Claudian's In Eutropium

Or, How, When, and Why to Slander a Eunuch

Jacqueline Long

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9780807863053
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire ancienne et classique

From A.D. 395 to 404, Claudian was the court poet of the Western Roman Empire, ruled by Honorius. In 399 the eunuch Eutropius, the grand chamberlain and power behind the Eastern Roman throne of Honorius's brother Arcadius, became consul. The poem In Eutropium is Claudian's brilliantly nasty response. In it he vilifies Eutropius and calls on Honorius's general, Stilicho, to redeem this disgrace to Roman honor. In this literary and historical study, Jacqueline Long argues that the poem was, in both intent and effect, political propaganda: Claudian exploited traditional prejudices against eunuchs to make Eutropius appear ludicrously alien to the ideals of Roman greatness. Long sets In Eutropium within the context of Greek and Roman political vituperation and satire from the classical to the late antique period. In addition, she demonstrates that the poem is an invaluable, if biased, source of historical information about Eutropius's career. Her analysis draws on modern propaganda theory and on reader response theory, thereby bringing a fresh perspective to the political implications of Claudian's work. Originally published in 1996. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Part One
The Literary World of In Eutropium

Chapter One
Structure and Genre

A first step toward understanding how In Eutropium struck its initial audiences, and what it reveals about Claudian’s circumstances and aims, is to analyze its literary form. Both the tasks of identifying elements within a work and of recognizing their configuration as a whole presuppose a system of conventions that define elements and overall forms. These conventions are conveniently summarized by the labels of genre.¹ There is nothing about generic categories that is absolute, for they are determined organically by evolving literary traditions. A given work shifts the nucleus of the genre even as it participates in it. Moreover, formalized generic criteria merely pick out salient components from a more shadowy but significant aggregate: they alone do not tell the whole story. Nor does a work’s conformity with any particular generic tradition mean that it may not also share in others. Genre is useful as it classifies clusters of features that coalesce distinctively at certain points in the continuum of literary history. Current combinations may guide the author in realizing his original conception; they do not prevent him from varying conventional patterns or introducing new elements. Generic affinities, as they emerge within a new work, prompt the audience to recall impressions left by other works of similar form. They do not block perception of the author’s innovations; they rather supply a provisional model in terms of which the new composition can be apprehended. As it unfolds it progressively redirects its audience’s expectations.² The model finally arrived at also broadens the basis on which to understand how elements function within the whole.

Prose oratory conventionally treated the same types of political subject as Claudian’s poems. Occasions for it proliferated with late antique court ceremonial. Rhetorical treatises such as the second ascribed to Menander detail ways to organize formal speeches for numerous public and private occasions.³ The format prescribed for the basilikos logos, or imperial speech, could be used to praise the emperor on virtually any occasion; many preserved speeches follow its main lines closely. The same scheme also was adapted for praising lesser officials in the “address,” or prosphonetikos logos, and for funeral eulogies, epitaphioi logoi.⁴ This basic format was a flexible and powerful literary model.

But although Claudian delivered his political works at the court of Honorius, at consular inaugurations, victory celebrations, and other occasions that ceremonial orations commonly adorned, one difference would immediately have struck his hearers: these pieces were not prose but poetry. Claudian composed in dactylic hexameters of great purity.⁵ They necessarily resonate with long traditions of epic: members of his audience who had enjoyed a literary education could instantly appreciate the noble antiquity of Claudian’s metrical form. Many specific allusions within his poems sharpen these associations.⁶

Latin satire shared the hexameter line, although its versification was less regularized than Vergilian or Ovidian epic. Peculiarities such as an occasional accented monosyllable placed last in the line or spondaic fifth foot validate Horace’s claim to write “pure conversational speech” (sermo merus, Serm. 1.4.48).⁷ They may also be considered to evoke the more archaic verse of the first satirists, Ennius and Lucilius. Claudian does not follow this metrical byway; his hexameter has a purely epic cadence.⁸ But the subject of In Eutropium did inspire satirical handling in other ways. Eutropius was a eunuch. He had risen in the domestic service of the palace to its top, as praepositus sacri cubiculi.⁹ He had developed great influence over Arcadius, extending well beyond the domestic concerns of the palace. He won the consulate for 399 by actions even less expected of a eunuch chamberlain: he took command of the Eastern army and drove back from Armenia a band of invading Huns.¹⁰ In attacking Eutropius, Claudian exercises a sharp sense of paradox and bitter wit to accentuate the incongruity of his person and political position. Juxtapositions and expostulations often recalling Juvenalian satire make Eutropius appear reprehensibly ludicrous.

Theodor Birt raised the question of whether In Eutropium is satire, in Zwei politische Satiren des alten Rom (1888). The first problem he faced was defining the genre of satire.¹¹ He found too many exceptions to the distinctions drawn in the scholarly literature of his time. Juvenal’s famous tag facit indignatio versum (Sat. 1.79) compellingly supplies one view of satire, but Birt noted that Horace and Lucilius are not always indignant.¹² Horace’s Canidia and many of Lucilius’s victims belie the notion that satire attacks generalities rather than individuals. Birt found more fully characteristic the idea that satire combines a serious purpose with a jesting or mocking technique. In keeping with this idea, he singled out Claudian’s declaration, “examples are born to outdo the jokes of comedy and the woes of tragedy” (1.298–99), as the motto of In Eutropium and pronounced it a satire; a century later, Severin Koster still applauded Birt for the motto.¹³ Koster nonetheless discussed In Eutropium as invective.

Whereas the definitions Birt rejected exclude some pieces generally regarded as satires, Birt found his “seriocomic” combination in works belonging to virtually every ancient genre as defined by other criteria.¹⁴ Although In Eutropium qualifies handily, the standard too easily embraces too many things to define a class bound by significant affinities. Mockery in In Eutropium appears readily, but Birt identified no standard for seriousness of purpose. His discussion shows that he was willing to recognize it on almost any grounds. He delineated a theme or style, which can operate within many genres. He did not establish a defining criterion of satire alone.

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff notoriously declared that there is no genre of satire, but only Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal.¹⁵ Wilamowitz himself did not rest great weight on this observation. It supports merely an incidental contrast of archaic and classical Greek with Roman authors, in whom he perceived more individuality; but he adduced satire first, as his strongest case. Nonetheless, these writers themselves and ancient as well as modern readers have sensed the connections of a tradition between them. It arises from the confluence of several factors.

Satura became a Roman literary term when Ennius applied it to his books of miscellaneous informal poems.¹⁶ Ancient grammarians derived it variously:¹⁷ they connected it either with satyrs, for their ridiculous and shameful activities; with lanx satura, a platter offering to the gods a diverse abundance of first fruits; with satura as the name for a stuffing composed of numerous foods; or with omnibus legislation known as lex satura. Modern scholars generally consider the association with satyrs secondary. The other three etymologies all limn a form that brings multitudinous disparate elements into a new unity. The primary cohesive force in ancient satire, from Ennius onward, was the strongly personal vision the authors projected.¹⁸ Horace calls attention to how intimately and completely his chief model, Lucilius, reveals himself in his books. He and Persius and Juvenal similarly present their satires as personal responses.¹⁹ Thus, ancient views of satire embraced both variousness and just the vivid individuality of the poet’s persona that moved Wilamowitz to declare genre inapplicable to satire.

Lucilius added a distinctive current of personal attack.²⁰ Horace and later satirists, however, although they explicitly referred to Lucilius’s aggressiveness when characterizing their own satires, transmuted it to general moral or philosophical admonition. In particular, they moved away from Lucilius’s contemporary political criticism. One factor was the changed political environment of the Roman Empire as opposed to the Roman Republic. Tacitus, looking back on more than a century of imperial government, remarks that eloquence has transferred its attentions from politics to the courts, because the emperors have stilled political contention.²¹ Quintilian similarly notes that forensic speeches more seldom need rhetorical figures to mask criticism of the powerful than do speeches criticizing a tyrant (Inst. Or. 9.2.67–68); he is discussing school exercises, but the exercises trained students for practical situations.²² His choice of a model for political discourse reflects both the artificial tradition of the schools and present risks in the face of absolute power. Satire in the imperial period veiled its political component and diffused it over broader ethical issues.

Horace in the programmatic Sermo 4 of his first book gives the change a pedigree, or at least an analogue, from Attic comedy. He cites Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes as models for Lucilius, but declares that his own satires follow the pattern of his father’s moral instruction: as Eleanor Winsor Leach has shown, Horace casts as his father a persona shaped by Terence and Attic New Comedy.²³ Old Comedy assailed individuals, especially politicians, openly, by name, with fantastic vehemence; New Comedy focused on more realistic domestic plots enacted by characters who represent types.²⁴ Horace implies that his satire too will avoid polemic and address social interactions generally. I. M. LeM. DuQuesnay has argued that book 1 of Horace’s Sermones does bear a political message, which advocates acquiescence to Octavian’s new regime;²⁵ but such a quietistic exhortation strengthens itself by promoting alternative concerns. When Horace imitates Lucilius’s great journey-satire (book 3) in his “Journey to Brundisium” (Sermo 1.5), which was occasioned by Maecenas’s embassy to Antony in 37 B.C. on behalf of Octavian, the urgent mission is adumbrated only obliquely. Horace unleashes no political vituperation. Instead he depicts the travelers’ friendly enjoyment of one another’s company, resuming the thematic focus of Sermo 1.3. At the same time, the various stages of travel link up a virtuoso display of satiric episodes. Horace’s technique implicitly corrects Lucilius’s, in fulfillment of his literary critique in Sermo I.4.²⁶

The ancient Life of Persius and scholia to his Satire 1 identify Nero as the author of verses Persius decries.²⁷ He fully equates stylistic with moral criticism; morality potentially comprehends capacity to rule, which forms the point of departure for Satire 4. But the Stoic paradigm of the Wise Man who alone is truly King pertains to anyone governing his own life.²⁸ Persius consistently resolves issues at the universally applicable level of the individual soul. When he touches on an imperial event expressly, it is incidental (Sat 6.43–52). A victory occasions festivity. Satire 6 considers neither the emperor nor the victory nor even the festivity itself, but the propriety of spending from one’s estate on any occasion rather than hoarding it all for a future heir. Persius nowhere satirizes political practice.

Juvenal attacks Domitian in Satire 4, but comments on his death at its close (Sat. 4.150–54): he explicitly ranks Dom...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Claudian’s In Eutropium
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Eunuch Consul and the Court Poet
• Part One The Literary World of In Eutropium
• Part Two The Historical World of In Eutropium
• Part Three The Literary and Historical Worlds Meet
• Conclusion: In Eutropium and the Empire of Rome
• Select Bibliography
• Index of Passages Discussed
• General Index