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‘Pompeius Macer’ and Ovid*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Peter White
Affiliation:
University of Chicago

Extract

The Pompeius Macer whom prosopographers have discerned among the friends of Ovid boasts connections as stellar as anyone in Ovid's ambit. His induction into the Roman establishment was preceded by the achievements of his father (or possibly grandfather) Theophanes of Mytilene, who for two decades had been one of Pompey's closest confidants. Macer himself served Augustus first as equestrian procurator of Asia and then as director of state libraries in Rome, and when the phil-Hellene Tiberius replaced Augustus, his position at court grew firmer still. He lived to see his son gain a seat in the Roman senate, to become the first known senator of Greek origin. And while tending to his political career, he made a name for himself in Roman literary circles and maintained a long-lasting friendship with Ovid.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1992

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References

1 Among many discussions of Pompeius Macer, see for example Bowersock, G. W., Augustus and the Greek World (Oxford, 1965), pp. 38–9Google Scholar; Hanslik, R., RE 21 (1952), 2276–7 Pompeius 92Google Scholar; Pflaum, H.-G., Les carrières procuratoriennes équestres sous le haut-empire romain (Paris, 1960), i.1113 and iii.957Google Scholar; Syme, R., History in Ovid (Oxford, 1978), pp. 73–4, and JRS 72 (1982), 7980.Google Scholar

2 Ad Cornelium Taciturn animadversiones (Leiden, 1686), p. 110Google Scholar, on Tac. Ann. 6.18.4.

3 Bertrand, J.-M., ‘Apropos de deux disparus: Cn. Pompeius Theophanes, M. Pompeius Macer’, ZPE 59 (1985), 173–6Google Scholar. Bertrand appears to me to give undue weight to another argument against Rycke's emendation, which is that the inversion ‘Macer Pompeius’ which it posits is an irregular name form. Bertrand is aware that Strabo does occasionally invert the order of nomen and cognomen (see p. 174 n. 21), and it must not be thought that this is mere Strabonian caprice. Strabo was undoubtedly mimicking speech patterns he heard among friends in the Roman elite, in whose parlance the order of nomen and cognomen was often inverted. On this front, Rycke's emendation seems unassailable.

4 For an account of Greek naming conventions at this period, see Daux, G., ‘L'onomastique romaine d'expression grecque’, in L'onomastique latine, Paris1315octobre 1975, ed. Duval, N. (Paris, 1977), pp. 405–13.Google Scholar

5 Mytilene itself furnishes two more examples, M. Pompeius Lykaon (IG 12.2.115) and the poet Marcus Pompeius Ethicus (IG 12.2.653); cf. at Ephesus Pompeius, M.Claudianus, Apollonius and Pompeius, M. Demeas Caecilianus (Inschriften von Ephesos, 708)Google Scholar, Pompeius, M. Damonicus (Inschriften von Ephesos, 1020)Google Scholar, and Pompeius, M. Boron (Inschriften von Ephesos, 2304)Google Scholar; at Cos M. Pompeius Ephebicus (Maiuri, A., Nuova sylloge epigrafica di Rodi e Cos [Florence, 1925], no. 571 bGoogle Scholar); at Rhodes M. Pompeius Epaphroditus (IG 12.1.647). The praenomen Marcus is also common along the Pompeii who proliferated at the other end of the Mediterranean, in Spain.

6 Another fact which may be pertinent to Theophanes' domestic arrangements is that Pompeii are attested in greater numbers at Mytilene than in any other Greek city of the East but Ephesus. (The numbers are 22 and 23 respectively: see the lists in Holtheide, B., Römische Bürgerrechtspolitik und römische Neubürger in der Provinz Asia, Hochschulsammlung Philosophie Geschichte 5 [Freiburg, 1983], pp. 234–7Google Scholar, with the discussion on pp. 24–5.) These Pompeii may be, or be descended from, kinsmen and protégés on whom Theophanes persuaded Pompey to confer the citizenship, or they may be from families of Italian settlers who originally had no connection to either Pompey or Theophanes. (On the difficulty of distinguishing between Romanized Greeks and Hellenized Romans at Mytilene, see Hatzfeld, J., Les trafiquants italiens dans I'Orient hellénique [Paris, 1919], pp. 92–5Google Scholar.) In either case, they will have been important people at Mytilene, and their numbers are large enough to raise the possibility that Theophanes adopted someone who was already a Pompeius by birth.

7 The fullest discussion of Pompeius Macer's library role is embedded in an account of the librarian Hyginus by Christes, J., Sklaven und Freigelassene als Grammatiker und Philologen im antiken Rom, Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei 10 (Wiesbaden, 1979), pp. 74–6Google Scholar. Since Christes takes as a given that Macer is Theophanes' son, while granting little significance to the term ordinare which Suetonius uses to specify Macer's role, he reaches conclusions different from those argued here.

8 For publicare of opening a collection to the public, cf. Suet. Caes. 44.2, Pliny, HN 7.115, and 35.26.

9 ‘[C. Iulius Hyginus] praefuit Palatinae bibliothecae’, Suet. Gr. 20.2; a comparable expression is (esse) supra bibliothecam, Vitr. 7 praef. 5 and 7 and the inscription commemorating Julius Pappus, Ti., AE 1960 no. 26Google Scholar. Both expressions are analogous to and probably based on Greek terminology. The first corresponds to προστναι τν βιβλιοθηκν, cf. Suda ii. 109.33–4, 306.16–17 Adler; for the second, cf. π τς βιβλιοθκης at Strabo 13.1.54 (609) and πισττης το Μουσεου κα τν ν ‘Ρώµῃ βιβλιοθηκν at IGR i.58, no. 136.4–5.

10 Other terms used in addition to ordinare (Suet. Caes. 56.7, Gr. 21.3) are disponere (Cic. Att. 4.8.2 = SB 79), digerere (Suet. Caes. 44.2), discribere (Sen. Dial. 9.9.7), and dissignatio (Cic. Att. 4.4a. 1 = SB 78). Plutarch uses νσκευζεσθαι of the cataloguing operation at Sulla 26.2, where it is clearly not a function performed by the person in charge of the collection. John Morgan suggests to me that the distinction of functions is also evident in sources suggesting that Callimachus catalogued the collection at Alexandria while Zenodotus was the librarian in charge.

11 The usual interpretation is that Augustus had Caesar's juvenilia in his keeping and forbade Macer to transfer them to the public collection. But some of these works seem already to have been in the public domain. The dicta collectanea which Suetonius mentions are evidently the same as the uolumina ποφθεγµτων of which Cicero knew (Fam. 9.16.4 = SB 190), and the Oedipus tragedy was presumably among the second-rate poems which Tacitus says that Caesar himself ‘in bibliothecas rettulit’ (Dial. 21.6). If that is the case, what Augustus had to do in order to keep them out of the library was not just withhold his own copies, but instruct Macer not to acquire them on the open market.

12 For Varro's role, see Suet. Caes. 44.2, ‘[Caesar destinabat] bibliothecas Graecas Latinasque quas maximas posset publicare data Marco Varroni cura comparandarum ac digerendarum’; for Tyrannio's role, see Plut. Sulla 26.2 and Cic. Att. 4.4a. 1 = SB 78. 4.8.2 = SB 79; cf. also Cic. QFr. 3.4.5 = SB 24 and 3.5.6 = SB 25.

13 ‘[C. Melissus] curam ordinandarum bibliothecarum in Octaviae porticu suscepit’, Suet. Gr 21.3.

14 The plural is often used this way of component parts of one collection, as at Suet. Caes. 44.2, Gr. 21.3, Petron. 48.4, Isid. Orig. 6.5.2; cf. ILS 1588–9, 1971–2.

15 As for example Hyginus (Suet. Gr. 20.2) and Julius, Ti. Pappus (AE 1960 no. 26Google Scholar) under Augustus and Tiberius respectively.

16 On the other hand, the man who performed a role exactly parallel to Macer's at the other Augustan library was definitely a freedman (Suet. Gr. 21.3).

17 This anomaly becomes more acute if it was through offspring of Macrina's praetorian brother that Theophanes' line survived into the following century. Given the scale on which members of the family were purged in 33, we should be wary of postulating unknown siblings who escaped to propagate.

18 It must be admitted that Strabo's silence about the entry of Theophanes' family into the Roman senate still needs explaining even if we strike the praetor of A.D. 15 from the stemma. Though Strabo was writing down into the early 20s, he is equally oblivious of Macrina's brother, who had to have entered the senate by A.D. 27 at latest and who may have entered much earlier.

19 The pieces to be fitted together do not end with those I have reviewed. Other texts which have been thought relevant to the history of Theophanes' family give us a Pompeius Macer who was master of a slave buried near Rome (ILS 7391), a Pompeius Macer who wrote a Greek tragedy from which Stobaeus culled a short excerpt (p. 617, no. 52 Hense = TGK Nauck, pp. 830–1), a ‘ … us Macer’ honoured on an undated coin from Priene (Regling, K., Die Münzen von Priene [Berlin, 1927], no. 186)Google Scholar, a Gaius or Gnaeus Pompeius who was honoured at Priene while serving as ὔπαρχος of Augustus (Hiller, F. von Gaertringen, Inschriften von Priene [Berlin, 1906], no. 247)Google Scholar, and a Pompeius Macer achieved by emending and combining author names associated with two epigrams in the Greek Anthology (Anth. Pal. 7.219, credited to a ‘younger Pompeius’, and 9.28, credited in alternate ascriptions to a ‘Pompeius’ or to a ‘younger Marcus’).

20 CIL 5.7816 and 7566, 8.504, and 12.2568.

21 The library organizer of Suet. Caes. 56.7 need not be separately considered: either he is the same man as the procurator, or else if he is not, we have no reason to suppose that he has any tie to the Mytilenean family.

22 ‘Trinacris est oculis te duce uisa meis’, Pont. 2.10.22 (and following); ‘hic mihi labentis pars anni magna peracta est’, Pont. 2.10.29.

23 ‘Est aliquid … et modo res egisse simul, modo rursus ab illis, / quorum non pudeat, posse referre iocos’, Pont. 2.10.39–42.

24 Theophanes' wife Archedamis is known from Mytilenean coins on which the pair are jointly commemorated as god and goddess, BMC Greek Coins of Troas, Aeolis, Lesbos, nos. 158–60; Pompeia Macrina's husband is identified by Tacitus at Ann. 6.18.2 above.

25 ‘Mea…coniunx non aliena tibi est’, Pont. 2.10.10.

26 Pont. 2.11.13–18 and 28, 1.2.136–40, 3.1.75–9.

27 Those who conflate the procurator with the tragedian quoted by Stobaeus (above, n. 19) must believe that Pompeius Macer was ambidextrous, composing verse in major genres with equal facility in Greek and in Latin.

28 There is one more reason for not identifying the friend of Ovid and the procurator, which as an argumentwn ex silentio cannot claim central importance, but which is worth stating nonetheless. The Letters from Pontus have as a prime objective to persuade friends to use their influence at court on Ovid's behalf. If Ovid's Macer was the Augustan procurator and the favourite of Tiberius, it is inconceivable that in Pont. 2.10 he would not have been asked to intercede for Ovid.

29 In describing the friends of Ovid and the other poets named in this paragraph, I take no account of slaves, since slaves were not autonomous social actors.

30 Cotys and his father Rhoemetalces, who figure in Pont. 1.8,2.9, and 4.7. The others are the freedman Hyginus (‘familiarissimus Ovidio poetae’ according to Suet. Gr. 20.2, and possibly the unnamed recipient of Tr. 3.14, but not certainly of Greek origin) and Arellius Fuscus (Ovid's preceptor in rhetoric according to Sen. Cont. 2.2.8, but never mentioned in the poems).

31 The only one to receive prominent mention is the Sicilian rancher Pompeius Grosphus, honoured in Carm. 2.16 and Epist. 1.12 (though Pompeius' cognomen is not conclusive proof that he was Greek). The others are the brothers Sosius (probably though not certainly Greek) who marketed Horace's books (Epist. 1.20.2, Ars 345); the rhetor Heliodorus who accompanied a diplomatic party with which Horace happened to travel in the early 30s (Serm. 1.5.2); the doctor Antonius Musa to whose medical expertise Horace alludes at Epist. 1.15.3; and perhaps the messenger ‘Onysius’ (the name has often been emended) who carried a book of Horace's poems to Augustus (Suet. Vita Hor. p. 298.14 Roth). The possibility that the philosopher and poet Philodemus (whom Horace quotes at Serm. 1.2.120–2) addressed Horace in one of his philosophical works has now been effectively closed. PHerc. 253 contains an allocution to Varius, Quintilius, and a third person whose name ends'… tius' (Vol. Here. Coll. Altera vii, fol. r l96, frag. 12, line 4, with discussion by Körte, A., RhM 45 [1890], 173–7)Google Scholar. That the name should be restored as ‘Plotius’ (Tucca) rather than ‘Horatius’ has been conclusively shown by a newly deciphered fragment containing an allocution to Plotius, Varius, Vergil, and Quintilius (Gigante, M. and Capasso, M., SIFC, 3 ser., 7 (1989), 4.Google Scholar

32 Don. Vita Verg. 34 Hardie (Eros); Macr. Sat. 5.17.18 (Parthenius); Servius on Ecl. 6.13, Aen. 6.264 (Siro); PHerc. 1802 (Vol. Here. Coll. Altera i, fol. 92, col. 11, line 3) as supplemented by Korte, A., RhM 45 (1890), 173–7Google Scholar, and PHerc. Paris. 2 as read by Gigante, M. and Capasso, M., SIFC, 3 ser., 7 (1989), 4Google Scholar (Philodemus); Hor. Serm. 1.5.2 and 40 (Heliodorus).

33 Gigante, M. and Capasso, M., ‘II ritorno di Virgilio a Ercolano’, SIFC, 3 ser., 7 (1989), 36Google Scholar