Cornell Studies in Classical Philology

Reading of Latin Poetry in Late Antiquity

Aaron Pelttari

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780801454998
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In The Space That Remains, Aaron Pelttari offers the first systematic study of the major fourth-century poets since Michael Robert's foundational The Jeweled Style. It is the first book to give equal attention to both Christian and Pagan poetry and the first to take seriously the issue of readership.

As Pelttari shows, the period marked a turn towards forms of writing that privilege the reader's active involvement in shaping the meaning of the text. In the poetry of Ausonius, Claudian, and Prudentius we can see the increasing importance of distinctions between old and new, ancient and modern, forgotten and remembered. The strange traditionalism and verbalism of the day often concealed a desire for immediacy and presence. We can see these changes most clearly in the expectations placed upon readers. The space that remains is the space that the reader comes to inhabit, as would increasingly become the case in the literature of the Latin Middle Ages.

CHAPTER 1

Text, Interpretation, and Authority

In late antiquity, the readers of Christian scripture and of Vergil’s poetry played a visible role in making meaning of the texts at their disposal. These readers of Vergil have often been charged with mindlessly yielding to a dogmatic belief in the poet’s infallibility. Alan Cameron, for example, describes the explanatory notes of Servius and Macrobius as misguided attempts at defensive criticism, at saving Vergil from the charge of ignorance (2011, 590–94). But in describing their canonical texts as deeply meaningful, Augustine, Macrobius, and others made room for their own creative and positive interpretations. At the same time, late antique writers lent importance both to the work of exegesis and to the status of secondary authors. In this chapter, the construction of the culture’s canonical works and the rise of a literature whose fundamental concern was the interpretation of that canon will serve as indexes to mark the privileged status of reading in late antiquity. Once this privileging of reading has been established, the cultural significance of Macrobius’s or Augustine’s exegesis will become evident. Rather than focus on the social or material conditions of reading in late antiquity, I approach reading as a literary activity. In this regard, I have benefited from the work of Joseph Pucci, who has shown that both Macrobius and Augustine legitimate the reader’s involvement in the text (1998, 51–82). I build on his results in order to show that this legitimation is one of the ways in which late antique authors came to reflect upon the importance of their reading. Because the textual reverence of late antiquity conceals a powerful turn toward appropriation, the reader’s role became more significant as the classical canon became more distant from the contemporary world.¹ Further, by construing writing itself as an act of reading, Macrobius and Jerome provided a theoretical basis for the reader’s involvement in the text. I will begin with the exegetical programs of Jerome and Augustine before turning to the more literary reception of Vergil, in particular by Macrobius and especially in the Saturnalia.

Jerome and Augustine on the Interpretation of Scripture

Augustine wrote carefully about how and why he read the scriptures. Although he sometimes embraced the reader’s free participation in making sense of the text, he also set strict limits on the proper interpretation of scripture. While Augustine admitted the reader’s ability to understand something other than the author’s intended meaning, the somewhat elder Jerome emphatically sought to restore the text’s original sense. Both authors valued the work of reading. Jerome focused on the depths of scripture and on the writing of commentaries; his example will serve as a foil to Augustine’s more theoretical focus.

Jerome and the Writing of Scriptural Commentary

Jerome was already famous as a scholar, commentator, and translator of the scriptures within his lifetime (c. 347–420).² A concern for historical context and for the literal interpretation of scripture was fundamental to his exegesis.³ Although he drew on earlier Greek and Hebrew scholars (especially Origen), Jerome was an original thinker.⁴ And despite his fondness for historical philology and a concomitant disdain for what he saw as overly rhetorical interpretation, Jerome described the scriptures as a mysterious text whose sense remained to be uncovered by the diligent reader.⁵

In a letter to Paulinus (soon to be) of Nola written in 394 and destined to be used during the Middle Ages as a preface to the scriptures, Jerome explains the contents and proper interpretation of the scriptures. He quotes Psalm 118:8 on the inner wisdom of the sacred text:⁶

“revela,” inquit David, “oculos meos, et considerabo mirabilia de lege tua”; lex enim spiritalis est et revelatione indiget, ut intellegatur ac revelata facie dei gloriam contemplemur.

(Ep. 53.4)

“Unveil my eyes,” says David, “and I will consider the wonders of your law.” For the law is spiritual and requires unveiling in order to be understood and for us to contemplate the glory of God in his unveiled appearance.

Jerome describes Christ as the divine Wisdom and as the one who holds the key to scripture’s unveiling (Ep. 53.4–5). His description of scripture borrows explicitly from Psalm 118; it also alludes to Paul’s description of the veil hanging over the Hebrew scriptures, a passage that was often quoted by Christian exegetes.⁷ Although Jerome was not the only author to describe scripture in this way, he does give special emphasis, in a relatively short letter, to the need for revelation. And when Jerome goes on to give Paulinus a brief overview of each book of the Old and New Testaments, he pays special attention to the mysterious sense of each text. In particular, he accentuates the hidden wisdom of the Apocalypse of John:

Apocalypsis Iohannis tot habet sacramenta, quot verba. parum dixi et pro merito voluminis laus omnis inferior est; in verbis singulis multiplices latent intellegentiae.

(Ep. 53.9)

The Apocalypse of John has as many mysteries as words. I have said too little, and every praise is inferior to the book’s merit. Multiple meanings lie hidden in individual words.

The concealed meanings of scripture appeal to Jerome, and for him, even single words do not have a simple meaning.⁸ Rather, he tells Paulinus that the simplistic surface of the text conceals a further meaning. The surface is simple so as to appeal to the unlearned; the learned, for their part, will understand scripture in a deeper way.⁹ For Jerome, the hidden meanings of scripture obligate the reader to interpret this text in more than its literal sense, and the authoritative text accepts and even requires its reader’s active participation. In this way, even a literal-minded exegete like Jerome emphasized the mystical aspects of scripture. In so doing, he suggested that the reader’s participation (and especially the commentator’s expertise) were necessary in order to elucidate the mysteries of scripture.

Jerome, who described scripture as a mysterious text, made a literary career out of scriptural exegesis. He was a student of the grammarian Aelius Donatus, and in many ways, his numerous scriptural commentaries follow the pattern set by commentators on classical texts.¹⁰ However, unlike earlier commentators, Jerome viewed exegetical writing as the highest form of literature. In so doing, he canonized an ideal of literature as exegesis and so lent weight to the work of reading.

In 392 or 393, Jerome wrote a work on Christian authors, De viris illustribus, modeled on Suetonius’s work of the same name.¹¹ In his prologue, Jerome explains that his goal is to review “all those who have published anything memorable on the holy Scriptures” (“omnes qui de scripturis sanctis memoriae aliquid prodiderunt”). He begins with Peter and ends with himself. His list includes poets, bishops, and exegetes. Thus, in Jerome’s arrangement, “writing on scripture takes many forms and arises in many different contexts,” but “all Christian writing worthy of the name is writing on scripture.”¹² The common thread in Jerome’s stance toward reading and his ideal of Christian authorship is the scriptural and exegetical thrust of his own scholarship.

In a follow-up to letter 53, Jerome invited Paulinus to begin writing works of scriptural exegesis. Upon receiving a panegyric (no longer extant) that Paulinus wrote in honor of Theodosius, Jerome praises his addressee’s eloquence, but he longs for the chance to train Paulinus in the scriptures rather than have him continue in the poetic and rhetorical training that he has already received.¹³ If Paulinus learns to understand the scriptures, Jerome says, there will be nothing “more beautiful, more learned, or more Latinate than his works.”¹⁴ Because Jerome goes on to compare Paulinus to a series of prose authors (Tertullian, Cyprian, Victorinus, Lactantius, and Hilary), he seems to have intended Paulinus to write exegetical works in prose rather than Christian poetry.¹⁵ Further, Mark Vessey (2007) has shown that Jerome appropriated for his own scholarship the Horatian ideal of laborious art. But in place of Horace’s ars poetica, Jerome substituted an ars scripturarum, the art of interpretation (Ep. 53.6). As Vessey says, “This substitution was not to be the labour of a day or of a single pair of letters. It was Jerome’s life work, the combined effect of all his literary exertions” (2007, 40). By constructing an ideal of literature as scriptural writing, Jerome made the work of reading the central task of any (Christian) author.

Jerome himself wrote voluminous commentaries on the scriptures,¹⁶ and he insists upon his role as commentator. In the preface to book 3 of his commentary on Galatians, Jerome apologizes for the rhetorical simplicity of his writing, in order to insist on the generic difference of commentaries:

sit responsum me non panegyricum, aut controversiam scribere, sed commentarium, id est, hoc habere propositum, non ut mea verba laudentur sed ut quae ab alio bene dicta sunt ita intelligantur ut dicta sunt. officii mei est obscura disserere, manifesta perstringere, in dubiis immorari. unde et a plerisque commentariorum opus explanatio nominatur.

(In Gal. 3, prol.)

I would reply that I am not writing a panegyric or a rhetorical exercise, but a commentary; that is, my aim is not for my words to be praised, but for the admirable words of another to be understood in the same way as they were spoken. It is my job to discuss what is obscure, to pass over what is obvious, to linger in doubtful places. For this reason, most people call the product of commentaries an explanation.

Jerome asserts elsewhere the generic difference of commentaries, and he also states that his aim is to set out the meaning of his author rather than to speak on his own authority.¹⁷ There is no reason to doubt that other commentators had the same aim or to think that Jerome was the first person to realize that a commentary was different than a panegyric. But for Jero...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Late Antique Poetry and the Figure of the Reader
• 1. Text, Interpretation, and Authority
• 2. Prefaces and the Reader’s Approach to the Text
• 3. Open Texts and Layers of Meaning
• 4. The Presence of the Reader: Allusion in Late Antiquity
• Conclusion
• References