Classical World

Latinists familiar with Roman’s important 2001 article on materiality in Martial (“The Representation of Literary Materiality in Martial’s Epigrams,” The Journal of Roman Studies 91 [2001] 113–45) will be surprised and impressed by the extensive treatment of Republican and Augustan literature in this monograph: the careful philology and insightful readings of that groundbreaking article are here applied to a much larger project of literary history that spans first-person poetry from Lucilius to Juvenal. Situating the inquiry between aesthetics and literary criticism, the introduction outlines “autonomist poetics,” that is, how poets strategically define their literary activities as separate from political and social obligations. In this view, Roman poets opportunistically exploit the opposition between aesthetic and material systems of value to create their own “autonomist” terms for poetic independence; individual authors develop personalized rhetorical strategies to respond to their own immediate social and political pressures.

This may sound like putting old wine into new wineskins, and Roman confronts some hoary topics in Latin literary studies: libertas in satire and politics, “propaganda,” recusatio, servitium amoris, patronage and poetic finances. The emphasis on autonomist rhetoric, however, provides an illuminating alternative approach to tired binaries such as “Augustan” and “anti-Augustan” or otium and negotium, as well as brilliant new readings of familiar works and authors. The lens of autonomist poetics brings unexpected connections into focus, revealing Catullus 4 as an incisive parody of Cicero’s own self-aggrandizing poetic efforts in the self-destructive competitiveness of the late Republic (71–78), and uncovering a shared poetics of radical self-sufficiency between the Epicurean Horace and the elegiac poets he mocked. Autonomist claims generate their own imagery and poetics of space: reading Tibullus’ contrasts between indoor and outdoor activities or between urban and rural spaces establishes a shelter of autarkic security in book 1 that the poet himself exposes and fragments in poem 2.3 (147–50). In a convincing conclusion to the chapter, Roman shows how the Panegyricus Messallae transmitted in the Tibullan corpus may be read as a perceptive inverse of Tibullus’ own autonomist positions to define a “rhetoric of heteronomy,” the poetics of a literary parasite (150–62).

Horace appears in two different sections and may be seen as the central figure of the monograph: Horace’s liminal social position and long career trajectory showcase his rhetorical versatility across different periods within Augustus’ reign. The nuanced readings of Horace’s works reveal an index of autonomist possibilities: Roman’s careful attention to generic boundaries locates Horace’s autonomist claims in satire as a humble genre, in the mundanity of the satirist’s self-directed lifestyle, as well as in his marked aesthetic critiques of Lucilius and overly prolific would-be rivals. These satiric strategies from the early days [End Page 137] of Maecenas’ friendship yield to different concerns and strategies in the Odes, and tracking autonomist discourse effectively distinguishes the subtle shifts in relationship between poet and princeps through the entire corpus. In this respect, Roman’s Horace sections accomplish a more holistically subtle reading of the poet than most contemporary monographs in the field. Horace also proves an effective comparative link between authors and approaches; Roman stresses the continuity of autonomist positions over time, and Horace provides the most consistent source of comparanda that hold the diverse authors together. One might think that Ovid would be the primary case study, but the poet’s exile is an afterthought to the Horace chapter (238–60).

There are risks and costs in pursuing such a rich multi-author project: some works are less amenable to the hermeneutic than others, or become artificially truncated from a larger discourse on the author’s corpus. Although the discussion of pastoral is essential to the section, Vergil’s Eclogues stands alone as an odd example of first-person poetry, and are isolated from any larger discussion of autonomist claims in Vergil. Similarly, Statius’ Silvae, as occasional poems dedicated to individual patrons, are a counterintuitive example of autonomist...