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 | Articles & Reviews Archive 2004
| Recent Scholarship on the Greek Novel and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative | Syme's Petronius | Arbiter of What? | Pontia's Pilates | Nachleben of Petronius | Oclopetam | Summary of Akihito Wantanabe, Hypothoos the Lover, Bandit, and Friend: a Study on Elite Masculinity in the Novel | Recent Scholarship on the Greek Novel and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative by Ronald Hock Work progresses on two fronts in the use of the Greek novel for situating and analyzing early Christian and Jewish narratives. One front is organizational, as a slight but significant change in the nomenclature of the principal organization for promoting such work shows. The Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative Group of the Society of the Biblical Literature (SBL) has been upgraded, thanks to the efforts of chairperson Judith Perkins, to the Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Literature Section, a change that signifies a move from the temporary status of a Group (one six year term, with one extension of six years) to a permanent program unit within the SBL system. The program for the 2004 SBL national meeting in San Antonio is to have one open session and a second one organized around the issues of the novel and social reality. The second front, scholarship, progresses in a number of ways. The Group ended its second six year term at the SBL meeting in Atlanta in November 2003 with two sessions. The theme of the first session was Religion and Ancient Narrative and included the following papers:
The second session had the theme Novel Studies in the Testaments: New, Old, and Apocryphal and included these papers:
With the end of the Group's second term the Steering Committee decided to solicit papers from the last six years to form a volume of essays as a way of making the work of the Group more widely available and to match the volume from the Group's first six years (Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative [eds. R. F. Hock, B. Chance, and J. Perkins; Symposium Series 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998]). The editorial committee for the second volume consists of Judith Perkins, Jo-Ann Brant, and Chris Shay. The committee has selected thirteen papers for the volume, still untitled, but divided into three sections: Section 1: Graeco-Roman Narrative
Section 2: Jewish Narrative
Section 3: Christian Narrative
Another collection of essays on the novels and the New Testament appeared in a special issue of the journal Perspectives in Religious Studies, vol. 29, no. 1, Spring 2002 (although the issue did not appear until 2003). Baylor University's graduate New Testament colloquium for 1999-2000, taught by Charles H. Talbert, investigated the Greek novels one semester and their use in analyzing the New Testament the following semester. Four papers from that colloquium are included in this issue, along with my presidential address at the SBL's Pacific Coast regional meeting in 2001 (since I had been invited to participate in one of the colloquium's sessions). The articles are:
Several other books and articles round out this survey and indicate the variety and vitality of scholarship in this area:
Also forthcoming in 2004 is Jo-Ann Brant's Drama and Dialogue: Tragic Conventions in the Fourth Gospel, from Hendrickson Publishers. A book announced in my previous Survey has now appeared, namely Lawrence M. Wills's Ancient Jewish Novels: An Anthology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), in which he provides brief introductions to and new translations of thirteen Jewish novels, historical novels, and novelistic testaments. Finally, the use of the Greek novels is central to the argument of the following article: Ronald F. Hock, "The Parable of the Foolish Rich Man (Luke 12:16-20) and Graeco-Roman Conventions of Thought and Behavior," in Early Christianity and Classical Culture: Comparative Studies in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe (J. Fitzgerald, T. Olbricht, and L. M. White; Supplements to Novum Testamentum 110; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003) 181-96. by Barry Baldwin I remember chatting with Sir Ronald in the aftermath of my "Seneca and Petronius" talk delivered to the Petronian segment of the 1979 Boston APA Meeting, subsequently published in Acta Classica 24 (1981) 133-40 = Studies on Greek and Roman History and Literature (Amsterdam 1985) 111-18. Affable as ever, the great man disposed of the pair with a wave of the hand and the dismissive "they were just courtiers." So far as I recall, Syme never wrote specifically on Petronius (no sign in his collected Roman Papers), and did not share Mommsen's predilection for him, as reported in Wilamowitz' Erinnerungen 1884-1914 (Leipzig 1929; English tr. G.C. Richards, London 1930). But there are various remarks dispersed across his Tacitus (Oxford 1958), worth gathering if only because they are not always given their due. 336, with n5: "Tacitus could not mention Seneca's pasquinade on Divus Claudius. That was alien to the dignity of history. Likewise the Satiricon." Regarding the imperial pumpkinification (perhaps to be titled Gourd Heavens?), I cling to my lonely view ("Executions under Claudius: Seneca's Ludus de Morte Claudii," Phoenix 18 (1964) 39-48 = SGRHL, 119-28) that what we have is not from the pen of the Stoic hypocrite. Syme's view of the Satyricon-less Tacitean obituary contradicts the surprise of Furneaux' "It is remarkable that Tacitus gives him no credit for any literary talent." This issue was rather burked by K.F.C. Rose, The Date & Author of the Satyricon (Leiden 1971), in which seminal work Syme frequently crops up in footnotes but not the bibliography where space was found for more marginal titles. Syme was attracted to the notion of H. Bogner, "Petronius bei Tacitus," Hermes 76 (1941) 223-24, that speciem simplicitatis in the Tacitean necrology is meant to be recognised as an echo of Petronius' novae simplicitatis opus (132.15), ignoring the instant rebuttal of Bogner by E. Bickel, "Petronius' simplicitatis bei Tacitus," RhM 90 (1941) 269-70. Rose (45), adducing Bickel, ignoring Syme, was cool to the idea. So am I. This sense of simplicitas is elsewhere in the Latin of Tacitus' time - look no further than Martial's preface to his first book. E. Courtney's A Companion to Petronius (Oxford 2001) begs indulgence for unacknowledged furta of fact and phrase. Here is one (7): "Mention of a disreputable work would consort ill with the dignity of the historian;" he also takes over the simplicitas issue (200) without mention of Syme or Bogner. 387 n6: "The subtle Petronius, who may be T. Petronius Niger, suff. c. 62." Courtney (6-7) doubts the identification because no cognomen is given in Tacitus, "implying that he had none," an argument anticipated by G. Bagnani, Arbiter of Elegance (Toronto 1954) 49 n12, and one whose frailty was ably demonstrated by Rose (51-55): judging by his silence, this matter did not trouble Furneaux. 538, with n6: Paraphrasing the Tacitean obituary, with nothing about the Satyricon, Syme observes "Petronius is a pendant and contrast to the equally stylised exit of Seneca," also tracing the doubts over his praenomen back to Nipperdey and characterising (without examples) the necrology as Sallustian. All of this recurs in Courtney (6). Furneaux made the Sallustian point, re the exordial de Petronio pauca supra repetenda sunt. It is now worth appending R.W. Garson, "Observations on the Death Scenes in Tacitus' Annals," Prudentia 6 (1974) 28: "Tacitus makes a man's death consonant with his life" - citing Petronius as paradigm. 723 & 732: the noun profligator is "all but unique;" "saved from being unique by Ennodius, Dictiones 18.5," crediting this information to the TLL Directorate. These are also the only two references in Lewis & Short; OLD, which knows nothing of post-AD 200 Latinity, cites only the Tacitean one. In fine, these are post-Syme, but since Courtney lacks them (the last was too late for him), I subjoin R. Martin, "Quelques remarques concernant la date du Satyricon," REL 53 (1975) 182-224, also his Le Satyricon de Pétrone (Paris 1999), along with the rebuttal by A. Daviault, "Est-il encore possible de remettre en question la datation néronienne du Satyricon de Pétrone?" Phoenix 55 (2001) 327-42. by Barry Baldwin Arbiter WAS a possible cognomen, but exceedingly rare. Furneaux came up with a lone example, in a hard-to-verify epigraphic source. K.F.C. Rose, The Date and Author of the Satyricon (Leiden 1971) 44, in Emeril style kicked this up a couple of notches to three: two slaves and a common soldier. No doubt such commoners earned so posh a name from some special talents on their individual parts. But I agree with Furneaux, Rose, et hoc genus omne that Tacitus' phraseology (Ann. 16.18.4) does not amount to a formal cognomen. In modern terms, one is drawn to such jazz luminaries as "Count" Basie and "Duke" Ellington. The appellation might be Tacitus' own; cf. Syme, Tacitus (Oxford 1958) 338 n5, followed by Rose (38). P. Corbett, Petronius (New York 1970) 15, suggests it was jestingly bestowed by Nero. Furneaux balanced between two now neglected stools: either Jacob's notion that it was a self-conferred accolade, or Ramsay's suspicion that it was smuggled into the text by "some grammarian who wished to mark the identity of the author with the person described by Tacitus." Whatever its provenance, I have often wondered over years of Petronian ponderings just what this elegant arbitration amounted to? On Tacitus' own evidence (16.20), our man played no part in the imperial boudoir frolics: his own choice? excluded by others? Yet, he was close (perfamiliaris - what degree of propinquity is thereby implied?) to the orgiastic Silia, a lady little known to us, but haud ignota in her time and opportunity for the historian of a good pun (Silia ... non siluisset). Before his obituary, this Petronius is nowhere else in the Neronian books. It is Tigellinus' orchestrated nocturnal "rave" (15.37 - did HE apply to the Arbiter for tips on how to throw a party?) that is Tacitus' paradigm (ut exemplum referam - no sign of elegantia or any cognates). Before that, it was ex-cobbler, hunchback Vatinius' Beneventum games (15.34); it is worth remarking that in Tacitus' narratives he, like Petronius, adsumptus est by the emperor. The Arbiter is not directly connected with those who allegedly wrote or polished up the royal verses (14.16), a task for which he, if the novelist-poet, was surely supremely fitted. And while gaining anecdotal space in Pliny and Plutarch - Titus Petronius, that is - neither Arbiter or any other Petronius makes it to the pages of Suetonius, apart from "the most learned and venerable" Petronius Aristocrates of Magnesia whom Persius met and admired at the house of Cornutus. Who exactly was this worthy? Doctissimus would suit an Arbiter, hardly sanctissimus. The anecdotal T. Petronius does not impress as a connoisseur of elegance. Owning and smashing an expensive fluospar dipper is no less vulgarian than Nero's even more costly one and his own breaking of precious goblets at table (Suetonius, Nero 47.1). Why, incidentally, is this Plinian tale (NH 37.7.20) not in Tacitus? Reproaching the prodigal emperor for his "sordid stinginess" was, according to Plutarch (Mor. 60e), the act of a flatterer, not all that dissimilar from the scurra Vatinius with his "I hate you, Nero, because you are a senator" (Dio Cassius, 63.15.1). This Petronius cuts a less attractive figure than the maverick consul Vestinus with his acre ingenium and asperae facetiae (Ann. 15.52.4; 15.68.4). Dum nihil amoenum et molle adfluentia putat nisi quod ei Petronius adprobavisset - Tacitus' formulation of the Arbiter's sway. Just what does this boil down to? Modern translations oscillate between Furneaux' "charming or luxurious," the terse "smart and elegant" of Grant's Penguin and Corbett's prolix "pleasing sensuality required by luxurious living." Amoenum is impossible to pin down, though it is notable that at Ann. 15.55.5 Scaevinus, the alleged crony of Petronius, is made to speak of his own vitam amoenam (and liberales semper epulas); the word is never used in the Satyricon. Molle is likewise too versatile to focus. Furneaux spent much of his note wondering what kind of ablative adfluentia is: causal or respect? Tacitus may be making a particular point with his choice of this noun - "classical but not common," Syme, Tacitus 732; Nepos, Atticus 13.5, on his subject's household management is worth adducing: munditiam non adfluentiam affectabat. When all is said and done, the scope of this Petronius' arbitrations of elegance remains opaque - perhaps Tacitus intended it thus, or had no choice through lack of information. By way of postscript, Lucan. In the Suetonian Life, he goes from membership of Nero's cohors amicorum to violent personal hostility, thanks to their literary rivalries, ridiculing the imperial poetaster in a public lavatory and famoso carmine cum ipsum tum potentissimos amicorum gravissime proscidit. Was Petronius one of his targets? At all events, he would have been tickled to know that in the last sentence (Bonn, p. 257) of the demented notice of Nero in John Malalas' Chronicle - no mention of any Petronius, "during the time of his reign the most learned Lucan was great and renowned among the Romans." by Barry Baldwin In the version most commonly quoted, a scholiast on Juvenal 6.638 wrote: Publi Petroni filia, quem Nero convictum in crimine coniurationis damnavit. defuncto marito filios suos veneno necasse convicta cum largis se epulis onerasset et vino venis incisis saltans, quo maximo studio oblectabatur, extincta est. Heady stuff, the lady a mixture of Medea and the fairy tale girl who danced herself to death - "father-fixation, the Freudian might say, could scarcely go further," quips Peter Green in his Penguin translation, taking her to be Petronius the novelist's daughter, comparing her suicide to the one described by Tacitus. Likewise John Ferguson in his "MacMillan Red" (1979), using almost identical language. K.F.C. Rose, The Date and Author of the Satyricon (Leiden 1971) 54, was soberer, "might conceivably be the daughter of the Arbiter," a note of caution sounded long before in Friedlaender; a shame that dear old "2d a day" Mayor's sensibilities did not allow him to comment on this poem. Apart from the obvious matter of her father's praenomen, it should not be forgotten, as it tends to be in these romantic speculations, that there are two other, different scholia printed by Wessner: a) haec est Pontia (inquit Probus) Publii Petroni filia, quae defuncto Drymione marito filios suos occidit, sed convicta ut largo vino atque epulis se obruerat, incisis venis saltans, cuius rei studiosa fuerat, extincta est; b) haec fuit Publii Petronii filia. haec filios suos pecuniae causa occidit, ut eam adultero donaret. quae postea se ipsa pro(ce)dente largiter epulata incisis venis extincta est. Also, the P. Petronius condemned for conspiracy in the first version depends upon Lipsius' emendation quem convictum for the manuscript quam convictam. Nor can we be sure that any of this happened in Nero's reign, a possibility advanced by G. Bagnani, Arbiter of Elegance (Toronto 1954) 86-88, but he muddied his waters with some wild prosopography, hence his notion is overlooked or dismissed as "implausible" in E. Courtney's Commentary on Juvenal (London 1980) 346. Bagnani would have done better to note that Juvenal's scholiasts, like the satirist himself, sometimes (cf. Wessner's index) refer to Domitian by plain Nero. Apart from Juvenal, Pontia is otherwise mentioned not by Tacitus or Suetonius but Martial, thrice (2.34.6; 4.43.5; 6.75.3-4), for her child-poisoning and only that. It must thus remain a possibility that Pontia and her father belong to the last of the Flavians, not the last of the Julio-Claudians. Rose (47) thought the whole story "looks suspiciously like a fantasy based on the Juvenal passage." This sort of thing is never impossible with scholiasts, but Juvenal provides only the circumstance of the child-killing mum; if our commentator made up the rest, he had a lively and independent imagination. Were it fantasy, a link might rather be traced to the Tacitean obituary, given the obvious linguistic link of venis incisis/venas incisas, plus the common feature of exotic after-dinner suicide. But, how else could any Latin author express vein-cutting, and everything else must still come out of X the Unknown's brain. True or not - maternal infanticides if not death by auto-saltation stretch from Medea to Magda Goebbels. Whether this story has anything to do with Petronius Arbiter is anyone's guess, and Pontia's epiphany as his daughter in editions and translations of Juvenal is not fact but factoid. by Barry Baldwin "Personally I would sooner give a child a copy of Petronius Arbiter than Peter Pan" - George Orwell, "Bookshop Memories," Fortnightly (Nov. 1936) = Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell & Ian Jack (New York 1968). by Antonios E. Sakellariou This is another attempt to interpret the reading oclopetam of cod. H (Petr. Sat. 35.4). If oclopetam can be satisfactorily explained, all other readings of this passage (odopetam, lpt, odepotam, Memm.mr) should be ignored, because they are met in mss. more recent and less valid than cod. H. Only if the reading does not have a satisfactory meaning, we should pass to the various corrections suggested by scholars and philologists. The reading oclopetam: a) should mean an edible animal or a food; b) it should have to do with the eyes, because it is with one eye that the archer (sagittarius) aims at his target. The connection of the word oclopeta to the eyes is indisputable, as De Vreese proved, Petron 39 und die Astrologie, 82-3. So readings like otopetam < ôtopétê (and not ôtopetê´, cf. hypsipe´tês / hypsipetê´s , ouranopetê´s in LSJ) can not be easily accepted: the explanation odopetam < otopetam (cod. L and Goldastus) = a hare, is not satisfactory in my opinion, because a hare is presented later to the messmates, under the form of Pegasus (36.2); why should Trimalchio present to the guests another hare on the zodiac table (35.4), before the novelty of the hare-Pegasus? c) It is probable that oclopeta means an animal that is hunted with a bow by the hunter (= sagittarius), i.e. this reading points at a fowl or a wild beast. If so, it is not probable that oclopeta means a sea animal or a fish. The suggestions that oclopetam is a corrupted form instead of oculatam (Rose-Sullivan), or that oclopeta is the fish known as corvina negra (= corb, in English) are not satisfactorily enough, if there can be another explanation of the word oclopeta. d) Oclopeta means either qui petit oculos (Heraeus) or qui oculo petit (Baehrens). If we consider that all carnivorous animals petunt oculo, it is preferable to accept Heraeus' interpretation, and ask for the animals that like to eat other animal's eyes. According to Isidore of Seville (13.7,43): hic (= corvus) prior in cadaveribus oculos petit; but the raven is not edible. Another bird that likes to eat the eyes of other animals is the crow, cornix, according to the Ciceronian passage (Pro Murena, 25): ornicum oculos confixerit, says Cicero about the scribe Cn. Flavius, in a phrase that means "to give anyone a dose of his own medicine" (Cassell's NLD). But the crow also is not edible, like the pica (Mart. 3.60,8), a cheap game. M. Smith (Petr. Arb. Cena Trim., Oxford, 1975, ad loc.) observed that oclopeta corresponds to the Aristotelian ophthalmoboros, but stopped there. Aristotle (in his Historia Animalium, 617a8) speaks about two birds that are ophthalmoboroi: "This then is the heron's way of life. The so-called pôyx has a peculiarity compared to the other birds: it is the most given to eating its prey's eyes. It is at war with the harpê, for that has a similar way of life" (transl. by A. Peck in Loeb). We know that harpê is the milvus ater (Aelian. Anim. 2.47): "But the mountain kite pounces upon birds and pecks out their eyes" (transl. by A. Schofield in Loeb). It seems that harpê is a wild bird, not edible. But the heron, ardea cinerea, from the family of ardeidae (pôynx or pôyx or phôyx, see LSJ, sub vv.), is edible, when it is young; and according to Aristotle (vide supra) it is a bird malista ophthalmoboron. (The identification of pôyx with the grey heron is probable; see D'Arcy W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Birds, London2 1936, 102,310, and the editors and/or translators of Antoninus Liberalis: G. Mordenti, I. Cazzaniga, M. Papathomopoulos, ad loc.). Antoninus Liberalis, the mythographer, narrates the story of Boulis and Aigypios (5), according to Boios, Ornithogonia I: "Boulis became a heron (= pôynx) and Zeus ordained that she was to eat nothing that grew out of the ground, and instead to feed on the eyes of birds, fishes and snakes, since she had been about to put out the eyes of her son Aegypius. Timandre he turned into a tit. And henceforth these birds never appeared in the same spot" (transl. by F. Celoria, Routledge, 1992, p. 54). It is not probable that Trimalchio knew the myth of Aigypios. But he may have heard of a bird that likes to eat other animals' eyes, ophthalmoboron, oclopetam. Petronius at last would know the Greek word corresponding to oclopeta; and he may have used it regarding the foods on Trimalchio's zodiac table. summary by A. Watanabe This dissertation explores the link between the three attributes of Hippothoos in the Ephesiaka, that of the pederastic erastes, arch-bandit, and active friend. Previous studies have either dismissed this combination as a result of the author's literary incompetence or seen it as stages in a progress from less to more desirable novelistic male. I argue instead that for the classically oriented audience of the Second Sophistic the three qualities represented an alternate, yet equally elite masculinity as that of the heterosexual, non-violent, and generally passive heroes. Both in the novel and other later Greek writings, the love of boys is constantly defended by the use of classics. In the literature of this period there is one common criticism of pederasty from the elite male standpoint, that it does not contribute to the formation of a new family and the reproduction of patriarchy, but in the Ephesiaka a unique solution is offered by Hippothoos' adoption of his beloved as his son and legitimate heir. Hippothoos' actions as a leader of brigands can be defended by the example of Odysseus, and later Greek literature including the novel features a number of figures like him, who are of elite background, but precisely because of their outstanding desire and ability to maintain masculine dominance become arch-brigands. Friendship continues to be celebrated in the Second Sophistic, and allusions to mythical and classical pairs of friends are frequent both in the novel and elsewhere. Hippothoos thus personifies an alternate masculinity, with some attributes taken from literature produced under different times and social circumstances, yet both in origin and at the end of his adventures he is an elite male of prosperous means. I suggest that the favorable treatment given to Hippothoos in the fictitious world proceeds from the recognition that he embodies an unmistakably classical and elite masculinity coupled with the belief of the author and his ancient audience in the relevance of the Greek male in a changed world." |