No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2021
This article calls for a new understanding of the relationship between classicizing and Christian discourses of exemplarity through a close reading of the figure of Scipio Nasica in Livy, Ab urbe condita Book 29 and Augustine, De ciuitate Dei Books 1–2. Nasica, whose selection as a uir optimus by the Senate in 204 b.c.e. has puzzled modern scholars, was a source of historiographical difficulty for Livy that prompted him to reflect upon exemplarity, mythmaking and the tenuous relationship between past and present. For Augustine, on the other hand, Nasica was a pagan, and thus imperfect, realization of Christian pietas and restraint from luxurious behaviour. Although differing in their interpretations of the Republican exemplum, both Livy and Augustine point to the complexities inherent in invocations of paradigmatic Roman maiores. The close study of Scipio Nasica thus reveals the classicizing precedent lingering behind the supposedly ‘Christian’ rejections of pre-Christian Roman culture in the De ciuitate Dei.
This paper originated in a graduate seminar on Livy's Third Decade taught by Celia Schultz at the University of Michigan. I would like to thank Celia for her comments on the paper, as well as Tobias Reinhardt, Jenny Rallens and Chuck Mathewes, who very generously read drafts of this article. My thoughts have also been sharpened and improved by the comments from the Editor and the anonymous peer reviewers at CQ. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Oxford-Yale Postgraduate Workshop on exemplarity and at the Ancient History postgraduate Work-in-Progress Seminar at the Oxford Classics Faculty. I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers and participants, particularly Irene Peirano Garrison, Federico Favi, Rachel Love and Alex Antoniou for very helpful bibliography.
1 Roller, L., In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele (Berkeley, 1999), 263Google Scholar lists the date as 204 b.c.e.; P.J. Burton, ‘The summoning of the Magna Mater to Rome (205 b.c.)’, Historia 45 (1996), 36–63 uses 205 b.c.e. Neither gives a substantial discussion concerning these dates.
2 See Roller (n. 1), 271 for the difference between the Greek iconography of Cybele and the Roman aniconic Magna Mater.
3 Fowler, W.W., The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic: An Introduction to the Study of the Religion of the Romans (London, 1899), 69–71Google Scholar; H. Graillot, Le culte de Cybèle, mère des dieux, à Rome et dans l'empire romain (Paris, 1912), 25–69; Vogt, J., ‘Vorläufer des Optimus Princeps’, Hermes 68 (1933), 84–92Google Scholar; Köves, T., ‘Zum Empfang der Magna Mater in Rom’, Historia 12 (1963), 321–47Google Scholar; G. Thomas, ‘Magna Mater and Attis’, ANRW 2.17.3 (1984), 1500–55; E.S. Gruen, Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Leiden, 1990), 5–33; Burton (n. 1); Roller (n. 1); Nikoloska, A., ‘The sea voyage of Magna Mater to Rome’, Histria Antiqua 21 (2012), 365–71Google Scholar; Satterfield, S., ‘Intention and exoticism in the Magna Mater's introduction to Rome’, Latomus 71 (2012), 373–91Google Scholar. In his remarks on the episode, T.P. Wiseman, Clio's Cosmetics (Leicester, 1979), 94–9 lays some preliminary groundwork on the literary critical points of interest in the historiographical tradition.
4 In placing Scipio Nasica centre stage, I offer analysis of a figure who has not received sustained scholarly attention since the work of Köves (n. 3). Studies tend more often to follow Ovid in their focus on Claudia Quinta as the actor of interest: see e.g. F. Bömer, ‘Kybele in Rom: die Geschichte ihres Kults als politisches Phänomen’, MDAI(R) 71 (1964), 130–51, at 146–51; J. Scheid, ‘Claudia the Vestal Virgin’, in A. Fraschetti (ed.), L. Lappin (transl.), Roman Women (Chicago, 1994), 23–34; C. Torre, ‘Ritratti di signora: per un'interpretazione di Ovidio, “Fasti” IV 247–349’, in P.F. Moretti, C. Torre, G. Zanetto (edd.), Debita dona: studi in onore di Isabella Gualandri (Naples, 2008), 471–503. For the Roman people as the primary focus of Livy's retelling of the Magna Mater episode, see D.S. Levene, Religion in Livy (Leiden, 1993), 71–2.
5 R. Langlands, Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 2018) and M.B. Roller, Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla (Cambridge, 2018), 156–62 discuss the ways in which the literary tradition over time registers change in modes of exemplary discourse. For Livy's self-consciousness about exemplarity, see B.S. Rodgers, ‘Great expeditions: Livy on Thucydides’, TAPhA 116 (1986), 335–52; M.B. Roller, ‘The consul(ar) as exemplum: Fabius Cunctator's paradoxical glory’, in H. Beck, A. Duplá, M. Jehne and F.P. Pol (edd.), Consuls and Res Publica: Holding High Office in the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2011), 182–210. On the transformations exempla undergo in different contexts more generally, see S. Goldhill, ‘The failure of exemplarity’, in I.J.F. de Jong, J.P. Sullivan (edd.), Modern Critical Theory and Classical Literature (Leiden, 1994), 51–73, and the bibliography collected by Langlands (this note), 142 n. 3.
6 For Augustine's innovation in this respect, see R. Honstetter, Exemplum zwischen Rhetorik und Literatur zur gattungsgeschichtlichen Sonderstellung von Valerius Maximus und Augustinus (Konstanz, 1977), 185–95; D. Trout, ‘Re-textualizing Lucretia: cultural subversion in the City of God’, JECS 2 (1994), 53–70; C. Conybeare, ‘Terrarum orbi documentum: Augustine, Camillus, and learning from history’, in M. Vessey, K. Pollmann, A.D. Fitzgerald (edd.), History, Apocalypse, and the Secular Imagination: New Essays on Augustine's City of God (Bowling Green, 1999), 59–74. Harding, B., ‘The use of Alexander the Great in Augustine's City of God’, AugStud 39 (2008), 113–28Google Scholar is an important exception to this approach, touching upon the classical precedents for Augustine's critique of Alexander the Great. In taking this approach to Christian exempla, I am building upon the work of J. Petitfils, Mos Christianorum: The Roman Discourse of Exemplarity and the Jewish and Christian Language of Leadership (Tübingen, 2016), 150–4; Langlands (n. 5), 143–4; and Roller (n. 5 [2018]), 26, who discuss to varying degrees the similarities between exemplarity in early Christian and (roughly) contemporary classical texts, but do not cover Late Antiquity. For the influence of classical models of exemplarity in the collapsing of distance between exemplum and emulator in Late Antiquity, see Brown, P., ‘The saint as exemplar in Late Antiquity’, Representations 2 (1983), 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 See further ‘Cornelius’ no. 352 in RE 4 (1900), 1494–7.
8 See Plin. HN 7.120; Val. Max. 7.5.2, 8.15.3. The meditation on the laudable and less laudable traits of both these Nasicas in Pliny and Valerius Maximus is a typical method of exemplary discourse in ancient literary sources, on which see Langlands (n. 5), 291–335. The date of Nasica Serapio's unsuccessful candidacy for the aedileship is not known (RE 4 [1900], 1502).
9 His piety, however, features in both Diod. Sic. 34/5.33.3 (εὐσεβεία) and Val. Max. 8.15.3 (sanctissimus). I am grateful to Alex Antoniou for his suggestion that Nasica's youth may have played an important role in Nasica's selection, as Romans tended to send young men to greet new gods. For a slightly different reading of the significance of his youth in the choice of Nasica, see Köves (n. 3), 325–35 and Thomas (n. 3), 1505.
10 See further RE 4 (1900), 1494. The entry in RE provides a list of the sources on Nasica, to which the passages from Book 1 of De ciuitate Dei, discussed below, should be added.
11 H. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford, 1996), 178.
12 CIL 6.1287.
13 App. B Ciu. 1.16–17 and Hann. 7.56–7 for Scipio Nasica and Scipio Nasica Serapio as ἄριστος.
14 Thomas (n. 3), 1505.
15 Flower (n. 11), 177–9 discusses the relationship with the epitaph of Caiaitinus, but notes that its chronology relative to that of Lucius Scipio cannot be determined. She does not comment on the qualities which deemed Caiatinus primarius.
16 Flower (n. 11), 178–9 in particular rejects the suggestion in RE 4 (1900), 1495 and in Vogt (n. 3), 89–90 that Lucius Scipio's inscription designated Lucius Scipio an optimus uir to extend the honour of the Senate's decision to other members of Nasica's gens.
17 For these discussions, see Livy 29.14.7–10, 36.40.8–9 (studied in further detail at pages 5–7 below). The reference to an optimus uir at Per. 49 likewise describes the selection of Nasica by the Senate, as the mention of this honour in relation to Corculum results from a conflation of the achievements of Nasica with those of his son Corculum (RE 4 [1900], 1494).
18 Either the oracle of Apollo at Delphi (Livy 29.11.5–7, Val. Max. 8.15.3, Cass. Dio 17.61) or the Sibylline Books (Diod. Sic. 34/5.33.2, Sil. Pun. 17.2, App. Hann. 7.56, De uir. ill. 46.1).
19 Thomas (n. 3), 1505.
20 For the former, see A.M. Stone, ‘Optimates: an archaeology’, in K.E. Welch, T.W. Hillard, J. Bellemore (edd.), Roman Crossings: Theory and Practice in the Roman Republic (Swansea, 2005), 59–94, at 59–67; for the latter, I. Samotta, Das Vorbild der Vergangenheit: Geschichtsbild und Reformvorschläge bei Cicero und Sallust (Stuttgart, 2009), 59–97.
21 ‘The Senate judged Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of Gnaeus who had fallen in Spain, a youth not yet a quaestor, to be the best of all the good men in the state. If the virtues by which they were led to decide thus had been handed down by writers close to the memory of those times, I would gladly hand them down to posterity. As it is, I will not insert my own opinions by conjecturing on a matter overwhelmed by its antiquity.’ All translations are my own, with reference to F.G. Moore (ed. and transl.), Livy: History of Rome: Books XXVIII–XXX (Cambridge, Mass., 1949); the text is from G. Wiessenborn and M. Müller (edd.), Titi Livi Ab urbe condita libri: Pars III libri XXIV–XXX (Leipzig, 19092).
22 Livy 29.14.7–8, 36.40.8–9. The significance of being voted uir optimus is also mentioned by Sil. Pun. 17.7.
23 For the forgetting of exempla, see Livy 37.1.9–10. In most exemplary anecdotes, Livy enumerates possible versions of the story when he is uncertain about information. See e.g. 2.40.1–2 (on the embassy of Veturia and Volumnia to Coriolanus); 3.26.9 (on Cincinnatus); 4.13.7–8 (on Lucius Minucius who is described as an exemplum of bad behaviour at 4.13.1–2); 29.21.1–3 (on Quintus Pleminius who is labelled an exemplum at 31.12.2); 30.26.9 (on Fabius Cunctator); 30.45.6–7 (on the cognomen of Scipio Africanus). For the multiplicity of interpretations inherent in Livy's exempla more generally, see J.D. Chaplin, Livy's Exemplary History (Oxford, 2000), 73–136.
24 Livy 3.47.5. The two passages also resemble each other on the level of language. In particular, both authorial interventions admit to a gap in their source material using the verb tradere which, as discussed below, is a verb of programmatic importance in 29.14.
25 Similarly, W. Wiehemeyer, Proben historischer Kritik aus Livius XXI–XLV (Emsdetten, 1938), 5. On the importance of source criticism to Livy's authorial self-fashioning, see Levene (n. 4), 29. Wiehemeyer (this note), 62 and Ridley, R.T., ‘Livy the critical historian’, Athenaeum 102 (2014), 444–74Google Scholar, at 470 note Livy's preference for sources which are closest to events narrated.
26 See similarly Levene (n. 4), 71 n. 113 on the importance of Livy's explicit acknowledgement of his silence. Livy is not the only author to allude to Nasica as uir optimus without detailing his virtues (see Cic. Har. resp. 13.27, Brut. 29; Vell. Pat. 2.3; Plin. HN 7.120; Ampelius, Liber memorialis 24), but is the only one to comment upon the absence of such a list.
27 Diod. Sic. 34/5.33.1–4 (whose description of ‘Nasica’ opposing Cato the Elder conflates Scipio Nasica with his son, Corculum), Cic. Fin. 5.64, Val. Max. 8.15.3, Sil. Pun. 17.1–12, all of which are listed at Gruen (n. 3), 25 n. 102.
28 See Livy 35.10.9, 36.36.3, 34.40.8–9.
29 J.P. Davies, Rome's Religious History: Livy, Tacitus, and Ammianus on their Gods (Cambridge, 2004), 54–6.
30 Livy 29.14.3–5. My reading of Livy's observations about the prodigies draws inspiration from the argument of Davies (n. 29), 21–85 that Livy's critique of religious practices does not imply a systematic sceptical attitude towards Roman religion tout court, but rather constitutes part of a larger network of hermeneutic approaches taken to the corpus of Roman history he inherited; see especially 83 for Davies's analysis of the prodigies listed at Livy 29.14. The association of Magna Mater with superstitio also reflects a larger tendency on Livy's part to link non-Roman religious traditions with superstitio, on which S.W. Rasmussen, ‘Ritual and identity: a sociological perspective on the expiation of public portents in ancient Rome’, in A. Rasmussen and S.W. Rasmussen (edd.), Religion and Society: Resources and Identity in the Ancient Graeco-Roman World: The BOMOS-Conferences 2002–2005 (Rome, 2008), 37–42, at 40.
31 Which types of literary works were particularly interested in the mythologizing of Scipio Nasica is an area needing further research, beyond the scope of this paper; see the preliminary overviews at Wiseman (n. 3), 95–8 (who has a particular interest in the possibility of staged versions of the tale of the arrival of the Magna Mater) and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Slow Cybele's arrival’, in J.N. Bremmer, N. Horsfall (edd.), Roman Myth and Mythography (London, 1987), 105–11, at 106. For an older theory on the mythical nature of the entire narrative of the acceptance of the Magna Mater into Rome, see E. Schmidt, Kultübertragungen (Giessen, 1909), 1–30.
32 Praef. 9. I am grateful to Irene Peirano Garrison for pointing out the similarities between the Preface and Book 29.
33 Livy's respect for uetustas likewise arises at 2.21.4 and 4.23.3, where he leaves undecided historical details which have been obscured by antiquity. Livy's citation of other writers in a meditation on the nature of good historiography is another example of his use of citation to engage critically and competitively with his predecessors, for which see A.L. Haimson, ‘Intertextuality and source criticism in the Scipionic trials’, in W. Polleichtner (ed.), Livy and Intertextuality (Trier, 2010), 93–133 and Haimson, A.L., ‘Citation and the dynamics of tradition in Livy's AVC’, Histos 7 (2013), 21–47Google Scholar. Furthermore, as I. Peirano Garrison, ‘Beyond emulation’ [unpublished paper delivered at the ‘Oxford–Yale Postgraduate Workshop: Exemplarity’ in 2019] notes, interponere carries metaliterary weight across Early Imperial literature, referring to an author's interventions in and innovations imposed upon the existing tradition. In this context, Livy's use of the verb interponere explicitly marks this statement as programmatic. For further discussion of Livy's relationship to his predecessors in the Preface, see Moles, J.L., ‘Livy's preface’, CCJ 39 (1994), 141–68, especially at 141–55Google Scholar.
34 On Nasica as an exemplum, see Calabi, I., ‘Le fonti della storia Romana nel De civitate Dei di Sant'Agostino’, PP 43 (1955), 274–94Google Scholar, at 285.
35 For a slightly different technique to foreground the gap between past and present in Livy, see Chaplin (n. 23), 121–36, who argues that the preference for exempla from more recent history in the speeches of Publius Sempronius Sophos at 9.33.3–34.26, Fabius Cunctator at 28.40.1–42.22, Scipio Africanus at 28.43.1–44.18, and Marcus Servilius Geminus at 45.37.1–39.20 underscores this sense of distance from earlier epochs.
36 T.P. Wiseman, ‘Ovid and the stage’, in G. Herbert-Brown (ed.), Ovid's Fasti: Historical Readings at its Bimillennium (Oxford, 2002), 275–99, at 275 specifically mentions the possibility of a staged version of this episode.
37 For this treatment of classical exempla in De ciuitate Dei, see J. Herdt, ‘The theater of virtues: Augustine's critique of pagan mimesis’, in J. Wetzel (ed.), Augustine's City of God: A Critical Guide (Cambridge, 2012), 111–29, at 123–7. Augustine's approach to biblical exempla is slightly different, in that he both places more emphasis on their similarities with his theological project rather than on the distance between exemplary past and his contemporary present (see e.g. I. Bochet, ‘La figure de Moïse dans la Cité de Dieu’, Studia Patristica 43 [2006], 9–14 on the significance of Moses in De ciuitate Dei) and also admits to the human imperfection even of the most revered Christian exempla, including martyrs and saints (on which, see R. Dodaro, ‘Augustine's revision of the heroic ideal’, AugStud 36 [2005], 141–57).
38 H. Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics (Göteborg, 1967), 642; Bonamente, G., ‘Il metus punicus e la decadenza di Roma in Sallustio, Agostino, ed Orosio’, GIP 27 (1975), 137–69Google Scholar; Schindler, A., ‘Augustine and the history of the Roman empire’, Studia Patristica 22 (1989), 326–36Google Scholar, at 329–31; G. O'Daly, Augustine's City of God: A Reader's Guide (Oxford, 1999), 79–81, 242; B. Harding, Augustine and Roman Virtue (London, 2008), 91–2.
39 ‘If that Scipio Nasica, once your pontifex maximus, were living—the man whom the whole Senate elected to receive the Phrygian cult objects in the terror of the Punic War, when the best man was sought, and whose face perhaps you would not dare to look upon—he would restrain you from this shamelessness. Why do you, when afflicted with adverse affairs, complain about the Christian era, if not because you desire to have your luxury secure and to abandon yourselves to the most ruinous ways once every harshness of troubles has been removed? Nor indeed do you desire to have peace and to abound in every type of prosperity so that you may use these goods honourably (that is, in a moderately sober, temperately pious way), but so that an infinite variety of pleasures may be sought in mad excess, and so that in pleasing times evil customs arise which are worse than raging enemies. And that Scipio, your pontifex maximus, the best man at the judgement of the whole Senate, fearing this calamity would befall you, did not want Carthage, then the rival of Roman power, to be destroyed. He spoke against Cato, who decreed that it ought to be destroyed, afraid that security was an enemy for weak souls, and seeing that terror was a necessary fit guardian for the, as it were, orphaned citizens.’ All translations are my own, with reference to G.E. McCracken (ed. and transl.), Augustine: City of God: Books 1–3 (Cambridge, Mass., 1957); the text is B. Dombart and A. Kalb (edd.), Sancti Aurelii Augustini Episcopi De ciuitate Dei libri XXII (Stuttgart, 1981).
40 It is important to note here that both S. Angus, The Sources of the First Ten Books of Augustine's De Ciuitate Dei (Princeton, 1906), 28 and Hagendahl (n. 38), 658–9 believe that Augustine's source for Scipio Nasica is Livy. The limitations of such attempts to pinpoint a source for Augustine's knowledge of Nasica are noted explicitly by Wiseman (n. 3), 97 n. 140, who argues that the language used to describe Nasica's selection is similar across all the literary sources. This caueat is reinforced by Langlands (n. 5), 166–86 and Roller (n. 5 [2018]), who explain that exempla are generally part of a larger cultural memory which transcends literary texts. See also Calabi (n. 34), 285, who believes, for different reasons, that Augustine's knowledge of Nasica is informed by late antique culture more broadly.
41 Diod. Sic. 34/5.33.3.
42 De ciu. D. 1.29.
43 On the link between past and present in De ciuitate Dei more generally, see G. Clark, ‘Fragile brilliance: Augustine, decadence, and the “other antiquity”’, in M. Formisano and T. Fuhrer (edd.), Décadence: “Decline and Fall” or “Other Antiquity”? (Heidelberg, 2014), 35–52, at 51.
44 See pages 10–11 below.
45 De ciu. D. 1.31. For exempla providing an ‘ethical continuity’ between past and present, see Roller, M.B., ‘Exemplarity in Roman culture: the cases of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia’, CPh 99 (2004), 1–56Google Scholar, at 32–7, with the important modifications of Langlands (n. 5), 226–57. For the parallel between Augustine and Nasica, see Conybeare (n. 6), 66 n. 25 and Harding (n. 38), 86, 92. Finally, it is important to note that Augustine's moralizing tone in this passage does not imply a general narrative of decline; see further Clark (n. 43).
46 ‘I would not want by any means, as a judge in this matter, those men who strive to be diverted by, rather than oppose, the vices of very licentious customs. Instead, I would have that Scipio Nasica, who was elected “best man” by the Senate, and by whose hands the image of a demon was received and carried into the city. He would tell us whether he wanted his own mother to deserve so well from the Republic that divine honours be decreed for her, as it is agreed that the Greeks, Romans and other Gentiles decreed honours to certain mortals whose public service they deemed of great worth, and that they believed these individuals were made immortal and received amongst the number of the gods. Surely, Nasica would choose so great a good fortune for his mother, if it were able to happen. Furthermore, if we were to ask him then whether he wished those base rites to be celebrated amongst her divine honours, would he not cry out that he would prefer that his own mother lay dead, completely senseless, than that she live on as a goddess for the sake of gladly hearing these things?’
47 Although not explicitly noted by the text, Augustine's emphasis on the religious positions held by Nasica (namely the pontifex maximus) when introducing his views on luxury and the gods establishes another parallel between Nasica and Augustine, whose critiques are launched from and because of his religious position.
48 Roller (n. 1), 267; see also Sil. Pun. 17.1–4. For the continued association of the Magna Mater with the defence of Italy into Late Antiquity, see Graillot (n. 3), 32 n. 2.
49 ‘With what zeal would he have removed the theatrical spectacles themselves from Rome if he dared to resist the authority of those whom he thought gods! He did not understand them to be harmful demons, or, if he did, even he deemed them more worthy of placation than condemnation! The celestial doctrine had not yet been declared to the Gentiles, which, cleaning the heart with faith, turned human minds with humble piety to the comprehension of matters in and beyond the heavens.’
50 The replacement of Nasica's worldview with that advocated by Augustine recalls an approach taken to exemplarity in the Confessions, in which Monica is portrayed as an exemplum which Augustine must eventually replace (E. Chan, ‘Monica's exemplarity: exploring the rhetorical unity of Confessions’ [unpublished paper delivered at the ‘Oxford–Yale Postgraduate Workshop: Exemplarity’ in 2019]). On the use of the same exemplum for different rhetorical purposes in Augustine, see Honstetter (n. 6), 189–90. Lingering just underneath the surface of Augustine's concerns about Nasica are his views of the problematic nature of the theatre; for an analysis of the intersection between spectacle, religion and exemplarity in De ciuitate Dei, see Herdt (n. 37).
51 ‘Thence, the Mother of the gods, a mother of such a sort that even the very basest man you could think of would be ashamed of having her as a mother, sought the best man when she wanted to occupy Roman minds. She did not choose him to make him the best by advising and helping him, but so that she might ensnare him by deceiving him—in a like manner to her about whom they write, “a woman, moreover, captures the precious souls of men”—in order that this soul, of great natural virtue, elevated in this testimony as though divine, and deeming himself truly the best, would not seek that true piety and religiosity without which all human nature, although praiseworthy, fades through pride and deteriorates.’
52 This critique of Nasica is an example of the general assumption of T.H. Irwin, ‘Splendid vices? Augustine for and against pagan virtues’, Medieval Philosophy and Theology 8 (1999), 105–27 that, for Augustine, pagans lack true virtue because they are activated by incorrect aims and motives.
53 De ciu. D. 5.18. For the Virgilian treatment of Brutus, see Verg. Aen. 6.820–3.