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The Poet and the Praetor: Travel Narratives from Early Second-Century Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

Andrew Turner*
Affiliation:
The University of Melbourne, ajturner@unimelb.edu.au

Extract

Travel was an inescapable fact of life for the citizens of early second-century CE Rome. People constantly travelled from Rome to Italy, from Rome to the provinces, and from the provinces to Rome; on business, public or private, as immigrants, or for personal reasons, including health and tourism. News of travel was also ever present. In a rigidly hierarchical society which paid continual homage to the princeps, but which also maintained the fiction that his actions were accountable to the Roman people, his extensive travels throughout Italy and the provinces were constantly documented and available for all citizens to see – through inscriptions, through panegyric, and through coins.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2009

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References

1 The appearance of the profectio and aduentus motifs in Domitian's coinage, and their development under Trajan and Hadrian, are discussed in Halfmann, H., Itinera principum: Geschichte und Typologie der Kaiserreisen im römischen Reich (Stuttgart 1986) 145–6Google Scholar.

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23 Braund (n. 2) 230-1.

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33 Braund, S.M., ‘Praise and Protreptic in Early Imperial Panegyric: Cicero, Seneca, Pliny’, in Whitby, M. (ed.), The Propaganda of Power: The Role of Panegyric in Late Antiquity (Leiden 1998) 33-76, at 64–5Google Scholar.

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35 Seelentag (n. 34) 22-3.

36 Seelentag (n. 34)113.

37 The (perhaps apocryphal) story of Hadrian racing to be first to announce Nerva's death to Trajan illustrates the importance of access; when his carriage was sabotaged by his jealous brother-in-law, Hadrian completed the journey on foot (Hist. Aug, Hadr. 2.6). See Seelentag (n. 34) 54-5.

38 For discussion of the titles contained in the first coin issues for Trajan, and of the uncertainties expressed in Pliny's first letter to him (Ep. 10.1), see Seelentag (n. 34) 57-61 and 62-77.

39 Seelentag (n. 34) 198-211.

40 For an argument that Juvenal intended Eppia's behaviour to be understood as representative of immorality under Domitian, see Ramage, E.S., ‘Juvenal and the Establishment: Denigration of Predecessor in the “Satires”’, ANRW 2.33.1 (1989) 640-707, at 691–2Google Scholar. Ramage's argument depends mainly on identification of the figures, Paris and Veiiento, mentioned in the poem (6.87, 113) with historical figures who flourished under Domitian, which is by no means assured; besides the famous pantomimus Paris who flourished under Domitian, there was another of this name under Nero (see Brill's New Pauly 10.534–5Google Scholar), so that the name may simply be used as a type.

41 For discussion of the date and circumstances of this revision, see Sullivan, J.P., Martial; The Unexpected Classic (Cambridge 1991) 4450CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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43 Translated by Shackleton Bailey (n. 42).

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45 Seelentag (n. 34) 24-6.

46 Thus with regard to Satire 4 Braund (n. 2) 248 comments that: ‘The length and arduousness of the fisherman's journey … reflects the intense fear that permeates society under Domitian.’

47 A reluctance to refer to leading political figures had in any case been encoded in the genre during the imperial period. Explicit references to the current princeps ate absent from Persius; see Cucchiarelli, A., ‘Speaking from Silence: The Stoic Paradoxes of Persius’, in Freudenburg, (n. 12) 6280Google Scholar, noting his comment: ‘it remains a fact that one cannot find in Persius’ satires clear allusions to the persons and events of contemporary political life in Nero's Rome. In his case, the encounter between Stoicism and satire has not produced the expected attitude of political opposition’ (76). Augustus is also virtually absent from Horace Satires Book 1; see Lowrie, M., ‘Horace and Augustas’, in Harrison, S. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Horace (Cambridge 2007) 77-89, at 81Google Scholar.

48 But see also Marache, R., ‘Juvenal - peintre de la société de son temps’, ANRW 2.33.1 (1989) 592-639, at 606–8Google Scholar, for discussion of how peripheral this panegyric is to the main theme of the satire, the misery of the modern writer (‘On a l'impression que ces vers ne sont qu'une précaution pour exempter l'empereur des reproches qui vont suivre’, 607).

49 For discussion of the dates of Juvenal's publication, see Braund, S.M. in OCD3, 804–5Google Scholar (c. 110-30 CE) and Schmidt, P.L. in Brill's NewPauly 6.1146–8Google Scholar.

50 Halfmann (n. 1)43.

51 For the scattered sources for this voyage and its chronology, see Sijpesteijn, P.J., ‘A New Document concerning Hadrian's Visit to Egypt’, Historia 18 (1969) 109–18Google Scholar.

52 For Greek inscriptions from Rome, see IGRRP 1.31-2Google Scholar (IG 14.960–1Google Scholar); for Latin by-laws from Lanuvium, ILS 7212 (CIL 14.2112)Google Scholar. However, the argument of Grenier, J.-C. and Coarelli, F., ‘La tombe d'Antinous à Rome’, MEFRA 98 (1986) 217–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that Antinous was buried in Rome and his tomb marked by the Barberini obelisk (now located in the Monte Pincio gardens) has been disputed; see Eck, W. in Brill's New Pauly 1.756–7Google Scholar.

53 See n. 3 above.

54 Keane (n. 3) argued that the derogatory reference in 15.45-6 to Canopus, ‘a resort town in Egypt frequented by Greeks and Romans’, as a model of luxuria and decadence, allows the satirist to undermine subtly ‘his own representation of the empire as an emblem of moderation and enlightenment’ (46).

55 Seelentag (n. 34) 24-6.