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ONOMASTIC IRONY IN FRONTO'S LETTERS AD M. CAESAREM 1.7, 2.5, 2.13 and 3.18*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2015
Extract
In contemporary onomastics the usage of the full name – given name and surname – lends a certain formality or seriousness to an utterance. It is often assumed that such pragmatics in the employment of names may be easily transferred to the ancient world, but we should none the less confirm our assumptions with textual evidence. This paper will present evidence from the letters between Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Cornelius Fronto which demonstrates not only that the fuller Roman name was used for formal occasions, but also that it could, as in the contemporary world, be employed in an ironic, mock-formal manner to intimate rather the opposite of formality, friendship.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 2015
Footnotes
*
Previous versions of this paper have been presented at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and Southern Illinois University Carbondale. I would like to thank the audiences there, particularly colleagues and students, for their helpful discussion. Thanks are also due to Bruce Gibson and the anonymous reader for CQ, whose questions and suggestions vastly improved the quality and scope of this piece. Any errors that remain are, of course, my own.
References
1 The stereotypical situation is that of a mother chastising her child. Dickey, E., Latin Forms of Address: From Plautus to Apuleius (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar, 52 also makes the same analogy.
2 Salway, B., ‘What's in a name? A survey of Roman onomastic practice from c. 700 b.c. to a.d. 700’, JRS 84 (1994), 124–45Google Scholar offers a diachronic history of naming conventions in the Roman world.
3 Adams, J.N., ‘Conventions of naming in Cicero’, CQ 28 (1978), 145–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Jones, F., ‘Naming in Pliny's letters’, Symbolae Osloenses 66 (1991), 147–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 169, observes that introductions are themselves formal occasions.
4 Dickey (n. 1), 51–3. See also Axtell, H.L., ‘Men's names in the writings of Cicero’, CPh 10 (1915), 386–404Google Scholar; Bailey, D.R. Shackleton, Onomasticon to Cicero's Letters (Stuttgart, 1995), 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Sherwin-White, A.N., The Letters of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary (Oxford, 1966)Google Scholar; Vidman, L., ‘Die Namengebung bei Plinius dem Jüngeren’, Klio 63 (1981), 585–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones (n. 3). Pliny, who edited his letters for publication, apparently treats the entire collection as one protracted conversation, referring to individuals fully named in a previous letter by a single name even when writing to a different interlocutor: see Sherwin-White (this note), 113, Vidman (this note), 586, Jones (n. 3), 154.
6 Jones, F., Nominum Ratio: Aspects of the Use of Personal Names in Greek and Latin. Liverpool Classical Papers 4 (Liverpool, 1996), 72Google Scholar. Jones rightly conjectures that Roman socio-political preoccupation with networks of amicitia would have encouraged increased familiarity among correspondents.
7 Jones (n. 3), 152, 161–2.
8 Jones (n. 6), 96–100.
9 Sherwin-White (n. 5), 557 discusses the use of dominus in addressing the emperor.
10 According to the analyses in Adams (n. 3), 159–60, Cicero's addresses for Atticus are similar: after the cognomen ‘Atticus’ becomes established, Cicero overwhelmingly prefers it to the praenomen Titus. The gentilicium is all but eradicated, despite being used frequently in the period before the cognomen is used.
11 van den Hout, M.P.J., A Commentary on the Letters of M. Cornelius Fronto (Leiden, 1999)Google Scholar, 3 discusses the use of magister, Caesar, dominus and Fronto in the address-lines.
12 The precise nature of the relationship between Marcus Aurelius and Fronto is under debate: in short, were the two close friends, or lovers? For two opposing positions, see Richlin, A., ‘Fronto + Marcus: love, friendship, letters’, in Kuefler, M. (ed.), The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago, 2005), 111–29Google Scholar and Laes, C., ‘What could Marcus Aurelius feel for Fronto?’, Studia Humaniora Tartuensia 10.A.3 (2009), 1–7Google Scholar.
13 ‘Bound’ addresses are grammatically implicated in a sentence, and thus ‘bound’ to it. For more on the distinction between ‘free’ and ‘bound’ forms, see Dickey (n. 1), 22.
14 At times in the letters Cicero too uses wit (in the form of mock-impoliteness) to build friendships (Hall, J., Politeness and Politics in Cicero's Letters [Oxford, 2009], 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Axtell (n. 4), 388 notes Cicero's use of mock-formality in Att. 1.2 to affect an air of self-denigrating false pomposity. On the same letter, see Shackleton Bailey (n. 4), 1, 57, and id., Cicero's Letters to Atticus, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1965), 296Google Scholar.
15 Citations in parentheses refer to the page number in the van den Hout 1988 Teubner edition, which is now the standard edition of Fronto's letters. Accordingly van den Hout's 1999 commentary is keyed to page numbers in his Teubner edition, making these page numbers requisite for consulting the commentary.
16 Translations are my own.
17 Van den Hout (n. 11), 66.
18 Pliny: Sherwin-White (n. 5), 113.
19 Axtell (n. 4), 388; see also Jones (n. 6), 74.
20 Echavarren, A., ‘The emergence of a novel onomastic pattern: cognomen + nomen in Seneca the Elder’, CQ (2013), 353–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar treats the innovation cognomen–gentilicium, the employment of which is also reflective of Seneca's relationship with the named.
21 McDonnell, M., ‘Writing, copying, and autograph manuscripts in ancient Rome’, CQ 46 (1996), 469–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar clearly delineates the different stages of the writing and publishing process as reflected in this letter.
22 Jones (n. 6), 92–3 observes that the use of duo nomina or cognomen may depend upon the celebrity of the individual, namely that ‘certain kinds of fame enable names to become public property’, allowing for more familiar usage without an actual personal relationship. We ‘feel’ as if we know these celebrities personally. For name-forms in citing authorities and writers in Cicero, see Jones (n. 6), 76; in Pliny, see Jones (n. 3), 159–61.
23 McDonnell (n. 21), 490.
24 McDonnell (n. 21), 489 theorizes that Marcus originally copied the speech as a mnemonic device, and sent the resulting manuscript to Fronto as a token of his devotion. Perhaps in this act too there is a touch of ironic humour, that Marcus sends to Fronto the scrap paper he used to memorize the speech, i.e. that it is not an official or polished copy, but something more akin to notes. What might otherwise be perceived as an insulting gesture is, in the context of their close and jesting relationship, a joke. Fronto's comments about the manuscript in the letter may support such a reading, as he gushes (perhaps a shade too melodramatically) about it: enimvero quibus ego gaudium meum verbis exprimere possim, quod orationem istam meam tua manu descriptam misisti mihi? (‘Really, with what words could I express my joy that you sent me my lousy speech copied out in your handwriting?’, §3). Fronto then marvels that the influence of love can make deleramenta appear as delenimenta, and veneficia as beneficia. These observations may be read as commentary upon the manuscript itself, that their close relationship allows Marcus' scribbles to be received for more than they are.
25 Richlin, A., Marcus Aurelius in Love (Chicago, 2005), 107Google Scholar.
26 One may observe that such proclamations – especially of love – often identify the addressee (beloved) in the full, formal, named form. Presumably when making such proclamations, for example in marriage ceremonies, we imagine that we are addressing the entire world, calling upon them as witnesses. As a result it is necessary to identify the object of affection fully to the audience of billions of strangers.
27 See van den Hout (n. 11), 137 for this Greek quotation, which Marcus incorrectly attributes to Thucydides.
28 Adams (n. 3), 162–3 and Shackleton Bailey (n. 4), 9–10 discuss Cicero's use of mi with the vocative; Dickey (n. 1), 214–29 discusses the phenomenon more broadly.
29 The technique used here fits neither of the sociolinguistic categories of ‘mock-politeness’ or ‘mock-impoliteness’ particularly well. Mock-politeness utilizes formal language ironically, with the aim to insult; mock-impoliteness utilizes insults to build bonds. Fronto and Marcus use the duo and tria nomina (politeness), which has the effect of distancing the interlocutors in a familiar relationship (mock-politeness), but it is done in jest (mock-impoliteness). Thus what we have here is mock-politeness nested within mock-impoliteness, perhaps.
30 So Jones (n. 6) on the use of the third person in the midst of second-person direct address: ‘In cases where the addressee is suddenly referred to in the third person instead of the second, one can envisage the turn as an appeal to a hypothetical witness’ (p. 131) and ‘The utterance may be addressed to another character or to the world at large, and there is often an element of appealing to a witness’ (p. 136).
31 Jones (n. 6), 98.