A Smattering of Verse – Reading Poetic Value in the <I>Historia Augusta</I>

Abstract

Late Roman education followed a long Roman tradition as it grounded its elites’ first steps into literary culture on Vergil and established a set of cultural and aesthetic values for them to carry throughout adult life (Kaster, Guardians of Language [1988]). Prose texts’ use of poetry economically activated these standards in readers’ minds (e.g., MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry [1998]). In its evaluation of the succession of Roman emperors against the background of Roman cultural heritage, projected across a miscellaneous canvas of fact, truth, accuracy, and significance (congeries, Syme, Emperors and Biography [1971]; Barnes, The Sources of the Historia Augusta [1978]; synthesis, e.g., Long, Syll.Cl. 2002), the Historia Augusta too capitalizes on the resources of Roman verse. Its proceedings have been little studied (e.g., Baldwin, BICS 1978); this paper will address the deficit by examining how the biographies appropriate poetic value.Vergil of course lays the foundation. Emperors’ tastes betoken their intellectual character (e.g., V.Hadr. 16.6, V.Ael. 5.9). Lines of the Aeneid take on oracular significance, whether consulted by the sortes Vergilianae (e.g., V.Hadr. 2.8) or attributed to a prophetic divinity (V.Alex.Sev. 4.6). Quotation confers an unanswerable authority, especially when the quoters call on ideals of Roman destiny (e.g., V.Macrin. 12.7, V.Diad. 8.7; cf. Den Hengst in Romane memento, ed. Rees [2004]). The classic breathes majesty.Several of the biographies’ emperors compose poetry, but fluency is not automatically admired (e.g., V.Ael. 5.2, cf. Quadr.Tyr. 7.4). Analysis must sound the judgments the text invokes. Scholarly attention has been paid to Hadrian’s animula vagula blandula (V.Hadr. 25.9; Cameron, HSCP 1980; Birley, Laverna 1994). An echo of Ennius recommends an emendation in the verse; Peter emended the Historia Augusta’s comment, rendering it snarkily dismissive (Teubner edition 1865; 1884), but the transmitted text better matches the biography’s ambivalence about Hadrian’s literary acumen. The transfer of diminutive formations from the soul to its destination, and the slowing of the syllables as the lines progress, intelligently sharpen the short poem’s poignancy. Hadrian was clever.Hadrian’s riposte to Florus neatly exemplifies the emperor’s competitiveness (V.Hadr. 16.3-4, cf. 15.10). Comparably, Macrinus replies in couplets to a critical poem; he is deemed to have disgraced himself, presumably by a false quantity (V.Macrin. 11.3-7; cf. Holmes, CQ 2007). The biographies utilize technical standards of Latinity, assuming readers can recognize them. In other examples, alleged translations take verbal form out of consideration, leaving content alone to suffer disparagement (e.g., V.Pesc. 12.6). The showiness of poeticized speech, however, underscores the biographies’ criticism.