Servilia and her family PDF
Preview Servilia and her family
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,14/12/2018,SPi SERVILIA AND HER FAMILY OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,14/12/2018,SPi OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,14/12/2018,SPi Servilia and her Family SUSAN TREGGIARI 1 OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,14/12/2018,SPi 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries ©SusanTreggiari2019 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2019 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2018950890 ISBN 978–0–19–882934–8 Printedandboundby CPIGroup(UK)Ltd,Croydon,CR04YY LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,14/12/2018,SPi For my daughters and granddaughters Jo Treggiari, Silvia Rajagopalan, Jasmine Rajagopalan, Lucy Parris OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,14/12/2018,SPi OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,14/12/2018,SPi Preface Ididnotmeantowritethisbook.Itsprotagonistisawomanwhosemalekin belonged to the senatorial order, a patrician of the established nobility, who playedaleadingroleinthepoliticsandsocietyofthelastyearsoftheRoman Republic. Her name was Servilia. Because that name only tells us the clan to whichshebelonged,aRomanwouldoftenhaveidentifiedherasServilia,the daughter of Caepio, which would give his hearers her father’s surname, or Servilia,thewifeofM.Brutusor(later)ofD.Silanus,whichwouldnarrowthe fieldalittlemore.CorneliusNepos,anearcontemporary,identifiesherasthe mother of Brutus.¹ Suetonius, in describing her long love affair with Iulius Caesar,findsitconvenienttoidentifyherasthemotherofM.Brutus,meaning the famous Brutus.² But for Cicero in his letters she is the only important contemporary Servilia and needs no identification as the apanage of a male.³ Like her approximate contemporaries Clodia (the wife of a Metellus) and Fulvia(whosefirsthusbandwasthatClodia’sbrother,P.Clodius)shehadan independentpersonalitywhichemergesfromourlimitedandpartialsources. This book had its beginnings in an invitation from Professor Dame Hermione Lee, President of Wolfson College, Oxford, to give the college’s 2009lectureinhonourofSirRonaldSyme.Ichosetosearchforatopicrelated toSyme’sownworkandtomyowninterestinRomanwomen.Iruledoutthe variouswomenoftheimperialfamilyonwhomSymeandsubsequentlyothers had written so perceptively. Servilia, Fulvia (wife in succession to Clodius, Curio,andMarkAntony),andSempronia(whosupposedlyplayedsomepart in a conspiracy) were the chief republican women whom Syme mentioned repeatedly.SoIspokeon‘SymeandServilia’,inthehopethatthetopicmight have entertained him. In the event, the paper was made memorable by the Dragon School’s fireworks, celebrating Guy Fawkes Day, which punctuated myremarks. ¹ Att.11.4. ² DJ50.2.Thebronzestatueallegedlyerectedbythe‘commonpeople’toCornelia(adaughter ofScipioAfricanus)namedherasmotheroftheGracchi(PlinyNH34.31,Plut.CGr.4.3,cf. statuebasefoundin1878intheporticusofOctavia:CIL1².p.201=6.10043b=6.31610=ILS 68 = ILLRP 336: Corneliae Africani f. Gracchorum [sc. matri], a method also adopted for identificationbyVM4.4.pr.,Sen.Cons.Marc.16.3,PlinyNH7.57,7.69(Gracchorummater), Juv.6.167–8(materGracchorum).Cf.PlinyNH7.71(Agrippina,wifeofDomitiusandmotherof Nero),Tac.Dial.28.6(Atia,motherofAugustus).OnthestatueseeFilippoCoarelli,‘Lastatuede Cornélie mère des Gracques et la crise politique à Rome au temps de Saturninus’ in Hubert Zehnackered.,LederniersiècledelaRépubliqueromaineetl’époqueaugustéenne(Strasbourg, 1978)13–28. ³ E.g.A97/5.4.3,Beneventum12May51,115/6.1.10,Laodicea20Feb.50. OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,14/12/2018,SPi viii Preface I have personal debts to Syme, not only for his writings and lectures, but because, as Camden Professor, he suggested my research topic in 1962 (not one in which he would have been interested himself, since it concerned the lowerclasses)andsubsequentlysupportedpublicationofthethesisasRoman freedmen during the late Republic. Later still I understand he was one of a triumvirate (along with my former tutor and my supervisor) who recom- mended me for a Visiting Fellowship at Brasenose, the college where he had heldtheCamdenChair.WeusedtomeetonvariousoccasionsintheUnited StatesandinOxford. I only intended to produce a lecture. It did not occur to me then that the evidence on Servilia would support a book. It is notoriously impossible to write a full-scale biography of any Roman of the classical period, except perhaps Cicero. Even for great men like Caesar or Pompey the sources are inadequate. We usually lack diaries, personal or business letters, memoirs (writtenbythesubjectorothers),documentssuchaswills,marriagecontracts and estate records, portraits, all the detailed written and visual evidence that makesbiographiesofmodernmenandwomensocomprehensiveandillumin- ating.TheproblemismuchworseforRomanwomen.Whatevidencewehaveis notwrittenbythembutbymen.Theirmemoirsandlettersfailedtosurvive.⁴ Biographyisinanycasedifficult. Biography attempts thesimulation, in words,of a man’s [sic]life, from what is knownaboutthatlife,fromthepapertrail,theenigmaticfootprint.Thusitdiffers fromotherliteraryarts.Theyseektoevokerealityfromillusion;biographyhopes tofastenillusionuponreality,toelicit,fromthecoldnessofpaper,thewarmthof alifebeinglived.⁵ Evenifthesubjectleftdiaries,letters,oranautobiography,howmanypeople can give a truthful, accurate, and full account?⁶ How many understand themselves?Howmanycontemporariescanassessthemfairlyandobjectively or understand the workings of their mind and feelings? Is any true under- standingpossibleofaninconsistent,fallible,emotionalbeingwhomaychange accordingtocircumstancesandoveralifetime?Onreadingagoodbiography, wemaythinkweunderstandmuchbetterthanbeforeapersonalityandalife, ⁴ Almostallthatwomenwroteintheclassicalperiod(fromCaerellia’scorrespondencewith CicerotothememoirsoftheyoungerAgrippina)waslost.AswebuildupapictureofAtticus (whosecorrespondencesimilarlydoesnotsurvive)fromCicero’srepliestohisletters,soweget somesenseofTerentiafromCicero’sletterstoher.(Therearenosurvivingletterstohisdaughter alone, though it is sometimes implied that she would read his letters to Terentia.) On the problems of scholars who write on Roman women see e.g. Suzanne Dixon, Reading Roman women(London,2001)7–25,Cornelia(London,2007)xi–xii. ⁵ PaulMurrayKendall,TheArtofbiography(NewYork,1985)28. ⁶ KennethDover,Marginalcomment(London:1994)1–4givesanilluminatingdiscussionof someoftheproblemsinwritingautobiography. OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,14/12/2018,SPi Preface ix but we cannot possibly understand all. Only a novelist can be omniscient, creatingtheinnerlifeofhisorhercharacters. Ahistoriancannotinanycasehopetorecreatethepastinallitscomplexity. We see it from between blinkers made by our own background, experiences, sympathies, prejudices, andimaginationorthelackof it.Inwhatfollowsthe reader will repeatedly see expressions such as ‘must have’, ‘would have’, ‘probably’,‘presumably’,and‘possibly’asIattempttofillindetailsofServilia’s lifefromwhatweknowofotherRomanwomenofherclassorguessatwhat she might have thought or felt. It is important that the reader should know how limited and patchy our firm knowledge is. As Keith Bradley has said about attempts to write the biography of Hadrian—and some emperors, of course,aremuchbetterdocumentedthanmostRomanmenandanyRoman woman—wehavetorealizehowshakyisthegroundonwhichwestand: Myinitialquestionofhowthepastcanberecoveredisbothbanalandprofound. It has no satisfactory answer, other than to affirm Syme’s pronouncement that historianscomein‘manytypesandmanytribes’.ThemainpointsIhavewanted toillustratearethatconventionalhistory,bynatureafictiveenterprise,isoften morefictionalthanitseemsandisalwaysprovisionalinitsfindings;thatfictional historyintheformofthehistoricalnovelortheimaginativereconstructionmay sometimessucceedaswellasorevensurpassconventionalhistory—textureand emotionareasimportanttohistoryaschronographyandgeography—andthat thepastmightsometimesbesuccessfullyevokedthroughmethodsthatpushfacts tothelimit.⁷ Syme disapprovedto some extent of biography: ‘...biographiesof emperors are a menace and an impediment to the understanding of history in its structureandprocesses’.⁸Buthecouldgivethisviewmorenuance: Biography is of plain service for conveying historical instruction painlessly. Itisnottobedespised,foritfurnishesaframeworkandachronologicalsequence. Butbiographyisalsotheenemyofhistory.Itispronetofableandlegend,itexalts the individual unduly, at the expense of social history, the long trends, and the factsofpowerintheworld.⁹ But he could not have worked on the themes he chose without studying the lives and careers of hundreds of individuals, the method we call prosopo- graphy. He studied the nature and workings of a class, the Roman oligarchy, by building up a composite picture from individuals. In focusing on an individual, one reverses the process, looking at him or her against the back- groundoftheclasstowhichheorshebelongs. ⁷ KeithBradley,‘RecoveringHadrian’,Klio94(2012)130–55at153. ⁸ TheAugustanaristocracy(Oxford,1986)14.FurtherreferencesinChristopherPelling,‘The rhetoricofTheRomanrevolution’,SyllectaClassica26(2015)207–47at236. ⁹ Romanpapers(Oxford,1979–91)6.122.
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