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THE LOSER LEAVES (ROME'S LOSS): UMBRICIUS' WISHFUL EXILE IN JUVENAL, SATIRE 3

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2015

Tom Geue
Tom Geue*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
*
tom.geue@bristol.ac.uk
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Extract

Juvenal's third satire is a privileged piece of verbal diarrhoea. As the longest satire in Juvenal's well-attended Book 1, as the centre of this book, and as the one Juvenalian jewel that sparkles ‘non-rhetorically’, it has always been the critics’ darling. Its protagonist, on the other hand, has not always been so popular. Recently, reader sympathy for old Umbricius (the poem's main speaker) has shifted to laughter in his face; the old sense of ‘pathetic’ has ceded to the new. One of the central strategies of the ‘Umbricius-as-caricature’ camp has been to point to the overtime worked by ‘mock-epic’ in this poem: Umbricius self-inflates to become another Aeneas, fleeing a crumbling Troy (Rome). But an oppositio is wedged in imitando. Umbricius makes his lengthy verbal preparations to depart from Rome for Cumae; Aeneas had come to Rome through Cumae. Umbricius withdraws to set up shop in the meagre countryside; Aeneas had escaped to cap his exile teleologically with the (pre-foundation of the) Greatest City That Will Ever Be. Still, Virgil's paradigm tale of displacement, drift and re-establishment underlies Umbricius' self-definition as an exile. Indeed exile, with a large and ever-increasing stock of mythical and historical examples, was a situation ripe for self-mythologizing. Umbricius stands in Aeneas' shadow then, standing it on its head. His recession also makes him into a Iustitia/Dikē figure, the final trace of the golden age, off to alloy himself elsewhere. In his mind, exile is rationalized by distinguished past examples; in ours, we laugh at how disparate example and man really are. That side of Umbricius has been done to death; or at least, for present purposes, to exile.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 773 - 787
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

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References

1 See W. Anderson, Essays in Roman Satire (Princeton, 1982), 219–20.

2 See especially Baines, V., ‘Umbricius' Bellum Civile: Juvenal, Satire 3’, G&R 50 (2003), 220–37Google Scholar; C. Connors, ‘From turnips to turbot: epic allusion in Roman satire’, in K. Freudenburg (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire (Cambridge, 2005), 123–45, at 139. For epic's general monopoly over Juvenal's imagination, see K. Freudenburg, Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal (Cambridge, 2001), 240; for Book 1, see J. Henderson, Writing Down Rome: Satire, Comedy and Other Offences in Latin Poetry (Oxford, 1999), 249–73.

3 Baines (n. 2), 221; C. Edwards, Writing Rome: Textual Approaches to the City (Cambridge, 1996), 127; Estevez, V., ‘Umbricius and Aeneas: a reading of Juvenal III’, Maia 48 (1996), 281–99Google Scholar, passim. Freudenburg (n. 2 [2001]), 267 dubs Umbricius ‘the poor man's Aeneas’.

4 For the centrality of this pattern to epic, see S. Harrison, ‘Exile in Latin epic’ in J. Gaertner (ed.), Writing Exile: The Discourse of Displacement in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Beyond (Leiden, 2007), 129–54, at 129.

5 Particularly for Ovid: see J.-M. Claassen, Displaced Persons: The Literature of Exile from Cicero to Boethius (Madison, 1999), 30, 69; for the inventory of exilic plots already available in the sixth century b.c.e., see J. Gaertner, Writing Exile: the Discourse of Displacement in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Beyond (Leiden, 2007), 9.

6 See Motto, A. and Clarke, J., ‘ Per iter tenebricosum: the mythos of Juvenal 3’, TAPhA 96 (1965), 267–76Google Scholar, at 273; S. Braund, ‘City and country in Roman satire’, in ead. (ed.), Satire and Society in Ancient Rome (Exeter, 1989), 23–47, at 30; S. Braund (ed.), Juvenal Satires Book 1 (Cambridge, 1996), 232–3. For the link between Umbricius and Egeria, see LaFleur, R., ‘Umbricius and Juvenal three’, Živa Antika 26 (1976), 383–431 Google Scholar, at 406–7. Umbricius also resembles Numa, particularly as recorded in Plutarch: M. Pasco-Pranger, Founding the Year: Ovid's Fasti and the Poetics of the Roman Calendar (Leiden, 2006), 87. Cf. the withdrawal of Pudicitia and Astraea at Sat. 6.19–20.

7 Gaertner (n. 5), 10; R. Branham, ‘Exile on main street: citizen Diogenes’, in Gaertner (n. 5), 71–86; SGoldhill, ., ‘Whose antiquity? Whose modernity?: the ‘rainbow bridges’ of exile’, A&A 46 (2000), 1–20 Google Scholar, at 18; T. Whitmarsh, ‘“Greece is the world”: exile and identity in the Second Sophistic’, in S. Goldhill (ed.), Being Greek Under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire (Cambridge, 2001), 269–305, at 271.

8 Goldhill (n. 7 [2000]), 3. On cynic philosophy as resonant background noise for Juvenalian satire, see J. Uden, ‘The invisibility of Juvenal’ (Diss., Columbia University, 2011), ch. 4.

9 Branham (n. 7), 77.

10 Namely of Epicurean philosophy, in its popular (Horatian) form embodied by the maxim λάθε βιώσας. On Epicurean withdrawal, see E. Brown, ‘Politics and Society’, in J. Warren (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism (Cambridge, 2009), 179–96.

11 Cf. Goldhill (n. 7 [2000]), 20.

12 This paper is in (its second) part a response to the (mistaken) relegation of Eclogue 1 as mere ‘literary furniture’ behind Satire 3 by Wright, J., ‘Virgil's pastoral programme: Theocritus, Callimachus and Eclogue 1’, PCPhS 209 (1983), 107–60Google Scholar, at 145–7: here I happily revoke its exile to and by that appendix.

13 For a (too) straightforward account of the pastoral framework of Satire 3, see Witke, E., ‘Juvenal III: An eclogue for the urban poor’, Hermes 90 (1962), 244–8Google Scholar; on Eclogue 1 and the end of Satire 3 specifically, cf. Pasoli, E., ‘La chiusa della satira III di Giovenale’, Grazer Beiträge 3 (1975), 311–21Google Scholar.

14 I follow the text of Braund (n. 6 [1996]).

15 See Goldhill (n. 7 [2000]), 2.

16 See Edwards (n. 3), 126. The collocation is even more striking if we keep in mind the end of the Sibyl's prophecy in Verg. Aen. 6.96-7: uia prima salutis, | quod minime reris, Graia pandetur ab urbe. Rome's foundation is thus dependent on a Greek city (Pallanteum).

17 Hardie, A., ‘Juvenal, the Phaedrus, and the truth about Rome’, CQ 48 (1998), 234–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 248–9; C. Edwards and G. Woolf  (edd.), Rome the Cosmopolis (Cambridge, 2003), 9–10; N. Morley, ‘Migration and the metropolis’, in C. Edwards and G. Woolf (edd.), Rome the Cosmopolis (Cambridge, 2003), 147–57, at 153 stresses that immigration has always been part of the Roman experience; Umbricius is just too limited to perceive this. There is more pointed dramatic irony regarding e-migration in lines 162–3: agmine facto | debuerant olim tenues migrasse Quirites. Poor Romans did do this long ago (i.e. the secessions of the plebs—see Braund  (n. 6 [1996]), ad loc.), but Umbricius forgets his history—or never knew it in the first place.

18 For pastoral tufa elsewhere, cf. Calp. Ecl. 6.71.

19 Fredericks, S., ‘The function of the prologue (1–20) in the organization of Juvenal's third satire’, Phoenix 27 (1973), 62–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 63; cf. Wright (n. 12), 145.

20 Cf. Freudenburg (n. 2 [2001]), 268.

21 Cf. Aeneas’ facilitated crossing of the Styx in Verg. Aen. 6: Charon thrusts the other (poor?) souls sitting on the bank out of the way to make room for Aeneas (411–13).

22 See Claassen (n. 5), 9, for the distinction between voluntary and enforced exile.

23 For the influence of Horace's Epode 16 on Satire 3, see J. Adamietz, Untersuchungen zu Juvenal (Wiesbaden, 1972), 13–4.

24 See V. Rimell, ‘The poor man's feast: Juvenal’, in Freudenburg (n. 2 [2005]), 81–94, at 83 on Juvenal's poetry standing for ‘piggishly stuffed’ Rome and empire. See also Freudenburg (n. 2 [2001]), 248 and Edwards (n. 3), 128.

25 Cf. Braund (n. 6 [1989]), 26.

26 Braund (n. 6 [1996]), 35; Gaertner (n. 5), 16; LaFleur (n. 6), 420 reads the Graecitas of Umbricius’ speech as another sign of the impossibility of escape.

27 LaFleur (n. 6), 404; especially now that the Via Domitiana was up and running (Stat. Silv. 4.3). This could be a rewarding intertext, especially regarding the dynamics of centre and periphery: see C. Newlands, Statius’ Silvae and the Poetics of Empire (Cambridge, 2002), 284–325.

28 LaFleur (n. 6), 401; Edwards (n. 3), 128; from another angle, Greeks also own the (poetic) countryside, as any Greek-named herdsman in the Eclogues would suggest.

29 LaFleur (n. 6), 402–3; Edwards (n. 3), 128.

30 Freudenburg (n. 2 [2001]), 269 points out the unreality of both city and country representations in Satire 3.

31 M. Skoie, ‘City and countryside in Vergil's Eclogues’, in R. Rosen and I. Sluiter (edd.), City, Countryside, and the Spatial Organization of Value in Classical Antiquity (Leiden, 2006), 297–326, at 301; for a parallel challenge to the city/country dialectic in Horace see D. Spencer, ‘Horace's garden thoughts: rural retreats and the urban imagination’, in Rosen and Sluiter (this note), 239–74; e.g. 267: ‘Rome is everywhere, even in Arcadia.’ Her argument is strikingly similar to mine, seizing on the germ of city/country co-implication in the Eclogues (250) and extending it to Horace.

32 On the hint that Satire 3 is one long tedious recitatio, see Lafleur (n. 6), 408–12.

33 Satire's urbicentricity: Braund (n. 6 [1989]), 23; ead. (n. 6 [1996]), 32, 230; Bond, R., ‘ Vrbs satirica: the city in Roman satire with special reference to Horace and Juvenal’, Scholia 10 (2001), 77–91 Google Scholar, at 91.

34 I retain the reading auditor (PRVF) over adiutor (Φ) here; for arguments in favour of adiutor, see Pasoli (n. 13), 317–21. The decision is not particularly urgent for my reading. The major point is Umbricius’ foot-dragging subordination, even in voluntary exile—a point with which both words accord.

35 On the wordplay possibilities of caligatus here, see B. Hook, ‘Umbricius caligatus: wordplay in Juvenal 3, 322’, in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, vol. 14 (Brussels, 2008), 365–74. I would see the footwear more as Umbricius’ reprisal for years of being stepped on. The complex of boot/trampling imagery is important in Satire 3 (248, 295, 322), but also extends to other key points in the Juvenalian corpus (10.86; 15.60; 16.14, 16.24-5).

36 I follow the text in W. Clausen (ed.), Virgil Eclogues (Oxford, 1994).

37 Cf. C. Perkell, ‘On Eclogue 1.79-83’, in K. Volk (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Vergil's Eclogues (Oxford, 2008), 110–24, at 113.

38 Though still commensurable on a pastoral scale: Skoie (n. 31), 305.

39 Itself a bought commodity; see Clausen (n. 36), ad loc.

40 Cf. Umbricius’ dispossession by ‘barbarian’ others in Satire 3 (the adjective barbara is used in line 66).

41 The Satires are packed with uneven quantities and counts, e.g. 1.40-1, 1.117-20, 4.25-7, 10.168-73.

42 The concern of Satire 3 with illimitable consumption could be summed up in the phrase plus | quam satis (180–1). See Rimell (n. 24), 86–7 on modulation of magnitude and scale, particularly in Satire 4; see also Freudenburg (n. 2 [2001]), 261–3. On the poetics of excess and amplitude, cf. D. Hooley, Roman Satire (Oxford, 2007), 134.

43 Bond (n. 33), 86 mentions Juvenalian ‘cinematography’. For Juvenalian ‘thinking in pictures’, see R. Jenkyns, Three Classical Poets: Sappho, Catullus, and Juvenal (London, 1982), 173–4, 211.

44 On shifts between microcosm and macrocosm, see D. Larmour, ‘Holes in the body: sites of abjection in Juvenal's Rome’, in D. Larmour and D. Spencer (edd.), The Sites of Rome: Time, Space, Memory (Oxford, 2007), 168–210, at 193.

45 Evaluation is prominent throughout the Satires, particularly in 10 (e.g. expende Hannibalem, 10.147).

46 Cf. J. Henderson, Writing Down Rome: Satire, Comedy and Other Offences in Latin Poetry (Oxford, 1999), 72 on Catullan counting.

47 Roles linked in the regulation of sumptuary spending, mentioned in Sat. 4.12.

48 J. Henderson, Morals and Villas in Seneca's Letters: Places to Dwell (Cambridge, 2004), 2.

49 rem tene, uerba sequentur; cf. Putnam, M., ‘Pastoral satire’, Arion 3 (1995–6), 303–16Google Scholar, at 311 on the distentius udder in Hor. Sat. 1.1 and its relation to Horace's programme of verbal moderation.

50 Cf. Witke (n. 13), 246, inferring a long process of reduction into Umbricius’ life story: a once great man now made small.

51 Cf. Larmour (n. 44), 206 on Umbricius’ rhetorical ‘burst-out’. For the plotless, ‘panoramic’ qualities of Juvenalian satire in general, see Baumert, J., ‘Identifikation und Distanz: eine Erprobung satirischer Kategorien bei Juvenal’, ANRW 2.33.1 (1989), 734–69Google Scholar, at 759.

52 Cf. Calp. Ecl. 5.119-21; S. Braund, Beyond Anger: A Study of Juvenal's Third Book of Satires (Cambridge, 1988), 12 says that this extension to sunset reflects Umbricius’ caricature-sized proportions. For poetry ‘made bigger’ by interminable material, cf. the bloated rich man's menu of Satire 5. Jenkyns (n. 43), 162 points out that the shadows of pastoral closure usually signal a centripetal movement homewards; here Umbricius is poised for the opposite.

53 Cf. the poor man's silence in line 297; Baines (n. 2), 231 sees this as the pauper's inability to participate in the epic tradition of flyting. Satire 3 could thus read as a kind of verbose revenge for suppression of speech. We could also align Umbricius with Juvenal: the author's verbal floodgates burst after years of Domitianic damming: see Freudenburg (n. 2 [2001]), 214–15.

54 Cf. Smith, W., ‘Heroic models for the sordid present: Juvenal's view of tragedy’, ANRW 2.33.1 (1989), 811–23Google Scholar, at 822 on the incomparability of the mythical past to the sordid present in Juvenal.

55 Cf. LaFleur (n. 6), 418.

56 Cf. Umbricius’ attempt to generalize his plight to a mass-migration in lines 162–3.

57 To borrow the title from Henderson (n. 2 [1999]), 249–73.

58 Cf. Braund (n. 52), 239 n. 1: ‘what seems to be a conversation turns out to be a monologue’.

59 conuerte is more than ‘invite’; it contains the idea of redirection, ‘transfer’ as well as ‘change’ (see OLD and OLD 2 s.v. conuerto, particularly 7a and 8a).

60 Cf. the suggestion of LaFleur (n. 6), 399 that the relationship of Umbricius to satirist is that of client to patron. Such a relationship makes sense of the final ‘invitation to invitation’ (see above).

61 Cf. Putnam (n. 49), 314–5, on the respective endings of Hor. Sat. 1.1 and Verg. Ecl. 10.

62 For the speaker's liminality in Juvenal's Satires, see Larmour (n. 44), 177; he also points to the liminality of Cumae (191) and the Porta Capena (194, 209). Larmour's conclusion (210) is similar to mine, though reached very differently.

63 On bucolic space in the Eclogues, see F. Jones, Virgil's Garden (London, 2011).

64 Juvenal's reprocessing of epic to make ‘epic satire’ is perhaps the most persistent cliché in Juvenalian scholarship (for epic in Book 1, see for example Braund (n. 6 [1996]), 21–4). For the idea of generic subsumption in Satire 3, cf. F. Jones, Juvenal and the Satiric Genre (London, 2007), 87 on Umbricius’ ‘discordant patchwork of literary voices’.

65 On the frame of exile ringing the Virgilian career (and other responsions between Eclogue 1 and the Aeneid), see M. Putnam, ‘Some Virgilian unities’, in P. Hardie and H. Moore (edd.), Classical Literary Careers and their Reception (Cambridge, 2010), 17–38, especially at 36–8.

66 For the morbid fascination felt by Romans for this curious pack of dogs, see M. Griffin, ‘Cynicism and the Romans: attraction and repulsion’, in R. Branham and M.-O. Goulet-Cazé (edd.), The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy (Berkeley, 1996), 190–204.

67 Uden (n. 8), 77–83 has already trodden and broken new ground on the relationship between Dio and Juvenal; my modest point to close owes plenty to his fresh ‘Second Sophistic’ slant on Juvenal.

68 See, for example, Jensen, B. Frueland, ‘Martyred and beleaguered virtue: Juvenal's portrait of Umbricius’, C&M 37 (1986), 185–97Google Scholar; a summary of ‘Umbricius loser’ evidence is in Braund (n. 6 [1996]), 233. This article sits firmly in the loser camp, but tries to avoid the conclusion that mere character assassination is the ‘point’ of Satire 3.