BLOOD ON HIS WORDS, BARLEY ON HIS MIND. TRUE NAMES IN CAESAR'S SPEECH FOR THE LEGENDARY ‘BARLEY-MUNCHER’ (BGALL. 7.77)

Abstract

Critognatus’ speech has long been recognized as heavily by Caesar's hand, although few have questioned whether any speech was delivered by the Arvernian noble at all; and it has long puzzled readers with its contradictory manner and fierce criticism of Rome. But the etymologizing wordplay across several languages demonstrated below (along with other distinctly comical elements) renders it more than likely that both the speech and the speaker are products of the author's imagination. In its Nabokovian mode, it offers a glimpse of Caesar the linguist and introduces a playfulness into the dire situation before Alesia that suggests that the ‘Barley-Muncher’ and his speech should be reconsidered in a different, more humorous light.

One author, however, has never been mentioned in this connection—the only author whom I must gratefully recognize as an influence upon me at a time of writing this book; namely, the melancholy, extravagant, wise, witty, magical, and altogether delightful Pierre Delalande, whom I invented. (V. Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading [New York, 1989], 6)

In honour of the Herculean Thesaurists in Munich; with fond memories.

Vladimir Nabokov repeatedly acknowledges the influence Delalande's Discours sur les ombres had exerted on his own writing—only then to admit, in the just-quoted foreword to his Invitation to a Beheading, that he had ‘invented’ him. No surprise: across his œuvre he evokes from the shadowlands many a character whose whispering name he fashioned from the expansive histories of the several languages he roamed so enviably, nimbly; his paronomatic Humbert Humbert, most noticeably when ‘pronounced with a French accent’ (Humbert [ɛ̃bɛʁ] and ombre [ɔ̃bʁ]), is merely its most notorious denizen.¹ Caesar is rarely ever associated with the author of Lolita; but his Critognatus, who, amidst the Gauls’ ghastly situation in and around Alesia, famously roars that they should rather eat their own than cede to Rome, hails, as will appear, from the same shadowy lands.

From there he arrives at a crucial moment in Caesar's (narrative of his) campaign. It is the final phase of the final year, not of the war in Gaul, of course, which would rage on for two more years,² but of the Gallic War: Vercingetorix and his Gallic coalition (including Rome's longest-standing ally, the Aedui) had been battling Caesar and his legions since the winter of 53/2 (at least);³ then, in the early fall, he withdrew his troops to Alesia, a major stronghold of the Mandubii (Alesiam, quod est oppidum Mandubiorum, 7.68.1); on the verge of encirclement by Caesar's troops, siegeworks and fortifications, he dispatched his cavalry to request from his Gallic allies additional troops, to arrive within thirty days, which is when supplies would run out. It is then—the deadline passed, ‘all grain consumed’ (consumpto omni frumento, 77.1), succour still out of sight—that a man ‘of the highest lineage amongst the Arverni and regarded as of great authority’ (summo in Aruernis ortus loco et magnae habitus auctoritatis, 77.3) rises to address his beleaguered fellow Gauls: appealing to their uirtus, recalling their ancestors’ savage endurance, he suggests euphemistically that they too subsist on human flesh rather than sortie or surrender (eorum corporibus qui aetate ad bellum inutiles uidebantur uitam tolerauerunt neque se hostibus tradiderunt, 77.12); rapacious Rome, he concludes, knew but one condition for other peoples: perpetua seruitus (77.16).

Critognatus’ speech, rousing and unsettling and the longest by far in all of the Gallic War, has long been recognized as pulcherrimum Caesarianae eloquentiae monumentum, as Philippe Fabia phrased it about one hundred and thirty years ago;⁴ opinions differ, however, on whether any speech was delivered at all: as recently as 2017 Kurt Raaflaub asserted that ‘it [was] hardly completely fictitious. Caesar probably collected information from captives and some of the leaders who surrendered in the end.’⁵ Regardless, Caesar's inclusion of Critognatus’ fiery criticism of Rome has met with surprise amongst his critics,⁶ as has the taut tension between, on the one hand, the speaker's elevated language and dignified notions of true virtue, freedom and respect of one's ancestors and, on the other hand, the crude cannibalistic proposal. It is, Sherwin-White summarized it memorably, as though ‘[w]e are bidden admire Gauls for their resolution, and at the same time we are meant to shudder at the darker side of barbarism.’⁷ The following observations are not intended to resolve these issues; they will, however, cast on them a wholly different and lighter light.

This light radiates through and (mostly) from Caesar's atypically emphatic preamble: non praetereunda oratio Critognati uidetur propter eius singularem et nefariam crudelitatem (‘it is impossible, clearly, to pass over Critognatus’ speech, given its singular and abominable cruelty’, 77.2). The ponderous pentasyllable, tellingly saved up until the end for emphasis, is—as is well known—doubly noteworthy:⁸ it appears no more than twice within all of the Gallic War; and it is highlighted as being the very reason for the inclusion of the entire speech.⁹ Its choice is, then, choicely unfortunate: crudelis hoc crudus, quem Graeci ὠμόν appellant per translationem, quasi non coctus nec esui habilis (‘cruel, meaning crude, which the Greeks translate as ὠμός, as in uncooked and inedible’, Isid. Etym. 10.48).¹⁰ The etymology is not, as far as I know, attested before Isidore; and it does not matter much that it passes modern muster (as Caesar's contemporaries may well have entertained their own etymology, as is so often the case: see below).¹¹ There are, however, some more contemporary and revealing synonymous uses of crudelis, including crudus;¹² and it may well be the association of ‘raw meat’ that accounts for the frequent syntagms of crudelitas with alere, cruenta, insatiabilis, pascere, satiare, or saturare (especially when blood is explicitly mentioned nearby).¹³ A different kind of support would seem to come from Polybius when he reports how the Carthaginians had discussed the question of short supplies ‘repeatedly during council’ (πλεονάκις ἐν τῷ συνεδρίῳ); a companion of Hannibal's, Monomachus, on one occasion ‘expressed the opinion’ (ἀποφήνασθαι γνώμην) that it would be necessary ‘to teach the troops to eat humans’ (διδάξαι … τὰς δυνάμεις ἀνθρωποφαγεῖν). Hannibal found the proposal bold and pragmatic but could not embrace it. Polybius concludes, in as much an authorial voice as Caesar: τούτου δὲ τἀνδρὸς εἶναί φασιν ἔργα καὶ τὰ κατὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν εἰς Ἀννίβαν ἀναφερόμενα περὶ τῆς ὠμότητος, οὐχ ἧττον δὲ καὶ τῶν περιστάσεων (‘to this man, they say, belong the acts in Italy attributed to Hannibal in regard to his cruelty, and to circumstances no less’, 9.24.5–8). But, of course, Polybius’ similar play on ὠμότης—both ‘crudeness’ and ‘cruelty’ (LSJ s.v.)—in another cannibalistic context qualifies as support only if we accept that Caesar had Polybius in mind.¹⁴ So the truest evidence that Caesar had blood on his words, that he used the etymology's ‘egregious narrative realism’ consciously, intentionally and effectively, lies in the cluster of etymological and etymologizing play to which it belongs:¹⁵ so when Critognatus expresses his concern for the Gauls’ propinqui consanguineique, an unparalleled iunctura wherein consanguineus, a ‘word of poetic origin’, is both (strictly speaking) superfluous and inviting of most unfortunate associations once more (especially in light of the association of crudelitas with sanguis as detailed in n. 13).¹⁶ There are, in fact, a total of six resonant instances: crudelitas, nefarius, oratio, consanguineus, Mandubii and, yes, Critognatus. It seems virtually inconceivable that such a density came of chance; let alone that it would have escaped the ear of a linguist such as Caesar.¹⁷

Of the two attributes that vivify crudelitas, one comes with connotations all too fitting according to an alleged contemporary etymology: nefarius, ut Varro aestimat, non dignus farre, quo primo cibi genere uita hominum sustinebatur (‘nefarius [is], according to Varro, [derived from] not being worthy of barley, which was the kind of food that in the early days sustained human life’, Isid. Diff. 1.423, Etym. 10.188).¹⁸ Caesar's contemporary readers would have been all the more likely to associate far, if in its more general sense of ‘grain’ (for example Verg. G. 1.73 flaua farra; cf. Vitr. De arch. 10.5.2 subministrat molis frumentum et eadem uersatione subigitur farina), as they had just been reminded that ‘all the grain had been used up’ (consumpto omni frumento, 77.1); Critognatus’ audience was literally barred from cereals.¹⁹

The etymological connotation of oratio, meanwhile, is all too well known: oro ab ore et perorat et exorat et oratio et orator et osculum dictum (‘I ask is derived from mouth and [so is] he begs and he implores and speech and speaker and kiss’, Varro, Ling. 6.96); it would not register under normal circumstances, surely, except here it is ‘awoken’ by its vicinity to similarly minded words, including the two outstanding.²⁰ First, the Mandubii: introduced as the inhabitants of Alesia (Alesiam, quod est oppidum Mandubiorum, 7.68.1), they contribute, voluntarily or involuntarily, to Vercingetorix’s efforts to secure nourishment for thirty days, as ‘a great number of [cattle] had been gathered by [or: wrested from] them’ (pecus, cuius magna erat copia a Mandubiis compulsa, 7.71.7). The last we hear of them is that they were forced to leave Alesia when supplies had run out, and Critognatus’ proposal had failed to carry; but Caesar held them at the Roman fortification and denied them food and shelter (Mandubii, qui eos oppido receperant, cum liberis atque uxoribus exire coguntur. hi, cum ad munitiones Romanorum accessissent, flentes omnibus precibus orabant ut se in seruitutem receptos cibo iuuarent. at Caesar dispositis in uallo custodibus recipi prohibebat, 7.78.3). An elusive tribe, they are attested nowhere else but once in Strabo, who almost certainly copied them from the Bellum Gallicum.²¹ But their name's vibrant strands seamlessly blend in with the rest of Caesar's canvas: it is not only, as Christina Kraus has pointed out to me, that manducare, ‘to chew, to eat’ (OLD 1, 2), would spring to a Roman's mind rather naturally in this context; but also that Manducus, ‘Gnasher’, was a gluttonous stock character of the famously popular fabula Atellana whose masks featured sizeable jaws with ‘enormous chattering teeth’.²²

That stock character, along with others, found a second home in Plautus’ fabula palliata where it caused the Parasite—a stock character of Greek New Comedy—to take on a more Roman complexion and to be defined primarily by hunger.²³ Gelasimus boils this down beautifully, when he ventures that hunger must have been his mother, as never since his birth has he ever felt full (famem ego fuisse suspicor matrem mihi, | nam postquam natus sum, satur numquam fui, Stich. 155–6). Elsewhere, the parasite Saturio reproaches Toxilus, who had welcomed his opportune arrival (O Saturio, opportune aduenisti mihi), with a pointed quip on his name: nam essurio uenio, non aduenio saturio (‘For it is Mr Starvurio who arrives, not Mr Sat(ed)urio’, Persa 101–3).²⁴ Such wordplay is common, of course, but particularly noticeably developed in the famous passage in the Captiui (158–65): the parasite Ergasilus, barely more than ‘skin and bones’ (ossa atque pellis sum, 135), complains about the absence of Philopolemus, ‘since [thereby] the companies of banqueteers have now been disbanded’ (quia nunc remissus est edendi exercitus, 153).²⁵ Since the latter's capture, he continues, ‘everyone has shirked this “assignment”’ (fugitant omnes hanc prouinciam, 156); Philopolemus’ father is not surprised (158–65 [translation by Wolfgang de Melo]):

non pol mirandum est fugitare hanc prouinciam.

multis et multigeneribus opus est tibi

militibus: primumdum opus est Pistorensibus;

eorum sunt aliquot genera Pistorensium:

opus Panicis est, opus Placentinis quoque;

opus Turdetanis, opust Ficedulensibus;

iam maritumi omnes milites opus sunt tibi.

Well, it's not strange that they've been shying away from this task. You need many soldiers of different kinds: first you need the ones from Bakerville. There are several types of soldiers from Bakerville: you need those from Breading and you also need those from the Cake District. You need soldiers from Thrushia and you need soldiers from Puerto Fico. Then you also need all the soldiers from the coast.

Every location is chosen because its name allows for the apt association of food: Pistorium is a town in Etruria, pistor ‘a pounder of far, (subsequently) a … miller/baker’ (OLD); the Panici may evoke the Punici or refer to the town Panna in Samnium—it certainly puns on panis, ‘bread’; the Placentini inhabit Placentia and pun on placenta, ‘a kind of flat cake’ (OLD); turdus is the ‘thrush’, just as the Turdetani are a Spanish tribe; and while the location hidden in the Ficedulenses has not been established, their name puns on ficedula, ‘a small bird esteemed a delicacy …, beccafico’ (OLD).²⁶ In light of these (and many other) passages, it is easy to see why Horace would single out the hungry parasite as one of the memorable parts in Plautus’ œuvre (Epist. 2.1.173): aspice, Plautus, … | quantus sit Dossennus edacibus in parasitis, which Brink translates: ‘[look …] how much of a (primitive Atellan) Dossennus Plautus is among (that is, when he represents) gluttonous spongers’.²⁷ In identifying this part, Horace associates Plautus with a(nother) ‘type figure of the Atellanae’, the sibling, perhaps even identical twin, of the Manducus mentioned above.²⁸

Given this prominence of the hungry part on the Roman stage and its embodiment by the stock character Manducus with his frightening mask—who in Rome would not associate the Mandubii in starving Alesia with the chomping Manduci? In fact, with such masks on the Alesian stage, who could challenge the wayward logic of Caesar's tale wherein the ever-hungry ‘Gnashers’ are singled out for expulsion from their (!) starving town? By the same token, their desperate plea to be helped with food (OLD iuuo 1) reads like a twisted gloss on their culinary cravings (cf. OLD iuuo 5 ‘to give pleasure to, delight’).

‘But wait! Who is coming our way? Oh why! It is Gnatho, the … parasite’ (sed quis hic est qui huc pergit? attat! hicquidemst parasitus Gnatho, Ter. Eun. 228). By now we know which way the wind is blowing, Crito(-)gnat(h)e! For Gnatho(n/s), as predestined by name (γνάθος, ‘jaw’), was in his role as an often gluttonous parasite just as much of a stock character as the Manducus.²⁹ In point of fact, Caesar's part has a nonce-name that befits the context all too well—and twice over to boot.³⁰ Firstly, its Greek constituents suggest ‘high-born’, comprising both κριτός, ‘chosen, choice’, and *γνητος, ‘born’ (γενέσθαι, cf. γνήσιος), comparable to κασίγνητος, ‘brother’ (for example Hom. Od. 8.585); the name Mr ‘High-Born’ joins the company of many a Plautine name of similar significance, such as the just-mentioned Ergasilos, who may reasonably be identified as ‘Ἐργάσ-ιλος, “Mr Energetic” or “Mr Strenuous”’.³¹ In the case of Mr ‘High-Born’, his name bespeaks the high standing that Caesar attributes him in his description as summo in Aruernis ortus loco (77.3, translated above). This rather blatant gloss on the Greek name may serve as a signpost of sorts to alert the reader to the name's further linguistic dynamics at play in the context.³² For, secondly, Caesar's parasitic part suffers peculiar cravings, perhaps, but such as are all too understandable in his situation: for another ready association in this context is κριθή, ‘barleycorns’, which joins γνάθος, ‘jaw’, to identify this man who disappears as suddenly as he arrived without leaving a trace anywhere inside or out of the Gallic War as the ‘Barley-Muncher’—as such, too, he would fit right in with Plautus’ food-punning company. Once again, then, the wayward logic of Caesar's drama is not to be denied: for what is a ‘Barley-Muncher’ to do when he lacks barley (far) desperately? If, lastly, ‘Critognatus’ would have translated into Celtic as ‘fils de la terreur’, as has been suggested, it would have made the name all the more palatable to Caesar, who had learned some Celtic (at least).³³

But there are two further twists, one of which—as Richard Martin has suggested to me—mines the fine phonetic difference between Critognatus and Crithognathos, while allowing for both very different ‘translations’.³⁴ The inability to pronounce aspirated consonants in Greek was a stereotypical linguistic marker of the ‘barbarian’ as represented most famously by the Scythian archer in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae (for example 1120 ἐπτόνησα instead of ἐφθόνησα).³⁵ At Caesar's time, proper aspiration (uocalis aspiratio, Cic. Orat. 150) as a marker of sound education was de rigueur: rusticus fit sermo, inquit [sc. P. Nigidius Figulus], si adspires perperam (‘Speech becomes rustic, Nigidius says, if you aspirate wrongly’, Gell. NA 13.6.3); not for nothing is it parodied in Catullus’ taunt of Harrius (chommoda dicebat, 84.1).³⁶ With that ideologically charged (in)ability in mind, Critognatus, Mr ‘High-Born’, becomes Crithognathus, Mr ‘Barley-Muncher’, to Caesar's Roman audience who knew how to pronounce Greek properly and to listen for true names.

For the second—and final and possibly most ingenuous—twist, we first need to bring M. Caelius Rufus, Cicero's keenly witty, naughty protégé, into the conversation.³⁷ In his defence speech de ui in that cause célèbre of 56, he ‘called the rhetor’ L. Plotius Gallus [sic], who had penned the speech for Caelius’ accuser L. Sempronius Atratinus, ‘a barley-fed speaker; and he taunted him as puffy, trifling and sordid’ (hordearium eum rhetorem appellat, deridens ut inflatum ac leuem et sordidum, Cael. Or. frg. 21M, apud Suet. Gram. et rhet. 26).³⁸ The precise meaning of the sobriquet has not been established;³⁹ but there is agreement that Caelius reused what would appear to have been a well-known nickname (and criticism) of Dinarchus, the last of the canonical ten Attic orators, whom ‘some, by way of a joke, called rather disarmingly “the barley-fed Demosthenes”’ (τινὲς καὶ προσπαίζοντες αὐτὸν οὐκ ἀχαρίτως κρίθινον Δημοσθένην εἰρήκασι, Hermog. Id. 2.11).⁴⁰ What had earned him that nickname is not clear from Hermogenes’ sketch (nor from Longinus, who appears to report it as well);⁴¹ except that Dinarchus, while variously deficient, ‘wield[ed] a style that, generally speaking, seemed very Demosthenic, what with its harshness and vigour and vehemence’ (καθόλου τε ὁ ἀνὴρ ἐμφαινόμενον ἔχει πολὺ τὸ Δημοσθενικὸν διὰ τὸ τραχὺ καὶ γοργὸν καὶ σφοδρόν, Hermog. Id. 2.11). Nor has all doubt been lifted as to what precisely κρίθινος implies: is it the low-quality barley bread in opposition to the high-quality wheat bread, or coarse beer in contrast to fine wine?⁴² But Max Nelson has recently brought the Caelius fragment more forcefully into the debate about the ‘barley-fed Demosthenes’, observing that all three Roman adjectives (inflatum ac leuem et sordidum) ‘can describe barley bread which is insubstantial, not very nourishing, and grainy; but they also can be suitably applied to an orator who is bombastic, ineffectual, and base. It is less plausible for these words to refer to beer instead’.

What, then, emerges from all of this for the Caesarean ‘Barley-Muncher’, first of all? Quite probably greater name recognition amongst his Roman audience (if Caelius’ apparently casual use is anything to go by)—but not, of course, of the good sort: for anyone familiar with the derogatory rhetorical use of κρίθινος/hordearius in reference to a speaker, a speaker by the name of Crit(h)ognat(h)us is at a predetermined disadvantage (much as was Verres, say, in his way);⁴³ and he is hardly to be taken all that seriously. This may well have dulled the sting of his critique of Rome. Second, and now regarding the precise significance of κρίθινος/hordearius in the rhetorical context: part of Caesar's joke consists in evoking the metaphorical κρίθινος/hordearius in a scene defined by the actual absence of literal cereals. Given the significance of food (rather than drink) in this episode, the joke works better if the notion implied by the derogatory term is one of bread; then again, even if beer as opposed to vine is the pejorative association, what better location could be imagined for its use than the land of the drinkers of beer (Posidonius, fr. 67 E–K)?⁴⁴

This leaves us with a town of ever-hungry Gnashers, where all grain supplies had been consumed, and starvation was suffered by all, when the low-grade speaker Mr ‘Barley-Muncher’, known to his own as Mr ‘High-Born’, broached his crude proposal. This leaves us with Caesar dicti studiosus, who fashions shades across the languages as nimbly and facetiously as Nabokov, thus contributing an especial instance to the strong tradition of etymologizing and punning on names in historiography (broadly conceived), and an audience back in Rome both more varied and more ‘learned’ than has often been assumed.⁴⁵

Last but not least, it leaves us with a question: if Critognatus is no more and no less than the bloodless and ultimately comical function of Caesar's narrative, why, then, did the latter feel the need, at this climactic moment, to evoke and revoke him?⁴⁶