BMCR 2009.07.02: Smith on Takacs, The Construction of Authority in Ancient Rome and Byzantium: The Rhetoric of Empire

Sarolta A. Taka/cs, The Construction of Authority in Ancient Rome and
Byzantium: The Rhetoric of Empire.  Cambridge/New York:  Cambridge
University Press, 2009.  Pp. xxiii, 167.  ISBN 9780521878654.  $80.00.


Reviewed by Steven D. Smith, Hofstra University
([email protected])
Word count:  1995 words
-------------------------------
To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-07-02.html
To comment on this review, see
http://www.bmcreview.org/2009/07/20090702.html
-------------------------------

Table of Contents
(http://www.cup.es/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521878654)

This is an ambitious book. In The Construction of Authority in Ancient
Rome and Byzantium: The Rhetoric of Empire, Sarolta Taka/cs defines the
transformations and continuity of imperial rhetoric from the early
Republican period until the reign of the Byzantine emperor Alexius I
Comnenus (r. 1081-1118), thereby defining as the scope of her study
more than 1300 years of Roman history. Just as ambitious as the book's
chronological scope is Taka/cs's decision to write this history of
imperial rhetoric within the space of 154 pages. One is reminded of
Cornelius Nepos, who according to Catullus dared omne aevum tribus
explicare cartis | doctis (1.6-7). Taka/cs's account of Roman imperial
rhetoric over such a vast period is a qualified success. Although
Taka/cs clearly defines her limited audience at the outset ("The reader
I have in mind is not the specialist but the person curious about the
formative power of political rhetoric" [xviii]) and although Taka/cs
manages to condense her subject within a readable narrative, there are
also some notable omissions, both of primary sources and of the
scholarly bibliography. Moreover her account of the Byzantine period is
less than satisfying.

Taka/cs's argument is clear: in its earliest manifestation, Roman
political authority was constructed according to a constellation of
traditional military and ethical values: virtus, disciplina, fides,
pietas, and self-sacrifice for the good of the state. With the
emergence of the imperial period, this constellation of traditional
virtues became focused around the figure of the pater patriae, and
Taka/cs traces the various continuities and ruptures in the rhetoric of
paternity from the reign of Augustus onward. When the rhetorical
fiction broke down during the reigns of emperors such as Nero,
Domitian, or Elagabalus, the expanse of the empire facilitated a
transference to the center of peripheral figures who were more adept at
employing Rome's traditional rhetoric of paternity to balance and keep
in check the interests of the military and the elite. Beginning with
the reign of Constantine I, Christian religious ideology is grafted
onto the imperial framework: the Father of the empire thus becomes
identified with the heavenly Father, and the role of the Emperor is to
enact and ensure the will of the Christian god on earth. Finally, with
the rise of the emperor Heraclius, the Roman Byzantine period saw the
church defining politics and eventually education to such an extent
that by the early Comnenian period the Eastern Roman Empire may be
identified as a fundamentalist theocracy.

Taka/cs's first chapter, "Republican Rome's Rhetorical Pattern of
Political Authority," surveys writers from Ennius to Cicero who
contributed to and refined the rhetoric that defined the virtuous Roman
man. Particularly helpful in establishing the argument is a
consideration of Polybius' remarks about the intersection of past,
present, and future in the ritual of elite Roman funerals (6.54.2-3) as
well as his theorization about the conditions which would cause a shift
in Rome's political system (6.57.8). This leads to a discussion of the
negative example illustrated in Cicero's prosecution of Verres, in
contrast to Cicero's own nomination as pater patriae by Quintus
Lutatius Catulus in 63 BCE for his service to the state as consul
during the conspiracy of Catiline. The chapter concludes with a brief
discussion of Cicero's representation of Julius Caesar as simillimus
deo after the latter's political restoration of Marcus Claudius
Marcellus. That Cicero could speak of Caesar as having achieved a
near-divine status for this act of clemency signals the rhetorical
"transformation from an ordinary to an extraordinary being," but a
being who was still to be seen as delimited by Rome's traditional
values: "a virtuous man sacrificed his own interests to those of the
state. This sacrifice, the self for the community, was the crucial,
initial exchange" (39).

Chapter 2 covers the imperial period from Augustus to Commodus. In the
first section, Taka/cs focuses especially on the Res Gestae, but
regarding the appropriation of the rhetoric of paternity and the
overlapping of public and private discourses during the reign of
Augustus (48-50), it is surprising not to see any references to the
work of Kristina Milnor, whose Gender and Domesticity and the Age of
Augustus would certainly have enriched Taka/cs's discussion.[[1]] The
second section treats Horace's second Roman ode, with particular
emphasis on the famous line dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
(3.2.13). Taka/cs's reading is sensitive to the poem's political
ambiguities. As it evokes Rome's military past and alludes even to
Aeneas' murder of Turnus on the battlefield, the ode ultimately "is a
multivalent literary modulation on this theme of cultural heritage and
a reminder that conquest is brutally bloody" (53).

Examining the import of the "extraordinary thought" that "patriotic
self-sacrifice gives pleasure to the sacrificing individual" (54),
Taka/cs introduces a novelistic parallel: Achilles Tatius 3.22.1.
Taka/cs here bases her argument on a 1993 note by Stephen
Harrison,[[2]] but unfortunately the text of this passage from Achilles
Tatius is corrupt. Taka/cs does not provide the original Greek, but her
questionable translation ("This is a necessity, a considerable deed,
but for friendship, if we must die, then the risk is good, death
sweet") seems to reflect the text of Vilborg or Gaselee's Loeb edition,
though this is nowhere made explicit, even in the bibliography.[[3]]
Garnaud's Bude/ edition, however, removes the phrase <greek>gluku\s o(
qa/natos</greek>, since it belongs to a family of manuscripts that is
in this instance less reliable.[[4]] Taka/cs's point here is simply
that "In Roman moral terms, the country took the place of the beloved"
(54), a claim that could well have been established without bringing in
a corrupt passage from a second-century Greek novel. Taka/cs's final
remarks on the challenging political rhetoric of Horace's poem
nevertheless remain valid: "war is the last resort of a broken-down
dialogue and aggression sets in when words have no longer any effect
and diplomatic means fail" (55).

>From Augustus, Taka/cs moves directly to the fall of Nero, who unlike
Augustus was unable or unwilling to represent himself successfully as
the state's "symbolic father figure" (62). This failure at the center
of Roman imperial power allowed for the rise of a peripheral figure
like Vespasian, whom Taka/cs likens to a hero from a Horatio Alger
novel: "If the American myth is one where the economically downtrodden
individual makes it to the top, the Roman one was of an elite citizen
receiving rewards for his moral uprightness" (65). After summarizing
the Flavian dynasty and the reign of Trajan, Taka/cs concludes the
second chapter with a brief comparison of Marcus Aurelius and his
"psychotic son" Commodus (77-80). Taka/cs directly appeals to her
non-specialist audience here by framing her analysis of Commodus'
perversion of the symbolic order within a discussion of Ridley Scott's
film Gladiator.

Chapter 3 covers the Severan period and moves into late antiquity up to
the reign of Honorius. In her narrative of the rise of Elagabalus
Taka/cs refines her description of Rome's patrocentric imperial
rhetoric. Harkening back to Livia's powerful role in shaping the
Augustan principate and to the influence of Julia Domna during the
reigns of Septimius Severus and Caracalla, Taka/cs accounts for the
successful machinations of Julia Maesa and Julia Soaemia in installing
Elagabalus as emperor by theorizing that in times of crisis when a
suitable father figure was absent, a mother figure could temporarily
provide the authority necessary for transmitting symbolic power from
one generation to the next (85-86). The following section, "A New World
Order," introduces the theme of Christian appropriation of Rome's
imperial rhetoric, with a focus on the The Passion of Vibia Perpetua
(89-94), and this is followed by an account of the transformational
reign of Constantine I, whose embrace of Christianity and a new
heavenly Father necessitated a shift in the rhetoric of authority:
"Under this construct, Christian emperors became subordinate executors
of an entity that existed outside of, but also encompassed, the world
it had created" (99).

The emperor Julian's opposition to Christianity, in particular
Christians' use of pagan paideia, posed, according to Taka/cs, an
important challenge to which Christian thinkers such as Basil
successfully responded, blending Christian ideology with pagan learning
as they saw fit (106). Apart from a brief mention of Tertullian,
Taka/cs's sources for this section are exclusively Greek (Eusebius,
Julian, Gregory Nazianzus, and Basil), and it is surprising not to read
here any discussion of Ammianus Marcellinus, for whom Julian
represented an ideal ruler. Does the premier Latin historian of late
antiquity offer nothing to the subject of imperial rhetoric during the
reign of Julian?

The chapter concludes with a discussion of Claudian's Panegyricus de
quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti (112-118). Taka/cs's reading of the
poem, in which the dead emperor Theodosius appears to counsel his young
son Honorius, is compelling, but Taka/cs offers no explanation of the
formative role of the half-Vandal general Stilicho in defining
Honorius' reign, nor does she bring to her interpretation any of the
crucial background provided by Alan Cameron in his seminal 1970 book on
Claudian.[[5]] The limited scope of Taka/cs's discussion here prevents
a more nuanced interpretation of the rhetoric of paternity during this
fascinating period. Consideration of, for example, Claudian's
Epithalamium honoring the wedding of Honorius and Stilicho's daughter
Maria would have revealed how Stilicho's powerful position at court was
maintained in part by the proper articulation of his own filial
relationship with Theodosius.

Taka/cs begins the fourth and final chapter with the reign of
Justinian, though this section would have benefited from consideration
of the important works on Procopius by Averil Cameron and, more
recently, by Anthony Kaldellis.[[6]] Taka/cs nevertheless offers an
intriguing reading of the foreword to Justinian's Institutes,
identifying a Vergilian allusion to Anchises's moral imperative that
Aeneas should parcere subiectis et debellare superbos (Aeneid
6.851-853). Whatever the reality behind the rhetoric, "Valor remained a
core virtue in Christian Rome's discourse" (126). Taka/cs's narrative
then moves into the Byzantine period, beginning, as she sees it, with
the reign of Heraclius, when Greek became the official administrative
language and when the empire identified Mary, the Mother of God or
theotokos, as its divine patron. Taka/cs's main interest in this
section is the panegyric poetry of George of Pisidia, though more could
have been made of the later Short History by Nikephoros, Patriarch of
Constantinople. Taka/cs duly recounts the story of the exchange between
Heraclius and the shamed overthrown emperor Phocas, but in an odd
bibliographic choice she cites not Cyril Mango's now standard text,
translation and commentary, but a 1975 reprint of de Boor's 1880
Teubner edition.[[7]]

In an attempt to demonstrate the negative degree to which the Eastern
Roman empire had subordinated the concerns of the state to the church,
Taka/cs shifts focus to the West and considers the reign of
Charlemagne, which liberated Europe from an overwhelming control of the
papacy (134-139). The East, where the separation between church and
state was not so clearly defined, was a failure by comparison. This
leads to Taka/cs's frankly troubling claim that, "The result was an
intellectual stagnation that would continue to characterize the
Christian Roman Empire of the East until its eventual demise in 1453"
(139). After such a statement, Taka/cs's discussion of the years
leading up to and including the reign of Alexius I Comnenus is all too
brief: Michael Psellos, Byzantium's greatest intellectual, receives but
one quotation, and there is no mention whatsoever of Anna Comnena or
the literary golden age of the Comnenian period. This uncharitable
account of Byzantine intellectual life is by far the book's greatest
shortcoming, and even non-specialist readers interested in this subject
would be well advised to consider as an alternative the recent study by
Anthony Kaldellis.[[8]]

In the end, this book offers non-specialist readers a brisk (sometimes
too brisk) narrative of the history of Rome's rhetoric of authority and
how the ideology of the Father changed and was adapted over a very long
period of time. To such readers I would recommend the book, with the
important reservation that Taka/cs's study serve merely as an
introduction to a rich field.


------------------
Notes:


1.   Milnor, Kristina. Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus:
Inventing Private Life. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2005.

2.   Harrison, Stephen J. "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori: Horace
Odes 3.2.13." RhM 136.1 (1993): 91-93.

3.   Vilborg, Ebbe, ed. Achilles Tatius: Leucippe and Clitophon.
Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1955. Gaselee, S., ed. Achilles
Tatius. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1969.  First edition
1917.

4.   Garnaud, Jean-Philippe, ed. Achille Tatius: Le Roman de Leucippe/
et Clitophon. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002. First edition 1991.

5.   Cameron, Alan. Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of
Honorius. Oxford: Clarendon, 1970.

6.   Cameron, Averil. Procopius and the Sixth Century. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985. Kaldellis, Anthony. Procopius of
Caesarea: tyranny, history, and philosophy at the end of antiquity.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

7.   Mango, Cyril, ed. Nikephoros, Patriarch of Constantinople: Short
History. Dumbarton Oaks Texts 10. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks
Research Library and Collection, 1990.

8.   Kaldellis, Anthony. Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of
Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition. Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.