at the greed (avaritia) and insanity (insania) of their builders. By contrast, the more mundane practical structures of the city (the agger (the defensive mound), the foundations of the Capitol, and the sewers) are true wonders. Pliny notes, at 36.104, that in earlier times ‘elderly men were still Wlled with admiration (mirabantur) for the vast expanse of the agger, the substructures of the Capitol, and above all, the sewers, the most important works of any you could mention (opus omnium dictu maximum)’.54 At 36.109, Pliny returns to his list of luxurious wonders, which includes the imperial palaces of Caligula and Nero, and what emerges from his discussion is not only, as we have seen elsewhere, a strongly ironic use of the language of mirabilia, but more signiWcantly, a conscious play on the image of 53 Edwards, Writing Rome (n. 52), 105, notes that Pliny doesn’t describe these buildings in any detail, since to describe them would be to reveal that they are made of exactly the same materials as those buildings which Pliny describes as luxurious and decadent. 54 On the sewers see E. Gowers, ‘The Anatomy of Rome from Capitol to Cloaca’, JRS 85 (1995), 23–32 and Edwards, Writing Rome (n. 52), 106–7.

96 collecting greek art, wonders, and luxury Rome as the world with which he opened his account of the marvels of Rome. At 36.113, he introduces a builder whose madness (insania) surpasses even that of Caligula and Nero—Marcus Aemilius Scaurus ‘whose time as aedile may have been the greatest single cause for the decline in morals’ (mores). Pliny is speciWcally referring to Scaurus’ theatre, which he ironically calls ‘the greatest of all works’ (opus maximum omnium), yet which, with its 360 columns, threestoreyed stage of marble, glass, and gilded wood, 3,000 bronze statues and seating for 80,000, completely contravenes Pliny’s ideals of simplicity and restraint.55 In Cicero’s Pro Scauro, the buildings of the Roman Forum provided an important part of his defence of Scaurus (who had been charged with extortion when propraetor in Sardinia). Cicero noted that wherever he looked, he was met with evidence in favour of Scaurus, and went on to list buildings such as the Curia, the Temple of Castor and Pollux and the three temples of the Capitol.56 In Pliny’s account, by contrast, Scaurus’ theatre serves to condemn its builder as vain and luxurious as, for example, when Pliny notes, at 36.115, that the materials left over from building the theatre were valued at 30 million sesterces, after they were destroyed in a Wre at Scaurus’ villa. There are several references to Scaurus earlier in book 36, most notably when Pliny’s narrative touches explicitly on luxuria. The diatribe against marble and luxuria which opens the book, includes a reference, at 36.5, to the 360 columns in Scaurus’ theatre, and when Pliny tells us that it was a temporary structure, it is surely meant to heighten our sense of its excessive nature.57 Similarly, Pliny’s account of marble in Rome inevitably mentions Scaurus’ theatre, at 36.50, as the Wrst theatre to have walls of marble. These references to Scaurus’ luxurious theatre culminate in its inclusion on the list of the wonders of Rome, and what is particularly striking about Pliny’s account of the building, is the way in which he plays on the narrative of conquest and totality which has led to its inclusion in his text. At 36.116, he discusses the consequences of the Wre at Scaurus’ villa which destroyed the materials left over from the building of the theatre. And now even Scaurus himself could not equal his own achievement. But from the moment the Wre occurred, he certainly had the advantage. For since he had gathered his materials from all over the world (convectis ex orbe terrarum rebus), no one else after him could equal his madness (ut nemo postea par esset insaniae illi).

55

e.g. NH 35.118 where Pliny talks of the prudence (prudentia) of his ancestors, who did not decorate the walls of their houses with paintings. See pp. 102–4. 56 Vasaly, Representations (n. 23), 37–9. 57 See J. A. North, ‘Deconstructing Stone Theatres’, Apodosis. Essays Presented to Dr. W. W. Cruikshank to Mark his Eightieth Birthday (London 1992), 75–83 on the Wrst permanent theatres in stone. On luxuria as wastefulness, see Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Pliny the Elder’ (n. 8), 88 and Berry, The Idea of Luxury (n. 7), 23–7.


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Like the Rome which Pliny imagines at 36.101, Scaurus’ theatre is made up of things collected from all over the world (convectis ex orbe terrarum rebus). The theatre itself incorporates the world (mundus alius), then, but unlike the world which Pliny’s text catalogues and preserves, the materials used in Scaurus’ theatre are destroyed by Wre, which Pliny earlier described as the punishment of luxuria.58 Pliny’s narrative seems to revel in the dynamic of totality which propels it forward, so that as we edge closer and closer to the Wnal completion of his encyclopaedic work, we continually meet, like a series of Russian dolls, miniature worlds within the world which catalogues them. Filled with mirabilia from all over the empire, Rome is already a miniature world within Pliny’s universal narrative which encloses it. In Scaurus’ theatre we Wnd another world, within the world which is Pliny’s Rome. And this world again encapsulates the problem which dominates Pliny’s Natural History—in collecting things from all over the world, the theatre is inevitably luxurious, and the excess materials are thus destroyed by Wre, the punishment of luxury. Scaurus’ luxury theatre is rivalled, in Pliny’s list of Roman wonders, by another theatre, built by Gaius Curio.59 It consisted of two wooden theatres set close to one another on pivots, which could then be revolved around to form an amphitheatre. Again Pliny’s account of Curio’s theatre, at 36.118–19, draws on images of the world: Here we have the earth’s conqueror, the vanquisher of the entire world (en hic est ille terrarum victor et totius domitor orbis), who distributes peoples and kingdoms, who sends its laws abroad, who represents, for mankind, an aspect of the immortal gods, dangling from an artiWcial contraption and applauding its own danger. . . . Behold, the entire Roman people (ecce populus Romanus universus), as if on board two ships, held up by a couple of pivots, and watching themselves engaged in mortal combat (et se ipsum depugnantem spectat), certain to die, if at any moment the mechanism were to fall to pieces.

While Scaurus’ theatre was built from materials drawn from all over the world, Curio’s theatre actually contains the world. The entire Roman people ( populus Romanus universus), whose city has already been likened to a world, and who here are qualiWed as world conquerors and rulers (ille terrarum victor et totius domitor orbis) Wll the seats of his revolving theatres. The description of Curio’s theatre is Wlled with implicit references to Pliny’s earlier list of wonders. We are presented with the unnatural counterpart of Pliny’s earlier image of Rome as the ‘hanging city’ (urbs pensile). In Curio’s theatre the whole of Rome dangles on a 58 NH 36.110: ‘There is no doubt that Wres punish extravagance’ (profecto incendia puniunt luxum). See Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio, 242–5 and 278. 59 See E. J. Jory, ‘Continuity and Change in the Roman Theatre’, in J. H. Betts, J. T. Hooker, and J. R. Green (eds.), Studies in Honour of T. B. L. Webster (Bristol 1986), i. 143–52.

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perilous contraption (in machina pendens), in contrast with its ideal counterpart, pictured at 36.104 hanging over the sewers. What is striking is the way in which Pliny imagines the Roman people themselves providing the spectacle. Spectacle and mirabilia are intimately linked in Pliny’s text, as is clear from the persistent focus in books 8–11 on when strange animals Wrst appeared in the games at Rome. If in Pompey’s theatre, the statues of mirabilia formed part of the spectacle of conquest, here, paradoxically, the conquerors of the world themselves become the mirabilia to be gaped at (et se ipsum depugnantem spectat). It is perhaps no accident, then, that Pliny likens the theatres to two frail boats. Earlier, in his account of obelisks, it was the boats which brought the monoliths to Rome that provided the spectacle. In Curio’s theatre, the roles are reversed, so that the conquerors who brought the obelisks back to Rome are installed as exhibits in the fragile boats which carry them.60 The discourse of mirabilia has been inverted to demonstrate how in Curio’s theatre, the Roman people have been conquered by their own excess. After his account of Curio’s theatre, Pliny embarks, at 36.121, on a new list, a list of ‘true wonders’ (vera miracula), ‘which are unsurpassed on account of their genuine value’. The list details aqueducts, and Pliny is able to conclude, at 36.123, that if one carefully considered all the sources of water in public and private buildings at Rome, and the distances travelled by the water before it arrives, it is clear that there is nothing more wonderful in the whole world (nil magis mirandum fuisse in toto orbe terrarum). Once again Pliny adapts the traditional constituents of the encomium of a city. Both Quintilian and Menander Rhetor included the utilitas of buildings in their prescriptions for praising a city.61 Here Pliny combines utilitas with computations to dazzle us, as only the encyclopaedist can.62 Like the account of the wonders of the world, Pliny’s account of the marvels of Rome sets up positive and negative models of wonder. The luxurious and unnatural theatres of Scaurus and Curio are set against useful Roman structures like the sewers and aqueducts, and, implicitly, the obelisks which Pliny’s Roman narrative appropriates. But Pliny does much more than simply present the viewer with individual positive and negative examples of building. His account deliberately plays on the dynamic of totality which has necessitated the inclusion of luxurious and unnatural buildings. It is not just that his list of the wonders of Rome, good and bad, is prefaced with an image of the buildings of Rome creating another world; but the buildings themselves are presented as worlds within the world they help to create. Thus Scaurus’ theatre is made up of 60 The image of the ships could also, as Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio, 280 notes, refer to the luxurious world of navigation. 61 Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria 3.7.26 and Menander Rhetor 2.347.9–10 and 2.347.25. See p. 80. 62 On the importance of utilitas in Pliny’s work, see Citroni Marchetti, ‘Iuvare mortalem’ (n. 8), 124–48.


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materials gathered from all over the world, but unlike the similar world which Pliny’s text creates, and most importantly, preserves, through their very luxurious nature, the materials used in Scaurus’ building are destined for destruction. Similarly in Pliny’s description of Curio’s theatre, we Wnd the world which it seats defeated by its own conquests, so that it is no longer African lions or Indian elephants which provide the entertainment, but the Roman people themselves. Rome becomes the booty of its self-defeat. The supreme irony is of course, that while the worlds which Scaurus and Curio create in their theatres self-destruct, they are preserved, as moral exempla, in the ultimate model of the world, the Natural History itself.

collecting the world in writing Pliny, then, does not simply include the objects of luxury in his inventory of entirety. He also plays on the dynamics which have necessitated their inclusion. And this self-reXexive tone is not only present in Pliny’s account of the wonders of the world and of Rome. It also underlies Pliny’s presentation of the process of collecting itself, evident in the extent to which the collections both of Greek art and mirabilia (natural and man-made), reXect in miniature the concerns which govern Pliny’s text as a whole. Book 36 is dominated by collections, and by images of collecting. Pliny’s account of Greek sculpture in marble quickly became an account of Roman collections of Greek marble statues, and while elsewhere in the Natural History, mirabilia were presented as something to be preserved and collected, Pliny openly played on this idea in book 36, in his account of the labyrinth at Heracleopolis. The book also contains two images of objects heaped together. In Pliny’s account of marble sculpture, the numerous art works at Rome were joined with Rome’s ‘heaps’ (acervi) of magistracies and traders in an attempt to explain why the names of some artists were unknown to Pliny. While the climax of the book at 36.101 imagined the buildings of Rome heaped together (acervata) to form another world (mundus alius). This invoking of the ‘heap’, speciWcally in contexts where it is intended to indicate the greatness of Rome, is signiWcant. Elsewhere we have seen Pliny himself ‘heaping up’ information for his readers (acervabimus). Like the ‘heaps’ which his work contains, then, Pliny’s text is also an acervus which demonstrates the magnitude of Rome and her empire. It is at 36.101, however, in the triumphant image of the monuments of Rome building another world, that we see Pliny voicing most strongly the mimetic relationship between his own encyclopaedic collection, and the smaller collections which it contains. In Chapter 2, I explored how Pliny’s taxonomies, in appearing to follow an order inherent in the world itself, work to present the

100 collecting greek art, wonders, and luxury totality contained in Pliny’s text as an accurate reXection of the world it describes. There is, then, always the potential for ambiguity when Pliny draws on images of the world, as we saw at the beginning of book 2 in his description of the world as ‘at once the work of Nature and Nature herself’ (rerum naturae opus et rerum ipsa natura). It was a description that could easily be applied to Pliny’s own work, which openly proclaimed its subject matter to be rerum natura. There is a similar ambivalence at 36.101 in the triumphant image of Rome as the world. There are already echoes in this passage of an earlier image of the world in the Natural History, Agrippa’s map in book 3. But the passage has even stronger resonances with Pliny’s own written representation of the world. In Pliny’s use of the word acervus to describe the pile of Rome’s buildings, a word which elsewhere (at 26.21) he has used to describe himself assembling information, there is already an allusion in the acervus of Rome’s buildings to the acervus which is the Natural History.63 But even more signiWcant is his use of the word narretur in his description of the world which Rome’s buildings create— ‘as if another world (mundus alius) were described (narretur) in the one place’. It is this word which Pliny chooses to qualify his own text at Preface 13—‘the nature of things, that is life, is to be narrated’ (rerum natura, hoc est vita, narratur). Pliny’s statement, then, that it is ‘as if another world were described in the one place’, could equally refer to his own work. For this is precisely what Pliny’s text does. It narrates the world in one place—the thirty-seven books of the Natural History—and furthermore, it places the world in Rome. The image of Rome as another world, then, is at once a statement of the greatness and glory of her buildings, and an expression of the overriding concern of Pliny’s work— to describe the world as Roman and to situate the world in Rome. As we near the end of Pliny’s encyclopaedic work, we see that Rome is not only presented as a microcosm of the world external to Pliny’s text, but that it becomes a microcosm of the world which is Pliny’s text. As Pliny’s narrative goes on to describe in detail all the buildings contained in the world which Rome creates, the extent to which the triumphant world image functions as a metaphor and metonym for Pliny’s own work becomes clearer. The luxurious monuments which the image of Rome as the world necessarily contains duplicate exactly the problem which has dominated the account of the world which contains them. In fact, the problem of luxury is already implicit in the way in which Pliny’s account of marble statues quickly becomes an inventory of Greek sculpture in Rome. Since marble is openly associated by Pliny, from the very beginning of book 36, with luxury, and since the collections of marble sculpture in Rome are integrally related to Rome’s empire (as we saw in the Wrst 63

Gowers, ‘The Anatomy of Rome’ (n. 54), 24: ‘each writer shapes Rome in his own image, that is in the image of the work he is writing . . . ’.


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two sections of this chapter), the presence of marble sculpture in Rome becomes a physical demonstration of the fact that conquest introduced luxury to Rome. Thus, the collections of Greek statues, like the written collection which contains them, include the very material of luxuria itself. They mirror Pliny’s encyclopaedic text, which, like them, is itself a collection of objects (which include luxuria) acquired through conquest. The problem of luxury is no longer simply implicit, however, in Pliny’s image of the monuments of Rome building another world. Instead, the incorporation of luxury buildings, such as the theatres of Scaurus and Curio, into the world which Rome’s monuments create allow the image of Rome as the world to function as a metaphor not simply for the totality of the text which contains it, but, most importantly, for the conXict which has dominated that text. The image of Rome as the world, luxury theatres and all, may ultimately reXect Nature’s human microcosm (‘there was no evil anywhere that was not present in man’); but it also embodies the paradox which has dominated Pliny’s inventory—that in trying to catalogue the glorious totality of the Roman empire, you inevitably include luxury, the substance directly responsible for Rome’s decline. We have reached the climax of the self-conscious tone which has dominated Pliny’s presentation of wonders. Already the inclusion of luxury on the inventory of entirety (as a result of the close link which Pliny established between the objects he was detailing and their origins in conquest) was accompanied by a self-reXexive play on the very dynamics which had necessitated such an inclusion. This was evident in Pliny’s ironic use of the language of mirabilia, and in the recurrent images of luxurious totality which dominated his account of the wonders of the world. Pliny’s self-reXexive presentation of the wonders of luxury culminates in his image of Rome as the world. It mirrors precisely the outcome of writing a narrative of Roman world empire, that is, that a catalogue of the world conquered by Rome must include luxuria, since conquest introduced it. The world created by Rome’s buildings in Pliny’s image is, then, at once a metaphor for the narrative of Roman world empire leading to luxury and ultimately to decline which dominates the Natural History, and a reXection of the actual writing of that narrative. Through the close association of conquest, collecting, luxury, and decline which we have seen at work in Pliny’s text, the dynamics of Pliny’s narrative actually become replicated in its telling.

five

The ArtiWce of Nature

But no artist enjoys any real fame unless they have painted [portable] panels— in this matter, the wisdom of earlier generations commands our greater respect. For they did not decorate walls for the exclusive enjoyment of their owners, or houses that were destined always to remain on the one spot, and could not be quickly grabbed up in the event of a Wre. Protogenes was content with a cottage in his little garden (casa Protogenes contentus erat in hortulo suo); there was not a single fresco in Apelles’ house (nulla in Apellis tectoriis pictura erat). There was as yet no desire to colour whole walls. All these artists laboured away for the beneWt of the city, and the painter was the common property of the world. (NH 35.118)

In the midst of his discussion of painting in book 35, Pliny presents us with an extraordinary image. He has just been praising the frescoes of the Roman painter Studius,1 and goes on to note that it is only the creators of panel paintings, not frescoes, who enjoy any fame. The comment Wts with the nationalistic focus of Pliny’s work. It explains why the Roman painter Studius who ranks high in Pliny’s estimation, is so little known.2 But it also, rather ironically, leads Pliny into a eulogy of a past, when it was not yet the custom to decorate whole walls. The theme is a familiar one—on several occasions in the Natural History Pliny highlights the decline of painting into luxury.3 But what is unusual about this particular passage is who Pliny chooses to people his ideal past with. Protogenes and Apelles, two of the most famous painters from the Greek canon, are imagined by Pliny living in simple surroundings, free of the luxurious decorations which characterize the contemporary Roman house. Throughout the Natural History, Pliny’s ideal past is emphatically Roman. Governed by the virtues of simplicity (simplicitas) and rusticity (rusticitas), it is, for Pliny, a time when Romans lived in harmony with their natural surroundings, before contact with foreign lands introduced luxury. This special relation1

NH 35.116. Manuscripts diVer on the name of the artist—Studius, Ludius, or Spurius Tadius have all been proposed. See R. Ling, ‘Studius and the Beginnings of Roman Landscape Painting’, JRS 67 (1977), 1–16 and J.-M. Croisille (ed.), Pline L’Ancien. Histoire Naturelle 35 (Paris 1985), 225 §116 n. 1. 2 See pp. 132–3 for further discussion of Studius. 3 e.g. NH 35.3: ‘And Wrst I will say what remains to be said about painting, an art that was once noble . . . but now it has been completely supplanted by marbles, and also indeed, by gold’. See also 35.50.

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ship with Nature is encapsulated in the aetiology which Pliny provides at 18.10 for the earliest Roman surnames. Rooted in agriculture, according to Pliny the name ‘Piso’ came from ‘pounding corn’, while families such as Fabius, Lentulus, and Cicero derived their names from their ability to grow certain crops (‘Fabius’ from faba, a bean; ‘Lentulus’ from lens, a lentil; ‘Cicero’ from cicer, a chickpea). Protogenes’ and Apelles’ homes embody Pliny’s rustic ideals. Their bare walls contrast with the likes of Scaurus, who lost 30 million sesterces worth of decorations when his house was burnt down by angry slaves. Pliny’s choice of words to describe the artists’ homes emphasizes their simplicity. Protogenes’ hut (casa) conjures up casa Romuli, the home of the most ideal Roman of them all; while Apelles’ house, Pliny suggests, is little more than four bare walls (in Apellis tectoriis). But the most suggestive element of Pliny’s description of Protogenes’ home is its setting. It is surely no accident that the artist’s house stands in a little garden (in hortulo). The garden (hortus) was a crucial space in Pliny’s idealized conception of Roman identity. At 19.50, for example, he contrasts the horti of the past cultivated (even by the kings of Rome themselves) to produce vegetables, with the gardens of contemporary Rome, which not only abandon the original (natural) purpose of the garden, but conXate the boundaries of country and town. Indeed, the kings of Rome tilled the soil with their own hands . . . In our laws of the ‘Twelve Tables’, the word ‘farm’ (villa) never appears—the word ‘hortus’ is always used in that sense; while ‘heredium’ (an hereditary estate) is used to mean a garden. . . . Now indeed, under the name of ‘hortus’, people possess the luxury of open countryside and villas actually within the city.

At 36.111, the extent to which Pliny’s ideal vision of the Roman house is rooted in agricultural production is again clear. He sets the luxurious palaces of Caligula and Nero against the houses of ‘those who made this empire great, who went straight from their plough or hearth to conquer nations and win triumphs and whose very Welds (agri) occupied less space than those emperors’ boudoirs!’ Protogenes and Apelles make unlikely Roman heroes. For if in setting Protogenes’ cottage in a garden, Pliny intends us to think of the hortus in its heyday of cabbage production (NH 19.57), there must have been many a contemporary reader who would have thought the artist more at home in one of the luxurious pleasure gardens (horti) which ringed imperial Rome. It is not just that as Greeks, Apelles and Protogenes seem out of place in an ideal Roman past; or even, as we saw in Chapter 4, that much of their art had been brought to Rome as booty from the very conquests which Pliny identiWes as the cause of the decline in Rome’s greatness. Here, of course, Pliny is holding them up as examples of ‘artists who labour away for the beneWt of the city’. One of the recurrent themes in Pliny’s account of Greek art is the contrast between the

104 artifice of nature positive model of the public display of art in Rome (as practised by Agrippa, Augustus, and Pliny’s own patron Vespasian), and the private collections of extravagant and corrupt Wgures such as Scaurus, Caligula, and Nero.4 At 34.84, for example, Pliny notes that Of all the works I have mentioned, the best have been dedicated by the emperor Vespasian in the Temple of Peace and his other public buildings. Nero had used brute force to bring them to Rome, and had then arranged them in the boudoirs of the Domus Aurea.

Several paintings by Apelles and Protogenes are cited by Pliny as examples of the public display of art in Rome, including Apelles’ Venus Anadyomene, dedicated by Augustus in the Temple of Divus Julius (35.91), and a picture of Ialysus by Protogenes in Vespasian’s Temple of Peace (35.102). As painters of portable pictures which can be seen by everyone (including Pliny and his contemporaries), Protogenes and Apelles are set against those who choose to conWne paintings to the walls of their houses. And yet while the empty walls of their humble homes may testify to their disdain for luxury, as two recognized masters of artiWce, Protogenes and Apelles remain deeply incongruous Wgures in Pliny’s idealized vegetable garden. If Nature, and man’s symbiotic relationship with her are integral to Pliny’s formulation of Roman identity, then part of the moral resonance which Nature commands in the Natural History (and in Roman culture in general) rests precisely on her traditional casting as the antithesis of art.5 As the real model for art to imitate, Nature could always pose as reality in the face of artiWce. Pliny’s chapters on art are Wlled with anecdotes which uphold this conceptual opposition of ars and natura, and several of them refer to the artists Apelles and Protogenes. At 35.88, for example, Pliny writes of Apelles: He painted portraits which were such close likenesses that, incredible as it may sound, the grammarian Apio put it on record that one of those people who can predict a man’s future from his face (they call them ‘physiognomists’) was able to tell from the portraits when the sitter would die, or how many years he had already lived.

The ultimate masters not of the ‘natural’, but its imitation, Apelles and Protogenes sit uneasily in Pliny’s rustic garden. So that if their creation of art ‘for the benefit of the city’ earns them a plot in Pliny’s ideal past, it also points to the tensions in Pliny’s representation of Nature and her opposite. It is the precarious relationship between art and Nature, naturalism and its model, which I wish to explore in this chapter. The opposition of ars and natura was, of course, common in republican and imperial literature, 4

See Isager, Pliny on Art and Society, 83–4. See A. O. Lovejoy and G. Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore and London 1997), 11–14 and 103–16 on nature as ‘norm’. 5

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at least up until Pliny’s time. Texts such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses display a fascination with exploring and testing the boundaries of this fundamental opposition.6 Pliny may, at times, seem simply to parrot the rather comfortable model of naturalism familiar from numerous Hellenistic and Roman texts—this certainly has been the usual response to the anecdotes of deceptive realism which appear in his discussion of sculpture and painting.7 But Pliny diVers from his predecessors in making his comments in a work devoted to describing Nature, not her imitations (Pref.13: ‘My subject is a barren one—the world of Nature, or in other words life, will be described.’). If Ovid’s Metamorphoses presents the reader with a series of transformations in Nature (including the ultimate transformation of art into life in the story of Pygmalion),8 then Pliny claims to provide us with a catalogue of Nature as she really is.9 This chapter explores Pliny’s presentation of the ars/natura opposition in the Natural History, and resituates the stories of striking naturalism within the context of a contemporary Roman fascination with artiWcial imitations of the natural—from the imperial grottoes of Rome to the middleclass gardens of Pompeii.

representing nature in paint Art may appear a somewhat incongruous subject for inclusion in a catalogue devoted to describing Nature in all her aspects, yet Pliny is keen to emphasize its debt to Nature for both its material form and inspiration. Arranged according to the substances from which they were made, Pliny’s extended discussions of painting and sculpture appear alongside remedies for toothache (34.120) and cataracts (35.180). His introduction of painting in book 35 immediately follows his statement, at 35.1–2, that his work will ‘omit nothing that is necessary or relating to Nature (naturale)’. Elsewhere Pliny reminds us that the artist draws not only on the materials of the natural world, but also its processes— Aristonidas, Pliny tells us at 34.140, used a mixture of copper and iron in his sculpture of Athamas (a king of Boeotia who, seized by a Wt of madness, killed his son) ‘so that the blush of shame would be expressed in the rust shining through the gleaming surface of the copper’. 6

See J. B. Solodow, The World of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Chapel Hill and London 1988); A. Sharrock, ‘Womanufacture’, JRS 81 (1991), 36–49; J. Elsner and A. Sharrock, ‘Re-viewing Pygmalion’, Ramus 20 (1991), 149–82, and A. Sharrock, ‘Representing Metamorphosis’, in J. Elsner (ed.), Art and Text in Roman Culture (Cambridge 1996), 103–30. 7 Most recently, V. Naas, ‘L’art grec dans l’Histoire naturelle de Pline L’Ancien’, Histoire de l’art 35/36 (1996), 15–26 esp. 21. 8 Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.243–97 and P. Hardie, Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge 2002), 173–226. 9 See Ch. 2, esp. 26–30.

106 artifice of nature And while Nature provides the artist with his medium, she is also his model. At 34.61, Pliny recounts the tradition that Lysippus turned to sculpture only after hearing the painter Eupompus declare that ‘Nature herself should be imitated, not any artist’. Zeuxis was perhaps taking the search for naturalism to extremes, if we believe the story at 35.64, that, when, criticized for a lack of proportion in his Wgures, he had the virgins of Girgenti parade naked, in order that he might select the most admirable points of each to serve as the model for his painting of Helen.10 Certainly Pliny’s fascination with naturalism in art has appeared, at times, to border on titillation. Numerous anecdotes illustrate Nature being fooled by her imitations, as, for example, when birds Xy down to peck at painted grapes.11 The natural world becomes the supreme arbiter of the quality of an artist’s work. One anecdote recounts how when Apelles entered a horse-painting competition, it was to the horses themselves that he turned to judge his work. He had some horses brought in, and showed them the paintings one by one; they neighed only at Apelles’ horse, and this invariably happened on subsequent occasions, revealing it to be a sound test of artistic skill. (NH 35.95)12

Pliny and his Roman contemporaries were not insensible to the wider implications of a history of art which privileged naturalism. One of Seneca’s Controversiae imagines an action brought against Parrhasius for harming the state.13 Seeking to create as naturalistic an image of Prometheus as possible, the artist had a slave tortured to serve as a model for his painting. The legal arguments in Seneca’s Wctional law suit playfully exploit traditional accounts of the relationship between art and Nature. One declaimer accuses the artist of breaking the rules of naturalism, since although the subject of Parrhasius’ painting was eventually released from his torment, the painter’s model enjoyed no such happy ending.14 An anecdote recounted by Pliny in his account of sculpture again illustrates the potential for extremes in the artist’s search for naturalism. Nobody should sing the praises of Perillus [c.570 bc]. He was more cruel than the tyrant Phalaris, for whom he made a bull, promising that if a man were shut inside and a Wre lit beneath, it would bellow. And he was the Wrst man to undergo this torture—a cruelty that was in his case appropriate. From images of gods and men, this was the level to which he had dragged down the most humane of arts. All those countless originators of the art had only toiled so that it could be used to make instruments of torture. (NH 34.89) 10

NH 35.64. Other versions of the story appear in Cicero, De Inventione Rhetorica 2.1.1, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Veteris Scriptoris 1. 11 NH 35.23, 35.65–66, and 35.155 (the text is corrupt, but most editions read uvas alitem nescisse aspectu discernere a veris, giving ‘grapes which the birds could not distinguish from the real models’). 12 See also NH 35.66. 13 Seneca, Controversiae 10.5. See H. Morales, ‘The Torturer’s Apprentice: Parrhasius and the Limits of Art’, in J. Elsner (ed.), Art and Text in Roman Culture (Cambridge 1996), 182–209. 14 Controversiae 10.5.6.

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In an ironic reversal of the epigrams celebrating the naturalism of Myron’s cow,15 it is no longer real cows who respond to their representation by lowing, but the sculpture itself which bellows, when someone is put inside and a Wre lit beneath. Both Seneca and Pliny point to the potential perversion of the naturalistic paradigm. But where Pliny diVers from Seneca is in the broader message about naturalism that his anecdote conveys. While Pliny condemns Perillus for creating an instrument of torture, his real concern is less about the cruelty which the search for a model in Nature can inXict, than the implications which the successful achievement of naturalism has for the artist’s relationship with Nature. Whereas in Seneca, the tortured slave provides the model for Parrhasius’ Prometheus, in the Plinian anecdote, torture becomes an essential component of the sculpture’s naturalism. The story of Perillus’ bull appears as early as Pindar, and is repeated in other Roman sources, such as Cicero.16 But Pliny is alone in blaming the artist rather than the commissioner of the sculpture, the tyrant Phalaris. This, crucially, shifts the emphasis in the anecdote from an illustration of the cruelty of tyrants, to an example of the precarious balance of power between the artist and his model, Nature. At 35.94, Pliny recalls a painting of a nude hero by Apelles, in which the artist ‘challenged Nature herself ’ (eaque pictura naturam ipsam provocavit). While here the phrase provides the ultimate accolade for the painter’s skill, in the introduction to book 33, Pliny uses the very same phrase to condemn the practice of engraving on gold and silver. Alas for our ill-spent ingenuity (ingenia)! We have found myriad ways to inXate the value of objects. The art of painting has been added, and we have made gold and silver more valuable by engraving them. Man has learnt to challenge Nature (didicit homo naturam provocare)! (NH 33.4)

The passage reveals the uncertain relationship between art and Nature in Pliny’s representation. If at one moment, the ability to challenge Nature (naturam provocare) is an expression of artistic skill, at another it marks a threat to the delicate balance between the human and natural world. This is the ultimate problem with naturalism for Pliny. There remains a positive model of art imitating Nature, but there is always the possibility that artists will not simply challenge Nature through the skill of their representation, but will try to improve on her, and even supplant her. The concern is evident in Pliny’s criticism of the practice of painting marble, at the beginning of book 35. 15 NH 34.57: ‘Myron is best known for his heifer, praised in some well-known verses’. See J. Overbeck, Die Antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der Bildenden Ku¨nste bei den Griechen (Leipzig 1868), 553–88. 16 Pindar, Pythian Odes 1.95–6; Polybius 12.25; Cicero, In Verrem 2.4.73; and Diodorus Siculus 13.90.

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We are no longer content with panels, or views in our bedrooms showing a broad expanse of mountains; we have even begun to paint on the stonework. This practice was invented in the principate of Claudius, while in Nero’s principate they discovered how, by inserting marks that were not already present in the embossed marble suface, they could introduce variety into uniformity; so that Numidian marble would have oval lines, and Synnadic marble be punctuated with purple, just as luxury would have liked them to have been by nature (qualiter illos nasci optassent deliciae). (NH 35.3)

Pliny’s complaint is not simply that the luxuriousness of marble veneer is heightened by the addition of a painted pattern. Even worse than this, the paint supplies what luxury would have liked Nature herself to have provided (qualiter illos nasci optassent deliciae). While varietas may be an essential component of Pliny’s conception of Nature, here it is the painter who adds variety to what is naturally uniform. The artistry is denied, and the painted surface masquerades as Nature’s own pattern. Pliny makes the same criticism elsewhere. Noting the practice of dying the Xeeces of living animals at 8.197, he comments that it was ‘as if luxury forced them to be born like that’ (velut illa sic nasci cogente luxuria). These artiWcial encroachments into the world of Nature are, of course, bound up with Pliny’s concerns about excessive luxury. In excavating beneath the surface of the earth to Wnd gold, silver, or marble, man contravenes the laws of Nature; and the embellishment of these already luxurious materials to increase their value, whether through engraving or paint, only heightens Pliny’s sense of outrage. But it is interesting how the blurring of boundaries between the natural and the artiWcial evident in Pliny’s presentation of these luxury goods, extends into what has generally been considered a history of art with nothing but praise for naturalism. Perillus was dependent on an elaborate mechanism of torture to make his sculpted bull come to life. But in his retelling of other familiar anecdotes, Pliny suggests the ability of art to supplant Nature through representation alone. In his account of painting in book 35, Pliny records Protogenes’ dissatisfaction with his depiction of a dog foaming at the mouth in his picture of Ialysus (a mythical Rhodian hero), now housed in Vespasian’s Temple of Peace. But it was the artiWce itself which displeased him, and he could Wnd no way to moderate it. It seemed excessive to him, to diverge too far from reality—the foam was painted, not a natural excretion from the dog’s mouth (spumaque pingi, non ex ore nasci). Tortured with anxiety, since he wanted to capture reality in his painting, not just the appearance of reality, he had wiped out the paint again and again, and changed his brush, never quite able to satisfy himself. Finally, infuriated with his art because it was too readily discernible, he hurled his sponge at the oVending spot on the panel, and the sponge replaced the colours it had wiped oV, creating exactly the eVect he had so desperately wanted. And so chance created Nature in the picture (fecitque in pictura fortuna naturam). (NH 35.102–3)

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The story, as Pliny tells it, is full of verbal plays which set Nature side by side with her old rival. But underlying Pliny’s revisiting of the familiar ars/natura conXict is the same uneasiness which permeated his account of painting on marble. Just as the Xeece of a living sheep could be dyed to suggest that it was their natural colour, or marble painted to produce patterns which were not provided by Nature, Protogenes wants the foam on the mouth of the dog to transcend the paint which created it, and become the natural product of the dog’s mouth (spumaque pingi, non ex ore nasci). Modern translations tend to reduce the emphasis of Pliny’s statement, by introducing the idea of representation. So Protogenes is dissatisWed with the painting because the ‘foam appeared to be painted’, rather than, as Pliny in fact says, ‘the foam was painted, not a natural excretion from dog’s mouth’ (spumaque pingi, non ex ore nasci).17 Whether referring to painted marble, dyed sheep, or Protogenes’ painting, Pliny deliberately appropriates the language of natural creation (nasci) to describe the artiWcial. But Protogenes pushes naturalism to its limits, in wanting his picture to contain not a realistic imitation, but reality itself (‘he wanted to capture reality in his painting, not just the appearance of reality’). The story closes with the fulWlment of this desire. We are told that ‘chance made Nature in the picture’ ( fecitque in pictura fortuna naturam). There is clearly a play here, and in the story as a whole, on the apparent incompatibility of chance (fortuna), and skill (ars)—thus it is chance that achieves what no amount of Protogenes’ ars could eVect. But the anecdote also illustrates the logical conclusion of naturalism. Pliny’s version of the story is alone in using the word natura to describe what resulted when Protogenes threw his sponge at the fresco (spongeam inpegit inviso loco tabulae . . . fecitque in pictura fortuna naturam).18 It is an indication of what is for Pliny the importance of the story. If in his discussion of painted marble or dyed sheep, Pliny displayed his concern about the ability of artiWce to pose as natural creation, here the artist (admittedly with the assistance of chance) has literally recreated Nature (fecitque in pictura fortuna naturam). Pliny’s account of an imaginary competition between two of the most famous Greek painters of the fourth century bc, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, suggests a similar reversal of the naturalistic paradigm. Parrhasius and Zeuxis, it is said, went into competition with one another. Zeuxis produced a painting of grapes which was so successful that the birds Xew up to the scaenae frons (ut in scaenam aves advolarent). Parrhasius then produced a painting of a curtain, depicted with such realism (ita veritate repraesentata) that Zeuxis, excited by the 17

See R. Gordon, ‘The Real and the Imaginary: Production and Religion in the Graeco-Roman World’, Art History 2 (1979), 5–34 esp. 7–8 on the problems with modern translations of Pausanias. 18 The other versions of this story refer to horse, not a dog—Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 63.4, Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.28; Plutarch, De Fortuna 4 (99 b–c) who tells the story of Apelles; and Valerius Maximus 8.11.ext.7 who does not name the artist.

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verdict of the birds, demanded that the curtain be drawn back to reveal the painting (ipse detulisse linteum pictum). Realizing his mistake, with true modesty he conceded the victory, admitting that while he had deceived the birds, Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist (quoniam ipse volucres fefellisset, Parrhasius autem se artiWcem). (NH 35.65)

Just as horses were the only true judges of Apelles’ mastery of the equine form, so here it is Zeuxis’ ability to deceive birds which proves the success of his trompe l’oeil. Pliny’s own telling of the story seems deliberately to mimic the triumph of artistry which the anecdote as a whole describes. In mistaking the painted grapes for their real models, the birds, we are told, Xew in scaenam. Generally interpreted as a reference to the Roman practice of painting the scaenae frons, translations set the contest in the theatre and imagine the birds Xying up to the stagepaintings.19 But scaena can also mean simply a painted scene.20 With the one word, Pliny expands the deception, so that the birds are not only drawn in by the illusion of the painted scene, but enter the home of illusion itself, the theatre. And there is still further scope for linguistic artiWce. For in scaenam not only translates as ‘towards the picture’, but also as ‘into the picture’, a reading which results in a complete elision of art and Nature. In this version, the birds, having been deceived by the painted grapes, would Xy not merely towards the painting, but into it (ut in scaenam aves advolarent); and in so doing institute a world, which far surpasses the twentieth-century virtual reality, in allowing Nature to merge with its imitation. In deceiving Nature herself, Zeuxis’ painting earns high praise for its naturalism, but it is Parrhasius who takes Wrst prize. His painting of a curtain is represented with such reality (ita veritate repraesentata) that it deceives Zeuxis, himself a master of deception. It is an achievement which is recalled later in Pliny’s account of Protogenes’ frustrations with his painting of Ialysus—he felt that his picture ‘was too far from reality (longius a veritate)’ and wanted it ‘to capture reality (verum), not just the appearance of reality (verisimile)’. With linteum pictum, Pliny captures in miniature the dissolution of distinctions between natural model and painted imitation which is played out in the story as a whole. The phrase describes both the painted image of a curtain and the real curtain which serves as the model for the painted image (and which Zeuxis understood the painting to be).21 Zeuxis’ mistake is in trying to separate linteum from pictum, when he asks that the curtain be drawn back to reveal the painting underneath. The paradigmatic relationship between art and Nature which Pliny approves in the Natural History is one in which the artist not only looks to Nature for his 19 N. Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked. Four Essays on Still Life Painting (London 1990), 30–2 and Morales, ‘ The Torturer’s Apprentice’ (n. 13), 185. 20 S. Bann, The True Vine. On Visual Representation and the Western Tradition (Cambridge 1989), 34–5. 21 See J. Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge 1995), 89–90 and Morales, ‘ The Torturer’s Apprentice’ (n. 13), 186.

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materials and models, but also to judge the success of his work. Apelles, for example, looked to horses to judge the success of his own representation of a horse. But in the contest between Zeuxis and Parrhasius, Parrhasius wins the competition, not simply because his trompe l’oeil is more eVective than Zeuxis’, but more signiWcantly because his painting manages to deceive a fellow artist. Zeuxis’ painting still looked to Nature for judgement—Pliny speciWcally tells us that the artist was ‘excited by the verdict of the birds’. But Parrhasius’ painting completely overturns the accepted model, taking the proof of his success not from Nature, but from an artist.22 No longer the ultimate arbiter of the quality of a work, Nature’s role has been appropriated by artiWce. These stories of the mastery of naturalism by successive Greek artists are clearly indebted both to the Hellenistic sources from which they ultimately derive,23 and a Roman fascination with plays on the relationship between ars and natura. But they also have something to contribute to the exploration of Nature with which the Natural History as a whole is concerned. In telling us that Apelles ‘challenged Nature herself ’ (naturam ipsam provocavit), Pliny may simply express Apelles’ expertise in naturalistic representation. But two books earlier, the very same phrase has been used to condemn man’s assault on the physical and moral supremacy of Nature which Pliny’s work champions. Similarly the anecdotes which describe Protogenes, Zeuxis, and Parrhasius grappling (and succeeding) with naturalism at once celebrate their mastery of artiWce (an artiWce which is reXected in Pliny’s own linguistic plays) and intimate the threat to Nature which such artists represent.

artificial nature If these accounts of the triumph of the Greek naturalism acquire new meaning in their Plinian context, then Pliny’s own presentation of them is itself informed by a material culture which had long been fascinated with imitating Nature. A hundred years before Pliny compiled his encyclopaedic account of Nature, an underground triclinium in a suburban villa (thought to belong to the Wrst emperor’s wife, Livia) was decorated on all four walls with a kaleidoscopic vision of the natural world (Fig. 26).24 Framed at the top by a rocky mossy border, the painted walls transport the viewer into a shady grotto surrounded by luxurious 22

Cf. Morales, ‘The Torturer’s Apprentice’ (n. 13), 187. See above, p. 8. 24 M. M. Gabriel, Livia’s Garden Room at Prima Porta (New York 1955); C. Calci and G. Messineo, La villa di Livia a Prima Porta (Rome 1984); S. Settis, ‘Le pareti ingannevoli. Immaginazione e spazio nella pittura romana di giardino’, Fondamenti 2 (1988), 3–39; R. Ling, Roman Painting (Cambridge 1991), 149–50. 23

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Fig. 26. This trompe l’oeil garden plays on real and painted space, with openings in the painted fence inviting the viewer to enter the illusionary world which lies beyond. Garden paintings. H: 3 m. From triclinium, Villa of Livia, Primaporta. c.30–20 bc. Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme (inv. 126373), Rome.

gardens playfully placed out of reach behind a fence and low wall. An opening in the trellis fence plays on this tension between real and painted space, inviting the viewer to venture into the garden; while a caged bird on the low wall looking wistfully at his ‘free’ companions beyond belies the fact that here all Nature, perhaps even the viewer, is captive to the painter’s brush. And if the range of plants and birds, along with the precision with which they are represented suggests that this is no more than a realistic transcription in paint of Nature herself, then the juxtaposition of Xowers and plants out of season reveals that this is Nature subjugated by artiWce. The artiWcial recreation of Nature was to become a standard part of the decorative repertoire of the imperial villa. The ability to transcend Nature was, of course, a particularly eVective way of expressing imperial power (and could just as easily be formulated, in the negative rhetoric, as an example of an emperor’s hubris).25 In his list of marvels which are ‘unsurpassed because of their genuine value’, Pliny includes the channel dug through a mountain by 25

J. E. G. Whitehorne, ‘ The Ambitious Builder’, AUMLA 31 (1969), 28–39; N. Purcell, ‘ Town in Country and Country in Town’, in E. B. MacDougall (ed.), Ancient Roman Villa Gardens (Washington, DC 1987), 187–203; C. Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge 1993), 138–59; and J. Elsner, ‘Constructing Decadence: The Representation of Nero as Imperial Builder’, in J. Elsner and J. Masters (eds.), ReXections of Nero (London 1994), 112–27 at 122.

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Claudius to drain the Fucine Lake, and describes it as ‘one of his most memorable achievements’ (inter maxime memoranda).26 But the display of imperial power through feats of natural engineering could also take place in less overtly public spaces. A succession of Wrst-century imperial villas include grottoes which explicitly play on the boundaries between the natural and artiWcial.27 Probably the earliest surviving example is to be found at Sperlonga, although scholars remain divided about the precise date of both the grotto itself and the sculptures displayed there.28 References in the sources to Tiberius’ narrow escape when the roof of a grotto attached to an imperial villa at Terracina collapsed have led several scholars to associate the grotto with the emperor Tiberius (sometime between ad 4 and 26).29 Christian Kunze has recently proposed a signiWcantly earlier date, drawing on the evidence of surviving masonry, to argue that the sculptural groups must have been installed no later than 30–20 bc.30 Although Anne Weis has noted, in response to this proposal, that the continued deployment of the earlier masonry style of opus incertum after the introduction of opus reticulatum, suggests that a Julio-Claudian date cannot deWnitely be precluded.31 Whether late republican, early Augustan or Julio-Claudian, however, the grotto at Sperlonga combines art and Nature to create an illusionistic display which rivals Pliny’s trompe l’oeil anecdotes. The natural cave attached to a villa complex was altered to include a series of four sculptural groups illustrating Odysseus’ adventures. The display of the sculptures was designed to heighten the illusionism—recalling their Homeric inspiration, the Blinding of the Cyclops was placed in a cavernous recess to the back of the cave, while a group showing the monstrous Scylla attacking Odysseus’ ship was installed on a podium at the centre of the grotto’s pool (Figs. 27–29).32 The decoration of the cave itself was 26

NH 36.12. See p. 90. The most comprehensive work on Roman grottoes is H. Lavagne, Operosa Antra. Recherches sur la grotte a` Rome de Sylla a` Hadrien (Paris 1988). 28 B. S. Ridgway, ‘ The Sperlonga Sculptures. The Current State of Research’, in N. T. de Grummond and B. S. Ridgway (eds.), From Pergamon to Sperlonga. Culture and Context (Berkeley and Los Angeles 2000), 78–91 provides an excellent summary of the arguments to date. See also B. Andreae, Praetorium Speluncae. Tiberius und Ovid in Sperlonga (Mainz 1994); N. Himmelmann, Die Homerischen Gruppen und Ihre Bildquellen (Opladen 1996) and B. Andreae and C. Parisi Presicce (eds.), Ulisse. Il mito e la memoria, exhib. cat. (Rome 1996). 29 See Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 39 and Tacitus, Annals 4.59. Also A. F. Stewart, ‘ To Entertain an Emperor: Sperlonga, Laokoon and Tiberius at the Dinner Table’, JRS 67 (1977), 76–90 esp. 83–8; Andreae, Praetorium Speluncae (n. 28), 14–21; and N. Himmelmann, Die Homerischen Gruppen (n. 28), 54–5. 30 C. Kunze, ‘Zur Datierung des Laokoon und der Skyllagruppe aus Sperlonga’, JdI 111 (1996), 139–223. 31 A. Weis, ‘Odysseus at Sperlonga. Hellenistic Hero or Roman Heroic Foil?’, in de Grummond and Ridgway (eds.), From Pergamon to Sperlonga (n. 28), 111–65 at 137–9. 32 The reconstruction of the display is supported for the most part by the Wnd spots recorded for the main fragments. See B. Conticello, in B. Conticello, B. Andreae, and P. C. Bol, ‘Die Skulpturen von Sperlonga’, AntP 14 (1974), 15–20. 27

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Fig. 27. Decorated with ‘natural’ materials (pumice, small stones, and shells), and incorporating a display of Odyssean sculptures, the cave at Sperlonga blurred the boundaries separating Nature and art, to produce a theatrical display of sculptures with Odyssean themes for the diners on the island triclinium. Cave with island triclinium. Late first century bc/ first quarter of the first century ad. Sperlonga.

minimal, and drew on the natural qualities of a seaside cave. While the Xoors were covered with simple white mosaic, the walls were revetted in opus musivum with small stones, pumice and shells. The success of the artful recreation of the Homeric landscape complete with hero rested precisely in this ambiguity, the uncertainty of where ‘real’ Nature ends and its imitation begins. Art and its ‘natural’ setting combined to present a vivid theatrical tableau to the diners on the island triclinium set in front of the seaside cave.33 The grotto decorated with an Odyssean theme was to become an established part of the imperial villa over the course of the next century.34 And it is interesting to see how each successive example shifts the balance between ars and natura. If the example at Sperlonga worked to heighten the naturalism of the sculptures through a natural setting (made more ‘natural’ through decoration) which replicated the Homeric narrative tradition, then in subsequent examples it is the artiWce itself which is brought to the fore. In the Claudian nymphaeum–triclinium which formed part of the emperor’s villa at Baiae, an

33 The grotto itself was equipped with seats, on either side as you entered the cave. On the view from the island triclinium, see Stewart, ‘To Entertain an Emperor’ (n. 29), 80–1, and Andreae, Praetorium Speluncae (n. 28), 122–4. 34 S. Carey, ‘A Tradition of Adventures in the Imperial Grotto’, GaR 49 (2002), 1–18.

Fig. 28. Set in a small recess at the back of the natural cave, the display of this sculpture drew on the setting of the Homeric story in a cave, to bring the sculptured group to life. The Blinding of Polyphemus. H: 3.5 m. Late first century bc/ first quarter of the first century ad. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Sperlonga.

Fig. 29. The display of the sculptures was designed to heighten their illusionism, as for example, in the placement of a group showing the Scylla attacking Odysseus’ ship in a pool at the centre of the cave. Reconstruction of the cave at Sperlonga. A ¼ ‘Pasquino Group’, B ¼ Scylla Group, C ¼ The Blinding of Polyphemus, D ¼ Theft of the Palladium, E ¼ Ganymede and the Eagle

116 artifice of nature apsidal dining room carved out of the mountainside incorporated Polyphemus’ cave into a more traditional display of statuary in niches (Pl. 1, Figs. 30–2).35 Here the sculptural group in the apse showed the moment in the Homeric story just before the blinding of the Cyclops, when Odysseus oVered Polyphemus a cup of wine (Fig. 30);36 while eight niches, four on either side of the triclinium, contained statues of Bacchus and a series of imperial portraits based on Greek statuary types (Figs. 31–2). The decoration of the triclinium’s apse still draws on the materials of Nature (such as pumice) to transform the man-made hollow into a natural cavern. But whereas at Sperlonga the natural setting of the cave worked to deny the artiWce of the sculpture and bring the Odyssean episodes to life, at Baiae the transformation of the apse into the Cyclops’ cave presents a ‘natural’ counterpoint to the niches with statues which line the walls of the triclinium. Here, the setting of the Polyphemus group in a man-made cave may quote the example at Sperlonga. But it also forms part of a series of quotations from Greek sculpture which permeate the statuary display as a whole. The Wgure of the Cyclops himself seems to have drawn on the frequently reproduced statue type, the Heracles Epitrapezios, attributed to Lysippus. While the statues displayed in the niches of the triclinium also elaborated on familiar Greek precedents. The head of Bacchus with a panther was modelled on that of the Apollo Sauroktonos attributed to Praxiteles (Fig. 31). A portrait of Antonia Minor in the guise of Venus Genetrix recalls Wfth-century korai, and the statuette of Eros which rests in her hand may derive from Praxiteles’ Eros at Thespiae (Fig. 32).37 At Baiae, then, the Polyphemus group is no longer sculptured theatre, but the prize exhibit in a display which includes numerous quotations from famous Greek and (perhaps more signiWcantly) Roman imperial prototypes. By the time of Nero natura has been completely transformed into ars. The west wing of the Domus Aurea included a grotto which explicitly followed in the tradition of those at Sperlonga and Baiae, yet was entirely artiWcial, constructed from cement (Fig. 33).38 The Domus Aurea was criticized by Tacitus and 35 The nymphaeum is now submerged underwater oV the Punta dell’ EpitaYo due to bradysism. See G. T. Sciarelli (ed.), Il ninfeo imperiale sommerso di Punta EpitaYo (Naples 1983); B. Andreae, ‘Il ninfeo di Punta dell’EpitaYo a Baia’, StMisc 28 (1984–5), 237–65; id., ‘Zur Einheitlichkeit der Statuenausstattung im Nymphaüm des Kaisers Claudius bei Baiae’, in V. M. Strocka (ed.), Die Regierungszeit des Kaisers Claudius (41–54 n. Chr.). Umbruch oder Episode? Internationales interdisziplina¨res Symposion. Freiburg 16–18 Februar 1991 (1994), 221–43; F. Zevi, ‘Claudio e Nerone: Ulisse a Baia e nella Domus Aurea’, in Andreae and Parisi Presicce (eds.), Ulisse. Il mito e la memoria (n. 28), 316–31. 36 Nothing much survives of the Wgure of the Cyclops, although remains of a support structure and a colossal lock of hair in the style of the Sperlonga Polyphemus have been found. Odysseus and his companion are pretty much intact, despite being feasted on by molluscs. 37 See Andreae, ‘Il ninfeo di Punta dell’EpitaYo a Baia’ (n. 35), 247–50 and 255–6 and A. Weis, ‘Sperlonga and Hellenistic Sculpture’, JRA 11 (1998), 412–20 at 415 n. 12. 38 H. Lavagne, ‘Le nympheé au Polyphe´me de la Domus Aurea’, MEFRA 82 (1970), 673–721; id., Operosa Antra (n. 27), 579–88; Ulisse. Il mito e la memoria (n. 28), 370 Cat. 5.19.

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Fig. 30. The triclinium at Baiae marks a shift in the balance between art and Nature present at Sperlonga, celebrating the artificial recreation of Nature in its display of the Polyphemus group in a man-made ‘natural ’ setting. Odysseus offering a cup of wine to the Cyclops. H: 1.75 m. Mid-40s ad. Castello Aragonese, Baiae.

Suetonius for its confusion of the supposedly hitherto distinct categories of town and country.39 When Tacitus notes that the palace architects, Severus and Celer, attempted to achieve through their art what Nature declared impossible (quae natura denegavisset, per artem temptare),40 we are reminded of Pliny’s strictures on the practice of painting marble to produce eVects ‘which luxury 39 See Purcell, ‘Town in Country and Country in Town’ (n. 25) and Elsner, ‘Constructing Decadence’ (n. 25). 40 Annals 5.42.

118 artifice of nature Fig. 31. Modelled in part on the statue of Apollo Sauroktonos attributed to Praxiteles, this statue of Bacchus forms part of a series of quotations which permeate the statuary display at Baiae. Bacchus with a panther. H: 1.41 m. Mid-40s ad. Castello Aragonese, Baiae.

artifice of nature Fig. 32. If the display of the Polyphemus group at Baiae quoted from a Roman imperial precedent, this imperial portrait presents a Roman refashioning of Greek art, in its combination of Greek prototypes. Portrait of Antonia Minor as Venus Genetrix. H: 1.59 m. Mid-40s ad. Castello Aragonese, Baiae.

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Fig. 33. The placement of the mosaic showing Odysseus offering the wine to the Cyclops in a curved vault revetted with pumice, plays on earlier displays of Polypheman sculptures in caves (Fig. 29 and Plate 1). Reconstruction of the nymphaeum in the Domus Aurea, before Trajanic alterations. ad 64–8. Rome.

would have liked Nature herself to have provided’.41 The ‘nymphaeum of Polyphemus’ embodies exactly the artiWcial Nature for which the Domus Aurea was so viliWed. Drawing on the materials of Nature for its decoration—rocks, stalactites, pumice, and shells—the nymphaeum takes the model of the natural grotto and recreates it from scratch in the heart of the city of Rome. Yet despite its debt to Nature, the ‘nymphaeum of Polyphemus’ openly celebrates its artiWce. If the grotto at Sperlonga sought to bring the ‘Blinding of Polyphemus’ to life through the naturalism of its setting, in Nero’s Domus Aurea the episode has become an artful quotation. An octagonal mosaic medallion set high in the vaulted ceiling (originally surrounded by four other mosaic medallions which no longer survive) shows not simply Odysseus oVering a sleep-inducing cup of wine to the Cyclops, but a bronze statue group of the scene (Fig. 34). Drawing 41

See pp. 107–8.

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Fig. 34. In specifically representing a bronze statue group of the Polyphemus scene, the mosaic offers an artful quotation of the earlier examples at Sperlonga and Baiae. Mosaic showing Odysseus offering a cup of wine to Polyphemus. L (of one side): 1 m. ad 64–68. Domus Aurea, Rome.

on a palette heavy with greens, yellowy browns, and black to create the eVect of patinated bronze, the mosaic shows the statuary group already familiar from Claudius’ nymphaeum at Baiae. And while the mosaic may ultimately refer back to an original Hellenistic bronze group on which the extant Roman marble versions were based, its presence here is clearly a play on the previous examples at Sperlonga and Baiae. The curved shape of the vault covered with pumice stone pays homage to the natural cave which housed the Wrst surviving imperial example of the subject. But the Neronian example celebrates the artiWce which remained concealed at Sperlonga. The natural cave has been transformed into a barrel vault, while the real statuary group at Sperlonga has been replaced by a representation in mosaic.

122 artifice of nature Subsequent examples of the Polypheman grotto seem to play less on the juxtaposition of ars and natura, and more on the grotto’s status as a canonical element of the imperial villa. Domitian’s villa at Castelgandolfo transposes the ground plan of the very Wrst imperial Polypheman grotto at Sperlonga to the shores of Lake Alba (Figs. 35–6).42 While if the suggestion that the Serapeum at Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli was originally intended as a Polypheman cave is correct, then here the grotto would have formed part of an extended series of quotations of canonical examples of art and monuments from all over the empire (Fig. 37).43 But it is the ‘nymphaeum of Polyphemus’ which comes closest to the inversion of naturalism evident in Pliny’s contemporary retelling of the competition between Zeuxis and Parrhasius. If Parrhasius’ triumph was to deceive not Nature but a fellow artist with his painting, the creators of the Neronian grotto eVect a similar coup, reducing art itself to artiWce in their mosaic representation of a bronze statuary group. The sophisticated plays on ars and natura in the imperial grotto were presumably intended to be seen as an expression of the emperor’s power over the natural world as much as a virtuoso display of artiWce by the architects and artists who created them. But the deliberate blurring of art and Nature also extends into the paintings which decorated the gardens of middle-class Pompeiians.44 These were themselves presumably inspired by the decor of the houses and villas of the Roman e´lite, and as such constitute an important body of evidence for a genre of painting of which few examples survive outside Campania.45 But the way in which painted gardens are adapted and moulded to suit the particular spaces of the Pompeiian house suggests that the plays on art and Nature which these paintings initiated were no less meaningful in their middle-class context. 42 G. Lugli, ‘Una pianta e due ninfei di eta´ imperiale Romana’, in Arte in Europa. Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Edoardo Arslan (Milan 1966), i. 47–50; K. de Fine Licht, ‘Antrum Albanum’, AnalRom Supp. 7 (1974), 37–66; Lavagne, Operosa Antra (n. 27), 589–594; P. Liverani, ‘L’antro del ciclope a Castel Gandolfo Ninfeo Bergantino’, in Andreae and Parisi Presicce (eds.), Ulisse. Il mito e la memoria (n. 28), 332–41. 43 Lavagne, Operosa Antra (n. 27), 603–16; B. Andreae and A. Ortega, ‘Nuove ricerche a Villa Adriana’, RendPontAcc 62 (1990), 67–103, esp. 79–103; W. L. MacDonald and J. A. Pinto, Hadrian’s Villa and its Legacy (New Haven and London 1995), 108–16; A. Viscogliosi, ‘Antra Cyclopis: osservazioni su una tipologia di coenatio’, in Ulisse. Il mito e la memoria (n. 28), 252–69 at 266–7. 44 See P. Grimal, Les Jardins romains (Paris 1943), W. F. Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Villas destroyed by Vesuvius (New York 1979) who provides a comprehensive survey of the visual material, and D. Michel, ‘Pompejanische Gartenmalereien’, in H. A. Cahn and E. Simon (eds.), Tainia. Festschrift fur Roland Hampe (Mainz am Rhein 1980), 373–404. 45 Apart from Livia’s garden room, the most important example to survive at Rome is the so-called Auditorium Maecenatis, now identiWed as a nymphaeum. See M. Borda, La Pittura Romana (Milan 1958), 213–14 and H. G. Beyen, ‘Pompeiani stili’, EAA 6 (1965), 356–66 at 362. Also R. Fo¨rtsch, Archaölogischer Kommentar zu den Villenbriefen des Ju¨ngeren Plinius (Mainz am Rhein 1993), 65–84 on the gardens of Pliny the Younger’s villas.

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Fig. 35. The shape of the natural cave at Sperlonga was to serve as a model for Domitian ’s grotto at Castelgandolfo (Fig. 36). Plan of the cave at Sperlonga.

By far the greatest number of garden paintings have been found on the rear wall of peristyle gardens situated at the back of the house, and would thus have been visible from the entrance (Fig. 38).46 There was a strong element of 46 On the view in the Roman house see H. Drerup, ‘Bildraum und Realraum in der ro¨mischen Architektur’, RM 66 (1959), 147–74; L. Bek, Towards a Paradise on Earth. Modern Space Conception in Architecture. A Creation of Renaissance Humanism. AnalRom Supp. 9 (1980); F. Jung, ‘Gebaute Bilder’, AntK 27 (1984), 71–122 esp. 93–7 and 102–3 on the axial relationship of garden and house.

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Fig. 36. The grotto attached to Domitian ’s villa at Castelgandolfo transposes the plan of the seaside grotto at Sperlonga (Fig. 35) to the shores of Lake Alba. Plan of Domitian ’s grotto. Late first century ad. Castelgandolfo.

self-promotion in this, establishing one’s status (or increasing it) through showing oV one’s magniWcent garden, even if it was only so in paint.47 Indeed an important constituent of the prestige which such an arrangement conferred were the sophisticated plays on art and Nature which the view onto a painted garden 47 See T. P. Wiseman, ‘Conspicui postes tectaque digne deo: The Public Image of Aristocratic and Imperial Houses in the Late Republic and Early Empire’, in L’Urbs. Espace urbain et histoire. Collection de l’Ecole Française de Rome 98 (1987), 393–413; A. Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton 1994) Part 1; and J. Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer (n. 21), 49–87.

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Fig. 37. If the Serapeum, at one end of the Canopus, was originally intended to continue the imperial tradition of the Odyssean grotto, then the Canopus itself also alluded to imperial precedents with its display of Caryatids, paying homage to both the Athenian acropolis, and closer to home, the Forum Augustum. Villa of Hadrian, view of the Canopus with Caryatids. c.ad 118–34. Tivoli.

presented. From the moment a visitor entered the House of the Tragic Poet (6.8.3), real Nature was replaced by its likeness. Set into the Xoor of the fauces a mosaic dog, with the accompanying warning ‘Beware of the Dog! (Cave canem)’, substituted representation for reality; but to the same eVect, Wrmly to remind visitors that they were entering another’s territory (Fig. 39). The game was certainly not lost on Petronius, who has the anti-hero of his Satyricon, Encolpius, fall over in fright when he enters Trimalchio’s house, terriWed at the sight of a painted dog in the entrance.48 In the House of the Tragic Poet, the substitution of the real model 48

Petronius, Satyricon 29.1. See P. Veyne, ‘Cave Canem’, MEFRA 75 (1963), 59–66 and N. Slater, ‘ ‘‘Against Interpretation’’: Petronius and Art Criticism’, Ramus 16 (1987), 165–76 esp. 167 and 169–70.


Fig. 38. The prominent placement of garden paintings where they would be visible not only from the street, but also important spaces such as the triclinium and tablinum, suggests that the sophisticated juxtaposition of art and Nature was as much a source of prestige as amusement. W. Gell’s engraving of the garden painting on the rear peristyle wall of the House of the Tragic Poet (6.8.3). 1837.

with its image in mosaic is mirrored in the vista through the atrium and tablinum to the peristyle at the rear, where the viewer was presented with real and painted Nature side by side. The small garden was surrounded on three sides by a portico, while the rear wall was decorated with a wooded landscape glimpsed behind a lattice fence (Fig. 38). Bar a few traces, the painting no longer survives, but Gell’s engraving, made at the time of excavation, preserves the overall scheme.49 The motif of the painted boundary was already present in Livia’s garden room (Fig. 26), but here traces of u-shaped Wttings on the columns of the peristyle suggest that there was indeed a real fence which the rear wall continued in paint.50 Already then, through the device of the fence, the painted landscape became incorporated into the real space of the garden. It is this approximation of opposites which the view from the fauces encapsulates. There, standing in the entrance, the architecture of the house frames a myriad of paradoxical juxtapositions—real Nature and its antithesis, painted Nature, real architecture and painted architecture—as one single composite view.51 49

W. Gell, Pompeiana: The Topography, EdiWces and Ornaments of Pompei (London 1832), ii, pl. 36; and PPM, iv. 548–56. 50 Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii (n. 44), ii. 133. 51 Drerup, ‘Bildraum und Realraum’ (n. 46), 174 emphasizes the steady development of the view through the Roman house into the presentation of the outside world as a picture. See also Jung,

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Fig. 39. Already in the mosaic at the entrance to the house, reality is substituted for its representation. Cave Canem mosaic. W: 1.76 m. From House of the Tragic Poet (6.8.3). c.ad 63–79. Pompeii.

The low wall or lattice fence is a recurrent motif in Pompeiian garden paintings. It is a device which appears to separate the viewer from the painted world lying beyond, and yet, paradoxically, in being constructed out of paint, it already belongs to the very world from which, as a boundary, it should be diVerentiated. Thus, in an attempt to deny its two-dimensionality, and assert itself as a physical reality, it becomes a support for birds to walk on, as for example, in the birds

‘Gebaute Bilder’ (n. 46), 103 on the identical treatment of a real and a painted view in the House of the Labyrinth.

128 artifice of nature perching on the painted golden fence in the House of Venus Marina (Pls. 5–7). In the House of the Tragic Poet, shrubs depicted on the black socle of the peristyle walls playfully question the eVectiveness of any fence, either real or imitation, to act as a barrier against the spread of painted Nature (Pl. 2). Certainly, in the House of Adonis (6.7.18), the low wall connecting the columns of the peristyle and enclosing the garden puts up little resistance—painted on the garden side with a variety of plants and birds, its physical reality is denied, and it joins the world of Nature which it encloses (Pl. 3).52 In the garden of the House of Venus Marina,53 this device is enlarged to incorporate entire buildings (Pls. 4–8). The garden is bounded by a portico on the west, north, and part of the east sides, while a day room (diaeta),54 and shrine room which projected out on to the east side of the garden had their external walls decorated with garden paintings (Pls. 7–8). The rear wall of the garden was divided into three by bands of yellow, and decorated with a central panel showing Venus (after which the house is named) Xanked on either side by garden paintings (Pls. 5–7). Along the bottom of this wall, and continuing round the outside of the diaeta and neighbouring shrine room, ran a lattice fence painted in gold, echoing the gold and white stuccoed columns of the portico. It is an important device which incorporates the diaeta and shrine room into the painted world which the fence limits. And yet while the painted image of a garden which decorates the exterior of the diaeta belies its architectural reality, a window in the east wall cuts through the painted garden to show us the interior of the room, decorated with delicate aediWcia in the Third Style. It is an ironic reversal of the aesthetic which we have seen in the House of the Tragic Poet. If there the visitor was presented with a view through the successive architectural frames of the fauces, atrium, and tablinum to the garden and painted landscape beyond (Fig. 38), here a view is constructed through the painted world of Nature onto the painted architectural frames which decorate the interior wall of the diaeta. The slightly earlier garden paintings which decorate cubiculum 8 in the House of the Fruit Orchard (1.9.5) incorporate a similar strategy (Pl. 9).55 The walls of the room are painted with a luxuriant array of trees and Xowers seen through an architectural frame (perhaps a trellis or pergola) which rises above a lattice fence, and divides the wall into three. Like the low wall or fence in other painted gardens, here the frame and the 52

This device is not unusual. See e.g., the House of the Menander (1.10.4), where the low wall connecting the columns of the peristyle is painted on both sides with gardens, while the garden side of the rear peristyle is decorated with scenes of hunting animals. PPM, ii. 267. 53 Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii (n. 44), i. 63–6 and ii. 330–1; D. Michel, ‘Pompejanische Gartenmalereien’, (n. 44), 399–400. 54 On diaetae, see Fo¨rtsch, Archaölogischer Kommentar (n. 45), 48–58. 55 See Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii (n. 44), i. 77–9 and ii. 317–22; Michel, ‘Pompejanische Gartenmalereien’, (n. 44), 387; and PPM, ii. 15–35.

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painted panels ( pinakes) attached to it, provide a perch for birds. A window which breaks into the right hand panel of the south wall is included in the game. Surrounded by a painted frame on top of which sits another bird (Fig. 40), the window with its view of the ala outside is transformed into another painted pinax in the illusory garden.56 An important element of this visual joke is the way in which the window is not simply incorporated into the scene which the wall depicts, but is presented as a painted panel. If the Pompeiians delight in juxtaposing real and painted Nature side by side in their gardens, the ironic juxtaposition of art and Nature is another important motif in the painted garden. The central panel on the rear wall of the House of Venus Marina shows Venus reclining on a giant shell, her drapery billowing out behind her head, and Xanked by two cupids (Pl. 5). It is ambiguous (and this is surely intentional) whether the representation is to be seen as such, that is as painting of a painting, or whether we are to regard the image as presenting us with a ‘real’ view onto the sea where Venus reclines in her shell. The choice of subject matter and arrangement—a representation of Venus, which occupies an ambivalent position as either panel painting or ‘real’ seascape, balanced on either side with two painted gardens—invites the viewer to compare Nature and art, and to seek out the games which the paintings play. The side panels, painted with gardens, are framed, not with the painted wood surround appropriate for a panel painting, but with garlands of ivy bearing white berries (Pls. 6–7). The suggestion is that this painted Nature has, sponte sua, grown a frame of its own in imitation of ars (and this is only enhanced if we view the central scene as a representation of a panel painting).57 In the left hand scene (Pl. 6) a bird hangs upside down from the ivy frame and tries to pluck a white berry, in what seems a conscious quotation of the tradition of trompe l’oeil stories we have witnessed in Pliny. The suggestion is that the berries are an imitation so realistic that the ‘real’ bird (‘real’ in that he perches on the ‘frame’ and is thus removed from the world of representation which the ivy frame encloses) is deceived. The irony, of course, is that the berries are not part of the ‘painting’, 56

Compare the garden paintings, discovered in 1979, in the House of the Golden Bracelet (6.17(Ins. Occid.).42) where practically identical devices are used. In the lunettes of both the entrance and rear walls painted shelves against a black background pretend three-dimensionality by supporting bowls, fruit, and birds, while a window in the lunette of the entrance wall is given a painted frame on top of which perches a bird and two apples. See Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii (n. 44), ii. 348–58, who calls it ‘The House of the Wedding of Alexander’, and B. Conticello, ‘Il giardino dipinto nella Casa del Bracciale d’oro a Pompei’, in B. Conticello et al., Il Giardino del Bracciale d’oro a Pompei e il suo restauro (Florence 1991), 19–24. 57 Compare the garland of myrtle which surrounds the view of wild animals in a mountainous landscape in the House of L. Ceius Secundus (1.6.15). With its wide base, narrowing into a columnar shape, the garland is clearly intended to bring an architectural frame to mind. See Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii (n. 44), i. 68 and ii. 315; P. Zanker, Pompeii. Public and Private Life (Cambridge Mass. and London 1998), 135–92; Michel, ‘Pompejanische Gartenmalereien’, (n. 44), 399; PPM, i. 468–81.

130 artifice of nature Fig. 40. Surrounded by a painted frame with a bird perching on top, a real window is playfully presented as a pinax, amidst the other panels which decorate the painted garden (Plate 9). Detail of upper zone of south wall of cubiculum 8, House of the Fruit Orchard (1.9.5). c. ad 40–50. Pompeii.

but the frame itself; and while the bird may appear to perch outside the painting on its frame, he is no more than pigment.58 The ‘natural’ frames are not the only riddles for the viewer. We have already seen how fences can be used to generate tension between the real and painted. In Livia’s garden room, an opening in the lattice fence taunted the viewer with its beautiful gardens out of reach (Fig. 26); in the House of the Tragic Poet, the shrubs decorating the bottom of the peristyle wall seemed to have escaped from the real or painted gardens enclosed behind the fence (Pl. 2). In the House of Venus Marina, it is not plants which elude their painted boundary, but ‘artiWcial’ creations, such as statues and fountains. In the left-hand panel a statue of Mars on a tall square pedestal is represented in front of the lattice boundary, a companion piece to the Venus (real or painted?) in the central panel (Pl. 6). Similarly in the right-hand panel, and on the painted exteriors of the diaeta and shrine-room, a series of fountains stand on pedestals in front of the fence (Pls. 7–8).59 The placement of these ornaments outside the fence which bounds the painted world, invites us to view them as belonging to the real garden. And it is surely signiWcant that it is the ‘artiWcial’ objects, and in particular the statue of Mars, that have been chosen to stand outside the boundary of the painted garden. The painted sculpture becomes an ironic intermediary between real 58 There is a similar play in Livia’s garden room, where a bird pecks at the leaves of the garland which frames the painting. See Gabriel, Livia’s Garden Room (n. 24), 7–8. 59 E. Moorman, La Pittura Parietale Romana come fonti de conoscenza per la scultura antica (Assen and Wolfeboro 1988), 159 Cat. 178 compares it with a real statue of Polycleitan type.

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and painted garden, initiating a dynamic in which painted ars stands between the real and the painted Nature. The garden, with its illusory ensemble of real and painted eVects, was clearly a space to which the owners of the House of Venus Marina attached great importance. Visitors to the house were presented with enticing views of the garden and its paintings from both the entrance, and the triclinium oV the garden peristyle (Pl. 4),60 while excavations reveal that it was the primary focus for renovations after the damage inXicted by the earthquake of ad 62. This pattern is reXected throughout Pompeii, where the vast majority of garden paintings can be dated to after ad 62.61 The garden at the rear of the house of Loreius Tiburtinus (2.2.2), for example, was still being remodelled at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in ad 79, and covered more than twice the space of the house. Zanker has shown how the garden quoted extensively from the model of villa architecture,62 but its decoration also played on the traditional opposition of art and Nature. An aedicula overlooking the canal which ran across the upper part of the garden was decorated with pumice stone, and Xanked by representations of panel paintings (indicated as such by the brown borders which frame them) illustrating two mythical transformations of man into Nature which appear in Ovid—on the right Pyramus and Thisbe, on the left Narcissus and his reXection in the pool below (Fig. 41). Around the canal statuettes of hounds attacking their prey were displayed alongside muses and a satyr.63 While the imperial tradition of the grotto, along with the example of Livia’s garden room attest to a fascination with plays on art and Nature among the Roman e´lite from the late Wrst century bc, the example of Pompeii in particular illustrates how the theme continued to engross Pliny’s middle-class contemporaries. The prominent placement of garden paintings where they would be visible not only from the street, but also important spaces such as the triclinium and tablinum, suggests that the sophisticated juxtaposition of art and Nature was a source of prestige as much as amusement. The garden paintings of Pompeii provide a Roman context in which to read the outstanding feats of naturalism achieved by Greek artists which Pliny’s work describes. And if Pliny’s history of art reXects a contemporary material culture 60

Bek, ‘ Towards a Paradise on Earth’ (n. 55), 192 notes that the picture of Venus is only seen in correct perspective from the triclinium, to the right of the entrance to the garden. See also Jung, ‘Gebaute Bilder’ (n. 46), 98–100 on the construction of views from the triclinium, and Fo¨rtsch, Archaölogischer Kommentar (n. 45), 84. 61 Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii (n. 44), i. 55. 62 Zanker, Pompeii. Public and Private Life (n. 57), 145–56 and 227 n. 44 for an extensive bibliography. 63 The garden in the house of M. Lucretius (9.2.5) had a similar display of garden sculptures. See D. K. Hill, ‘Some Sculpture in Roman Domestic Gardens’, in E. B. MacDougall and W. F. Jashemski (eds.), Ancient Roman Gardens (Washington, DC 1981), 81–94, esp. 86.


Fig. 41. With its display of paintings depicting mythical transformations of man into Nature, the garden of the House of Loreius Tiburtinus plays on the traditional opposition of Nature and art. Aedicula flanked by paintings of Narcissus (left) and Pyramus and Thisbe (right). From garden of House of Loreius Tiburtinus/D. Octavius Quarto (2.2.2). After ad 62. Pompeii.

which revelled in plays on art and Nature, then the ambiguities which permeate his presentation of the Greek artist’s ability to challenge Nature are perhaps suggestive of the author’s stance with regard to these artiWcial imitations of Nature. Pliny does not explicitly refer to the contemporary garden paintings which were such an important element of the decoration of the Pompeiian house. He does however describe the work of a Roman painter named Studius (or Ludius—the text is corrupt), and while his description has generally been seen to refer to what we now term sacro-idyllic landscape, it could also encompass garden paintings.64

64 M. Beagon, ‘Nature and Views of her Landscapes in Pliny the Elder’, in G. Shipley and J. Salmon (eds.), Human Landscapes in Classical Antiquity. Environment and Culture (London and New York 1996), 284–309, discusses this passage at 286.

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I must not deprive Studius of his due. He was a painter from the time of Augustus, who was the Wrst to introduce the delightful practice of painting walls with images of villas, porticoes, landscaped gardens (opera topiaria), groves, woods, hills, Wshponds, canals, streams, coasts, and anything else that one could wish for (qualia quis optaret). (NH 35.116)

Pliny’s account of Studius’ work is favourable. He speciWcally draws attention to his inclusion of the painter, and describes his paintings as extremely attractive (amoenissimam). But he concludes his list of subjects that Studius paints with a remark which is suggestive of his assessment of artiWcial Nature elsewhere— Studius paints whatever anybody could desire (qualia quis optaret). It is perhaps no more than a throw-away comment, but one which draws on the language of luxury to describe Studius’ paintings of Nature. For Pliny, the predominance of luxury in Roman society is the result of an uncontrollable appetite, which is expressed in his use of verbs denoting longing and desire (such as amare (love), cupire (long for), placere (please), iuvare (delight) ) to describe luxurious behaviour. Here optare is a relatively restrained expression of desire, but a verb which Pliny has already used at the beginning of book 35 to describe the taste for painting marble with markings ‘just as fastidious luxury would have liked them to be by nature’ (qualiter illos nasci optassent deliciae). Like the masterpieces of Greek sculpture brought back to Rome as booty, Studius’ work is problematic for Pliny. As a Roman painter of note in a history of painting dominated by Greeks, he provides an important example of Roman supremacy in the Weld. And yet in summing up the subject matter of his work in the phrase ‘whatever anybody could desire’ (qualia quis optaret), Pliny expresses an uneasiness about an artist whose work feeds the luxurious Romans’ appetite for artiWcial imitations of Nature.

representing nature with words Pliny’s discussion of the medicinal uses of plants begins in book 25 with an account of previous Roman and Greek writers on the subject, and touches on some of the diYculties an author encounters when seeking to give an accurate picture of plants. While the Greek practice of painting the plant and writing the properties underneath is, according to Pliny, ‘a most pleasing method’, it is also one ‘which illustrates almost nothing, except the diYculty of applying it’ (25.8). Colours can be misleading, as can the representation of only one stage of the plant’s lifecycle, and the copyist is always prone to error. Verbal descriptions have their own shortcomings too, since ‘some writers have not even indicated the shape of the plant, and for the most part have left it at bare names’ (25.9).

134 artifice of nature The discussion aVords Pliny yet another opportunity to assert the superiority of his own knowledge65—he, apparently, has had ‘the opportunity to examine all except a very few plants’ in the garden of Antonius Castor ‘currently the greatest authority in the Weld’ (25.9). But the passage is interesting in its awareness of the diYculties in creating an accurate picture of Nature, whether in images or words. Pliny’s own account of Nature is an ambitious exercise in naturalism in which, like the artists whose achievements he recounts, Pliny takes Nature as his model. And while, in the preface, Pliny cites the practice of artists giving their work provisional titles such as ‘Worked on by Apelles or Worked on by Polycleitus’ to explain that his representation too is unWnished and liable to possible defects,66 throughout the Natural History as we have seen, he is keen to present his account as a faithful portrait of Nature as she really is. The chapters on art cast Nature as the reality which artists seek to reproduce (and even supplant), but elsewhere Pliny’s portrayal of Nature seems speciWcally designed as a riposte to her deceptive imitations.67 In the discussion of insects with which he opens book 11, Nature is not the inspiration for artists, but the artist par excellence. Pliny’s emphasis on Nature’s creativity has its origins in early ideas of a creative cosmic divinity, and in later Stoic thought, in particular the theory of Nature expounded by the Stoic Balbus, in Cicero’s De Natura Deorum.68 But what is particularly interesting in this context, is the extent to which Pliny draws on the language he later uses to describe art and artists, in his characterization of Nature. Praising Nature’s craftsmanship (artiWcium) in her creation of insects, Pliny refers to the subtlety (subtilitas) with which she attached the wings, a word Pliny also uses to describe Theodorus’ self-portrait in book 34;69 to her genius (ingenium) when she provided insects with a sting, a term frequently used in his discussion of artists.70 Pliny notes Nature’s ars, and marvels at her skill when working in miniature, a skill which he also attributes to Lysippus.71 His portrait of natura artifex includes qualities commonly found 65

See 23–5. See p. 61. 67 Cf. NH 21.4 where Pliny speaks of the competition between art and Nature (certamen artis ac naturae). 68 On natura artifex see J. Andre´, ‘Nature et culture chez Pline L’Ancien’, in id. (ed.), Recherches sur les artes a` Rome (Paris 1978), 7–17, esp. 8, Beagon, Roman Nature, passim, and id., ‘Nature and Views of her Landscapes in Pliny the Elder’ (n. 64), 295–6. 69 NH 34.83: ‘praised for the extreme delicacy of execution’ (magna subtilitate celebratur). 70 e.g. NH 35.73: ‘ Timanthes had considerably ingenuity’ (vel plurimum adfuit ingenii); and 35.69 on Parrhasius: ‘He painted an ingenious (argumento quoque ingenioso) personiWcation of the Athenian demos.’ 71 NH 11.4: ‘With what genius she made the sting sharp enough to pierce the skin; and, as if working on a large object, when in fact it is so small you cannot see it, she modelled it with corresponding skill, to be at once sharp for digging, and hollow for sucking . . . But we marvel at elephants carrying castles on their shoulders, . . . when in fact Nature is nowhere more visible than in the smallest of her creations.’ Compare 34.65, on Lysippus: ‘The extreme delicacy of execution, even in the smallest details, is particularly characteristic of his work.’ 66

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in treatises on rhetoric—he praises the method (ratio) and power (vis) of Nature’s minute creations, both terms which Cicero uses (along with subtilitas—a term which Pliny also applies to Nature) to describe the rhetorical styles of Demosthenes, Lysias, and Isocrates.72 Evidently linguistic artiWce can provide an equally eVective illustration of Nature’s artistry; indeed the Roman assimilation of art and rhetoric is also evident in the potted histories of art which appear in rhetorical treatises to illustrate the evolution of style.73 For Pliny, there is no doubt who wins the playful competition between art and Nature. When marvelling, at 7.8, that Nature has made no two men look the same, he adds ‘this variety is something that no art (ars nulla) could achieve, even in a limited number of creations.’; while at 21.2, in his discussion of Xowers, Pliny notes that ‘not even painting ( pictura) has the capacity to imitate their colours or the variety of their combinations’. But in seeking to create an image of Nature to rival the coloured marbles or the painted walls which so fascinate contemporary Roman society, the traditional roles can be reversed. At 21.4, for example, Pliny describes the competition between the painter Pausias, and the garland-maker Glycera. Later it became fashionable to vary the combinations by interweaving Xowers of diVerent colours, to heighten the eVect of smell and colour in turn. It started at Sicyon, through the ingenuity of the painter Pausias, and Glycera, a garland-maker with whom he was very much in love. When he imitated her work in his paintings (cum opera eius pictura imitaretur), she challenged him by varying her designs (illa provocans variaret), and so there was a competition between art and Nature (essetque certamen artis ac naturae).

Pausias and Glycera are both credited with ingenium, an essential attribute of the artist which dominates Pliny’s accounts of painting and sculpture. And while Pausias fulWls the traditional role of the artist in imitating Glycera’s Xower arrangements (cum opera eius pictura imitaretur), Glycera’s actions also look forward to the masters of trompe l’oeil who appear in book 35. In challenging Pausias with the variety of her designs (illa provocans variaret), Glycera’s garlands anticipate Apelles’ painting of a nude hero, with which he ‘challenged Nature herself ’ (eaque pictura naturam ipsam provocavit).74 An illustration of the varietas which was an essential element of the Stoic conception of Nature, the anecdote also reverses the traditional roles in the conXict between art and Nature. If elsewhere it is the artist who challenges Nature with the naturalism of his representations, here it is Glycera who challenges the artist with her ingenious Xower arrangements. 72 Cicero, De Oratore 3.28. See also Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria 5.14.1 (ratio) and 10.5.2 (subtilitas). On ratio in Pliny see Beagon, Roman Nature, 61–8, 169–73, 222–7. 73 Cicero, Brutus 70 and Orator 9; Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria 12.10.1–9; J. J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art. Criticism, History and Terminology (London and New Haven 1974), 58–63. 74 See above p. 107.

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Nature emerges in Pliny’s portrait as far greater an artist than any of the masters of painting and sculpture whose feats of naturalism he recounts in the chapters on art. And if Pliny employs the same terms to describe natura artifex as those which he applies to the artists who imitate her, his presentation of Nature’s creations also draws on the language of her artiWcial imitations. In a list of famous plane trees in book 12, Pliny includes a story which reveals Nature not as artist, but as imitator.75 Now there is a famous plane-tree in Lycia, which enjoys the agreeable proximity of a cool spring. It stands, like a house (domicilii modo), by the roadside, and inside is a hollow cave 81 feet across. The summit forms a shady grove, shielding itself with vast branches as big as trees, and covering the Welds with its long shadows. And so that nothing is lacking from this image of a grotto (ac ne quid desit speluncae imagini), mossy pumice stones are gathered within a circular rim of rock. This tree is so deserving of the term ‘wonder’ that Licinius Mucianus (three-times consul, and recently made deputy to the governor of the province) thought that he should record for posterity that he had held a banquet with 18 companions inside the tree, which itself provided generous couches made from leaves; and that he had then slept in the same tree, sheltered from every gust of wind, and Wnding more pleasure in the agreeable sound of rain falling through the leaves, than in brilliant marble, colourful pictures or ceilings panelled with gold. (NH 12.9–10)

Pliny summons several man-made objects to describe the plane-tree—in its position by the road it apparently resembles a house (domicilii modo), while its abundant leaves make wonderful couches (large ipsa toros praebente frondis). Equipped with all the comforts of a Roman triclinium, the plane-tree is clearly intended by Pliny to show how Nature alone provides luxury enough for mankind. So much so that Licinius Mucianus preferred the natural delights of the plane tree to the customary accoutrements (paintings and marble panelling) of an e´lite Roman house. The irony of Pliny’s representation is that, in seeking to oVer a natural alternative to the extravagances of Roman taste, Nature becomes inseparable from her artiWcial imitations. With a hollow centre large enough to accommodate nineteen people, and protected by vast branches, the plane tree already resembles a cave. Pliny pursues the comparison to invoke the idea of an artiWcial grotto—‘so that nothing would be missing from this image of a cave’, the tree had incorporated mossy pumice stones into its interior (ac ne quid desit speluncae imagini, saxea intus crepidinis corona muscosos complexa pumices). In choosing the word imago to refer to the impression of a cave which the tree evokes, Pliny speciWcally introduces the idea of the imitation. Imago was a term commonly used to refer to representations in art, and was not only the standard Roman word for a portrait, but also for a deceptive copy. At 35.23, Pliny uses it 75

For other discussions of this passage, see Lavagne, Operosa Antra (n. 27), 447, Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio, 220–1, and Beagon, ‘Nature and Views of her Landscapes in Pliny the Elder’ (n. 64), 291.

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to describe how crows, taken in by the trompe l’oeil paintings (decepti imagine) of a scaenae frons, tried to land on the roof represented in the scenery. In his discussion of pumice at 36.154, Pliny uses the same term to describe a manmade artiWcial grotto: I must not neglect to mention the characteristics of pumice ( pumicum natura). This is the name given to the corroded rocks which hang from the ceilings of the buildings called musaea, in order to create the impression of a cave through artiWce (ad imaginem specus arte reddendam).

It is surely an intended irony, that the Wrst item in Pliny’s account of the ‘nature’ of pumice ( pumicum natura) is its use in artiWcial imitations of Nature.76 His description of pumice hanging from the ceilings ‘in order to create the impression of a cave through artiWce’ recalls the near contemporary examples of manmade grottoes at Baiae and in Nero’s Domus Aurea (Pl. 1 and Fig. 33); while the terms which he uses to describe such an eVect are reminiscent of those used in his account of the Lycian plane tree (ad imaginem specus arte reddendam/ac ne quid desit speluncae imagini). At Baiae, the architects of Claudius’ seaside grotto used pumice to heighten the naturalism of a man-made cave in a natural setting. In Nero’s Domus Aurea, the pumice which revetted the vaulted ceiling was an important element in the recreation of Nature wholesale which the concrete cave achieved. Pliny’s account of the Lycian tree highlights the pumice stones as a vital element in the tree’s impression of a grotto (indeed, at 36.154, they are cited as essential to the imitation of a grotto). But where the Lycian tree diVers from its imperial counterparts, is that its use of pumice is not the result of man’s intervention, but an eVect entirely of Nature’s own making. In the Lycian tree we not only have an illustration of Nature’s inventiveness, but crucially, an example of Nature imitating her own artiWcial imitations. In preferring the tree to the paintings and marble veneers which so excited e´lite Roman taste, Licinius Mucianus may appear to choose Nature over luxury. But in fact, the tree’s attraction rests precisely in its resemblance to the artiWcial grottoes which had become an essential element of e´lite Roman imperial culture. In choosing the tree, then, Licinius is simply exchanging one luxurious environment for another. This is the supreme irony of Pliny’s formulation of the relationship between art and Nature. In seeking to demonstrate the superiority of Nature, the reality becomes inseparable from the artiWcial imitations which rival her. 76

On the use of pumice to decorate artiWcial grottoes see Lavagne, Operosa Antra (n. 27), 273 and 405–37 on the other elements of opus musivum.

six

Imaging Memory

As for memory, the most essential gift in life (memoria necessarium maxime vitae bonum), it is not easy to say who has excelled the most in it, since so many have won renown for it. (NH 7.88)

Memory, not surprisingly, is a theme with special reference for Pliny. He devotes an entire section of book 7 to describing particularly outstanding examples of this ‘most essential gift in life’—including, at 7.88, Lucius Scipio who ‘could list the names of the whole Roman people’, and a Greek named Charmadas, who could recite ‘on demand, the contents of whole volumes in libraries, as if he were reading them’. In comparing his own work in the preface to a thesaurus (a treasury or storehouse),1 Pliny invokes a metaphor which was frequently used by Romans to describe memory. The Rhetorica ad Herennium, for example, called memoria ‘the Repository of inventions’.2 This idea of preservation which is inherent to memory dominates Pliny’s work—hence the appropriateness of the storehouse as a metaphor. As we have already seen, Pliny repeatedly draws attention to his inclusion of information with phrases such as ‘nor should we omit’, or ‘nor should we forget’. But Pliny is also aware of the fragility of memory. At 7.90 he notes that ‘nothing else in man is as fragile’, and counterbalances his list of amazing feats of memory, with some peculiar instances of forgetting—a man, for example, who when hit by a stone, ‘forgot (oblitus) how to read and write, but nothing else’. Remembering and forgetting are central to Pliny’s discussion of portraits in his chapters on art. His presentation of ancestral portraits is directly dependent on their role, or at least what he perceives to be their role, as transmitters of memory. Like written records, objects too are privileged as a means of preserving memory. By its very nature, something durable and lasting, an object can preserve memory of the past (perhaps quite unintentionally); and, of course, objects are very often explicitly created to serve as memorials, or aide1

NH Pref 17. See also pp. 75–6. On the storehouse as an image for memory, see Rhetorica ad Herennium 2. 28, 3.16; Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria 11.2.2.; F. Yates, The Art of Memory (London 1966); M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory (Cambridge 1990), 33–5; and J. Farrell, ‘The Phenomenology of Memory in Roman Culture’, CJ 92.4 (1997), 373–83 at 373. 2

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memoires.3 Pliny clearly appreciated this—at 34.16, he notes that ‘It was not usual to make portraits (eYgies) of men unless they deserved lasting commemoration ( perpetuitatem merentium) for some remarkable reason’. The close relationship identiWed by Pliny between the creation of an image and the perpetuation of memory is reXected in the Roman practice of deliberately destroying portraits of emperors who had been overthrown. The destruction and removal of images belongs amidst a range of ancient Roman practices which speciWcally targeted memory in the punishment of an overthrown emperor or an individual convicted of treason.4 These include banning the use of the condemned’s name within the clan ( gens), the erasure of their name from public (in particular, honorary) inscriptions and records, the prohibition of mourning whether the condemned died through execution or suicide, and the conWscation of their property.5 While there was no standard procedure following the condemnation of an emperor or individual, some of these sanctions could be stipulated by oYcial decree.6 But iconoclastic attacks on portraits could also mark an unoYcial response to the downfall of an individual. The modern term coined to refer to these practices is damnatio memoriae. In its emphasis on the ‘condemnation of memory’, it pinpoints the way in which some of these sanctions (such as the deliberate destruction of portraits) reveal an eVort to completely erase the memory of an individual from the public sphere. But in describing a range of diverse practices under the one heading, it implies a systematic procedure which never existed, and elides the extent to which each individual action could manipulate memory to quite diVerent eVect. Two coins issued by the emperor Nero, for example, preserve responses to the emperor’s downfall.7 But 3

See A. Radley, ‘Artefacts, Memory and a Sense of the Past’, in D. Middleton and D. Edwards (eds.), Collective Remembering (London 1990), 46–59; W. Melion and S. Ku¨chler, ‘Introduction: Memory, Cognition, and Image Production’, in id. (eds.), Images of Memory (Washington, DC and London 1991), 1–7; and M. Rowlands, ‘The Role of Memory in the Transmission of Culture’, in R. Bradley (ed.), Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society. World Arch 25.2 (1993), 144–7. 4 For discussions of surviving visual material, see H. Jucker, ‘Iulisch-Claudische Kaiser- und Prinzenportra¨ts als ‘‘Palimpseste’’ ’, JdI 96 (1981), 236–316; M. Bergmann and P. Zanker, ‘ ‘‘Damnatio Memoriae’’ Umgearbeitete Nero- und Domitiansportra¨ts’, JdI 96 (1981), 317–412; and E. R. Varner (ed.), From Caligula to Constantine. Tyranny and Transformation in Roman Portraiture, exhib. cat. (Atlanta 2000). 5 See F. VittinghoV, Der Staatsfeind in der ro¨mischen Kaiserzeit. Untersuchungen zur ‘damnatio memoriae’ (Berlin 1936); H. Blanck, Wiederwendungen alter Statuen als Ehrendenkma¨ler bei Griechen und Ro¨mern. StArch II (Rome 1969); and K. Mustakallio, Death and Disgrace. Capitol Penalties with Post Mortem Sanctions in Early Roman Historiography (Helsinki 1994), 9–15. 6 See e.g. the senatus consultum issued following Piso’s trial after the death of Germanicus. W. Eck, A. Caballos, and F. Fernańdez, Das Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre (Munich 1996); M. GriYn, ‘The Senate’s Story’, JRS 87 (1997), 249–63; D. Potter, ‘Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone’, JRA 11 (1998), 437–57; H. Flower, ‘Rethinking ‘‘Damnatio Memoriae’’: The Case of Cn. Calpurnius Piso’, ClAnt 17 (1998), 155–86. 7 See V. Zedelius, ‘Nero calvus? Antike Vera¨nderungen an Bronzemu¨nzen des Kaisers Nero’, in Das Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn. Berichte aus der Arbeit des Museums 2/79 (Bonn 1979), 20–2, and

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Fig. 42. This coin of the emperor Nero preserves a specifically targeted attack on the emperor following his downfall. Pilloried in the sources for his practice of singing in public, here the mouth of the emperor’s portrait has been slashed. Dupondius of Nero. Diameter: 30 mm. ad 64–6. Akademisches Kunstmuseum, Bonn.

Fig. 43. In this coin of the emperor Nero, an essential element of Nero’s iconography of power has deliberately been removed—his hair (cf. Figs. 52–3). Dupondius of Nero. Diameter: 30 mm. ad 64–6. Rheinisches Landesmuseum (inv. 6783), Bonn.

unlike the evidence in the sources for the deliberate destruction of imperial images, the defacement of these coins reveals less an attempt to erase memory, than to transform and perpetuate it. On a dupondius in the Akademisches Kunstmuseum in Bonn, the image of the emperor who was so famed for singing in public has had its mouth slashed (Fig. 42).8 On another of Nero’s coins, now in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, the long locks which the emperor wore in the tradition of Hellenistic kings have deliberately been removed, and Nero is bald (Fig. 43).9 In tune with recent approaches to the subject, these images reveal memory not as a static collection of facts and ideas which can be retrieved at will, but as a Xuid process, something that can be consciously manipulated or unconsciously altered as societies continually examine and reorder their relationships with the past.10 It is this idea of memory as the construction of successive generations, as much as a passive reservoir to be referred to, which is the theme of this chapter. Focusing K. Stemmer, ‘Das Bildnis des Nero’, in H. Born (ed.), Damnatio Memoriae: Das Berliner Nero-Portra¨t (Mainz am Rhein 1996), 28–117. 8

For Nero’s warbling see Suetonius, Life of Nero 20–5 and Tacitus, Annals 14.14. Suetonius, Life of Nero 51 notes Nero’s long hair. On Nero’s portraiture see U. Hiesinger, ‘The Portraits of Nero’, AJA 79 (1975), 120–4; N. Hannestad, ‘Nero, or the Potentialities of the Emperor’, in N. Bonacasa and G. Rizza (eds.), Ritratto uYciale e rittratto privato. Atti dell II Conferenza internazionale sul ritratto romano (Rome 1988), 325–9; and D. Boschung, ‘Die Bildnistypen der iulish-claudischen Kaiserfamilien: ein kritischer Forschungsbericht’, JRA 6 (1993), 39–79 at 76–7. 10 See P. Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge 1989); D. Middleton and D. Edwards (eds.), Collective Remembering (London 1990); Melion and Ku¨chler, ‘Introduction: Memory, Cognition, and Image Production’ (n. 3); J. Fentress and C. Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass. 1992); and Rowlands, ‘The Role of Memory in the Transmission of Culture’ (n. 3). On new approaches to the study of memory in the ancient world see J. Penny Small and J. Tatum, ‘Memory and the Study of Classical Antiquity’, Helios 22.2 (1995), 149–77; and Farrell, ‘The Phenomenology of Memory in Roman Culture’ (n. 2). 9

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on Pliny’s discussion of portraits in the Natural History, it explores how the theme of memory which dominates Pliny’s presentation of portraits provides an important reference point for understanding responses to portraits (preserved both in the material evidence of the images themselves, and the writings of Pliny, his contemporaries and successors) in imperial Rome.

ancestral memory The list of contents for book 35 describes the Wrst subjects for discussion as ‘the prestige of painting, the prestige of portraits’. The words perfectly encapsulate the opening chapters of the book. For while Pliny announces at 35.2 that Wrst he will say what remains to be said about painting ( primumque dicemus quae restant de pictura), the account quickly develops into a lengthy digression on portraiture both sculpted and painted. The transition is an easy one, since from the very beginning, Pliny’s discussion of painting emphasizes its capacity permanently to preserve human likeness. When describing the origins of painting at 35.15, Pliny says that ‘everyone agrees that it began with drawing a line round a man’s shadow’. While his introduction of painting at 35.2 attributes painting’s prestige largely to portraiture. Painting, he tells us is an art that was once noble (when it was much sought after by kings and nations) and which ennobled others who were considered worthy to be handed down to posterity; but now it has been completely supplanted by marbles, and also indeed, by gold.

The at once ‘noble’ and ‘ennobling’ art of painting is contrasted with the contemporary taste for marble and gold. Pliny’s lament belongs to the wider opposition of Greek and Roman culture that dominates the Natural History as a whole (see pp. 23–5). The contrast between Roman portraiture and Greek marbles, which is implicit here at 35.2, is made quite explicit at 35.6, where the traditional display of ancestral masks is qualiWed with ‘not statues by foreign artists, or bronzes or marbles’. But beyond a more general opposition with Greek art, Pliny’s praise for the Roman portrait tradition rests on what he perceives as the direct aim of portraiture—the preservation of memory. It is speciWcally painting’s ability ‘to hand down to posterity (posteris tradere)’ which makes it ‘ennobling of others’. Pliny returns to the subject at 35.4, when he says ‘the painting of portraits, through which extremely accurate likenesses of people were preserved for eternity (qua maxime similes in aevum propagantur Wgurae), has completely died out’.11 11 For an alternative interpretation of this passage see G. Didi-Huberman, ‘Imaginum Pictura . . . in totum exolevit.’ De´but de l’histoire de l’art et Wn de l’e´poque de l’image’, Critique 586 (1996), 138–50 and id., ‘L’image-matrice. Geńeálogie et ve´rite´ de la ressemblance selon Pline l’Ancien, Histoire Naturelle, XXXV, 1–7’, L’inactuel 6 (1996), 109–25.

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Both statements emphasize the role of the portrait in preserving and transmitting memory. Indeed in a story which Pliny later recounts at 35.151, a desire to preserve memory prompts the creation of the very Wrst portrait in clay. The lover of the daughter of a potter named Butades was going away, and so she traced the outline of his face on a wall. By pressing clay into his daughter’s sketch and Wring the imprint, Butades produced the man’s portrait. The combined actions of the potter and his daughter make permanently present in an image what is absent. At 35.9, Pliny explicitly invokes this idea to explain the creation of imaginary portraits—‘and a desire for what we have lost (desideria) gives birth to faces which have not been handed down, as happened in the case of Homer’. It is speciWcally this capacity of the portrait to make permanently present which Pliny highlights in the opening chapters of book 35. Things were diVerent in the atria of our ancestors. There it was portraits that were for looking at (quae spectarentur), not statues by foreign artists, or bronzes, or marbles. Faces modelled in wax were arranged on separate chests, so that these likenesses (imagines) might be carried in procession at a funeral of the gens, and whenever someone died, all the members of his household that had ever existed were present (totus aderat familiae eius qui umquam fuerat populus). (NH 35.6)

As one of the few sources on ancestral portraits, Pliny’s discussion in book 35 has played a particularly important role in modern attempts to reconstruct the appearance and display of Roman ancestral masks. Pliny’s contrast of ancestral masks with contemporary portraits, for example, is seen as evidence that the ancestral masks had died out by the imperial period.12 The precise relationship between the veristic portraits which survive in great numbers and are dated to the Wrst century bc (or in certain cases are later copies of works from that period), and the ancestral masks, none of which survive, and for which we have to rely on the literary sources (primarily Polybius and Pliny) for evidence, is Wercely contested.13 For some, the ancestral portrait is entirely separate from the republican veristic portraits—a wax mask worn by actors at a funeral, which may or may not have been modelled directly from the features of the dead man.14 For others, the republican portrait is a later development of the ancestral mask, the wax mask evolving into a portrait in the round made in a more durable 12

A. N. Zadoks-Josephus Jitta, Ancestral Portraiture in Rome and the Art of the Last Century of the Republic (Amsterdam 1932), 23; H. Drerup, ‘Totenmaske und Ahnenbild bei den Ro¨mern’, RM 87 (1980), 81–129 at 105; and H. I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford 1996), 39. 13 Two heads sculpted roughly in wood, found in the lararium of the House of Menander, Pompeii, have been interpreted by some as a form of ancestral portrait, but we have no surviving examples of the wax masks which Polybius and Pliny describe. See A. Boe¨thius, ‘On the Ancestral Masks of the Romans’, ActaArch 13 (1942), 226–35 at 234 and G. Lahusen, ‘Zur Funktion und Rezeption des Ro¨mischen Ahnenbildes’, RM 92 (1985), 261–89. 14 Flower, Ancestor Masks (n. 12), 5.

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material (bronze or marble).15 But while Pliny’s account of portraits may never provide us with a deWnitive answer about what ancestral portraits looked like, what is particularly interesting is the way in which the processes of memory dominate his account. The ancestor portraits, like the outline which Butades’ daughter drew in the wall, serve to preserve permanently all the images of the members of their clan ( gens), so that the gens itself becomes an eternal memorial, untouched by the mortality of its members.16 This sense of permanent commemoration dominates Pliny’s discussion of portraits, evident in his use of words such as posteris (for posterity), in aevum (through the ages), semper (always), tradere (to hand down), and propagare (to transmit). If Pliny is full of praise for the portraits of his ancestors, the compliment does not extend to his contemporaries. We have already seen Pliny twice announce the demise of portraiture (35.2, 35.4), and this is presented as a decline in both material form and contemporary attitudes. The simplicity of the ancestral portraits modelled in wax, is contrasted with the more luxurious bronze and marble statues by foreign artists which decorate the homes of Pliny’s contemporaries. At 35.4, he complains that people now leave portraits of their money, not themselves. Everyone, therefore, prefers the conspicuous display of material to recognizable likenesses of themselves . . . . As a consequence, nobody’s likeness lives on and they leave behind portraits of their money, not themselves (itaque nullius eYgie vivente imagines pecuniae, non suas relinquunt).

Elsewhere Pliny makes it clear that these new luxurious portrait forms directly reXect the characters of the people portrayed. At 35.5 he writes that: Inertia has destroyed the arts, and since our minds cannot be portrayed our physical features are also neglected (artes desidia perdidit, et quoniam animorum imagines non sunt, negleguntur etiam corporum).

Implicit in Pliny’s presentation of portraits is the assimilation of medium and character. The very style of the portrait reveals the nature of the person portrayed. If the luxurious media chosen by Pliny’s contemporaries for their portraits reXect what is really being represented—money, not character (imagines pecuniae, non suas), then the simplicity of the ancestral wax eYgy embodies the mos maiorum of Pliny’s ideal past. A similar approach was to be used in later physiognomical treatises, in particular the work of the second-century sophist, Polemo, who drew on physiognomy to create positive and negative 15

Zadoks-Josephus Jitta, Ancestral Portraiture (n. 12), 37; Boe¨thius, ‘On the Ancestral Masks of the Romans’ (n. 13); J. M. C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Ancient World (London and New York 1971), 48; and R. R. R. Smith, ‘Greeks, Foreigners and Roman Republican Portraits’, JRS 71 (1981), 24–38 at 31. 16 On the display of portraits in the domus see R. Neudecker, Die Skulpturenausstattung Ro¨mischer villen in Italian (Mainz 1988), 74–84.

144 imaging memory exempla, which encouraged the reader to concur with his categorization of a subject.17 Pliny expands the analogy at 35.8. Noting the republican orator Messala’s protest that a bust from another family had been included amidst the portraits of his own gens, Pliny adds: But I hope that the Messala family will forgive me for saying that even to falsely claim the portraits of famous men as one’s own revealed a certain love for their virtues, and this was far more deserving of honour, than to behave in such a fashion that no one would want to possess one’s own portrait.

Just as the simple wax medium of the ancestral masks could reXect the mos maiorum of those portrayed, so choosing to include the portrait of someone outside the gens amidst the family’s collection of ancestral portraits reveals an appreciation of the virtues which such a portrait embodies. This may well have been part of the motivation for commissioning a portrait statue which showed the subject bearing portrait busts, such as the Barberini togatus (Fig. 44). While Pliny is writing considerably later than the Augustan date traditionally given to the togate statue, like his text, the statue suggests that a Roman could earn prestige not only through having ancestral portraits to display, but through the very action of displaying portraits (whether of one’s own family or another’s). The original portrait head of the togatus has not survived to enable us to see whether physiognomic likeness was an important feature of the statue’s iconography.18 But, in tune with Pliny’s commentary on the Messalan collection of portraits, the statue, in its incorporation of portrait busts, demonstrates an appreciation of the virtues and values which such portraits evoked. For Pliny, contemporary Romans, by contrast, ensure through their own conduct, that no one will want to possess their portrait. Perhaps the most decisive element in Pliny’s negative construction of contemporary behaviour is the treatment of portraits. The sense of permanent commemoration which dominates Pliny’s presentation of the ancestral portrait is directly contrasted with the impermanence of the contemporary portrait. The portraits of Pliny’s contemporaries not only fail to preserve memory through being representations of their subject’s money, not character, but most importantly, Pliny presents his contemporaries deliberately destroying family portraits. Heads of statues are exchanged for others—even before now sarcastic epigrams on the subject have done the rounds. Thus everyone prefers the conspicuous display of wealth to a recognizable likeness of themselves, and meanwhile, they plaster the walls of their pinacothecae with old pictures, and cherish the portraits of strangers, while as for their 17

See T. Barton, Power and Knowledge. Astrology, Physiognomics and Medicine under the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor 1994), 95–131. 18 The head is ancient but does not belong to the statue.

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Fig. 44. In tune with Pliny ’s later discussion of portraits, this statue suggests that an individual gained prestige not simply through the possession of ancestral busts, but more importantly, through the action of displaying them. ‘ Barberini togatus ’. H: 1.65 m. First century bc/ad. Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori (inv. 2392), Rome.

own portraits, their conception of honour only stretches as far as the price for their heir to break up the statue and drag it out of doors with a noose. Consequently nobody’s likeness lives on, and they leave behind portraits of their money, not themselves. (NH 35.4–5)

The passage recalls, and this is surely intentional, descriptions in other contemporary or near contemporary authors of statues of overthrown emperors or

146 imaging memory members of the imperial guard being toppled to the ground and smashed to pieces. The image of the broken statue being hauled out of the house with a noose (in a symbolic mimicking of a hanging) is reminiscent of Juvenal’s description of a crowd delighting in seeing a fallen statue of Sejanus dragged along by a hook.19 In Pliny’s text, however, it is not an angry mob, but a son destroying the portraits of his own father. And the father himself had prized not the images of his own ancestors, but those of strangers. The contrast with Pliny’s response to Messala’s complaint about the inclusion of people other than close relatives in the family’s display of portrait busts is striking. Whereas the latter action signalled for Pliny an appreciation of the virtues that ancestral portraits embodied, in the contemporary example, the father’s admiration for portraits of strangers above those of his own family, sets a precedent that culminates in the son’s deliberate destruction of his father’s portrait. If Pliny invokes the practice of destroying the images of overthrown emperors to demonstrate the extent to which his contemporaries not only fail to preserve ancestral memory but willingly obliterate it, his representation of ancestral portraits as ideal guardians of memory has much in common with the mnemonic techniques described in surviving discussions of rhetoric. Several scholars have cited Pliny’s emphasis on ‘likeness’ in an attempt to reconstruct the appearance of the ancestral masks.20 Certainly, at 35.4, Pliny does describe the art of portraiture as the medium ‘through which extremely accurate likenesses of people (qua maxime similes) were preserved for eternity’. Yet the fact that, at 35.9–10, Pliny praises the invention of portraits for people whose likeness has not been handed down, suggests that he is perhaps more interested in the capacity of the portrait to permanently preserve the image of a person rather than the accuracy of the image itself. Pliny shares this emphasis on realistic likeness with the speciWcations made in sources on the rhetorical technique of memoria for the mental images to be remembered. One rhetorical technique of memory (as presented by the Rhetorica Ad Herennium, Cicero, and Quintilian)21 involved the construction of an architectural framework (loci), generally conceived of as a house, although public buildings and even cities were also suggested as possibilities.22 Against this 19

Juvenal, Satires 10.65. See also Pliny the Younger, Panegyric 52.4. See D. Jackson, ‘Verism and the Ancestral Portrait’, GaR 34 (1987), 32–47 and Flower, Ancestor Masks (n. 12), 39. 21 Rhetorica ad Herennium 3.16–24 is the main source, dated 86–82 bc, while Cicero, De Oratore 2.86.351–2.88.360 and Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria 11.2.17–22 assume that the reader already has some knowledge of artiWcial memory. On ancient memory techniques see Yates, The Art of Memory (n. 2), 1–49, Carruthers, The Book of Memory (n. 2), 71–9, and K. Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories (Cambridge 1992), 39–59. 22 Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria 11.2.21. See D. Favro, ‘Reading the Augustan City’ in P. J. Holliday (ed.), Narrative and Event in Ancient Art (Cambridge 1993), 230–57 at 232–3; and B. Bergmann, ‘The Roman House as Memory Theater: The House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii’, ArtB 76.2 (1994), 225–55. 20

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architectural background were set the mental images (imagines) of what was to be remembered.23 It is striking that the human Wgure recurs repeatedly as an image in the sources on mnemonic devices. Thus the Rhetorica ad Herennium, in noting that each Wfth locus should be marked, suggests that at the tenth locus one should place ‘some acquaintance whose Wrst name is Decimus’.24 This is obviously a play on the dual meaning of decimus, but the use of the human Wgure as a mnemonic device is not isolated. Elsewhere the Rhetorica ad Herennium uses the example of a group of acquaintances standing in a row.25 Representations of the human face were perhaps, then, particularly suited for remembrance. Indeed Aristotle explicitly compared the mental picture to ‘a kind of painted portrait, the lasting state of which we describe as memory’.26 What is particularly interesting, against the backdrop of Pliny’s discussion of portraits, are the factors which determine whether a mental image will last. The Rhetorica ad Herennium notes: We should therefore create images of the kind which can remain Wxed in the memory longest. This will be the case if we establish likenesses that are as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague, but doing something; if we bestow on them outstanding beauty or unparalleled ugliness. (3.22.37)

The most successful images for promoting memory are those in which the likeness is most marked (quam maxime notatas similitudines—a rhetorical phrase which might seem to be speciWcally recalled in Pliny’s qua maxime similes (35.4)). Like the Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero also emphasizes the importance of clearly deWned imagines in his discussion of memoria. One must employ a great many loci, which are clear, deWned, and placed at moderate intervals; and images that are active, sharply outlined and distinctive, capable of presenting themselves to the mind, and quickly making their mark. This ability will be achieved through practice, . . . and by using the image of a single word to represent an entire concept, with the system and method of a master-painter, distinguishing the positions of objects by altering their form. (De Oratore 2.87.358)27

The images must be sharp (imaginibus acribus), and marked (imaginibus insignitis), so that they can more swiftly penetrate the mind. There is great stress laid on the sharp outline of the images, not only in the use of the word acer, but also in 23 Cf. Rhetorica ad Herennium 3.16.29: ‘An image is, as it were, a Wgure, mark, or portrait of the thing that we wish to remember’ (Imagines sunt formae quaedam et notae et simulacra eius rei quam meminisse volumus). 24 Ibid. 3.18.31. 25 Ibid. 3.18.30. See also 3.20.33. 26 De memoria et reminiscentia 450a30. See Yates, The Art of Memory (n. 2), 16 and 33. 27 See also Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria 11.2.22 who quotes this passage.

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Cicero’s comparison of the mnemonic technique to the work of a painter ‘distinguishing the position of objects by altering their form’. SigniWcantly, one of the criticisms which Pliny levels against the portraits of his contemporaries at 35.4, is the lack of clear distinction between the Wgures—‘Now bronze shields are set up ( ponuntur), with portraits in silver, in which there is little discernible diVerence between Wgures’ (surdo Wgurarum discrimine). Pliny’s choice of the word ponuntur, a word frequently used in both texts and inscriptions speciWcally to denote the erection of a monument, emphasizes the erection of these imagines clipeatae as memorials, and contrasts with their complete failure to comply with the conditions which make an image memorable—the Wgures are not sharply outlined, but instead can barely be distinguished one from the other.28 Like the rhetorical mnemonic imago, Pliny’s ideal ancestral portraits (imagines maiorum) fulWl the requirements for promoting lasting memory. They provide lasting likenesses (qua maxime similes) of their subjects, in contrast to their contemporary counterparts which lack the sharp outlines necessary for an enduring memorial. Pliny emphasizes the fact that they are objects to be looked at. The opening sentence of his eulogy of ancestral portraits, at 35.6, makes this quite clear—‘Things were diVerent in the atria of our ancestors. There it was portraits that were for looking at’ (quae spectarentur). While his description at 35.12 of the Wrst portrait shields set up in a public place, recounts how Appius Servilius wished the portraits of his ancestors ‘to be in full view on an elevated spot (in excelso spectari), and the inscription detailing their honours to be read’.29 For Pliny, portraits, like Cicero’s mnemonic imagines, have an active role to play. Given the aYnity between Pliny’s description of ancestral portraits and the speciWcations for imagines in the rhetorical handbooks, it is interesting that Pliny highlights the architectural setting of the imagines maiorum. The other main source on ancestral portraits, Polybius, writing some 200 years earlier than Pliny, concentrates on the funeral procession as a context for the display of ancestral portraits, adding that after the procession the masks were kept in a cupboard in the atrium.30 In Pliny’s discussion of ancestral masks this emphasis is reversed. He does, as we saw above, refer to the role of the imagines in making the entire clan ( gens) present at a funeral of one of their number; but his main focus is on the part which the imagines play in the gloriWcation of the clan ( gens) and 28 See R. Winkes, ‘Pliny’s Chapter on Roman Funeral customs in the Light of clipeatae imagines’, AJA 83 (1979), 481–4 and J. Pigeaud, L’Art et le vivant (Paris 1995), 213 for other discussions of this passage. 29 See also NH 34.24, where Pliny says that after Cn. Octavius was killed on an embassy to Antiochus IV, the Senate voted that a statue of him be set up ‘in the most visible spot’ (oculatissimo loco). 30 Polybius 6.53–4. See H. T. Rowell, ‘The Forum and Funeral imagines of Augustus’, MAAR 17 (1940), 131–43 at 133; Flower, Ancestor Masks (n. 12), 36–8; and M. Bettini, Anthropology and Roman Culture: Kinship, Time and Images of the Soul (Baltimore and London 1991), 176–80.

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traditional way of life (mos maiorum) with which the architecture of the house as a whole is concerned. Things were diVerent in the atria of our ancestors. There it was portraits that were for looking at . . . Faces modelled in wax were arranged on separate chests . . . In fact, the ‘family trees’ (stemmata) ran in lines about the painted portraits. The archive rooms (tabulina) were Wlled with scrolls and records of magisterial careers. Outside the doors, around the lintels, were other portraits of these great minds, and nearby were Wxed the enemy spoils, which even someone who bought the house was not permitted to remove, and even though it changed masters, the domus celebrated an eternal triumph (triumphabantque etiam dominis mutatis aeternae domus). (NH 35.6–7)

The passage sets up a series of memory images against their architectural backgrounds. The ancestral portraits and the ‘family trees’ (stemmata—the written expression of the relationships between those represented in the various portraits)31 placed in the atrium, the records and the magisterial res gestae in the tabulina,32 further portraits and triumphal booty fastened to the doorway, all combine to form one lasting memorial, the house (domus) itself. Here too, as we saw with the portraits themselves, Pliny emphasizes the permanence of the domus (aeternae)—the house may change masters, but it will always remain as a memorial to the gens whose memories it houses. Every object which Pliny places in his ideal domus is an object that commemorates the history of the gens, whether it be the portraits preserving the memory of the ancestors themselves, the stemmata charting their relationships with one another, the records of their actions in the tabulina, or the spoils commemorating their triumphs attached to the doorway.33 Pliny’s collection of resonant images set against an architectural backdrop Wnds material parallels in both the private and public sphere. In the second style wall-paintings which decorated the atrium of the so-called Villa of the Poppaei at Oplontis (c.100–50 bc), shields hanging in the intercolumniations of a colonnade, and imagines clipeatae with idealized male and female heads, displayed above a cornice, are included in an illusionistic display of grandeur (Fig. 45).34 But closest to Pliny’s image of the triumphant domus Wlled with ancestral images and records, is the Forum Augustum, which explicitly drew on the republican model of the display of portraits to create a monumental atrium, and incorporate the princeps into the ancestry (mythical and historical) of the 31

On the stemmata see Bettini, Anthropology and Roman Culture (n. 30), 174–82. On record keeping in the domus see P. Culham, ‘Archives and alternatives in republican Rome’, CP 84 (1989), 100–15 esp. 104. 33 See Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio, 250–1 and S. Hales, ‘At Home with Cicero’, GaR 47 (2000), 44–55, esp. 45–6 on the rhetoric of the house. 34 See A. de Franciscis, ‘La villa romana di Oplontis’ in B. Andreae and H. Kyrieleis (eds.), Neue Forschungen in Pompeji (Recklinghausen 1975), 9–39; and P. G. Guzzo and L. Fergola, Oplontis. La Villa di Poppea (Milan 2000), pls. 33–5. 32

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Fig. 45. Offering a material parallel for the array of images included in Pliny’s ideal domus, the wall-paintings decorating the atrium of the Villa of the Poppaei display shields and portrait shields, against trompe l’oeil architecture. Wall painting. From atrium of the Villa of the Poppaei. c.100–50 bc. Oplontis.

Roman state (Fig. 46).35 It is perhaps hardly surprising, then, that at 36.102, Pliny includes the Forum on his list of ‘magniWcent buildings’ (magniWca opera), since it incorporated all the elements which Pliny included in his idealized picture of the domus. The porticoes that Xanked the Temple of Mars Ultor were Wlled with statues showing, to the north, famous Wgures from Rome’s myth-history (summi viri) including Romulus, and to the south, Augustus’ ancestors stretching right back to Aeneas. Each statue (displayed, in accordance with the rules for making an imago memorable, in an intercolumnar niche) was accompanied by an account of the subject’s great deeds—Pliny quotes, at 22.13, from the res gestae inscribed under the statue of Scipio. While the returned 35 P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. H. A. Shapiro (Ann Arbor 1988), 210–15; D. Favro, The Urban Image of Augustan Rome (Cambridge 1996), 126–8; K. Galinsky, Augustan Culture (Princeton 1996), 206–7.

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Fig. 46. In Augustus ’ Forum, the republican tradition of displaying portraits and records side by side in the domus is enlarged to provide the new emperor with the greatest pedigree of all. Reconstruction of summi viri (showing statue accompanied by titulus and elogium) in the Forum Augustum. Dedicated 2 bc. Rome.

Parthian trophies were housed in the cella of the Temple of Mars Ultor, like Pliny’s domus ‘celebrating an eternal triumph’. The memoria that Pliny’s ideal domus creates and preserves is not static. It has an active function to exhort others to do likewise. In other sources we see this role speciWcally given to portraits—Cassius Dio, for example, notes that it was seeing the portrait statue of the regicide L. Junius Brutus and that of Julius

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Fig. 47. Like the ‘Barberini togatus’ (Fig. 44), or the wall-paintings in the atrium of the Villa of the Poppaei (Fig. 45), this funerary relief harnesses the prestige inherent in the display of portrait busts. Funerary relief with portrait busts. W: 0.34 m. First century bc. National Museum (inv. 1187), Copenhagen.

Caesar on the Capitol that urged Brutus to assassinate Caesar.36 Pliny, too, clearly appreciated this capacity of the portrait—at 35.12, during his discussion of portrait shields (clupei), Pliny notes ‘To see, represented on a shield, the face of the man who once used it, inspires great courage (origo plena virtutis) in the beholder’. At 35.7, this exhortatory role of the portrait is enlarged and extended to the whole domus. We are presented with an image of the domus with all its spoils and ancestral images, every day reminding its new owner of the successes of his predecessor. Pliny concludes: ‘This proved to be a considerable stimulus (stimulatio ingens), when every day the very walls accused a cowardly owner of trespassing on someone else’s triumphs.’ Scholars continue to debate whether objects such as the Barberini togatus (Fig. 44) or the funerary relief, now in Copenhagen, showing at either end a bust in some sort of cupboard (Fig. 47), provide us with representations of original ancestral portraits, that is as described by Polybius and Pliny, or simply portraits of the kind which have survived.37 But regardless of whether these images prove or disprove that by the end of the Republic the wax images which Pliny apparently describes had been replaced by busts, what they undeniably demonstrate is the eVectiveness of the human face within Roman culture to act as a memorial, not only of the person represented, but also, by extension, of their achievements and their way of life, of mos maiorum. This is something which is recognized not only in Polybius’ description (6.53–54) of the ability of ancestral 36

Cassius Dio 43.45.3–4. See also Lahusen, ‘Zur Funktion und Rezeption des Ro¨mischen Ahnenbildes’ (n. 13), 268–9 and A. P. Gregory, ‘ ‘‘Powerful Images’’: Responses to Portraits and the Political use of Images in Rome’, JRA 7 (1994), 80–99 esp. 91–7. 37 See Boe¨thius, ‘On the Ancestral Masks of the Romans’ (n. 13), 234; Toynbee, Death and Burial (n. 15), 48; Smith, ‘Greeks, Foreigners and Roman Republican Portraits’ (n. 15), 31; and Flower, Ancestor Masks (n. 12), 5–7.

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masks in some way to bring the person they represented back to life, but perhaps more interestingly, it is evidenced by the frequent exempla drawn from the human Wgure in the rhetorical accounts of memoria. It is striking, then, that one of the speciWcations which the Rhetorica ad Herennium includes for making the mnemonic device of the imago as memorable as possible is to attribute to it either extreme beauty or extreme ugliness (si egregiam pulcritudinem aut unicam turpitudinem eis adtribuemus).38 It could equally refer to the two main styles chosen by the Romans to portray themselves—the idealism of both Hellenistic and Julio-Claudian portraiture (e.g. Fig. 53), and the ‘verism’ (or anti-idealism) of republican portraits, later revived in the oYcial portraiture of Vespasian and Pliny’s patron, Titus (Figs. 44 and 60). Whether the Roman practice of memoria was speciWcally inXuenced by the example of portraiture in its development of eVective memory images (imagines), or the creators of Roman portraits, both ideal and ‘veristic’, were informed by the rhetorical speciWcations for making something more memorable, is impossible to say. But the way in which the Rhetorica ad Herennium’s comment mirrors the material evidence suggests a close relationship between portraits and the processes of memory in Roman culture. The powerful nature of the memorial quality of portraits is attested by the evidence we have for restrictions on their public display. Portraits of living people on coins were not allowed until the last years of the Republic,39 while a passage in Pliny’s chapters on art also suggests an attempt to control the display of portraits in public spaces. At 34.30, he notes that in 158 bc the censors removed all the statues from the Forum which had not been set up by the decree of the Senate and people of Rome, and concludes that ‘evidently those men took measures against ambition even in the case of statues’. This is generally taken as evidence for the fact that statues were not allowed to be displayed in public without prior authorization from the Senate, but even if, as some have contested, it does not amount to deWnite evidence of a formal law, it certainly demonstrates a concern to control the display of images in the public sphere.40 A passage in Cicero’s In Verrem has also led some scholars to argue for a law speciWcally controlling the public display of ancestral masks. When listing the privileges that he earns through his position as an aedile elect at 2.5.36, Cicero includes, along with the fringed toga and curule chair, ‘the right to leave my 38 Cf. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (London and New York 1970), 13: ‘For it is not really the perception of likeness for which we are originally programmed, but the noticing of unlikeness, the departure from the norm which stands out and sticks in the mind.’ 39 See J. D. Breckenridge, Likeness. A Conceptual History of Ancient Portraiture (Evanston, Ill. 1969), 155 and J. P. Rollin, Untersuchungen zu Rechtsfragen Ro¨mischen Bildnisse (Bonn 1979), 54–66. 40 See R. Du¨ll, ‘Zum Recht der Bildwerke in der Antike’, in Studi in onore di Emilio Betti 3 (Milan 1962), 129–53 at 136–53; and Rollin, Untersuchungen zu Rechtsfragen Ro¨mischen Bildnisse (n. 39), 38–53 esp. 43–5 and 84–7.

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portrait as a memorial for posterity’ (ius imaginis ad memoriam posteritatemque prodendae). Whether ius should be understood here as referring to an actual law, as some have argued,41 or simply a custom,42 remains unclear. But both Polybius’ and Pliny’s discussion of the imagines maiorum place the ancestral masks Wrmly within an aristocratic setting, and Cicero, a novus homo, in mentioning his right to leave an imago for posterity in connection with the legal entitlements of magisterial oYce, clearly recognizes the political potential of the imagines maiorum. A display of ancestral masks along with their tituli, detailing the achievements of the person represented, either in the atrium or in the funeral procession, would certainly have presented a forceful demonstration of the power and success of a gens (as demonstrated by Augustus’s appropriation of the form in his Forum Augustum). Even if not restricted by a formal law, then, the evidence of the sources clearly displays an awareness of the power inherent in the ancestral portrait’s commemorative function. And perhaps the most compelling evidence for this is the destruction of portraits of someone found guilty of treason. It demonstrates a clear recognition of the power of portraits to serve as lasting memorials of the status and inXuence of the person represented, and, by extension, of their gens. Hence the need to destroy the image of someone perceived as a danger to the state. This mnemonic capacity of the portrait dominates the Plinian account. And it is a theme that is taken a lot further than mere observation of the portrait’s function as a recorder of human likeness. Pliny presents us with positive and negative examples of portraiture that are directly linked to the prescriptions for the creation of imagines in the sources on memoria. Here, the fact that the ancestral portraits and the mental images used to aid remembrance, described in the rhetorical handbooks, are both called imagines is fortuitous. On its own it would not be particularly signiWcant. Imago is, after all, a word with a great breadth of meaning, not simply conWned either to imagines maiorum or its application in mnemonic techniques.43 But combined with the other allusions that Pliny makes to mnemonic techniques, and the speciWcally architectural setting he gives to his account of portraiture, this coincidence of terms only 41 Du¨ll, ‘Zum Recht der Bildwerke in der Antike’ (n. 40), 134; Rollin, Untersuchungen zu Rechtsfragen Ro¨mischen Bildnisse (n. 39), 5–37; L. Nista, ‘Ius Imaginum and public portraiture’, in M. Anderson (ed.), Roman Portraits in Context. Imperial and Private Likenesses from the Museo Nazionale Romano, exhib. cat. (Atlanta 1989), 33–9 at 33–4. 42 Zadoks Josephus-Jitta, Ancestral Portraiture (n. 12), 97–110; G. Lahusen, Untersuchungen zur Ehrenstatue in Rom. Literarische und Epigraphische Zeugnisse (Rome 1983), 113–27; and Flower, Ancestor Masks (n. 12), 53–6. 43 On the use of imago speciWcally to mean portrait see R. Daut, Imago. Untersuchungen zum BildbegriV der Ro¨mer (Heidelberg 1975), 41–51 and 141–5; G. Lahusen, ‘Statuae et Imagines’ in B. von Freytag Gen. LoringhoV, D. Mannsperger, and F. Prayon (eds.), Praestant Interna. Festschrift fu¨r Ulrich Hausmann (Tu¨bingen 1982), 101–9 at 103–4 and Flower, Ancestor Masks (n. 12), 33–5.

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serves to highlight the rhetorical mnemonic framework which underpins Pliny’s discussion of ancestral portraits. And the coincidence would surely not have been lost either on Pliny, himself an author of a handbook on rhetoric, or on his e´lite readers, trained in the art of rhetoric, and consequently memoria, from a young age.44 Pliny’s representation of portraits is then, I would argue, directly constructed out of his recognition of their capacity to preserve memory. Like the images suggested by the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Cicero for creating lasting memory, Pliny’s ideal ancestral portraits too provide striking resemblances (qua maxime similes), in contrast to their negative, modern counterparts who fail to provide their Wgures with sharp outlines (surdo Wgurarum discrimine).45 In discussing more contemporary portraits, Pliny draws on the practice of destroying the images of overthrown emperors, to suggest that, unlike their ideal precursors, they not only fail to preserve memory, but actually attempt to annihilate it.46 And crucially, Pliny not only sets up the ancestral portraits as ideal purveyors and preservers of memory, but also constructs an ideal memory for us to associate them with. In Pliny’s account (largely through their antithetical opposition, material and symbolic, with contemporary portraiture), the ancestral portraits become ideal embodiments of Roman virtue and restraint; a claim that is reinforced by their situation in the domus with its records of familial achievements, and the spoils which proclaim the role of the gens in conquest. This is not to say that outside of the Natural History the ancestral portraits had none of these ideal associations. The role of the imagines in the advancement and gloriWcation of the republican gentes has been repeatedly emphasized, and Sheldon Nodelmann has highlighted how the veristic portrait (which if not a ‘true’ ancestor portrait can certainly be said to possess the same memorial qualities) consists of a complex of signs that symbolize the cursus honorum and mos maiorum.47 But it is important to recognize the deeply rhetorical nature of Pliny’s account of portraits. It is not only an account in which portraits, the ideal preservers of memory, actually mimic, in the description of their appearance, the processes of memoria laid down in the rhetorical handbooks, but also one which is anxious to prescribe the precise memories which these memorial images should evoke. And if the human face was frequently chosen as an mnemonic aid because it was considered particularly memorable, then Pliny’s choice of portraiture as a peg on 44 B. Vickers, In Defense of Rhetoric (Oxford 1988); G. A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton 1994); and T. Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge 1998), 190–239. 45 See pp. 146–8. 46 See pp. 144–6. 47 S. Nodelmann, ‘How to Read a Roman portrait’, in E. D’Ambra (ed.), Roman Art in Context. An Anthology (New Jersey 1993), 10–26.

156 imaging memory which to hang his thoughts on contemporary society may well seek to exploit this—so that in choosing the imagines to exemplify wider trends in contemporary culture, his comments will themselves be made more memorable.

imperial memory If Pliny drew on the practice of deliberately destroying statues to create a damning picture of the attitude of his contemporaries to the portraits of their forebears, his discussion of an image connected with the recently overthrown emperor, Nero, expands on the negative trope of the destruction of memory. The account of Nero’s Colossus comes at the end of a list of colossal statues in book 34, all included under the theme of ‘boldness’ (audacia) in art. In our own day however, Zenodorus’ Mercury, made in the city of the Arverni in Gaul, outdid all the other statues in this class in size . . . After Zenodorus had proved his skill in Gaul, Nero summoned him to Rome, where he made a colossal statue, 119 1⁄2 feet high. It was originally intended to be a portrait of the emperor, but after Nero’s crimes had been condemned, it was dedicated to the worship of the Sun (qui dicatus Soli venerationi est damnatis sceleribus illius principis). . . . This statue proves that knowledge of bronzecasting had died out (interisse), since Nero was quite ready to provide gold and silver in lavish quantities (largiri aurum argentumque paratus esset); it also proves that in modelling and chasing, Zenodorus was the equal of any artist of old. When he was working on the statue for the Arverni, he made copies of two cups chased by the hand of Kalamis . . . These copies were so skilfully made, that there was scarcely any diVerence between them and the originals. So that Zenodorus’ pre-eminence in the Weld only makes us realize all the more that the art of bronze-casting has been completely forgotten (deprehenditur obliteratio). (NH 34.45–7)

Nero’s Colossus, as Pliny describes it, is the complete antithesis of the ideal portraits which we are to encounter in book 35. Here, instead of the simple wax images which reXect the mores of those represented, we Wnd the indulgence and excess of Nero implied and reXected in the size and medium of the statue.48 Pliny is not explicitly negative about the size of the statue, although its position as the largest Colossus at the end of a list which includes the Colossus at Rhodes is made clear. At 35.51, though, he describes a 120 ft (37 m.) painting of Nero as ‘madness’ (insania), and when he tells us that as soon as it was put up, it was struck by lightning and completely burnt, there is the strong implication that this was Nature’s response to such hubris (particularly since, as we have seen, Pliny notes in book 36 that Wres are punishments inXicted on 48

The notion of excess surrounding the Neronian period is present in other Neronian writers—see, for example, E. Gowers, ‘Persius and the Decoction of Nero’, in J. Elsner and J. Masters, ReXections of Nero (London 1994), 131–50.

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luxury).49 But the size of the statue (either 1061⁄2 or 1191⁄2 feet (32.5 or 36.5 m.) high depending on manuscript readings),50 highlights the extravagance of its medium. We are told that Nero was prepared to provide gold and silver for the statue. The sentence refers back to Pliny’s introduction of bronze casting at 34.5, where he laments the decline in the art. At one time, bronze was alloyed with a mixture of gold and silver, yet the artistry was considered more valuable than the metal. Now it is hard to say which is worse.

In Nero’s provision of gold and silver for a statue that was over 100 feet (30 m.) high, Pliny provides us with an extreme example of the distorted relationship between material and substance. The statement forms part of Pliny’s rhetorical portrayal of Nero as the embodiment of luxury and excess. At 34.63, Pliny gives us another example of the emperor’s destructively luxurious tastes in art. Nero, we are told, was so delighted with a portrait by Lysippus of Alexander as a young man that he had it gilt. Since this costly addition destroyed the beauty of the work, the gold was removed, and the statue was considered even more valuable without it, despite the fact that it still retained the scars and incisions from where the gold had been attached.

The verb which Pliny chooses to describe Nero’s provision of gold and silver for the Colossus, largiri, inXates the sense of Nero’s unrestrained indulgence. It is the verb in which largitio, the imperial display of muniWcence, has its root.51 Here in Nero’s readiness to bestow largitio on himself, through providing (largiri) gold and silver for his portrait, we see the complete distortion of the imperial model. The emperor is now both ruler and subject, giver and receiver of imperial largess. But even more signiWcant, is the fact that, instead of preserving memory, as Pliny’s ideal portraits do, the very process of making the Colossus destroys knowledge. Pliny refers to this twice in his description of the Colossus. First we are told that the statue proved that ‘knowledge of bronze-casting had died out’ (interisse). Generally understood to mean that Zenodorus did not know the correct proportions of copper, gold, and silver required to make bronze,52 this loss of knowledge stands in stark contrast to the artist’s expertise in other Welds— Zenodorus, we are told, ‘in modelling and chasing, was the equal of any artist of old’. When Pliny concludes his section on Zenodorus, he makes the same contrast, noting that ‘Zenodorus’ pre-eminence in the Weld only makes 49

See pp. 96–7. Suetonius, Life of Nero 31 gives a height of 120 feet. 51 On largitio see R. MacMullen, ‘The emperor’s largesses’, Latomus 21 (1962), 159–66 and F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London and New York 1977), 135–9. 52 See Isager, Pliny on Art and Society, 94. 50

158 imaging memory us realize all the more that the art of bronze-casting has been completely forgotten’ (tanto magis deprehenditur aeris obliteratio). Pliny’s use of the word obliteratio is signiWcant. It is a word which, like the verb from which it derives (oblitero) has forceful connotations of deliberately removing something from the memory.53 In strong contrast to the ancestral portraits then, whose very appearance ensures that they serve as lasting images of memory,54 Nero’s colossal portrait eVaces knowledge of the very process that created it. SigniWcantly, elsewhere in the Natural History, Pliny frequently uses the same term to present himself doing the exact opposite. At 36.42, for example, he writes Nor should I forget (nec obliterari convenit) Sauras and Batrachus, who built the temples that are enclosed by the Porticoes of Octavia.55

Like the ancestral portraits, and in contrast to his rhetorical presentation of Nero’s colossal portrait, Pliny’s Natural History is about preserving memory, not destroying it.56 Anticipating Pliny’s account of contemporary portraiture later on in book 35, Nero’s Colossus presents itself as the example par excellence of the decadence which Pliny describes. Pliny does marvel (mirabamur) at the realism (similitudinem) of the clay model which Zenodorus made for the Colossus,57 although we have also seen how the word mirare is frequently linked in Pliny’s text with luxury.58 And in light of the fact that Nero was apparently prepared to provide gold and silver for its manufacture, one wonders if this remarkable likeness is to be interpreted as a strikingly realistic representation of Nero’s indulgence and extravagance. Like the contemporary portraits which Pliny bemoans,59 Nero’s portrait is also a (literal) representation of money, not character, but on far more extreme a scale. We do not have to look forward to Pliny’s account of ancestral portraits in book 35 to Wnd the Colossus’ antithesis. The two colossi which directly precede Nero’s on the list are contrast enough. The Wrst is the Tuscan Apollo, in the Temple of Divus Augustus, of which Pliny notes at 34.43, ‘it is not easy to say which is more worthy of wonder—the quality of the bronze or the beauty of the 53 e.g. Varro, De Lingua Latina 5.52; Cicero, Post Reditum in Senatu 21; Livy 41.24.11; Tacitus, Annals 2.83; Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 22. 54 See pp. 146–8. 55 Also NH 6.141: ‘nor have I forgotten’ (nec sum oblitus) 14.7: ‘I, however, will make a thorough investigation into even those things which have been consigned to oblivion’ (sed nos oblitterata quoque scrutabimur); 18.335: ‘Nor have I forgotten’ (nec sum oblitus); 33.164: ‘I have not forgotten that’ (non obliti). 56 See pp. 20 and 76. 57 See R. R. R. Smith, ‘Nero and the Sun-god: Divine Accessories and Political Symbols in Roman Imperial Images’, JRA 13 (2000), 532–42 at 536–7. 58 See pp. 92–3. 59 See pp. 143–6.

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statue’. It provides a stark contrast to Nero’s Colossus which proves that the art of bronze-casting is dead, and the statue’s association with Augustus, a positive model of imperial rule in the Natural History,60 only adds to this. But the contrast with the next colossus is even stronger. After he defeated the Samnites in a war fought under a solemn oath [293 bc], Spurius Carvilius made the statue of Jupiter in the Capitol from their breastplates, greaves and helmets. The statue is so enormous that it can be seen from the Temple of Jupiter Latiaris. From the Wlings which were left over, he made a statue of himself which stands at the feet of his statue of Jupiter. (NH 34.43)

Here the material from which the cult statue is made directly reXects what the statue is intended to commemorate. Just as the simple wax medium of the ancestor portrait both enhanced and signalled its commemoration of the ancestors’ self-restraint,61 so here, the melted down bronze shields, greaves, and helmets of the enemy are the ideal material for a statue which commemorates the Roman triumph over the Samnites. The very material embodies the memory which the statue seeks to preserve. And the colossal size of the statue only enlarges the magnitude of the triumph. The spoils of victory were such that there was enough bronze not only to make a colossus, but also to make a life-size statue from the discarded Wlings. It contrasts strongly with the largest colossus of all, a work which Nero was more than ready to have made in gold and silver, and whose very creation obliterated all knowledge of the art of working in bronze. Pliny’s account of Nero’s Colossus, then, is closely linked with his discussion of ancestral portraits. The Colossus becomes a sort of anti-portrait, which destroys memory instead of preserving it. But beyond Pliny’s text too, the Colossus remained intimately connected with processes of remembering and forgetting, a statue whose memory was preserved by later generations as a proverbial example of imperial excess. The actual appearance and subsequent history of the Colossus is a matter of much debate.62 It remains unclear whether the statue was a colossal representation 60

e.g. NH 2.93–4 where Pliny notes that a comet which Augustus had thought very favourable to himself ‘did, to tell the truth, have a beneWcial eVect on the world’. On Pliny’s portrayal of Augustus, see R. Till, ‘Plinius u¨ber Augustus’, Wu¨rzJbb ns 3 (1977), 127–37; G. Binder, ‘Auguste d’apre`s les informations de la NH’, in Pigeaud/Oroz, Pliny, 461–72; and B. Baldwin, ‘Roman Emperors in the Elder Pliny’, Scholia ns 4 (1995), 56–78 at 58–64. 61 See pp. 143–4. 62 The main works on the Colossus are P. Howell, ‘The Colossus of Nero’, Athenaeum 46 (1968), 292–9; C. Lega, ‘Il Colosso di Nerone’, BullCom 93 (1990), 339–78; M. Bergmann, Der Koloss Neros, die Domus Aurea und der Mentalita¨tswandel im Rom der fru¨hen Kaiserzeit. TrWPr 13 (Mainz am Rhein 1993); id., Die Strahlen der Herrscher: Theomorphes Herrscherbild und politische Symbolik im Hellenismus und in der ro¨mischen Kaiserzeit (Mainz am Rhein 1998), 133–230; and Smith, ‘Nero and the Sun-god’ (n. 57), esp. 536–8. K. Bradley, Suetonius’ Life of Nero, CollLatomus 157 (1978), 175–7 gives a useful summary of arguments about the Colossus.

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Fig. 48. Struck by Alexander Severus to commemorate his restoration of the Colosseum in ad 227, the coin reverse preserves an image of the Colossus, standing to the left of the Colosseum, where it had been placed by Hadrian. Sestertius of Alexander Severus, reverse, showing the Colosseum with Colossus to the left, and Meta Sudans, to the right. c. ad 237. British Museum, London.

Fig. 49. The juxtaposition of monuments on this coin reverse provides a good indication of the enormity (both physical and rhetorical) of the Colossus—equal in height to the Colosseum, it makes Domitian ’s monumental fountain appear decidedly minuscule. Multiplum of Gordian III, reverse, showing the Colosseum with Colossus to the left, and Meta Sudans, to the right. ad 238–41. British Museum, London.

of the Sun-god, or speciWcally showed the emperor in the guise of the Sun-god. Indeed, one possibility is that it was not even completed during Nero’s lifetime.63 Pliny and Suetonius say that the Colossus was intended to represent Nero, and yet both these accounts are highly rhetorical, expressly concerned with presenting the statue as an illustration of the emperor’s insania.64 For Suetonius, the Colossus serves as a visual index of the extravagance of the Domus Aurea. The following details will give some idea of its size and magniWcence. The vestibule was large enough to contain a colossal portrait of himself, 120 ft [c.35 m.] high. (Life of Nero 31)

The colossal nature of the statue which is essential to Suetonius’ account, is perfectly encapsulated in two later coins. Struck by Alexander Severus and Gordian III (the more legible of the two), they illustrate how Titus’ Colosseum eventually acquired its name, showing a colossal statue, equal in height to the amphitheatre, and towering over Domitian’s monumental fountain, the Meta Sudans (Figs. 48–9).65 In the Gordian coin, the statue is clearly Wtted with a radiate crown, an attribute also present in what appears to be another image of the Colossus, preserved on an amethyst gem in the Pergamon museum (Fig. 50).66 63

64 Smith, ‘Nero and the Sun-god’ (n. 57), 537. Ibid. 536–7. R. A. G. Carson, Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum (London 1962), vi. 128, no. 156 and pl. 6 (156) and J. P. C. Kent, Roman Coins (London 1978), (rev. edn. of Die Ro¨mische Mu¨nze, 1973), 310, no. 448 and pl. 124, reverse. 66 Bergmann, Der Koloss Neros (n. 62), 11 and 16–17. 65

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Fig. 50. While we can never be certain whether this amethyst gem shows the Colossus as it was under Nero, or in Vespasian ’s rededication, the image demonstrates the extent to which the Colossus had become an enduring symbol in Roman culture, as witnessed by its reproduction on coins and gems, and its repeated appearance in literary accounts of later emperors. Wax impression of an amethyst gem. Diameter: 1.1 cm. Late first century/early second century ad. Pergamon Museum, Berlin.

These images give us some idea of the general composition of the statue—all three show a colossal naked Wgure in the Lysippan style, the right arm supported on a rudder.67 Yet they fail to provide a conclusive answer to the question of whether the Colossus showed Nero in the guise of the Sun-god. Even if the most recent dating of the amethyst gem to the Wrst/second century ad is correct, it is impossible to be sure whether the gem shows the Neronian Colossus, or the statue as it looked after its rededication to the Sun-god by Vespasian, as recorded by Pliny. Bergmann has argued that the Colossus did indeed show Nero with a radiate crown, which from ad 64 is a regular feature of his coins (Figs. 51–2).68 The radiate crown formed part of an imperial tradition stretching back to the Wrst emperor Augustus, and represented honours voted by the Senate, as much as it alluded to some sort of divine status.69 But while Nero’s radiate coins clearly belong in this context, other images seem to point to a shift in the symbolism of this imperial attribute, which dispense with the ambiguity present in the coin tradition, to align the emperor more closely with the Sun-god. The association 67

It is uncertain whether the rudder was part of the Neronian original, or a later adaptation. See Bergmann, Der Koloss Neros (n. 62), 14–17. 68 Bergmann, Der Koloss Neros (n. 62), and id., Die Strahlen der Herrscher (n. 62), 133–230. 69 On the radiate crown in imperial iconography, see A. Alfo¨ldi, ‘Insignien und Tracht der Ro¨mischen Kaiser’, RM 50 (1935), 1–171, at 143 (repr. in A. Alfo¨ldi, Die monarchische Repra¨sentation im ro¨mischen Kaiserreiche (Darmstadt 1970)) and Bergmann, Die Strahlen der Herrscher (n. 62), Part 3.

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Fig. 51. Marianne Bergmann has argued that the Colossus showed Nero in the guise of the Sun-god. Bergmann ’s reconstruction of Nero ’s Colossus.

of Nero with Helios survives in numerous contemporary references, both literary and iconographic.70 But perhaps the most convincing evidence of the merging of the imperial and the divine in the iconography of Nero’s reign is found on an altar from Rome, now in Florence. Dedicated to the Sun-god by Eumolpus, a slave from the Domus Aurea, the altar is carved in relief with an image of the god wearing the traditional radiate crown. The chubby features of the god, however, along with a short hairstyle in place of the long locks present 70 See P. Grimal, ‘Le De Clementia et la royaute´ solaire de Ne´ron’, REL 49 (1971), 205–17 and Bergmann, Die Strahlen der Herrscher (n. 62), 133–230. On the cult of the Sun at Rome see S. E. J. Hijmans, ‘The Sun which did not Rise in the East: The Cult of Sol Invictus in the Light of Non-Literary Evidence’, BA Besch 71 (1996), 115–50.

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Fig. 52. This depiction of Nero wearing a radiate crown belongs to an iconographic tradition which originates with the first emperor Augustus. Dupondius of Nero, obverse. After ad 64. British Museum.

in other depictions, recall representations of Nero, as he is shown in his late portrait-type (Figs. 53–4).71 Ultimately, we can never reconstruct the exact appearance of the Colossus as it was conceived under Nero, or even be certain whether it was ever Wnished. But the altar of Eumolpus provides an intriguing piece of evidence when considering the subsequent history of the Colossus. Following Nero’s death, the Colossus was dedicated to the Sun-god, and for Pliny, at least, this dedication formed part of the posthumous punishment of Nero. The Colossus, he says at 34.45, was ‘dedicated to the worship of the Sun, after Nero’s crimes had been condemned’ (qui dicatus Soli venerationi est damnatis sceleribus illius principis). One might have expected the statue to have been immediately destroyed following Nero’s suicide, particularly given the way in which it is presented by both Pliny and Suetonius as the embodiment of imperial excess. Some of Nero’s portraits were certainly destroyed. In a symbolic assault on the emperor,72 a gilt-bronze head of Nero, now in a private collection in Berlin, was deliberately removed from its body with a chisel.73 The Colossus however, was not removed or destroyed, but preserved in a new dedication to the Sun-god. And this seems to reXect a quite deliberate choice. If the altar of Eumolpus attests to a close alignment of god and emperor during Nero’s lifetime, then, regardless of the original form of the Colossus under Nero, the rededication of the statue speciWcally to the Sun-god suggests an attempt to draw on the associations present in other Neronian images to contrast Vespasian’s piety with Nero’s claims to divinity. 71

Bergmann, Der Koloss Neros (n. 62), 9. See Gregory, ‘ ‘‘Powerful Images’’ ’ (n. 36), 96–7; J. Elsner, ‘Image and Ritual: ReXections on the Religious Appreciation of Classical Art’, CQ 90 ns 46 (1996), 515–31 at 527–8; Varner, From Caligula to Constantine (n. 4), 10. 73 See H. Born (ed.), Damnatio Memoriae: Das Berliner Nero-Portra¨t (Mainz am Rhein 1996). 72

164 imaging memory Fig. 53. The elaborate hairstyle which Nero sports in this portrait was to be deliberately targeted in attacks on the emperor ’s image after his downfall (see Fig. 43). Portrait of Nero. H: 0.38 m. After ad 64. Worcester Art Museum (inv. 1915.23), Mass.

The posthumous treatment of other Neronian images illustrates a similar concern to perpetuate a negative image of the emperor. In the two coins from Bonn which I discussed at the beginning of this chapter, for example,74 the emperor’s image has been deliberately assaulted, not in an attempt to destroy it, but in order to change its symbolism (Figs. 42–3). Originally intended as positive 74

See pp. 139–40 and Varner, From Caligula to Constantine (n. 4), 14–16, and 126–8, Cat. 20–4.

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Fig. 54. An image of the Sun-god portrayed with the features of Nero in his late portrait type suggests that by the end of his reign, the emperor had become indistinguishable from the god with whom he aligned himself. Cast of altar of Eumolpus, with image of the Sun-god. H: 0.59 m. After ad 64. Museo della Civilta` Romana (original in Museo Archeologico Florence (inv. 86025)), Rome.

representations of imperial rule, these coins now commemorate Nero’s crimes and his downfall. Their defacement was presumably an unoYcial response to Nero’s image. But later examples testify to the employment of similar processes on public monuments. On the Gate of the Argentarii (c. ad 203–4), for example, several Wgures were removed following their downfall.75 On the relief to the left of the gate’s entrance, the only Wgure of the original three to survive is Caracalla (Figs. 55–6). 75 On the Gate of the Argentarii, see D. E. L. Haynes and P. E. D. Hirst, Porta Argentariorum PBSR Supp. (1939); L. Franchi, Richerche sull’arte di eta` severiana. St Misc 4 (1964), 7–19; A. Bonnanno, Portraits and Other Heads. Roman Relief Portraiture to Septimius Severus. BAR Supp. Ser. 6. (1976), 147–9.

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Fig. 55. Caracalla did not just order the removal of Plautianus and Plautilla from the Gate of the Argentarii, but left the blank space for all to see, a public memorial to their punishment and the actions which led to it. Relief showing Caracalla. Gate of the Argentarii, lefthand internal face. H: 1.70 m. ad 203–4. Rome.

Plautianus, Severus’ praetorian prefect, was apparently removed after his execution in 205, followed by the erasure six years later of his daughter (the wife of Caracalla) Plautilla, after her murder. On the right of the entrance stand Septimius Severus and his wife, Julia Domna, Xanked by a blank space where Geta, Caracalla’s brother and co-emperor, was once portrayed (Figs. 56–7). Geta’s

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Fig. 56. Originally a monument which demonstrated imperial unity and succession, under Caracalla, the memorial quality of the Gate of the Argentarii was dramatically transformed. Drawing showing outline of figures on the Gate of the Argentarii which were later removed (1 and 3)

portrait has also been removed from the pilasters, in the form of praetorian standards topped by imperial busts, which frame the reliefs. The removal of images of the empress Messalina after her murder, was presented by Tacitus as a deliberate attempt to erase her memory. And the Senate helped Claudius to forget her (iuvitque oblivionem) by decreeing that her name and portrait statues be removed from public and private places. (Annals 11.38)

But, paradoxically, the very absence of portraits could also promote memory, at least in the short term. Tacitus, discussing the funeral of Junia Tertulla (the wife of Gaius Cassius, and the sister of Brutus) emphasizes the absence of the ancestral masks of Cassius and Brutus, forbidden to be displayed following their conviction for treason. But Cassius and Brutus shone forth ( praefulgebant), precisely because their portraits were not to be seen. (Annals 3.75)

For Tacitus, the absence of the ancestral portraits of Cassius and Brutus is a potent reminder of the honourable actions which led to an unfair punishment. But on the Gate of the Argentarii, the memorial power of the visible void is harnessed to form part of the punishment itself. The blank spaces where Plautianus, Plautilla, and Geta were once portrayed, announce to the viewer that they have forfeited the right to be honoured on a public monument, and act as a memorial to this punishment. It is ironic, then, that for Hannestad ‘the monument is characterized by a primitive horror vacui’.76 For it is the vacant spaces which characterize Caracalla’s refashioning of the monument. They at once erase 76

N. Hannestad, Roman Art and Imperial Policy (Aarhus 1988), 280.

168 imaging memory Fig. 57. In replacing his coemperor, Geta, with a void, Caracalla presents himself as the true heir of Septimius Severus, and reminds the viewer of Geta ’s crimes. Relief showing Septimius Severus and Julia Domna. Gate of the Argentarii, righthand internal face. H: 1.69 m. ad 203–4. Rome.

the right of Plautianus, Plautilla, and Geta to appear on an honorary monument, and at the same time commemorate the punishment itself and the actions which resulted in that punishment. The example of the Gate of the Argentarii Wnds parallels in earlier oYcial sanctions. In Annals 2.32, for example, Tacitus records that when Marcus

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Scribonius Libo Drusus was found guilty of treason in ad 16, not only were his portrait and name banned, but the Senate also voted days for public thanksgiving, and decreed that the day of Libo’s suicide should become an annual festival. Like the blank spaces on the Gate of the Argentarii (Figs. 55–7), the ritual recollection of Libo’s death served to publicly commemorate Libo’s crimes and their detection. The recutting of imperial portraits too, represents a similar desire, not simply to erase an image by replacing it with another, but publicly to degrade the emperor who was originally represented in the image. Many scholars explain the practice as simply due to economic reasons.77 But we have already seen that one of the charges that Pliny laid against his contemporaries was that they swapped the heads of statues, one for another.78 It is a statement which, precisely because it is intended to reXect badly on his contemporaries, illustrates the expression of contempt inherent in the reuse of portrait statues to represent someone other that the original sitter. And the fact that most reworked portraits of condemned emperors were recut into images of their successors,79 suggests that symbolism was at least as important as economics. In a series of portrait statues of the imperial family at the Basilica at Veleia, for example, the head of a togate statue of Caligula was replaced with a portrait of Claudius (Fig. 58).80 An alteration which would have been obvious to all the citizens of Veleia, it serves simultaneously as a public condemnation of the recently overthrown Caligula, and an expression of continuity, the old emperor replaced by the image of his successor. We can see the same process at work in the two Cancelleria reliefs, although here the process seems never to have been completed.81 In a scene which originally depicted Domitian setting out for battle ( profectio, Frieze B), Domitian’s head has been recut to show Nerva, his head now far too small for the body (Fig. 59). The head of Vespasian in the relief showing his arrival in Rome (adventus, Frieze A), also seems to have been recut from an earlier portrait, most probably of Domitian. Found under the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, the reliefs were discarded in Roman times. The most plausible 77 Blanck, Wiederwendungen alter Statuen (n. 5), 100–8, who does also allow for political reasons; Jucker, ‘Iulisch-Claudische Kaiser- und Prinzenportra¨ts als ‘‘Palimpseste’’ ’ (n. 4), 240–1; Bergmann and Zanker, ‘Damnatio Memoriae’ (n. 4), 318. 78 See pp. 144–6. On the replacing of heads on statues see Blanck, Wiederwendungen alter Statuen (n. 5), esp. 14–23. 79 Jucker, ‘Iulisch-Claudische Kaiser- und Prinzenportra¨ts als ‘‘Palimpseste’’ ’ (n. 4), 315. 80 C. Saletti, Il ciclo statuario della Basilica di Velleia (Milan 1968), 45–9 and 109–10; H. Jucker, ‘Der Prinzen des Statuenzyklus aus Veleia’, JdI 92 (1977), 204–40; and D. Boschung, Die Bildnisse des Caligula (Berlin 1993), esp. 97–9. 81 See D. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture (New Haven and London 1992), 191–2 and 203–4, for a summary of the arguments and the extensive bibliography.

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Fig. 58. The history of the imperial family is rewritten in the statuary display at Veleia, erasing Caligula from the display, and replacing him with Claudius. Statue of Claudius (formerly with a portrait of Caligula). H: 2.21 m. From the Basilica at Veleia. As Caligula, ad 37–41. As Claudius, post ad 41. Museo Nazionale (inv. 1870, no. 280; inv. 1952, no. 834), Parma.

explanation is that, having been removed from display for reworking following Domitian’s downfall, they were not Wnished before Nerva’s death only eighteen months later, and consequently were never returned to public display. But as in the earlier example at Veleia, the recutting of Domitian on the Cancelleria reliefs was presumably intended to act as at once a public condemnation of his tyrannical predecessor, and an assertion of the antecedents of Nerva’s imperial

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Fig. 59. Nerva’s death, after only two years as emperor, may have prevented the public display of this relief, but as at Veleia (Fig. 58), imperial lineage was refigured, to wipe out the legacy of Domitian, and resituate Nerva in relation to Vespasian. Relief originally showing profectio of Domitian, recut to portray Nerva. H: 2.06 m. Found under the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome. ad 93–5, recut ad 96–7?. Vatican Museums, Rome.

power in the more favourable example of Vespasian. Interestingly, Tacitus records (Annals 1.74.3) that the proconsul of Bithynia was charged with maiestas for replacing the head of a statue of Augustus with that of Tiberius. The action was evidently not justiWed in the case of the emperor par excellence—nobody could replace Augustus. In all these examples, the creation of an image of the new ruler is directly dependent on the erasure of his predecessor. It is not simply about punishing the excesses of an emperor who has been condemned, through the removal of his image. It is about symbolically creating a new order out of the one that has been overthrown. And nowhere is this process more clear than in the recutting of images of Nero into Vespasian (Fig. 60). Numerous portraits of Nero were recut to replace his features with those of another emperor—Eric Varner lists a total of Wfty-six recut portraits, in contrast to only twenty-one examples surviving unaltered.82 But the recutting of Nero to represent his successor is particularly striking. Two emperors could not have had more diVerent physiognomies or styles of self-presentation, and the amount of work involved in transforming a portrait of Nero into Vespasian must have been almost equal to starting a portrait from scratch, if less expensive. But the symbolism inherent in the act of producing the mature republican face of Vespasian out of a youthful long-haired Nero must go a long way towards explaining why so many portraits were recut. 82

Eric Varner, ‘ Tyranny and the Transformation of the Roman Visual Landscape’, in id. (ed.), From Caligula to Constantine (n. 4), 9–26, at 12. See also Bergmann and Zanker, ‘ ‘‘Damnatio Memoriae’’ ’ (n. 4), 316–18; J. Pollini, ‘Damnatio Memoriae in Stone—Two Portraits of Nero Recut to Vespasian in American Museums’, AJA 88 (1984), 547–55; and D. Boschung, Die Bildnisse des Augustus (Berlin 1993), 80–2 on portraits of Nero reworked to represent Augustus.

172 imaging memory Fig. 60. In a symbolic act, which depicts the new emperor Vespasian only through the erasure of his predecessor, this portrait of Nero has been recut to show Vespasian. Portrait of Vespasian, recut from Nero. H: 0.39 m. ad 70–9. National Museum (inv. 3425), Copenhagen.

The building programme of the Flavians proclaimed a similar message, deriving much of its positive rhetoric precisely from the fact that Nero’s Domus Aurea was being razed to the ground, and replaced by public buildings. In his De Spectaculis 2.1–12, Martial presents us with a glowing account of the new regime which is founded entirely on the erasure of Nero’s legacy.

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Here where the bright Colossus gazes close up at the stars, and lofty scaVolding rises in the middle of the road, once shone the loathsome halls of a cruel king, and in the whole of Rome there stood but a single house. Here where the venerable pile of the amphitheatre rises before our eyes, was once Nero’s lake. Here where we marvel at the baths of Titus, a speedy gift, a haughty stretch of countryside deprived the poor of their homes. Where the Claudian colonnade unfolds its broad shadows, the palace stopped at its furthest point. Rome has been restored to herself, and under your rule, Caesar, the pleasures once commanded by a master, now belong to the people.

Martial deliberately reminds us of the extravagance of Nero’s Domus Aurea in order to cast the new Flavian monuments in a positive light. The amphitheatre is venerabilis precisely because it used to be Nero’s lake; the baths are to be admired for the very reason that they take the place of a ‘haughty stretch of countryside’.83 The glory of Flavian Rome depends on the fact that she has overthrown Nero and his buildings.84 The inclusion of the Colossus in Martial’s point by point contrast of Neronian and Flavian monuments is signiWcant. For Suetonius, the Colossus illustrated the extravagance of Nero’s Domus Aurea. But Martial’s reference to the Colossus is more complex. Cited as a positive contrast to ‘the loathsome halls of a cruel king’, the Colossus is the Wrst in a series of Flavian transformations. But unlike the Colosseum or Titus’ baths, the Colossus was not a new Flavian monument, but a statue which even if not completed during Nero’s reign, was certainly conceived under that emperor. Martial’s reference to scaVolding rising in the middle of the street has been seen to allude to work undertaken on the Colossus after Nero’s death. That some sort of work was done seems to be supported by Suetonius, who says (Life of Vespasian 18) that Vespasian employed a refector of the Colossus. But precisely what was done remains uncertain. Some have argued that the attributes of Helios (including the radiate crown present in later images of the Colossus (Figs. 48–50)) would have been added to transform the statue into a representation of the Sun-god.85 But if the statue was already a portrait of Nero in the guise of the Sun-god, as Bergmann has argued, then the refector may simply have changed the inscription.86 While Bert Smith has suggested that the refector’s role 83

Pliny the Younger’s Panegyric 52.3–5 employs the same device. See E. W. Leach, ‘The Politics of SelfPresentation: Pliny’s Letters and Roman Portrait Sculpture’, CA 9 (1990), 14–39 esp. 36. 84 See J. P. Sullivan, Martial: The Unexpected Classic (Cambridge 1991), 6–7; T. Barton, ‘The inventio of Nero: Suetonius’, in J. Elsner and J. Masters, ReXections of Nero (London 1994), 48–63, esp. 50; and P. J. E. Davies, ‘What Worse than Nero, What Better than his Baths?: ‘‘Damnatio Memoriae’’ and Roman architecture’, in Varner (ed.), From Caligula to Constantine (n. 4), 27–44, esp. 40–1. 85 A. Boe¨thius, ‘Nero’s Golden House’, Eranos 44 (1946), 442–59, id., The Golden House of Nero (Ann Arbor 1960), 110–11 and Bradley, Suetonius’ Life of Nero (n. 62). On the standard attributes of Helios, see Bergmann, Der Koloss Neros (n. 62), 14–15. 86 Lega, ‘Il Colosso di Nerone’ (n. 62), 352 and Bergmann, Der Koloss Neros (n. 62), 9.

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may have been to Wnish the statue.87 All these arguments remain dependent on the particular author’s position as to the original form of Nero’s Colossus. And given that this can never be reconstructed with any certainty, the Colossus in its post-Neronian form must remain equally elusive. But if the precise nature of the rededication of the Colossus is irretrievable, the intention behind its preservation seems clear. While destroying the statue might have ultimately removed the memory of Nero’s crimes from the Roman psyche, its rededication encouraged a multivalent reading. In dedicating the statue to the Sun-god, Vespasian could reinstitute the ‘proper’ relationship between the imperial and the divine (which had become so blurred on the altar of Eumolpus) and remind the viewer of Nero’s failure to observe that boundary. The symbolism was surely not lost on Martial, for whom the Colossus embodies the very process of physical transformation with which his poem as a whole is concerned. Despite its refashioning into an image of a god rather than an emperor (whatever form this took), then, the Colossus has much in common with the treatment of imperial portraits following an emperor’s downfall. This could take diVerent forms (whether replacement, recutting, erasing, or defacement), but more often than not shared a common aim: to manipulate the memorial quality inherent in portraiture and replace the original message with a complex web of associations, both positive and negative. But if the rededication of the Colossus displays the same intention as, for example, the recutting of Domitian on the Cancelleria reliefs (Fig. 59), or the empty spaces on the Gate of the Argentarii (Figs. 55–7), it diVers in one crucial respect. Like no other imperial image, the Colossus was to become established in the literature as the ultimate exemplar of imperial tyranny. Already for Pliny and Suetonius, the Colossus provided the perfect illustration of Nero’s excess. The colossal nature of the image presumably made it an ideal harbinger of such messages, and this is reinforced by their (unveriWable) testimony that the statue was intended to portray the emperor himself. But in later sources, the resonance of the Colossus is enlarged, no longer just to reXect on Nero or his successor Vespasian, but to act as a benchmark for the assessment of later emperors. The Colossus appears repeatedly in the imperial biographies of the Historia Augusta. In the account of Hadrian’s reign, we are told that Hadrian moved the Colossus to make way for the Temple of Venus and Rome, and dedicated the statue to the Sun, after having removed the features of Nero. With the assistance of the architect Decrianus, he lifted the Colossus in an upright position, and moved it from where the Temple of Rome now stands. This was such an enormous undertaking, that he provided as many as twenty-four elephants for the task. 87

Smith, ‘Nero and the Sun-god’ (n. 57), 537.

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And after removing the features of Nero, he dedicated this statue to the Sun, and arranged that the architect Apollodorus should make another similar statue, to be dedicated to the Moon. (Historia Augusta, Hadrian 19.12)

In a passage which recalls Pliny’s description of the transport of the obelisks to Rome,88 Hadrian’s piety is exempliWed by the sheer eVort required to move the Colossus. But the positive portrayal of Hadrian also rests on his rededication of the Colossus to the Sun-god.89 If the amount of work required to move the Colossus reminds us of Nero’s proverbial extravagance, then Hadrian’s rededication of the statue reveals the emperor to be the antithesis of Nero. In crediting Hadrian rather than Vespasian with the rededication of the Colossus, the Historia Augusta (generally dated to the late fourth century ad)90 may reveal a muddling of earlier sources. But later citations of the Colossus in the Historia Augusta continue to use the statue to characterize imperial behaviour. The biography of Commodus, for example, tells us that Commodus transformed the Colossus into a portrait of himself.91 He made certain additions to the decoration of the Colossus, which were all later taken oV. He also removed the head of the statue, which was a portrait of Nero, and replaced it with a portrait of himself, and he inscribed a list of his honours underneath in his usual style, not forgetting to include the titles ‘Gladiatorius’ and ‘EVeminatus’. (Historia Augusta, Commodus 17.10)

The account pinpoints precisely the detail which made the negative portrayal of the Colossus in Pliny and Suetonius so successful—their identiWcation of the statue as a portrait of Nero; and elaborates on this not only to remind us of the negative connotations which already surround the statue, but to present Commodus transforming it into a portrait of himself. The suggestion, of course, is that if Commodus shares with Nero his taste for statuary, then this also extends to other things. And what is particularly interesting about this passage is the way in which it mirrors the material treatment of the portraits of emperors who had been overthrown. For if the Historia Augusta is keen to tell us that Commodus’ alterations have now been removed (along with Commodus himself ), it is equally at pains to describe precisely what those alterations were. Like the voids on the Gate of the Argentarii, the passage at once records the erasure of memory, and preserves memory of what is no longer there. 88

See pp. 86–7. See A. R. Birley, Hadrian. The Restless Emperor (London 1997), esp. 112. On the symbolism of the Colossus under Hadrian, see Lega, ‘Il Colosso di Nerone’ (n. 62), 352 and Bergmann, Der Koloss Neros (n. 62), 11. 90 On the Historia Augusta see R. Syme, Emperors and Biography. Studies in the Historia Augusta (Oxford 1971) and id., Historia Augusta Papers (Oxford 1983). 91 See Howell, ‘The Colossus of Nero’ (n. 62), 297–8; Lega, ‘Il Colosso di Nerone’ (n. 62), 352; Bergmann, Der Koloss Neros (n. 62), 11. 89

176 imaging memory In the Historia Augusta’s biography of Gallienus, the rhetorical reach of the Colossus is once again extended, to present Gallienus not simply remodelling the Colossus into a portrait of himself, but actually attempting to outdo it. He was, however, extremely cruel to the soldiers—he killed as many as three or four thousand in a single day. He ordered that a statue be made of himself in the guise of the Sun and greater than the Colossus, but it was destroyed while it was still unWnished. It was, in fact, begun on such a large scale that it seemed twice the size of the Colossus. He wanted it to be placed on the summit of the Esquiline hill, and to be holding a spear, so that a child could climb the shaft to the top. (Historia Augusta, Gallienus 18)

Gallienus’ cruelty and excess is quantiWed precisely through his wish to make an image of himself twice the size of the Colossus. No longer content with the colossal proportions of the Colossus, his tyrannical nature is shown to far surpass even that of Nero himself. As in the account of Commodus’ alterations to the Colossus, here too we are reminded that Gallienus’ contribution has been destroyed. But the evocative image of a child climbing the spear to the top of the statue is memorable enough to ensure that Gallienus’ madness will not be forgotten. These later accounts provide little help in attempts to reconstruct the appearance of the Colossus after Nero’s death. The reference to Nero’s portrait on the Colossus in the biographies of both Hadrian and Commodus proves neither that the Colossus was originally intended as a portrait of the emperor, nor that his features remained on the Colossus after his death. Instead it demonstrates that the presentation of the Colossus as a portrait of Nero, already present in the accounts of Pliny and Suetonius, was to become an essential feature of the statue’s transformation into a negative exemplar. But if we can say little about the material form of the Colossus either in its original Neronian conception (possibly never completed), or its later rededication, the references to the statue in later sources provide us with a unique insight into the sophisticated treatment of imperial images following an emperor’s demise. The very fact that many modern scholars accept that the statue was a portrait of Nero demonstrates how successful the rhetorical accounts have been. Beyond the physical treatment of images themselves, literary accounts too could remould memory to transform tangible objects into negative memorials of tyranny.

refashioning memory What both Pliny’s account of ancestral portraits and the history of the Colossus after Nero’s overthrow reveal, is a deeply sophisticated approach by the Romans

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to the relationship between portraits and memory. The theme of memory is crucial to the encyclopaedic text and it dominates Pliny’s account of portraiture. The ancestral portraits, I have argued, are constructed as ideal precisely through their association with the rhetorical techniques of memory. And their role as preservers and transmitters of lasting memory is contrasted with contemporary portraits whose failure to transmit memory is evident not only in their inadequacy as rhetorical images of memory, but also in their unprompted destruction. The practice of deliberately destroying images already recognized the powerful memorial qualities of the portrait, hence the need to destroy or remove an image. But the evidence also suggests that the Romans were clearly aware that the memorial power of a portrait could be harnessed and put to diVerent uses. Thus, the recutting of imperial portraits from one emperor to another can be seen deliberately to make use of the symbolism inherent in the transformation of the image of a tyrant into that of his new, more favourable successor. Similarly, the erasure of the portrait of an emperor from a public monument allows the void created to assert the tyrannical nature of that emperor, and at the same time to celebrate his downfall. While the history of the Colossus after Nero shows us how the Colossus could be recast as a bearer of negative memory, to serve as a perpetual reminder of imperial tyranny. But it is not just their potential to embody and preserve diVerent sorts of memory which unites all these images, literary and visual. What emerges above all is their deeply rhetorical nature. Most obvious, of course, is Pliny’s debt to rhetorical treatises for his presentation of ancestral portraits. And the way he uses the portraits he describes to function as positive and negative exemplars is also strongly rhetorical. It encourages the reader to make judgements about the person portrayed speciWcally on the basis of how they are portrayed. Thus the simple wax ancestral images signify the virtue and restraint of Pliny’s ideal ancestors, while the more luxurious material of both the contemporary portraits, and Nero’s Colossus, in particular, explicitly guides the reader to characterize those represented as lacking in restraint, and morals. We see exactly the same device used in Martial where monuments serve to cast their builders as either positive and negative. The epigram is, of course, a Roman literary genre where we might expect to encounter a large degree of rhetoric; perhaps less so the ‘objective’ encyclopaedia. The objects too, emerge as powerful instruments of rhetoric which work to persuade the viewer. The substitution of one emperor for another, which, as in the case of the Basilica at Veleia, cannot have gone unnoticed, acted to persuade the viewer both of the immorality of the emperor who had been replaced and the virtues of his successor. Most strikingly, the very absence of an image could have an enormous rhetorical power. The missing ancestral portraits of Brutus and Cassius in the funeral procession of Junia Tertulla made them ‘shine forth’, while

178 imaging memory the obviously empty spaces on the Gate of Argentarii asserted both the maiestas which had caused the Wgures to be removed, and the sense of triumph inherent in that removal. But most powerful by far is the rhetoric of Nero’s Colossus, which became, after Nero’s death, a literal embodiment of that emperor’s perceived negative qualities, and continued to exercise this persuasive force for many centuries.

seven

Conclusion

The end of the Natural History is as apparently straightforward and objective as the table of contents with which the work begins. Having asserted that his account of the world is complete (‘For now that I have completed my account of all the works of Nature’ (37.201)), Pliny does go on to declare Italy the greatest land in the whole world. In the whole world, wherever the vault of heaven turns, the most beautiful land of all is Italy, a land endowed with all those things which earn pride of place in Nature, a land which is the ruler and second mother of the world (NH 37.201)

But the work does not end with this assertion of Italian supremacy. Instead, Pliny completes his encyclopaedic account of the world with yet another list, a list of the most expensive of Nature’s products. As for the products of Nature, the most expensive to be found in the sea (in mari) is the pearl; on the earth’s surface (extra tellurem), the rock-crystal; in the earth’s interior (intra), diamonds, emeralds, gemstones, and vessels of Xuorspar; . . . From those animals who breathe, the most expensive product found on land is the elephant’s tusk, and in the sea, the turtle’s shell. In the case of hides and coats of animals, the most expensive are the pelts dyed in China and the tufted beard of the Arabian shegoat, which we call ‘ladanum’ . . . I must not forget to mention (non praetereundum est) that gold, for which all mortals go mad, is scarcely tenth on the list of precious commodities, while silver, with which gold is bought, comes almost as low as twentieth. Hail, Nature, mother of all creation; show me your favour, since I am the only Roman citizen to have praised you in all your manifestations. (NH 37.204–5)

It seems, at Wrst, an unassuming list—for some, perhaps, an instance of the ‘occasionally absurd’ information to be found in Pliny’s text.1 But the list with which Pliny completes his survey of the world is no less a stratagem than the lists which we have encountered elsewhere in the Natural History. It reproduces in miniature exactly the totality which Pliny claims his work has achieved. Like the Natural History as a whole, the list provides an inventory of objects from the 1

J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art. Criticism, History and Terminology (London and New Haven 1974), 73.

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conclusion

surface of the earth (extra tellurem), from beneath the earth’s surface (intra tellurem), and from the sea (in mari), and in emphasizing the completeness of the list (non praetereundum est), Pliny draws on the same strategies of totality which have helped to construct his work as a whole. In this Wnal list’s repeated references to exotic objects and far-oV lands (China and Arabia), there is clearly an element of the dynamic of Roman conquest and possession which dominated the account of mirabilia and Greek sculpture. But the list does not simply embody the drive for totality (and total conquest) which informs Pliny’s text. It also reXects again on the problem of totality, in its subject matter which parades the luxury which has proved inextricable from Pliny’s narrative of Roman world conquest. The problematic link between luxury and greatness is something which the preceding paragraph seems implicitly to acknowledge. Following his declaration that Italy is ‘a land endowed with all those things which earn pride of place in Nature’, at 37.203, Pliny awards the second prize to Spain, since while her crops, oil, wine, and horses may equal those of Gaul, her deserts ‘give her the edge, with esparto grass, selenite, and even luxury (etiam deliciis)—in the form of pigments’. With characteristic irony, Pliny demonstrates that luxury is inescapable (for his text, as much as for Rome)—in the ultimate reversal of its true meaning, for Pliny at least, as a word used to describe bounteous growth, luxury can even be found in the desert. But beyond the irony, there is the suggestion that if Italy enjoys Wrst place, luxury and all, then luxury itself must become a criterion in the assessment of greatness—hence Spain beats Gaul to win second place. Given the ubiquitous nature of luxury for Pliny, it is perhaps no surprise that gold and silver come last on his list of the world’s most expensive goods. Placed almost as low as tenth and twentieth on the list, as Pliny is keen to remind us, they provide a powerful example of how, within the Plinian moral scheme, the ideals of simplicity and rusticity have been supplanted—now gold is less valuable than animal skins from China. But there is also perhaps the intimation that since gold, once the ultimate in luxury, is no longer greatly valued, Rome can return to the ideal state which Pliny’s work has continuously advocated, to the time when Romans wore iron, not gold, rings, as a sign of their ‘war-like valour’ (virtus) (33.8–9). It is highly appropriate that Pliny’s work should Wnish with a list. The triumphant assertion of Italian supremacy which precedes it, might seem a suitable rhetorical Xourish with which to end a catalogue of a world taken over by Rome. But it is precisely in the seemingly uncomplicated mechanisms of knowledge such as the list, that we have seen the real persuasive force of Pliny’s work. Throughout the Natural History, the supposedly objective list has been used by Pliny to transform his inventory of the world into a powerful evocation of empire and emperor. Indeed Pliny himself has emerged as the supreme

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connoisseur of the list as an art form, in his inclusion of the monumental list which dominated Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie. And his own Wnal list is no less artful or artiWcial. It is a human valuation, a man-made appreciation of natura, revealing that however much Pliny’s other lists may appear to be Nature’s own, they are, in fact, anthropocentric in their structuring. So too, on a larger scale, the Natural History reveals itself not as Nature’s work, but man’s: as the author’s Wnal sentence proclaims, Pliny’s own unique creation. If Pliny’s lists are artfully arranged to reXect the author’s own agenda, then art, itself the result of man’s contact with Nature, emerges as an equally important medium through which the wider messages of the Natural History are developed. The rhetorical declaration of Italian superiority which precedes the author’s Wnal list illustrates the signiWcance of art and monuments for Pliny’s Roman catalogue—Italy’s outstanding contribution to the arts is cited as one of the primary reasons why she should win first place. In the whole world, wherever the vault of heaven turns, the most beautiful land of all is Italy, a land endowed with all those things which earn pride of place in Nature, a land which is the ruler and second mother of the world, with her men and women, her generals and soldiers, her pre-eminence in the arts (artium praestantia), her reputation for genius (ingeniorum claritatibus), and again her geographical position, and her healthy, temperate climate (NH 37.201)

At Wrst sight, Pliny’s claim seems to fail to match up to his own discussion of art and artists in the Natural History. Books 33–6 are, after all, dominated by the masterpieces of Greek, not Italian/Roman, artists. And yet, as we have seen, Pliny’s history of Greek art is simultaneously a history of Roman appropriation, which may begin as a catalogue of Greek artists and their works, but quickly becomes a catalogue of the works of Greek artists in Rome. This theme is characteristically condensed in the closing paragraphs to the Natural History, where both ‘generals and soldiers’ and ‘pre-eminence in the arts’ are cited as reasons for the country’s excellence. Like the Laocoon, a work variously recognized as an original Roman creation, a Roman copy of an original Hellenistic work, or even an original Hellenistic sculpture brought to Rome, the threads of Greek and Roman authorship become indistinguishable in Pliny’s narrative. Pliny’s judgement at 36.37, that the Laocoon is ‘to be preferred above all the paintings and all the statues ever made’ is inseparable from the fact that it was on display in the palace of his patron, Titus. Equally, on a larger scale, Pliny may draw on earlier Hellenistic histories of art for material, but the presentation, arrangement, and agenda are entirely his own. While the anecdotes describing the deceptively realistic images produced by Greek painters such as Zeuxis and Parrhasius may originate in the lost work of Duris of Samos, in their Plinian context they reXect underlying

182 conclusion concerns about the artist’s relationship with his model, Nature. In Pliny’s account, the roles traditionally assigned to Nature and the artist have often been reversed in a battle for moral supremacy, as for example in Licinius Mucianus’ ‘natural’ grotto, where Nature consciously mimicked her artiWcial imitations in an attempt to outdo them. Against this backdrop, it is striking that ingenium, a quality which Pliny attributes to Nature as much as to artists, reappears in his concluding eulogy of Italy. Italy’s ingenium may stem from the privileged position which she enjoys in Nature—‘her geographical position, and her healthy, temperate climate’. And yet as a term which has recurred in Pliny’s account of artists, the imitators of Nature, it illustrates how in cataloguing the very achievements which qualify Italy as superior, Nature and her artiWcial imitations have proved inextricable. Pliny’s account of Greek art is profoundly Roman in its presentation—perhaps most clearly witnessed in his transposition of two Greek masters, Apelles and Protogenes, into his idealized Roman garden. But explicitly Roman art-forms and monuments are equally implicated in the concerns of the Natural History as a whole, despite their status as indigenous creations. Objects such as ancestral portraits or Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie may ultimately provide the visible justiWcation for Pliny’s concluding statement of Italy’s ‘pre-eminence in the arts’, but these objects are carefully chosen to reXect Pliny’s own authorial agenda, more than to oVer a Roman canon to outdo the masterpieces of Greek art. Agrippa’s map, for example, may be introduced by Pliny as an object located in external reality—a survey of the world which Agrippa ‘set before the eyes of Rome’—and yet the extent to which it is woven into the fabric of Pliny’s subsequent discussion reveals it as nothing more or less than a paper monument, whose image is now inextricable from the words which describe it. Both an external demonstration of Pliny’s imperial concerns, and a representation of the world for his own account to rival, Agrippa’s map becomes recreated in Pliny’s own image, allowing the author to endow his own world-view with the status of a monument. Ancestral portraits, too, as presented by Pliny, are inseparable from the author’s motives for including them in his work. Long recognized by scholars as a true Italian contribution to the visual arts, in Pliny’s account ancestral portraits appear as the physical manifestation of his own desire to preserve memory. Substance and message mirror one another, so that for Pliny, the very creation and appearance of these images enacts the techniques of memory prescribed by the rhetorical handbooks. With consummate artistry, Pliny moulds the material form of the portrait to embody one of the essential themes of his work. Images provide tangible examples, for Pliny, of the issues with which he is concerned. And if Pliny himself repeatedly makes use of images and monuments in his work, then much of his discussion of art is less concerned with the images

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themselves, more concerned with the functions they serve, and the uses to which they have been put. His account of Greek art, for example, is dominated by issues of display and context—whether in the positive model of the public display of art in Rome, or the private luxury which those public displays engendered. His discussion of ancestral images provides us not only with a picture of the ideal portrait, but a set of idealized practices for the treatment of those images; the permanent display of ancestral portraits, untouched by successive owners of the domus, is contrasted with the contemporary destruction of portraits. Negative images and practices are as crucial as more positive examples to the development of Pliny’s themes. Like the deliberate assaults preserved on the coins of the emperor Nero, or the visible voids on the Arch of the Argentarii, Pliny’s text too vaunts negative memory, to persuade the reader of his own vision of Roman greatness. At 34.16, Pliny returns to a time when the Romans understood the proper purpose and potential of art: ‘it was not usual to make portraits of men unless they deserved lasting commemoration for some remarkable reason.’ But it is in exploring Pliny’s own use of images and monuments, positive and negative, in the Natural History that we understand the true function of art for Pliny. Objects and creators, Greek and Roman, are not only the three-dimensional facts, the bricks and mortar from which Pliny’s world vision is built, but mirror that world vision with all its contradictions and problematic inclusions—whether in Agrippa’s map, Curio’s theatre, or Pliny’s own picture of Rome’s buildings heaped up to form a world in their own right.

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index Numbers in italic denote figure numbers. Monuments and paintings are listed according to location, and/or imperial builder (e.g. Augustus). Coins are listed under coins and emperors; gems under gems; mosaics under mosaics. Statues are listed under artist if attributed; alternatively, under location, if well known, or else person represented. acervus 82, 99, 100 metaphor for Natural History 99, 100 Acheron 43 Actium Temple of Apollo 44 Adamklissi (Romania) Trajan’s trophy 11, 17, 47, 51, 56–7 Aeneas 150 Africa 15, 35–6, 37 Agrippa, Marcus 26 n.32, 63, 64–5, 66, 68, 104 Agrippa’s map 18, 19, 43, 47, 61–74, 100, 182, 183 Agrippa’s Pantheon 80 Diribitorium 73, 95 Alba, Lake 122 Alcamenes 80 Alexander the Great 33, 65, 83–4 Alexandria 18, 86 conquest of 83 Pharos, the (lighthouse) 90, 93 Temple of Caesar 86 Alpine tribes 52, 60, 67, 68 Alps 44, 47, 48, 59, 61, 66 altars Altar of Eumolpus, Florence 54, 162–3, 174 altar of Rome and Augustus 52 Altars of Sestius, Spain 44 amber 24, 25 ancestral portraits 138, 141–56, 176–7, 182 active role 148, 152 deliberate destruction of 144–6, 177, 183 display in atrium 142, 144, 148–9, 154, 155, 183 embody mos maiorum 143, 146, 152–3, 155, 156, 177

law concerning public display of 153–4 link with rhetorical memory techniques 146–9, 177 relationship to veristic portraits 142, 152 simplicity of wax medium 143, 144, 159, 177 transmitters of memory 141, 142, 146–56, 157, 158, 177 use in funeral procession 142, 148, 154 Ankara Temple of Augustus and Rome 14, 51, 54–5, 66, 68 Antigonos of Karystos 8, 9–10 Antiochus III 78 Apelles 61, 104, 106, 110, 111, 134, 135, 182 Apelles’ house 102–5 ‘challenges Nature’ 107, 111, 135 Venus Anadyomene 104 Aphrodisias Sebasteion 21–3, 68 Apollodorus 175 Appius Servilius 148 aqueducts 98 Arabia 37, 180 Aristonidas 105 Aristotle 18, 19 De memoria et reminiscentia 147 Armenia 68 art ability to supplant Nature 108–111 ars/natura opposition 102–137 competition with Nature 135 challenge to Nature 107–11 debt to Nature 105 genius (ingenium) 134, 135, 182 Greek art becomes public property in Rome 83 natura artifex 134–5, 136

194 index art (cont.) public display of Greek art in Rome 83, 104, 183 takes Nature as its model 104, 106–7, 110–111, 134, 135, 182 see also collections, display, painting, sculpture artificium 134 Asia, conquest of 78, 83 Asia Minor 68 Asinius Pollio 80 Athamas, King of Boeotia 105 Athenis 79–80 Athens 22, 80 Atlas Mountains 37, 38–9 Attalus II 83 Attalus III 78 Augustus 33, 34 n. 56, 44, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55, 61, 62, 74, 80, 85, 87, 92, 104, 133, 159, 161, 171 Arch of Augustus, Susa 12, 52–3 Forum Augustum 46, 66–7, 68, 73, 92, 149–51, 154 horologium 88, 93 mausoleum 54 Porticus ad Nationes 67, 68 Res Gestae 13–14, 51, 54–5, 56, 58, 66, 68 Temple of Mars Ultor 150, 151 trophy at La Turbie 6–10, 43–61, 64, 66, 67–8, 70, 73, 74, 181, 182 avaritia (greed) 95 Babylon Temple of Jupiter Belus 44 Bacchus, statue of 31, 116 Baetica 34, 61 Baiae Antonia Minor as Venus Genetrix 32, 116 Claudian nymphaeum 30–2, 114–16, 121, 137 pl. 1 Odysseus offering cup of wine to the Cyclops 30, 116, 121 Bacchus with a panther 31, 116 Balbus 134 barbarians 35, 52 Barberini togatus 44, 144, 152, 153 Barkan, L. 12 basanites (Ethiopian marble) 92 Beagon, M. 12

Bergmann, M. 161, 173 Bithynia 171 booty 75, 82–3, 103, 133, 149, 152, 155 Borges, J.L. ‘Tlo¨n, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ 41–2 Britain 37, 47 Brodersen, K. 65 suggested appearance of Agrippa’s map 19 bronze 143, 159 bronze shields 148 bronze-casting 156 decline in 157–8, 159 Brutus, L. Junius 151 Brutus, Marcus 152, 167, 177 Brutus Callaecus 81 Bupalus 79–80 Butades 142, 143 Caesar, Julius 45, 85, 152 Circus Maximus 95 Forum 95 Caligula 96, 104, 169 palace of 95 portrait replaced at Veleia 58, 169 Callimachus 18 Campania 122 Caracalla 55, 165–6 reworking of Gate of the Argentarii 55–7, 165–9, 174, 175, 177, 183 Carthage defeat of 78–9 Temple of Juno 43 Cassius Dio 62–3, 151–2 Cassius, Gaius 167, 177 Castelgandolfo Domitian’s grotto 35, 122 cataloguing see listing Cato the Elder 18, 24 Caulon 64 Celer 117 Celsus 18 Artes 18 Cephisodotus 80 Cerne 65 Charmadas 138 Chios 80, 91 Cicero 107, 135, 153–4, 155 aetiology of name 103 De Natura Deorum 134

index De Oratore 146–8 In Verrem 153–4 Pro Scauro 96 Cimbrian promontory 39 Citroni Marchetti, S. 12, 15 classification 26–30, 32, 33 alphabetical 29 criticism of earlier systems 28 following order inherent in Nature 27–9, 99–100 Nature supreme classifier 29 Romanocentric 33, 79–80, 84–5, 86–7, 91–2 systematic 19 Claudius 23, 68, 92, 108, 167 draining of the Fucine Lake 90, 113 portrait replaces Caligula at Veleia 58, 169 Clodius’ house 95 Cnidos 81 coins first portraits of living people on 153 of Alexander Severus 48, 160–1 of Gordian III 49, 160–1 of Nero 42, 43, 139–40 Collecting and conquest 90, 91–2, 94–5, 96, 100, 180 desire for totality 75–9, 95 images of collecting 79, 99 to preserve 76, 85–6, 93 Collections Asinius Pollio’s 80 metaphors for Natural History 99–101 NH model for collectors 75 NH a collection in writing 75–101 NH as storehouse (thesaurus) 75–6, 82, 138 of booty in Rome 75, 82, 90, 133 of Greek sculpture in Rome 79–84, 90, 99, 100–1, 133, 181 of mirabilia 79, 84–91, 93, 99 private 104 colossi colossal statue of Jupiter 159 Colossus at Rhodes 156 Nero’s Colossus 48–51, 156–78 Tuscan Apollo 158–9 Commodus 175, 176 Como cathedral 1–4, 2 Constantinople Hippodrome 87

195

Obelisk of Theodosius 24, 25, 87–8 Conte, G.B. 12 Copenhagen funerary relief with portrait busts 47, 152 Coponius 62, 86 copper 27, 105, 157 Corinth, destruction of 78, 92 Corinthian bronze 92 cosmology 19 Cottius, King 53 Curio, Gaius 97 Curio’s theatre 97–9, 183 curiosity cabinets 75 cursus honorum 155 Cyclopes 85 Cyclops 28, 34, 113, 116, 120, 122 Cyme, Temple of Apollo 83–4 damnatio memoriae 139 see also iconoclasm and memory decline 15, 24, 25,75–101, 103 decline originates with conquests in the East 78, 91, 103 Decrianus (Hadrian’s architect) 174 Delphi 22 Demosthenes 135 desideria 142 Detlefsen, D. 9 Diomede, monument of 43 Diomedes’ island 43 display of ancestral portraits 141, 142, 144, 148–9, 154, 155, 183 private 104, 183 public display of Greek art in Rome 83, 104, 183 restrictions on display of portraits 153–4 Dodona, temple of Zeus 43 Domitian 122, 160 Cancelleria reliefs 59, 169–71, 174 Domitian’s grotto, Castelgandolfo 35, 122 Meta Sudans 48–9, 160 Domitius Piso 75 Duris of Samos 8, 181 Egypt 38, 86, 88, 90, 92 empire 30 benefits of 76

196

index

empire (cont.) conquests introduce luxury 77–9, 91–2, 93, 96, 101, 102, 103, 180 imperium 33 link between conquest and decline 76–9, 91–2, 94–5, 103 listing and conquest 32–40, 44–5, 52–61, 82, 91, 93, 94 military expeditions 36–40 monuments and empire 43–74 world dominated by Rome 32–40, 43–74, 97 Encolpius 125 encyclopaedia aim of totality 17, 18, 20 ff., 27, 30, 58, 76, 78–9, 95, 96, 97, 98, 179, 180 enkyklios paideıâ 17 exclusions 21 f., 27, 34–5 knowledge acquired through conquest 77, 82, 84, 92 precursors of Pliny 17–18 strategies of the encyclopaedia 17–40 see also under classification, listing, totality engraving 107–8 enkyklios paideıâ 17 Epirus 43 Ethiopia 65, 85, 92 Eumolpus (slave from the Domus Aurea) 162 Eupompus 106 Europe 37 exploration 36–9 Fabius 103 Far East, the 37 Father Liber 65 Ferri, S. 11 fire (punishment of luxury) 97, 103, 156–7 Flavian building programme 172–3 Florence Altar of Eumolpus 54, 162–3, 174 forgetting see under memory Formige´, J. 48 reconstruction of trophy at La Turbie 8 fortuna 109 Fucine Lake 90 Gaius Caesar 37 Galba 34, 36, 39, 44 Gallia Belgica 15

Gallia Narbonensis 15 Gallic tribes 52 Gallienus 176 garden paintings 122–33 views onto 123–7, 131 gardens 28 Antonius Castor’s garden 134 Hanging Gardens of Thebes 90 horti 103 peristyle gardens 123–4, 126, 131 Protogenes’ garden 102–5, 182 of Pompeii 105, 122–33 Gaul 34, 37, 44, 47, 156, 180 Gell, W. 126 gems 29, 79, 179 amethyst gem, Pergamon Museum 50, 160–1 gens 139, 142, 143, 144, 148–9, 153, 154, 155 geography 33–40, 41–74 Germany 14, 39, 47 Geta 56–7, 166–8 Ghiberti, L. 14 Girgenti 106 Glycera competition with Pausias 135 gold 76–7, 108, 141, 157, 158, 159, 177, 180 engraved 107, 108 Gordian III 160 Gorgades 43 Gracchus, T. Sempronius 62, 64 Greece 44, 82 Greeks Greek sources 24–5 Pliny’s criticism of Greek scholarship 24–5 Pliny’s hostility towards Greeks 23–5, 141 grottoes 105, 113–22, 131, 136–7, 182 see also under Baiae, Castelgandolfo, Primaporta, Rome: ‘nymphaeum of Polyphemus’, Sperlonga Gualandi, G. 11 Gulf of Scanderoon 69 Hadrian dedicates Colossus to Sun-god 174–5, 176 Serapeum, villa at Tivoli 37, 122 Halicarnassus 86 Hannestad, N. 167 Hannibal, tomb of 44 Hanno 43

index Helen of Troy 106 Helios see Sun-god Heracleopolis 93, 98 Hercules 65 Hispania Tarraconensis 14 Hispania Ulteriora 44 Historia Augusta Commodus 175, 176 Gallienus 176 Hadrian 174–5, 176 Homer, portrait 142 Horace Epodes 24 horti see under gardens Howe, N. Ph 12 Iasos 80 iconoclasm 139–40, 144–6, 155, 163–4 see also memory and portraiture ideals (in NH) diligence 25–6, 66 ideal domus 148–9, 151, 152, 155, 183 ideal gardens 102–5 ideal memory 155–6 ideal names 103 ideal past 102–3, 104, 143, 177 ideal portraits see ancestral portraits ideal Roman virtues 15 ideal status of farmers 15 mos maiorum see mos maiorum rusticity (rusticitas) 16, 102–3, 180 self-restraint 155, 159, 177 simplicity (simplicitas) 15, 96, 102–3, 143, 177, 180 imagines clipeatae 45, 148, 149, 152 imagines maiorum see ancestral portraits imago deceptive copy 136–7 mental image in rhetorical memory technique 146–7, 148, 149, 150, 153, 154 imperium see empire India 85 ingenia 107 ingenium 134, 135, 182 insania 91, 96, 156, 160 inscriptions Agrippa’s map as an inscription 19, 65–7 Augustus’ Res Gestae 13–14, 51, 54–5, 58, 66, 68

197

erasing 139 Forum Augustum, tituli 66–7, 68 on Arch of Augustus at Susa, 12, 52–3 on Augustus’ trophy at La Turbie 9, 48–52, 58, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 74 on base of Obelisk of Theodosius 88 on statue erected by Tuditanus 60 on Trajan’s column 5, 46 on Trajan’s trophy, Adamklissi 11, 51 Pliny’s use of 65–6 iron 105, 180 Isager, J. 13 Isidorus Charax 37 Isocrates 135 Istrians 60 Italy 35, 36, 85 as ‘conqueror and parent of the world’ 35, 36, 97, 179, 181 as microcosm 85, 90–1, 94 ingenium of 182 map of 62 Pliny’s description of 33, 35 Juba II, King of Mauretania 37 Julia Domna, empress (wife of Septimius Severus) 56–7, 166 Junia Tertulla (wife of Cassius, sister of Brutus) 167, 177 Juvenal 146 knowledge and conquest 65, 76–7, 82, 84 desire to preserve 76, 85–6, 138, 182 destruction of 157, 159 superiority of Pliny’s 28, 134 Kunze, C. 113 labyrinths 90–91, 93, 95, 99 Laestrygones 85 lampholders 83–4 language (in NH) aetiology of Roman surnames 103 and empire 35–6 commemoration 143, 148 language of artificial imitation 136–7 language of luxury 133, 157 language of mirabilia 87, 89–90, 92–3, 95, 101, 158 language of natural creation 109

198 index language (cont.) to describe art/artists 134–5 translating ‘barbarian’ names into Latin 34–6, 52 Laocoon 181 largiri 157 largitio 157 La Turbie Augustus’ trophy 6–10, 43–61, 64, 66, 67, 70, 73, 74, 181, 182 Lentulus 103 Lepidus, M. 92 Libo Drusus, Marcus Scribonius 168–9 Libyssa 44 libraries 138 at Alexandria 55 at Temple of Apollo, Palatine, Rome 55 Licinius Mucianus 136–7, 182 lists as literary device used by Pliny 33–4, 59, 179–81 censuses 55 list of Nature’s most expensive products 179–80 listing and conquest 32–40, 44–5, 52–61, 77, 82, 91, 93, 94, 96 listing and possession 82–91 monumental lists 47–74, 181 Pliny’s use of administrative lists 33–4, 37, 42, 55, 74 visual quality 47–74 Liverani, P. 67 Livia garden triclinium, villa at Primaporta 26, 111–2, 126, 130, 131 Livy 62, 77 Lucretius 35 Lucullus, Lucius 91 Ludius see Studius luxury (luxuria) 76–9, 91–101, 108, 133, 183 as a ‘wonder’ 92, 158 disdain for 104 inclusion in Natural History 75–9, 91–101, 180 in Nature 136–7 link with conquest 76–9, 91–2, 93, 100–1, 102 materials 76–7, 91–2, 108, 157, 177

Nero’s Colossus embodiment of 157, 163, 173–4, 177 punished by fire 97, 103, 156–7 Lycian plane tree 136–7 lyncurium 23 lynx 85 Lysias 135 Lysippus 8, 22, 106, 116, 134, 161 Alexander the Great 157 Heracles Epitrapezios 116 Magi 25 magnets 27, 28 maiestas 139, 154, 177 maps Agrippa’s map 18, 19, 43, 47, 61–74, 100, 182, 183 of Italy, in Temple of Tellus 62 of Sardinia, in Temple of Mater Matuta 62, 64 Tabula Peutinger 62 marble 27, 79, 91–2, 96, 108, 135, 143 imported to Rome 91–2 luxurious 91–2, 108, 141, 143 painting on 107–8, 109, 116 veneer 91, 96, 108, 136, 137 Marcellus 78 Marius’ canals 44, 47 Mars 47, 130, pl. 6 Martial, De Spectaculis 172–3, 174, 177 Mauretania 37 Mausoleum of Halicarnassus 86 Maximus (governor of Egypt) 86 memoria (rhetorical technique of memory) 146–8, 153, 154–5, 177, 182 architectural framework 146, 148, 149 imagines 146–7, 148, 149, 150, 153, 154 loci 146–7 Pliny’s use of 146–9, 154–5, 177, 182 memory 138–78 and portraits 138–78 as a storehouse (thesaurus) 138 destruction of 139–40, 156–9, 167 forgetting 82, 157–8, 167 fragility of 138 manipulating 139–41, 174, 176 obliteratio 82, 158 means of preservation 138, 177 mnemonic techniques 146–8, 154–5, 182

index Menander Rhetor 80, 92 Messala 144, 146 Messalina, empress (wife of Claudius) 167 mirabilia 84–91, 92–9, 180 and spectacle 98 language of 87, 89–90, 92–3, 95, 101, 158 man-made 86–91, 92–9 natural 84–6 miracula (see also mirabilia and ‘wonders’) 86–91 Moeris, Lake 90 Monaco 47 monuments used as literary devices 41–74 moose 85 mosaics Cave Canem, House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii, 39, 125 Odysseus offering cup of wine to the Cyclops, Domus Aurea 34, 120–1 mos maiorum 24, 25 decline as a result of luxury 77–9, 91–2, 96 decline through expansion of empire 77–9, 91–2 embodied in ancestral portraits 143, 144, 155, 156 Mount Atlas 38–9 Mummius, L. 78, 82–3, 92 Mu¨nzer, F. 9 Mussolini Ara Pacis case with Res Gestae inscription 13 Myron’s cow 107 Narcissus 41, 131 natura artifex see under Nature Natural History as an account of Nature as she really is 19–20, 100, 105, 134, 181 as sourcebook 7–8 as compilation 10–11 ‘bibliographies’ (book 1) 24, 25 eulogy of the past 102–5 influence on the history of Classical art 8, 13–14 modelled on Nature 134 nationalism of 25, 33, 102 NH as model of the world 99

199

originality of, 22 f., 134 Quellenforschung 8–11 readership, 15–16 structure of 18–20, 27, 30 ‘table of contents’ 30–2, 77, 141 themes see classification, collecting, collections, decline, display, empire, encyclopaedia, geography, ideals, language, list, luxury, memory, mirabilia, monuments, naturalism, Nature, portraiture, sources, totality, ‘wonders’, world naturalism 104, 105, 106–111, 134, 137 breaking the rules of naturalism 106 feats of 131, 136 Pliny’s praise for 108 reversal of naturalistic paradigm 108–111 Nature ars/natura opposition 102–137 artificial imitations of 105, 111–133, 134, 136–7 as microcosm 77, 101 as arbiter of naturalism 106, 111 as artist 134–5, 136–7 as model for art/artists 104, 106–7, 110–111, 134, 135, 182 as supreme classifier 29, 181 challenged by artist 107–111, 132 competition with art 135 conceals luxurious materials beneath earth’s surface 76–7, 108 fooled by her imitations 106, 137 imitates art 129, 136–7, 182 luxury a perversion of 76–7 man’s relationship with 104, 108 moral resonance of 104, 111 natura artifex 134–5, 136 natural luxury 136–7 Pliny alone knows true order of 28 ff. supremacy of 111, 137 transformations in 105, 131 varietas 84, 108, 135 Necthebis 86, 87 Nepos, Cornelius 8 Nero 15, 68, 96, 104, 108, 116, 130–40, 156 assaults on his image 139–40, 163–4, 183 coins 42, 43, 52, 139–40, 161, 164, 183 colossal painted portrait 156–7 Colossus 48–51, 156–78

200

index

Nero (cont.) Domus Aurea 95, 104, 116–7, 120, 137, 160, 162, 172–3 extravagance/excess 157, 163, 173–4, 175, 177 in guise of Sun-god 160–2, 163 luxurious taste in art 157 ‘nymphaeum of Polyphemus’, Domus Aurea 33–4, 116–21, 122, 137 posthumous punishment 163, 171–4 portrait 53, 54, 153, 162–3 portrait recut into Vespasian 60, 171 Nerva Cancelleria reliefs 59, 169–71, 174 Nicias 83 Nicolet, C. 55 Nile 36, 37–8, 87, 88 statue of 92 Nodelmann, S. 155 obelisks 86–9 as ‘wonders’ 86 in Rome 88–9 Obelisk of Theodosius 24, 25, 87–8 transport to Rome 86–7, 93, 98, 175 obliteratio 82 Odyssean themes 113–22 Odysseus 28, 30, 34, 116, 120 Olympia 22 onyx 27 Oplontis, Villa of the Poppaei 45, 149 opus musivum 114 orbs/urbs trope 64–5 Ostia 90 Ovid Metamorphoses 105, 131 painting decline into luxury 102, 141 garden paintings 122–33 origins 141 panel paintings 102, 104, 131 portable 102, 104 Pliny’s discussion of 102, 105, 108, 135 sacro-idyllic landscape 132–3 wall-paintings 102–4, 122–33, 135, 136, 137 see also under Oplontis and Pompeii Parrhasius 181 competition with Zeuxis 109–111, 122 painting of Prometheus 106–7

Parthia 33, 37 Parthian trophies 151 Pasiteles 8, 9–10 Pausias competition with Glycera 135 Pelusium 44 Pergamum 78 Perillus 106–7 peristyle 123–4, 126, 131 Perorsi, the 38 Persepolis 33 personifications of provinces/nations Hadrianeum 20, 67–8 Pompey’s theatre 62–3, 67, 86 Porticus ad Nationes 67 Sebasteion, Aphrodisias 21, 22, 23, 68 Petronius, Satyricon 125 Phalaris 106–7 Pharaohs 86 Pharos, the 90, 93 Pheidias 80 physiognomical treatises 143–4 pinakes 129 Pindar 107 Piso 103 plants, medicinal uses 133 Plato 17, 19 Plautianus (praetorian prefect) 166–8 Plautilla (wife of Plautianus) 166–8 Pliny the Elder as art historian 14 as encyclopaedist 12, 17–40 career 14–5 literary oeuvre 6, 155 portrait at Como 1, 2–6, 3, 4, 10 Pliny the Younger 3–7 letter to Baebius Macer (3.5) 5–7, 8, 10, 14, 31 letter to Tacitus (6.16) 3–5, portrait at Como 2–3, 2 Polemo 143–4 Polybius 32, 37, 38, 142, 148, 152, 154 Polycleitus 61, 134 polyp 85 Polyphemus 28, 34, 113, 116, 120, 122 Pompeii House of Adonis (6.7.8) 128, pl. 3 House of Loreius Tiburtinus (2.2.2) 41, 131

index House of the Fruit Orchard (1.9.5) 40, 128–9, pl. 9 House of the Tragic Poet (6.8.3) 38–9, 125–6, 130 pl. 2 House of Venus Marina (2.3.3) 128–31, pl. 4–8 Pompey the Great 65, 85 Pyrenaean trophies 44–5 theatre 62–3, 67, 86, 98 tomb of 44 porphyry 92 Porsena, King tomb of 90 portraiture 138–78 active role 151–2 assaults on 42–3, 164–9, 174, 193 banning of 169 deliberate destruction of 139, 144–6, 154, 155, 156, 165–9, 174, 177, 183 demise of 143–6 first portrait 142 idealised 153 imaginary portraits 142 impermanence of contemporary portraits 144–6, 158, 177 Pliny’s discussion of 141–56, 176–8 portrait shields 45, 148, 149, 152 preserves memory 138, 141–2, 143, 144, 146–56, 157, 177, 182 recutting imperial portraits 59, 60, 169–72, 174, 177 removal of 165–9, 171, 174, 177 replacing heads 144, 169–71, 174 restrictions on the public display of 153–4 veristic (see also ancestral portraits) 142, 152, 153, 155 see also ancestral portraits Praxiteles 80, 81 Apollo Sauroktonos 7, 116 Cnidian Aphrodite 81 Eros at Thespiae 116 Primaporta Villa of Livia, garden triclinium 26, 111–2, 126, 130, 131 Protogenes 111 painting of Ialysus 104, 108–9, 110 Protogenes’ house 102–5, 182 pumice 120, 131, 136–7 Puteoli 87

201

Pygmalion 105 pyramids, the 25, 86, 89, 91, 92–3, 95 Pyramus 41, 131 Pyrenees, the 44 Quintilian 80, 98, 146 Rabelais, F. 17 radiate crown 50, 51, 52, 160, 161, 162, 173 Ramses II 87 ratio 76–7 rhetorical term 135 Ravenna 90 realism anecdotes concerning deceptive realism in art 105, 106, 113, 129, 181 of ancestral portraits 146–8 of Colossus 158 Red Sea, the 77 reindeer 85 rhetoric 135, 155 Rhetorica ad Herennium 138, 146–7, 153, 155 rhetorical treatises 135, 146–8, 153, 155, 182 Rhodes 22 Colossus at Rhodes 156 Rhodopis 93 Rhone valley 47 Rodari, Iacopo and Tommaso 1–4, 2 Roman army 36–9 Romania 51 Rome agger (the defensive mound) 95 Agrippa’s Diribitorium 73, 95 Agrippa’s map 18, 19, 43, 47, 61–74, 100, 182, 183 Agrippa’s Pantheon 80 Arch of the Argentarii see Gate of the Argentarii as ‘hanging city’ 90, 97–8 as microcosm 85, 88, 90–1, 92, 94–5, 97 as wonder of the world 72–3 as world-conqueror 97 Augustus’ horologium 88, 93 Augustus’ Res Gestae 13, 51, 54–5, 56, 58, 66, 68 Basilica Aemilia 95 Baths of Titus 173 buildings make another world 72–4, 94–5, 97, 98, 99–101, 183

202

index

Rome (cont.) Cancelleria reliefs 59, 169–71, 174 Capitol 95, 96, 152, 159 Capitoline temples 96 casa Romuli 103 Circus Maximus 81 Colosseum 48–9, 160, 173 colossal statue of Jupiter 159 Curia 83, 96 Curio’s theatre 97, 183 Domus Aurea 95, 116–7, 120, 137, 160, 162, 172–3 encomium of Rome 80 Flavian building programme 172–3 Forum Augustum 46, 66–7, 68, 73, 92, 95, 149–51, 154 Forum of Caesar 95 Gate of the Argentarii 55–7, 165–9, 174, 175, 177, 183 gates 45–7, 73 Hadrianeum 20, 67–8 horti 103 Horti Sallustiani 85 Horti Serviliani 80 introduction of luxury 77–9, 91 Meta Sudans 48–9, 160 Nero’s Colossus 48–51, 156–78 ‘nymphaeum of Polyphemus’, Domus Aurea 33–4, 116–21, 122, 137 Pompey’s theatre 62–3, 67, 86, 98 Portico of Octavia 80 Porticus ad Nationes 67, 68 Porticus Vipsania 61, 62 power measured through her monuments 45–7, 72–3, 95 Scaurus’ theatre 96–9 sewers, the 95, 98 Shrine of Ceres 83 statues of ‘Fourteen Nations’, Pompey’s theatre 62–3, 67, 86 statues of ‘famous marvels’, Pompey’s theatre 86, 98 Temple of Apollo, Palatine 55, 80, 83–4 Temple of Apollo Sosianus 80 Temple of Castor and Pollux 96 Temple of Concord 83 Temple of Divus Augustus 83, 158–9 Temple of Divus Julius 104 Temple of Jupiter Latiaris 159

Temple of Mars Ultor 150, 151 Temple of Mater Matuta 62 Temple of Peace 73, 92, 95, 108 Temple of Tellus 62 Temple of Venus and Rome 174 Trajan’s column 5, 15, 16, 46, 55–7, 58 Tuscan Apollo 158–9 Romulus 103, 150 Roncoroni, A. 12 Rouveret, A. 11 rusticity (rusticitas) see under ideals sacro-idyllic landscape see under painting Sallmann, K. reconstruction of Agrippa’s map 18 Samnites, Roman triumph over 159 Samothrace 81 sand 91 sard 27 Sardinia 62, 64, 96 Satyrs 38 scaenae frons 110, 137 Scaurus, M. 84, 96–7, 103, 104 theatre 96–9 Schweitzer, B. 13 Scipio Aemilianus 37, 38, 78, 150 Scipio, L. 78, 138 Scopas 81 sculpture colossal statues 156–9 marble 79–84, 91, 93 paintings of 130–1 see also collections, display, portraiture Scythians 85 Sejanus 146 Sellers, E. 8–9, 14 Seneca Controversiae 106–7 Septimius Severus Gate of the Argentarii 55–7, 165–9, 174, 175, 177, 183 Servius 67, 68 Settis, S. 14 seven wonders of the world, the see wonders Severus (architect) 117 Severus, Alexander 160 shields 148 Sicily 64, 85 Sicyon 135

index silver 76–7, 78, 108, 157, 158, 159, 177, 180 engraved 107, 108 simplicity (simplicitas) see under ideals Smith, R.R.R., 173–4 sources for ‘chapters on art’ 8–9, 13, 14, 111, 181 for geography, 33, 36–9 Greek sources 24–5 Pliny’s criticism of Greek scholarship 24–5 Quellenforschung 8–11 Roman army as a source, 36–9, 42 Spain 34, 37, 44, 47, 180 Sperlonga cave/grotto 27–9, 36, 113–14, 116, 120, 121, 122 Blinding of Polyphemus 28–9, 113, 120 Scylla attacking Odysseus’ Ship 29, 113 Sphinx, the 86, 89–90 Spurius Carvilius 159 statue from bronze filings 159 stemmata (family-trees) 149 Stoics 19, 134, 135 Strabo 52 Straits of Gibraltar 69 Strong, E. see Sellers, E. Studius 102, 132–3 subtilitas 134, 135 Suetonius 117, 160, 173, 174, 175, 176 Suetonius Paulinus 37 Sun-god 160, 161, 162, 163, 173, 174 Susa Arch of Augustus 12, 52–3 Syracuse, conquest of 78 Tabula Peutinger 62 tabulina 149 Tacitus 3, 116–7, 167, 168–9, 171 Tamarci 44 Terracina 113 Thebes 83 Hanging Gardens 90 Theodorus 134 Theodosius 87–8 thesaurus 75–6, 82, 138 Thisbe 41, 131 Tiber 88, 90 Tiberius 83, 92, 113, 171 grotto at Sperlonga 27–9, 113–4 Titus 14, 15, 30, 153, 160, 181

203

Baths of Titus 173 Colosseum 48–9, 160, 173 dedication of NH to 75–6 totality aim of 17, 18, 20ff., 27, 30, 58, 76, 78–9, 95, 96, 97, 98, 179, 180 excluding in order to achieve totality 21f., 27, 34–5 innumerability of 21–3 strategies of 17–40, 180 Trajan Trajan’s column 5, 15, 16, 46, 55–7, 58 Trajan’s trophy, Adamklissi 11, 17, 47, 51, 56–7 treason 139, 154 Trimalchio 125 Triumpilini 21, 68 trompe l’oeil paintings 135, 136–7 trompe l’oeil anecdotes 105, 106, 113, 129, 181 trophies see under Adamklissi, La Turbie, Pompey the Great Tuditanus 60 Turin 52 universe 32 see also world utilitas 98 vanitas 24, 25, 90–1, 95 varietas 84, 108, 135 Varner, E. 171 Varro 8, 18, 32, 62 Antiquitates 18 De Re Rustica 15, 18, 62 Disciplinae 18 Veleia, Basilica 169, 177 Venus 128, 129, 130 pl. 5 Vespasian 15, 73, 74, 104, 153, 174 on Cancelleria reliefs 169–71 piety 163 portrait 60, 153, 171 rededication of Colossus to Sun-god 161, 163, 173–4, 175 Temple of Peace 73, 92, 95, 104, 108 Via Julia Augusta 47 Virgil Georgics 15 vis (rhetorical term) 135 Wallace-Hadrill, A. 12 wax 143, 144, 159, 177

204

index

wax masks see ancestral portraits Weis, A. 113 Winckelmann, J.J. 8, 13–14 wonders of the world 84, 86, 92 luxurious 92–9 positive 93, 95 Roman 85, 86, 95–9 transport of obelisks 87, 93 ‘true wonders’ (vera miracula) 98, 112–113 world boundaries of 39, 64, 65, 84, 85 images of the world 61–74 esp. 72–4, 94–9 Pliny’s description of the world 19, 32

represented as Roman 32–40, 66, 73, 94–5 Rome/Italy as mirror of world 90–1, 94 world dominated by Rome 32–40, 43–74, 97 Wunderkammern 75 Xenocrates 8, 13, 14 Zanker, P. 131 Zenodorus 156–9 Zeuxis 106, 181 competition with Parrhasius 109–111, 122 painting of Helen 106

index locorum aristotle De memoria et reminiscentia 450a30: 146 augustus Res gestae 19–21: 55 26–30: 55 cassius dio 43.45.3–4: 151–2 56.34.2: 62–3 cicero De oratore 2.86.351–2.88.360: 146 2.87.358: 147–8 3.28: 135 In Verrem 2.5.36: 153–4 Pro Scauro 46–7: 96 historia augusta Commodus 17.10: 175 Gallienus 18: 176 Hadrian 19.12: 174–5 horace Epodes 2.156–7: 24 juvenal Satires 10.65: 146 livy 25.40–1–3: 78 39.6–7: 78 41.28.10: 62

lucretius De rerum natura 5.1028–1090: 35 martial De spectaculis 2.1–12: 172–3 menander rhetor 2.347.9–10: 98 n. 61 2.347.25:98 n. 61 2.360.25–32: 80 ovid Metamorphoses 10.243–97: 105 petronius Satyricon 29.1: 125 pliny the younger Letters 3.5: 5–7, 14 6.16: 3–5 pliny the elder Natural history Pref. 6: 15 Pref. 12: 20 n. 16 Pref. 12–13: 84 Pref. 13: 18, 23–4, 100, 105 Pref. 14: 22 Pref. 15: 28 Pref. 17: 7, 75, 82, 138 Pref. 19: 20 n. 16, 75 Pref. 26: 61, 134 Pref. 33: 30 1: 24 1.index to book 29: 31 1.index to book 30: 31

206 index locorum 1.index to book 36: 84, 86 2.2: 19–20, 31 2.8: 32 2.30: 28 3.7: 33, 34 3.16–17: 61–2, 64–5, 70–3 3.17: 26 n. 32, 64–5, 70–3 3.18: 44 3.34: 44 n. 8 3.36: 34 3.37: 36, 39, 44, 74 3.39: 35 3.42: 21 3.46: 34 n. 56 3.66–7: 45–7, 95 3.86: 64 3.96: 64 3.122: 25 3.129: 60 3.133: 60 3.136–7: 47, 58–61 3.138: 60 3.139: 34–5 3.151: 43 4.2: 43 4.4: 43 4.5: 44 4.94–6: 39 4.97: 37 4.102: 37 4.111: 44 5.1: 35–6 5.5: 38 5.7: 38 5.9: 38 5.11: 37, 38, 38 n. 70 5.14: 37, 38 5.30: 36 5.45: 35 5.51: 37 5.58: 36 5.68: 44 5.148: 43 6.111: 33 n. 51 6.115: 33 n. 52

6.122: 44 6.139: 64 n. 45 6.141: 37 6.198: 65 6.200: 43 6.206: 40 6.207: 69 6.211: 70–1, 79 n. 16 7.8: 135 7.9: 85 7.18: 77 7.21: 85 7.32: 84 7.34: 86 7.75: 85, 87 7.88: 138 7.90: 138 7.95–6: 65 7.96: 44 7.97–8: 65 7.99: 45 8.4: 85 8.39: 85 8.69: 85 8.70: 85 8.96: 84 8.197: 108 9.93: 85 11.1–4: 134–5 11.6: 84 12.9–10: 136–7 14.2–7: 76, 82, 86 18.10: 103 19.1–2: 28 19.50: 103 19.57: 103 19.139: 77 21.2: 135 21.4: 134 n. 67, 135

index locorum 22.13: 150 24.5: 24, 77, 95 25.8: 133 25.9: 133, 134 26.21: 82, 99 29.14: 24 33.1–3: 77 n. 9 33.2–3: 29 33.4: 107 33.8–9: 180 33.112: 25 33.130: 21 33.148–50: 78 33.150: 78–9 33.164: 26 34.5: 157 34.6: 92 34.14: 83–4 34.16: 139, 183 34.30: 153 34.35: 22, 23 34.36: 22 34.37: 8 34.43: 158–9 34.45–7: 156–9 34.49: 21 34.52: 9, 14, 21 34.54–65: 8 34.57: 107 n. 15 34.61: 106 34.61–5: 8 34.63: 157 34.65: 134 34.83: 8, 134 34.84: 104 34.89: 106–7 34.120: 105 34.138: 27 34.140: 105 34.147: 28 35.1: 28, 105 35.1–2: 23–4

35.2: 21, 141, 143 35.3: 102 n. 2, 107–8 35.4: 141, 143, 146, 148 35.4–5: 144–6 35.5: 143 35.6: 141, 142, 148 35.6–7: 148–9 35.7: 152 35.8: 144 35.9: 142 35.9–10: 146 35.12: 148 35.15: 141 35.23: 106 n. 11, 136–7 35.24: 82–3 35.51: 156–7 35.56–74: 8 35.64: 106 35.65: 109–110 35.65–6: 106 n. 11 35.68: 8 35.73: 134 35.88: 104 35.91: 104 35.94: 107, 135 35.95: 106 35.102: 1–4 35.102–3: 108–9 35.116: 102 n. 1, 132–3 35.118: 96 n. 55, 102–5 35.131: 83 35.151: 21, 38 n. 71, 142 35.155: 106 n. 11 36.1: 91 36.5: 96 36.12: 113 36.13: 79–80 36.15: 80 36.16: 80 n. 21 36.20: 80 n. 21, 81 36.21: 81 36.23: 80 36.24: 80 36.25–6: 81 36.27: 81–2, 99 36.30: 86 36.33: 80 36.37: 181

207

208

index locorum

36.39: 67 36.41: 62, 86 36.42: 158 36.48: 91 36.49: 91, 92 n. 49 36.50: 96 36.51–4: 91 36.55: 91 36.57: 92 36.58: 92 36.64: 86 36.66: 87 36.67: 87 36.69: 80, 86, 87 36.72: 88 36.75: 25, 91 36.76: 89–90 36.77: 90 36.82: 92–3 36.83: 90 36.84: 91 36.86: 92 36.91: 25, 90 36.94: 90 36.101: 72–4, 82, 94–5, 97, 99–101 36.103–4: 95 36.104: 90, 95, 97, 98 36.109: 95 36.110: 97 n. 58, 103, 156–7 36.111: 103 36.113: 96 36.115: 96 36.116: 96–7 36.118–9: 97–8 36.124: 90 36.126: 27 36.154: 137 37.1: 21, 79 37.12–14: 83: n. 28 37.31: 24, 25 37.52–3: 23 37.54: 25 37.62: 29 n. 42 37.91: 27 37.138: 29 37.186: 29 37.195: 25 37.201: 85, 179, 181

37.203: 180 37.204–5: 179–81 polybius 6.53–4: 148, 152–3 quintilian De institutione oratoria 2.7.27: 80 3.7.26: 98 n. 61 5.14.1: 135 10.5.2: 135 11.2.2: 138 n. 2 11.2.17–22: 146 rhetorica ad herennium 2.28: 138 3.16: 138 3.16–24: 146 3.16.29: 147 3.22.37: 147 seneca Controversiae 10.5: 106–7 servius Commentary on the Aeneid 8.721: 67, 68 strabo 4.3.2: 52 suetonius Life of Nero 31: 160, 173 Life of Vespasian 18: 173 tacitus Annals 1.74.3: 171 2.32: 168–9 3.75: 167 5.42: 117 velleius paterculus 2.39.2: 66–7

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