Figures in the Shadows

The Speech of Two Augustan-Age Declaimers, Arellius Fuscus and Papirius Fabianus

Bart Huelsenbeck

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110388152
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The collection of the elder Seneca assembles quotations from scores of declaimers over a period spanning sixty years, from the Augustan Age through the early decades of the empire. A view is offered onto a literary scene, for this critical period of Roman letters, that is numerously populated, highly interactive, and less dominated by just a few canonical authors. Despite this potential, modern readings have often lumped declaimers together en masse and organizational principles basic to Seneca's collection remain overlooked. This volume attempts to 'hear' the individual speech of declaimers by focusing on two speakers—Arellius Fuscus, rhetor to Ovid, and Papirius Fabianus, teacher of the younger Seneca. A key organizing principle, informing both the collection and the practice of declamation, was the 'shared locus'—a short passage, defined by verbal and argumentative ingredients, that gained currency among declaimers. Study of the operation of the shared locus carries several advantages: (1) we appreciate distinctions between declaimers; (2) we recognize shared passages as a medium of communication; and (3) the shared locus emerges as a community resource, explaining deep-seated connections between declamation and literary works.

1Quotations in the collection of the elder Seneca: principles of order

1Terminology: thema, sententiae, diuisiones, colores

The rhetorical collection of the elder Seneca makes for challenging reading. To the modern reader, particularly those coming to the work for the first time, the collection presents an unusual organization: declamatory themata, a tripartite grouping of material (Sententiae, Diuisiones, Colores), lists of obscure names followed by raw quotations, and the quotations themselves, which often seem jarringly disjointed. The organization should seem strange to us: the work is unique among our surviving ancient texts, anomalous even among other declamatory collections, and some of its most basic organizational features remain open to debate, when considered at all.6

Despite the idiosyncrasies of the work, some basic structural features are patently clear.7 Each book is prefaced by stylistic portraits of one or more speakers. Next, Seneca ranges relevant material under declamatory themes (themata): a theme is a fictitious premise out of which declaimers composed their speeches.8 Typically, 6–8 themata appear per book. The material subsumed under the themata consists of quotations, rhetorical-technical analyses, critical comments, and personal anecdotes. Quotations of speakers appear throughout the material; however, each declamation has been formally partitioned into three sections, with somewhat different types of material appearing under each section. These sections are called, respectively, the Sententiae, the Diuisiones, and the Colores.9

‘Sententiae’ proves to be an unfortunate name for this first section since the label can quickly lead to misunderstanding. Seneca uses the term sententia very broadly: it does not refer strictly to an “epigram,” one of the most common translations of sententia. Rather, sententiae are simply quotations—generally short, but otherwise of an unspecified nature. In the Sententiae-section they are introduced by a speaker’s name, which appears in the genitive case and without a verb of speaking.10 The formularity is significant: the appearance of a name, as heading in the genitive, signals that what follows is a quotation uninterrupted by authorial comment.11 The quotation is thus isolated from authorial remarks in the same way as a lemma in an ancient commentary is separated from remarks about the lemma.12 By contrast, quotations appearing in the Diuisiones and Colores (where, still, they can be called sententiae) are not introduced with names as headings; names appear in whatever case is required by the syntax of the introductory sentence (e.g., Albucius dixit).

The diuisiones (divisions) are bare outlines of arguments.13 These are often laid out in indirect statement. The divisions, however, are not limited to lists of arguments nor to a presentation in indirect statement; rather, they too can contain direct quotations, along with commentary and anecdotes.

Finally, the colores (colors) are tendentious perspectives on the circumstances of a case, roughly equivalent to what today is commonly referred to as ‘spin.’14 Also here we find direct quotations, commentary, and anecdotes.

I have remarked already that the term ‘sententiae’ can lead to a misunderstanding of Seneca’s quotations, and that it is in the Sententiae that quotations appear without comment: here Seneca does not direct readers how to understand what is recorded. Besides these challenges, there are still others confronting the reader that relate to questions of continuity and sequence within quotations. A quotation among the Sententiae is usually not one quotation: it is a series of discontinuous excerpts that Seneca has juxtaposed without indicating where one excerpt ends and another begins. It is this lack of continuity that frequently makes interpretation ambiguous and difficult.15 Absent are more familiar means of maintaining textual cohesion, such as a continuous narrative, that readers of other literary genres depend upon to make sense of texts. Further, the realization that a quotation consists of separate pieces leads to a question about how the pieces hang together: What is the relationship of the excerpts to each other?

For the above reasons, the quotations in the Sententiae-section are where, arguably, the organization of Seneca’s collection is least understood. And yet it is these quotations that form the collection’s core: here we have the most to gain from an improved understanding.16 The quotations in the Sententiae, since they are the longest, are often the richest. They are our best chance to hear a declaimer speak. A study, such as the present one, whose purpose is to investigate declaimers’ speech in their own words, rather than relying on what others said of them, will necessarily draw heavily on these quotations. How do they work? It is imperative that we understand the basic principles informing their organization.

This first chapter examines the organization of quotations in the elder Seneca’s collection, devoting special attention to quotations appearing in the section of Sententiae. But, the investigation is by no means limited to quotations appearing there. We are interested in quotations, wherever they appear.17 Although Seneca divides quotations between three different sections of Sententiae, Diuisiones, and Colores, in terms of their fundamental organization—in terms of what a quotation is and how it functions—the quotations everywhere are essentially the same. They are, I shall argue, informed by the same principle—what in the course of the discussion will be called the ‘shared locus’ (shared passage) or simply ‘locus.’

2Quotations: sequence, sources, reliability

It is widely recognized that quotations18 given under the Sententiae consist of discontinuous excerpts and that the borders between these excerpts are often uncertain. However, in these same quotations the reader encounters another uncertainty, one surprisingly seldom mentioned: Does the sequence of excerpts follow the order in which they were applied in a (now-lost) speech?19 My view, as I hope to substantiate, is that the excerpts are non-sequential. This does not mean the excerpts are always out of sequence; frequently, it must be admitted, it is difficult to tell. It means, rather, that sequentiality as a principle of organization is not one of Seneca’s priorities. Consequently, excerpts are often out of sequence and not infrequently even repeat the same material in a way that would not be done in a single speech.

Two other questions pertaining to the organization of Seneca’s collection remain matters of lingering debate. Seneca implies in the first preface (C. 1, pr. 2–5) that the quotations in the book—a book which in its current mutilated state numbers over 370 Teubner pages and in its original form would have been at least twice as long—are drawn from memory.20 The feat, if true, would be nothing short of astonishing. Some scholars have seen fit to take Seneca nearly at his word; others are skeptical and insist that he must have relied on written materials.21 A related question is whether the quotations are in fact genuine and accurate.22 Were the words Seneca attributes to, say, the rhetor Cestius Pius actually spoken by him? Are the quotations recorded verbatim, or was the goal simply to capture the gist of what was said?

These are the most serious questions for anyone who wishes to draw on Seneca’s work—a treasure of information, from many perspectives. Unfortunately, conclusive proof on one side of the debate or the other is difficult to come by, and perhaps at times we shall have to be content with well-reasoned convictions.23 But at the very least these convictions must be made explicit at the outset.

Some compensation for the absence of decisive proof concerning the three prominent questions—the organization of quotations, their source(s), and their reliability—derives from the fact that these problems are interrelated. Our conclusions about them ought to be consistent and support one another. Records based on written materials will be more precise than those based on memory.24 And it should be expected that the organization of the collection will in some fashion bear the imprint of the method that produced it. That is, the view that Seneca uses his memory (without written records) to reproduce the quotations must take account of their organization, as does the alternative view that Seneca used notes. Patterns of organization in the quotations are crucial pieces of evidence for discovering how the collection was made. Still, despite some scholarly interest in the sources of Seneca’s material, studies that involve a close examination of the quotations remain rare.25 Even arguments for the use of written records have drawn on external probabilities, or on references Seneca makes to rhetorical publications, rather than profiting from an analysis of the quotations themselves.26

My conviction is that Seneca relied on publications and private notes, his own and probably others’, for the vast majority of his collection. It would be foolish to think that Seneca’s memory did not play a role in assembling the collection, perhaps including unassisted reproduction of some of the quotations. But the number o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Quotations in the collection of the elder Seneca: principles of order
• 2 Papirius Fabianus: voice of a philosopher
• 3 Arellius Fuscus: a rhetor reviewed
• 4 Arellius Fuscus: presence in traditions
• 5 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of Passages Cited
• General Index