Fifth-Century Athenian and Augustan Images of the Barbarian Other [Footnotes]

Philip Hardie[1]

[1] An earlier version of this paper was delivered at a panel on 'Athens and Augustan Rome' at the 125th Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association in Washington, in December 1993.

[2] Inventing the barbarian. Greek self-definition through tragedy (Oxford 1989).

[3] Athenian models do not figure to any extent in Y. A. Dauge's Le barbare. Recherches sur la conception romaine de la barbarie et de la civilisation (coll. Latomus 176, Brussels 1981): pp. 10-13 strive to separate the experience of the two peoples. An emphasis on the cosmopolitan aspects of Roman history and citizenship policy may have led to an underestimation of the role of the idea of the Barbarian in constructing the Roman sense of national identity: cf. K. Christ 'Römer und Barbaren in der hohen Kaiserzeit', Saeculum 10 (1959) 273-88; N. I. Herescu 'Les constantes de l'humanitas Romana', RCCM 2 (1960) 258-77.

[4] On the temptation for Roman generals and emperors to conceive of themselves as heirs to Alexander in his war against the Persians see e.g. N. Hannestad Roman art and imperial policy (Aarhus 1986) 54.

[5] But see now the arguments against the substantial existence of Hellenistic epic in A. Cameron Callimachus and his critics (Princeton 1995) ch. 10.

[6] P. R. Hardie 'Imago mundi: cosmological and ideological aspects of the Shield of Achilles', JHS 105 (1985) 11-31.

[7] P. R. Hardie Virgil's Aeneid: cosmos and imperium (Oxford 1986) 99, noting also the possibility of an allusion to the Parthenos shield in the description at Aen. 2.227 of the twin serpents nestling under the shield of the Trojan Minerva (following the suggestion of E. Petersen Die Kunst des Pheidias (Berlin 1873) 338); cf. also S. J. Harrison 'Vergil and the cult of Athena', Hermes 115 (1987) 124-5.

[8] 'Vergil and Pheidias: the shield of Aeneas and of Athene Parthenos', Vergilius 37 (1991) 22-30. C. Picard 'Virgile et l'Ilioupersis du Parthénon', RÉL 14 (1936) 269-71 suggests that the scenes of the Trojan War in the Carthaginian temple of Juno in Aen. 1 may allude to the Parthenon metopes of the same subject.

[9] See R. M. Schneider Bunte Barbaren. Orientalstatuen aus farbigem Marmor in der römischen Repräsentationskunst (Worms 1986) 64-7; G. Bowersock in E. Segal Caesar Augustus. Seven aspects (Oxford 1984) 174-5. Cf. also A. Kuttner Dynasty and empire in the age of Augustus. The case of the Boscoreale cups (Berkeley, etc. 1995) 83 suggesting that the figures of Parthian captives in the Basilica Aemilia allude to the Persian Porch in Sparta, and also referring to Persian caryatids at the Villa Farnesina.

[10] Virgil: Aeneid XI (Cambridge 1991) 22 n. 58.

[11] In general see P. Devambez s.v. 'Amazones' in LIMC I.1 (Zurich and Munich 1981). In the Hellenistic period the use of the Amazon is complicated by the fact that a number of Greek cities in Asia Minor claim an Amazon as their founder; an example of the Athenian-type use of the Amazon as a figure of the enemy is provided by the Attalid dedication on the Athenian acropolis. On the possible use of Amazonomachy as image of Augustan victory see E. La Rocca Amazzonomachia: le sculture frontali del tempio di Apollo Sosiano (Rome 1985) (viewed sceptically by R. A. Gurval Actium and Augustus (Ann Arbor 1995) 116 n. 73); J. Fink 'Amazonenkämpfe auf einer Reliefbasis in Nikopolis', ÖJh 47 (1964/65) 70-92; E. Simon 'Zur Bedeutung des Greifen in der Kunst der Kaiserzeit', Latomus 21 (1962) 749-80 (griffins fighting Amazons interpreted as Apollonian defeat of barbarians).

[12] See G. S. West 'Chloreus and Camilla' Vergilius 31 (1985) 22-9.

[13] Hall (1989) 201 ff. 'The polarity deconstructed', discussing inter alia the use of barbarian stereotypes in the depiction of the perversion of the 'natural' order in the interaction of the Aeschylean Clytemnestra and Agamemnon.

[14] For an interesting case-study of the way in which criticism of the 'bad emperor' could be articulated through an Orientalism see T. Woodman 'Nero's alien capital', in T. Woodman and J. Powell (edd.) Author and audience in Latin literature (Cambridge 1992) 173-88.

[15] M. Wyke 'Augustan Cleopatras: female power and poetic authority', in A. Powell (ed.) Roman poetry and propaganda in the age of Augustus (Bristol 1992) 98-140, at 117 for some reflections on why the analogy between Cleopatra and Amazon is never made totally explicit.

[16] With Hor. C. 1.37.17-18 adurgens, accipiter uelut | mollis columbas (of Caesar) cf. Aen. 11.721-2 quam facile accipiter saxo sacer ales ab alto | consequitur pennis sublimem in nube columbam (Camilla and Aunus).

[17] Possibly as dithyramb: cf. A. Hardie 'Horace Odes 1.37 and Pindar Dithyramb 2', PLLS 1 (1977) 113-40. If Hardie is correct, Odes 1.37 is substantially modelled on a fifth-, rather than a sixth-, century Greek model, although not one written for an Athenian patron.

[18] See Nisbet-Hubbard ad loc.

[19] Cf. P. G. Toohey 'A note on Horace Odes 1.38', Maia 32 (1980) 171-4; G. B. Nussbaum 'A study of Odes 1.37 and 38', Arethusa 4 (1971) 91-7, pointing to the shared 'preoccupation with, and rejection of, the Oriental as exotic and degenerate', the shared drinking theme, and the contrast between the 'utterly private, intimate and dateless world' of 1.38, and the 'public, historic world of 37'.

[20] OLD s.v. apparatus 3a. The sense 'rhetorical devices, embellishments' (OLD s.v. 3b) is in line with a metapoetic reading of C. 1.38.

[21] Hor. C. 1.2.21, 50; 1.21.14; 2.1.31; 2.2.17; 3.3.42; 3.5.3; 4.14.41. Cf. A. Y. Campbell Horace (London 1924) 110 'It would scarcely be possible to make too much of ... the juxtaposition of the two concluding poems of Book I. Impotence, effeminacy ... the qualities ... of Cleopatra whose defeat he celebrates in the 37th; in the 38th he denounces "Persian" ... magnificence ... This is ... the reason for the prominence .... assigned in many a passage of the Odes to anti-Parthian campaign projects; for Horace they are what he almost always calls them, "Medes" or "Persians", and all that the name involves must be subdued.'

[22] Cf. M. J. H. van der Weiden The Dithyrambs of Pindar. Introduction, Text and Commentary (Amsterdam 1991) 63-4; J. K. Newman 'Pindar and Callimachus', ICS 10 (1985) 169-89, at 181. philyra: Plin. Nat. 19.31 iunco Graecos ad funes usos nomini credamus quo herbam eam appellant [i.e. scoi'no"], postea palmarum foliis philuraque manifestum est. It is perhaps relevant that philyra in both Greek and Latin may be used of a writing material.

[23] C. Dilthey Analecta Callimachea (Bonn 1865) 25-6 takes the 'sacred spring' of Hy. Apoll. 112 to refer to the spring Callirhoe at Eleusis, which would then give an Oriental/Attic opposition, but F. Williams ad loc. regards this as 'not a necessary inference'. On Callimachus' antiquarian interest in things Attic see A. S. Hollis 'Attica in Hellenistic poetry', ZPE 93 (1992) 1-15.

[24] Cicero's Philippics and their Demosthenic model: the rhetoric of crisis (Chapel Hill 1983) 20; 170 'Demosthenes surely was inspired by the model of Pericles and saw the conflict with Philip in terms similar to that which had taken place earlier between Athens and the Persian Empire.'

[25] For some preliminary considerations see P. R. Hardie 'The Aeneid and the Oresteia', PVS 20 (1991) 29-45.

[26] The power of images in the age of Augustus (transl. A. Shapiro, Ann Arbor 1988), esp. 57-65, 245-63.