¹ Suet., Aug. 87.1 (asparagus), 90.1 (lightning), 72.3 (dinosaurs), 75.1 (Saturnalia).

² Milnor, K.Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus: The Invention of Private Life (2005)Google Scholar, especially 80–93. As recently as 1997, Horsfall, N. ‘The emperor unbends: some neglected aspects of Suetonius’ Life of Augustus’, Ancient History 27 (1997), 25–30Google Scholar called for more serious analysis of ancient material about ‘the really private, behind-closed-doors emperor’. On the erotic dimension of imperial intimacy, see Vout, C.Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome (2007)Google Scholar.

³ Though the germ of this essay arose quite independently with Suetonius, I must acknowledge the pioneering work of Mary Jaeger on Roman-Syracusan relations in Roman culture, in particular her magnificent Archimedes and the Roman Imagination (2008), published as I was writing this paper. See also eadem, ‘Cicero and Archimedes’ tomb’, JRS 92 (2002), 49–61Google Scholar; eadem, ‘Livy and the fall of Syracuse’, in Eigler, U., Gotter, U., Luraghi, N. and Walter, U. (eds), Formen römischer Geschichtsschreibung von den Anfängen bis Livius: Gattungen – Autoren – Kontexte (2003), 213–34Google Scholar.

⁴ Text of Suetonius is taken from Carter, J. M.Suetonius: Divus Augustus (1982)Google Scholar. Cf. a similar compound at Plato, Rep. 475e: τεχνυδρίων ‘minor arts’.

⁵ Stahr, A.Suetons Kaiserbiographien (1854)Google Scholar, ad loc.: ‘Den Namen Syrakus gab Augustus diesem seinem Arbeitskabinett wohl mit Bezug auf Archimedes von Syrakus, der in seiner Studierstube, selbst die Eroberung der Stadt nicht bemerkte’; Rolfe, J. C. (ed.) Suetonius, with an English translation (2nd edn, 1928)Google Scholar, ad loc.: ‘With reference to the study of Archimedes, or perhaps to the general use of such elevated rooms in Syracuse.’ Robert Graves inserted a similar explanation into his 1957 Penguin translation, The Twelve Caesars, ‘perhaps because Archimedes of Syracuse had a similar one’, omitted in the revised edition of M. Grant (2003).

⁶ Carettoni, G.Das Haus von Augustus auf dem Palatin (1983)Google Scholar; idem, Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik (1988)Google Scholar; Iacopi, I. and Tedone, G. ‘Lo “studiolo” di Augusto’, Boll. Archeol. 1 (1990), 143–8Google Scholar; Iacopi, I.The House of Augustus: Wall Paintings (2008)Google Scholar; Galinsky, K.Augustan Culture (1996), 189–91Google Scholar. See now the more muted claim of Clarke, J. R. ‘Augustan domestic interiors: propaganda or fashion?’ in Galinsky, K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus (2005), 264–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 270–1; cf. Carandini, A. and Bruni, D.La casa di Augusto: dai Lupercalia al Natale (2008)Google Scholar, 72–3, 162–3. Sojc, N. ‘Domus Augustana auf dem Palatin’, MDAI(R) 112 (2006), 339–50Google Scholar and Iacopi, I. and Tedone, G. ‘Bibliotheca e porticus ad Apollinis’, MDAI(R) 112 (2006), 351–78Google Scholar argue that the ‘studiolo’ along with the other rooms belongs to the earliest phase of the house (thanks to Frederick Brenk for these references). Carandini and Bruni, op. cit., 162–3 note that it would have been hard for Suetonius to see any part of the original house once Augustus had superimposed his new version. However, Wiseman's, T. P. review of Carandini and Bruni, ‘The House of Augustus and the Lupercal’, JRA 22 (2009), 527–45Google Scholar casts grave doubts on identifying the so-called ‘House of Augustus’ with any royal residence on the Palatine: ancient sources indicate that it might just have been part of one of the aristocratic houses the emperor repossessed for incorporation into his palace complex.

⁷ Publisher's summary of Iacopi, op. cit. (n. 6): ‘Here, under a vault of stucco, the Emperor used to retire when he didn’t want to be disturbed, hiding away his Alexandrian “modernity” from all the people who believed he was a conservative.’

⁸ Suet., Aug. 6.1: ‘nutrimentorum eius ostenditur adhuc locus in auito suburbano iuxta Velitras permodicus et cellae penuariae instar.’ See Bodel, J. ‘Monumental villas and villa monuments’, JRA 10 (1997), 5–35Google Scholar, at 13 on Augustus’ birthplace and the myths attached to it. Tamm, B.Auditorium and Palatium: A Study on Assembly-Rooms in Roman Palaces during the 1st Century b.c. and the 1st Century a.d. (1963)Google Scholar, 49 speculates that Augustus himself may have set aside the ostentatiously modest part of his Palatine house as a museum for future generations.

⁹ See Edwards, C.Writing Rome: Textual Approaches to the City (1997)Google Scholar, 30–43. Morgan, L. ‘Natura narratur: Tullius Laurea's elegy for Cicero (Pliny, Nat. 31.8)’, in Heyworth, S. (ed.),Classical Constructions: Papers in Memory of Don Fowler (2007), 113–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar tracks the sixteenth-century ‘relocation’ (by a couple of miles) of the ruins of Cicero's villa at Cumae. For a sceptical response to the ‘Lupercal’ grotto, see Wiseman, op. cit. (n. 6).

¹⁰ Carter, op. cit. (n. 4), ad loc.

¹¹ Ar., Nub. 218; Plut., Dem. 7 (cf. Quint. 10.3.25); Plin., Ep. 2.17.20.

¹² See Liebenwein, W.Lo studiolo: die Entstehung eines Raumtyps und seine Entwicklung bis um 1600 (1977)Google Scholar; Thornton, D.The Scholar in his Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (1997)Google Scholar.

¹³ Cicero in the Laws chooses an island in the River Fibrenus near his birthplace as the ideal setting for philosophical discussion à la Phaedrus: Leg. 2.1.1, (Atticus) ‘locum mutemus et in insula quae est in Fibreno … sermoni reliquo demus operam sedentes?’ (Marcus) ‘sane quidem; nam illo loco libentissime soleo uti siue quid mecum ipse cogito siue aut quid scribo aut lego’.

¹⁴ Suet., Aug. 85.1.

¹⁵ Bachelard, G.The Poetics of Space (2nd edn, 1994)Google Scholar, 13.

¹⁶ Holland, P.Suetonius, History of Twelve Caesars, ed. Freese, J. H. (1923)Google Scholar, ‘Notes and Annotations’, 37.

¹⁷ Shuckburgh, E. S. (ed.) C. Suetoni Tranquilli Diuus Augustus (1986)Google Scholar; Carter, op. cit. (n. 4), ad loc.; Ailloud, H.Suétone: vie des douze Césars, 3 vols (1931)Google Scholar, ad loc.; Nep., Dion 9.1: ‘cum a conuentu se remotum Dion domi teneret atque in conclaui edito recubuisset.’ For Rolfe, see n. 5.

¹⁸ Coarelli, F. M.Lazio (1982)Google Scholar, 61–2 (cf. idem, Roma sepolta (1984)Google Scholar, 143–5); De Franceschini, M.Villa Adriana: mosaici–pavimenti–edifici (1991)Google Scholar, 643; Macdonald, W. L. and Pinto, J. A.Hadrian's Villa and its Legacy (1995)Google Scholar, 81–94. Diod. 14.7.1–3 describes the retreat as a ‘fortified acropolis, a place of refuge in case of need’, enclosing a dockyard connected with the harbour of Laccium by a canal of one ship's width; Cic., Tusc. 5.59 claims that the suspicious tyrant had a retractable wooden drawbridge separating the secluded bedchamber where he slept with his wives from the main body of his palace: ‘sic noctu ad eas uentitabat, ut omnia specularetur et percontaretur ante; et cum fossam latam cubiculari lecto circumdedisset eiusque fossae transitum ponticulo ligneo coniunxisset, eum ipse (MS ipsum) cum forem cubiculi clauserat, detorquebat.’

¹⁹ Athen. 5.207a–209. See Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 106–8.

²⁰ For Augustus’ dicta et apophthegmata, see Malcovati, E. (ed.) Caesaris Augusti Fragmenta (2nd edn, 1928), 106–26Google Scholar. On anecdotes as historical sources, see the classic paper of Saller, R. ‘Anecdotes as historical evidence for the principate’, G&R 27 (1980), 69–83Google Scholar.

²¹ On Roman Sicily, see Manganaro, G. ‘Per una storia della Sicilia romana’, ANRW 1.1 (1972), 442–61Google Scholar; ‘La Sicilia da Sesto Pompeio a Diocleziano’ ANRW 2.11.1 (1988), 3–89Google Scholar; ‘Sicilia di età imperiale’ ANRW 2.11.1 (1988), 346–413Google Scholar; and the Roman essays in Smith, C. and Serrati, J. (eds.) Sicily from Aeneas to Augustus: New Approaches in Archaeology and History (2001)Google Scholar. As an archaeological and historical introduction, Wilson, R. J. A.Sicily under the Roman Empire: The Archaeology of a Roman Province, 36 b.c.–A.D. 535 (1990)Google Scholar cannot be bettered. On Sicily and the Second Punic War, see Briscoe, J. ‘The Second Punic War’, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 8 (2nd edn, 1989), 44–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Sicilian identity, with more detail than could possibly be given here, particularly from the epigraphic perspective, see J. R. W. Prag, Sicily and the Roman Republic 241–44 BC: Provincialization and Provincial Identities, unpub. PhD thesis, University College London (2004).

²² Feeney, D.Caesar's Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History (2007)Google Scholar, 7–67 identifies calendrical synchronization as an essential constituent of ancient Mediterranean historiography.

²³ Connors, C. ‘Chariton's Syracuse and its histories of empire’, in Paschalis, M. and Frangoulidis, S. (eds), Space in the Ancient Novel (2002), 12–26Google Scholar, at 16. Cic., Verr. 2.2.2 credits Sicily with teaching Rome imperialism: ‘prima docuit maiores nostros quam praeclarum esset exteris gentibus imperare.’

²⁴ Livy 25.24.11–14; Plut., Marc. 19.1–2.

²⁵ Theoc., Id. 28.18: Τρινακρίας μυελόν.

²⁶ Jonathan Prag has argued that citizens of Syracuse were much more likely to refer to themselves epigraphically as ‘Syracusans’ than as ‘Sicilians’. See also Loicq-Berger, M.-P.Syracuse: histoire culturelle d’une cité grecque (1967)Google Scholar on evidence for a specifically Syracusan identity.

²⁷ On Rome's reception of the Sicilian tyrants, see Dunkle, J. R. ‘The Greek tyrant and Roman political invective of the Late Republic’, TAPA 98 (1967), 151–71Google Scholar; Grimal, P. ‘Cicéron et les tyrans de Sicile’, Ciceroniana 4 (1980), 63–74Google Scholar; Gildenhard, I. ‘Reckoning with tyranny: Greek thoughts on Caesar in Cicero's Letters to Atticus in early 49’, in Lewis, S. (ed.),Ancient Tyranny (2006), 197–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Paideia Romana: Cicero's Tusculan Disputations (2007)Google Scholar, on the Tusculans as a philosopher's negotiation with Caesar's tyranny. On Dionysius I, see Sanders, L. J.Dionysius of Syracuse and Greek Tyranny (1987)Google Scholar; Caven, B.Dionysius I: War-Lord of Sicily (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For recent interpretations of the Verrines, see Butler, S.The Hand of Cicero (2002)Google Scholar; Pittia, S. and Dubouloz, J. (eds.) La Sicilie de Cicéron. Lectures de Verrines (2006)Google Scholar; Prag, J. R. W. (ed.) Sicilia Nutrix Plebis Romanae: Rhetoric, Law, and Taxation in Cicero's Verrines (2007)Google Scholar.

²⁸ See Loicq-Berger, op. cit. (n. 26), 273 for ‘un goût du grandiose’ as a Syracusan characteristic, presumably by association with the tyrants’ megalomaniac ambitions (she also cites the suggestive phrase of R. Rochefort, Travail et travailleurs en Sicile. Étude de géographie sociale, unpub. doctoral thesis, Lyon (1961): ‘l’hypertrophie du moi sicilien’).

²⁹ Sen., Marc. 17.2. See Manning, C. E.On Seneca's “Ad Marciam” (1981)Google Scholar, Garbarino, G. ‘Secum peregrinari: il tema del viaggio in Seneca’, in De tuo tibi. Omaggio degli allievi a Italo Lana (1996), 263–85Google Scholar and Montiglio, S. ‘Should the aspiring wise man travel? A conflict in Seneca's thought’, AJP 4 (2006), 553–86Google Scholar, especially 567.

³⁰ Wilson, op. cit. (n. 21), 28.

³¹ Cic., Planc. 26.65–27.65.

³² Cic., Off. 3.14.58–9. Cf. Sen., NQ 4 praef. 1: ‘delectat te, quemadmodum scribis, Lucili uirorum optime, Sicilia et officium procurationis otiosae.’

³³ Cic., Verr. 2.4.117: ‘eorum coniunctione pars oppidi quae appellatur Insula, mari disiuncta angusto, ponte rursus adiungitur et continetur.’

³⁴ See the maps in Wilson, op. cit. (n. 21), 160–1.

³⁵ An ‘umbilical’ link commemorated in the various myths of a submarine stream connecting the Peloponnesian river Alpheius with the Syracusan spring Arethusa: Mosch., fr. 3 Gow; Virg., Aen. 3.694–6; Ov., Met. 3.6.29–30; Stat., Silv. 1.2.203–8 (rationalized by Strabo, 6.2.4 C271).

³⁶ Cic., Verr. 2.2.6–7. See further Sartori, F. ‘Suburbanitas Siciliae’, in Händel, P. and Meid, W. (eds), Festschrift für R. Muth (1983), 415–23Google Scholar. Cf. Cic., Verr. 2.5.157: ‘suburbana et fidelis prouincia, plena optimorum sociorum honestissimorumque ciuium’; 2.3.66: ‘prouincia suburbana’ (bracketed as corrupt in Peterson's OCT); Flor. 2.2.15, 3.19.3: ‘suburbana prouincia’; Plin., HN 16.38. See Cic., Fam. 9.7.2 on Sardinia as a ‘farm’ so minor that Caesar has not yet inspected it. On Sicily as appendage to Italy, see Strabo 6.2.7 C272, 6.4.1 C286. For its nearness (propinquitas), rhetorically manipulated to suggest the close economic relationship with Rome, see Cic., Verr. 2.2.5–6, 2.3.64, 2.3.211, with Scuderi, R. ‘La raffigurazione ciceroniana della Sicilia e dei suoi abitanti: un fattore ambientale per la condanna di Verre’, in Stella, C. and Valvo, A. (eds), Studi in onore di Albino Garzetti (1996), 409–30Google Scholar. Horace makes the equation of province and farm implicit in his near-juxtaposition of two Epistles, 1.12 and 1.14: Iccius, procurator of Agrippa's Sicilian estates, is to Agrippa (Augustus’ provincial deputy) what the surly bailiff of the Sabine farm is to Horace. See Putnam, M. C. J. ‘From lyric to letter: Iccius in Horace Odes 1.29 and Epistles 1.12’, AJP 116 (1995), 193–207Google Scholar on Horace's play with cornucopias, fruitfulness and profit (fructus), both material and philosophical, in a poem focused on a semi-independent addressee on a semi-removed island. For Augustus’ own procuratorial joke, see Plut., Mor. 207c (= Malcovati, op. cit. (n. 20), 16): asked if Theodotus procurator of Sicily was bald or a thief, the emperor answered, ‘Yes’.

³⁷ Cic., Planc. 40.95: ‘Siciliam petiui animo, quae et ipsa erat mihi, sicut domus una coniuncta.’ It is worth remembering that Augustus’ alternative to ‘Syracuse’ was a freedman's suburban farm: Suet., Aug. 72.2.

³⁸ Hor., Sat. 1.5; Lucil. 97–147 Marx = 94–148 Warmington.

³⁹ Cic., Fam. 6.8.2: ‘propinquitas locorum uel ad impetrandum adiuuat crebris litteris et nuntiis uel ad reditus celeritatem re aut impetrata’; Planc. 26.65–27.65 (see above); Att. 15.11.1: (Cassius insulted at the prospect of being given a government commission to buy corn in Sicily) ‘egone ut beneficium accepissem contumeliam?’

⁴⁰ OLD s.v. 1.

⁴¹ Shakespeare, Henry IV Part II, Act IV, Scene v, lines 234–41. Israel Shatzman alerts me to a parallel confusion: ‘Strato's Tower’ was the name given both to Caesarea and to an underground passage in the Hasmonaean Baris in Jerusalem, where Judas the Essene correctly predicted that Antigonus, brother of Aristobulus I, would die (Joseph., BJ 1.78–80; Ant. 13.309–13).

⁴² Spence, S. ‘The straits of empire: Sicily from Vergil to Dante’, in Barolini, T. (ed.),Medieval Constructions in Gender and Identity: Essays in Honor of Joan M. Ferrante (2006), 133–50Google Scholar stresses the distance, physically minimal but conceptually critical, between Italy and Rome's first province.

⁴³ Virg., Aen. 3.414–19; Sil., Pun. 14.20–22: ‘sed spatium, quod dissociat consortia terrae, | latratus fama est (sic arta interuenit unda) | et matutinos uolucrum tramittere cantus.’

⁴⁴ Cic.,Planc. 40.96: ‘cum ipsa paene insula mihi sese obuiam ferre uellet, praetor ille … me in Siciliam uenire noluit.’

⁴⁵ Quint. 10.3.25: ‘Demosthenes melius, qui se in locum ex quo nulla exaudiri vox et ex quo nihil prospici posset recondebat, ne aliud agere mentem cogerent oculi. ideoque lucubrantes silentium noctis et clusum cubiculum et lumen unum velut †rectos† maxime teneat’; Plut., Dem. 7. Augustus’ bunker: Suet., Aug. 90.

⁴⁶ Cic., Verr. 2.4.117: ‘situ … ex omni aditu uel terra uel mari praeclaro ad aspectum.’ On the sights of Sicily, and above all Syracuse: Cic., Verr. 2.5.68; Sen., Marc. 17.2, 6; Ov., Ex Pont. 2.10.22–9.

⁴⁷ Strabo 6.1.5 C257, 6.2.1 C265–6.

⁴⁸ Cic., Acad. 2.81; Varro ap. Plin., HN 7.85; Strabo 6.2.1 C267; Val. Max. 1.2; Solinus 1.99; and Ael., Var. Hist. 11.13. Pothecary, S., ‘Strabo the geographer: his name and its meaning’, Mnemosyne 52 (1999), 691–704CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 695 calls this figure ‘surely fictional’.

⁴⁹ Cic., Verr. 2.5.169: ‘ex cruce Italiam cernere ac domum suam prospicere posset? … Italiae conspectus ad eam rem ab isto delectus est, ut ille in dolore cruciatuque moriens perangusto fretu diuisa seruitutis ac libertatis iura cognosceret.’

⁵⁰ Val. Max. 9.8 ext. 1: ‘dum tam paruo spatio Italiam Siciliamque inter se diuisas non credit.’

⁵¹ The Polla elogium (ILLRP 454 Degrassi) records a road built ad fretum ad statuam, which suggests that there might have been a complementary statue on the Italian side. Prestianni, A. M. ‘Il Peloro nell’antichità: miti scienze storia’, in Gentili, B. and Pinzone, A. (eds), Messina e Reggio nell’antichità: storia, società, cultura (2002), 141–84Google Scholar discusses Pelorus’ etymological and cultural associations with the gigantesque and mentions a ‘tower’ in Strabo (3.5.5 C171) possibly identical to the statue.

⁵² Stat., Silv. 2.2.3: ‘celsa Dicarchei speculatrix uilla profundi’; 2.2.83–5: ‘quid mille reuoluam | culmina uisendique uices? sua cuique uoluptas | atque omni proprium thalamo mare’. See Van Dam, H.-J.P. Papinius Statius, Siluae Book II: A Commentary (1984)Google Scholar; Newlands, C.Statius’ Silvae and the Poetics of Empire (2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 154–98. The villa of Lucullus in Phaedrus’ anecdote about the emperor Tiberius similarly looks out on both the Sicilian and the Tyrrhenian seas: 2.5.10, ‘prospectat Siculum et respicit Tuscum mare’. Pliny's favourite suite in his Laurentine villa (Ep. 2.17.20) overlooks the sea on one side, the land on the other.

⁵³ Sen., Ep. 51.11: ‘uidebatur hoc magis militare, ex edito speculari late longeque subiecta … scies non uillas sed castra.’

⁵⁴ Stephen Harrison suggests to me a link with the ‘Tower of Maecenas’ in Rome, from which Nero allegedly fiddled while Rome burned (Suet., Nero 38): see Ampolo, C. ‘Livio I, 44, 3: la casa di Servio Tullio, l’Esquilino e Mecenate’, PP 51 (1996), 27–32Google Scholar. Cic., Tusc. 5.59 alleges that Dionysius I was so afraid of public meetings that he conducted them from a tall tower: ‘cum in communibus suggestis consistere non auderet, contionari ex turri alta solebatur.’ Lauter, H.Die Architektur des Hellenismus (1986)Google Scholar, 225–6 suggests that Augustus’ ‘Syracuse’ was inspired specifically by look-out towers like those found in houses in the theatre quarter of Delos, via a presumed link with Sicily.

⁵⁵ Sil., Pun. 14.300–2: ‘turris, multiplici surgens ad sidera tecto, | exibat, tabulata decem cui crescere Graius | fecerat et multas nemorum consumpserat umbras’; 14.341–9: ‘uir fuit Isthmiacis decus immortale colonis, | ingenio facile ante alios telluris alumnus, | nudus opum, sed cui caelum terraeque paterent. | ille, nouus pluuias Titan ut proderet ortu | fuscatis tristis radiis; ille haereat anne | pendeat instabilis tellus; cur foedere certo | hunc affusa globum Tethys circumligit undis, | nouerat atque una pelagi lunaeque labores, | et pater Oceanus qua lege effunderet aestus.’

⁵⁶ See Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 95–7. Virgil, too, remarks on Marcellus’ metaphorical pre-eminence: Aen. 6.855–6, ‘aspice ut insignis spoliis Marcellus opimis | ingreditur uictorque uiris supereminet omnis?’

⁵⁷ Clarke, K.Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World (2001)Google Scholar, 224.

⁵⁸ ibid., 225.

⁵⁹ Strabo 6.2.7 C273: ταμεῖον τῆς ῾Ρώμης; Cic., Verr. 2.2.5: ‘itaque ille M. Cato Sapiens cellam penariam rei publicae nostrae, nutricem plebis Romanae Siciliam nominabat. nos uero experti sumus … nobis non pro penaria cella sed pro aerario illo maiorum uetere ac referto fuisse.’

⁶⁰ Görler, W. ‘Syracusae auf dem Palatin; Syracuse, New York: Sentimentale Namengebung in Rom und später’, in Görler, W. and Koster, S. (eds), Pratum Saraviense: Festgabe für Peter Steinmetz (1990), 169–83Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Cic., Tusc. 2.9, Div. 1.8, Att. 1.31.1 (Amaltheion); Cic., Att. 1.4.3, 1.6.2, 1.9.2, 1.10.3, 1.15, Fam. 7.23.2, Q. Fr. 3.9.7 (Lyceum and Academy); SHA, Hadrian 26.5: ‘Tiburtinam uillam mire exaedificauit, ita ut ea et prouinciarum et locorum celeberrima nomina inscriberet, uelut Lyceum, Academian, Prytaneum, Canopum, Poicilen, Tempe uocaret. et, ut nihil praetermitteret, etiam inferos finxit.’

⁶² Bergmann, B. ‘Meanwhile, back in Italy …: Creating landscapes of allusion’, in Alcock, S. E., Cherry, J. F. and Elsner, J. (eds), Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece (2001), 154–66Google Scholar.

⁶³ T. Hägg's map of the locations of Greek novel plots, which span the eastern Mediterranean from Syracuse and Tarentum to Antioch and Ethiopia (The Novel in Antiquity (1980), endpapers charting the routes of Xenophon's Ephesian Tale), is the ultimate inspiration for F. Moretti's controversial European novel ‘maps’ (Atlas of the European Novel, 1800–1900 (1998), 52). Greek-facing Syracuse could claim to be a Roman's first point of contact with this ‘romantic’ quarter of the known world.

⁶⁴ On Archimedes’ life, see Dijksterhuis, E. J.Archimedes, trans. Dikshoorns, C. (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 77–100 draws attention to the importance of genre and framing in shaping the various literary biographies.

⁶⁵ Val. Max. 7 ext. 7. See also Polyb. 8.3; Cic., Verr. 2.1.131; Livy 25.31.9; Plin., HN 7.125; Sil., Pun. 14.676–8; Plut., Marc. 19.4–6; with Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 77–100 for a subtle discussion of authorial agendas in each case. For visual representations of Archimedes’ death, see Winter, F. ‘Der Tod des Archimedes’, 82. Winckelmannsprogramm der Archäologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin (1924)Google Scholar. On the tradition of representing Greek philosophers’ deaths as appropriate to their teachings, see Chitwood, A.Death by Philosophy: The Biographical Tradition in the Life and Death of the Archaic Philosophers, Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁶ Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), passim, especially 91–3.

⁶⁷ Cic., Tusc. 5.64–6.

⁶⁸ Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2002); eadem, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 32–47.

⁶⁹ Metonymy for the consummate investigation of his career, the prosecution of Verres: see Butler, op. cit. (n. 27). For Cicero and Archimedes as investigators: (Cicero) Cic., Tusc. 5.64, ‘ego quaestor … indagaui’; Tusc. 5.65, ‘dixi me illud ipsum arbitrari esse quod quaererem’; (Archimedes) Val. Max. 8.7 ext. 7, ‘propter nimiam cupiditatem inuestigandi’; Vitr. 9 praef. 10, ‘inuenisse quod quaereret’.

⁷⁰ Livy 25.24.11–14; Plut., Marc. 19.1–2. Sil., Pun. 14.666–7 also describes Marcellus looking down on the city from a high rampart: ‘sublimis de alto | aggere despexit.’ See Carawan, E. M. ‘The tragic history of Marcellus and Livy's characterization’, CJ 80 (1984), 131–41Google Scholar; Marincola, J. ‘Marcellus at Syracuse (Livy XXV, 24, 11–15): a historian reflects’, in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History (2005), 219–29Google Scholar; Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2003); eadem, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 85–100. In general on Marcellus and Syracuse, see Eckstein, A. M.Senate and General: Individual Decision-Making and Roman Foreign Relations, 264–194 b. c. (1987)Google Scholar, 157–69; Gruen, E. S.Culture and National Identity: Republican Rome (1983), 94–103Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Rossi, A. ‘The tears of Marcellus: history of a literary motif in Livy’, G&R 47 (2000), 56–66Google Scholar. Scipio's tearful reaction to the sack of Carthage in 146 b.c. (Diod. 32.24) was a correspondingly self-conscious response to the cycles of history: see Feeney, op. cit. (n. 22), 54–6.

⁷² McDonnell, M. ‘Roman aesthetics and the spoils of Syracuse’, in Dillon, S. and Welch, K. E. (eds), Representations of War in Ancient Rome (2006), 68–90Google Scholar.

⁷³ Livy 25.40.1. Cic., Verr. 2.4.121 alleges that, by contrast with Verres, Marcellus siphoned none of the spoils off to private houses, profaned no sanctuaries, and left many exceptional objects in Syracuse (‘Syracusis autem permulta atque egregia reliquit’). Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 88 notes some significant members of Cicero's audience: a descendant, C. Marcellus, proconsul of Sicily in 79 b.c., was among the iudices at Verres’ trial, while another Marcellus was a witness for the defence.

⁷⁴ Cic., Rep. 1.21. See Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 48–68.

⁷⁵ See Carawan, op. cit. (n. 70); T. Harrison, ‘Sicily in the Athenian imagination’, in Smith and Serrati, op. cit. (n. 21), 84–96; H. Flower, ‘“Memories” of Marcellus: history and memory in Roman Republican culture’, in Eigler, Gotter, Luraghi and Walter, op. cit. (n. 3), 39–52, at 46 on the damnatio of Marcellus in some interested historians.

⁷⁶ Strabo 6.2.4 C272 (Augustus); Suet., Gaius 21: ‘Syracusis conlapsa uetustate moenia deorumque aedes refectae’ (Caligula). Connors, op. cit. (n. 23), 21, n. 22 correctly divines that Strabo had some explaining away to do in giving Augustus’ reasons for not wholly restoring Dionysius’ city. Wilson, R. J. A. ‘Towns of Sicily during the Empire’, ANRW 2.11.1 (1988), 90–206Google Scholar, at 113–15 suggests that, thanks to extensive works by Hellenistic kings and republican benefactors, Augustus had little to do other than improve the city's amenities by adding an amphitheatre, porticos and parks.

⁷⁷ Wilson, op. cit. (n. 21), 179, fig. 150. Cf. on the temple of Venus at Eryx, Tac., Ann. 4.43: ‘et Segestani aedem Veneris montem apud Erycum, uetustate dilapsum, restaurari postulauere, nota memorantes de origine eius et laeta Tiberio’; Suet., Claud. 25: ‘templumque in Sicilia Veneris Erycinae uetustate conlapsum ut ex aerario pop. R. reficeretur, auctor fuit.’

⁷⁸ See Connor, W. R. ‘The razing of the house in Greek society’, TAPA 115 (1985), 79–102Google Scholar, especially 83, citing Timoleon's demolition of Syracusan tyrants’ houses in 343/2 b.c. (Plut., Timol. 22.1–3).

⁷⁹ Cic., Tusc. 5.65: ‘quis est omnium, qui modo cum Musis, id est cum humanitate et cum doctrina, habeat aliquod commercium, qui se non hunc mathematicum malit quam illum tyrannum?’

⁸⁰ Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2002), 53–4 (cf. eadem, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 37 and 173, n. 16) points out that the negative aspects are curiously conflated in Daumier's charcoal sketch of Archimedes dying with a Damoclean sword hanging over his head (Laughton, B.The Drawings of Daumier and Millet (1991)Google Scholar, 51).

⁸¹ Horace's miniature gigantomachy in C. 3.4 blends Pindaric praise for Hiero's foundation of Aetna in Pythian 1 with more muted allusions to Augustus’ own Sicilian victory over Sextus Pompeius (see Nisbet-Rudd ad loc.). For Syracusan tyrants as cautionary role models, compare C. 3.1.17–19: ‘destrictus ensis cui super impia | ceruice pendet, non Siculae dapes | dulcem elaborabunt saporem’, where the ‘sword of Damocles’, courtier to Dionysius I, is suspended over an unnamed tyrant (cf. Cic., Tusc. 5.21.61–2).

⁸² Connors, op. cit. (n. 23).

⁸³ Connors, op. cit. (n. 23), 19.

⁸⁴ Suet., Aug. 2.2–3.

⁸⁵ See e.g. Cic., Verr. 2.2.51; also Hor., C. 1.12.45–6: ‘crescit occulto uelut arbor aeuo | fama Marcelli’, with Nisbet-Hubbard ad loc. (this Pindaric image creates a family tree that ties the conqueror of Syracuse to his Marcellan descendants, the ‘late efflorescence of three successive consuls in the last years of the Republic’). On the Late Republican revival of Marcellus’ reputation, see Flower, op. cit. (n. 75). On the Marcellan ‘cult’ in Syracuse, see Rives, J. ‘Marcellus and the Syracusans’, CP 88 (1993), 32–5Google Scholar; Glei, R. F. ‘The show must go on: the death of Marcellus and the future of the Augustan principate (Aeneid 6.860–86)’, in Stahl, H.-P. (ed.),Vergil's Aeneid: Augustan Epic and Political Context (1998), 119–34Google Scholar. See also Gabba, E. ‘Posidonio, Marcello e la Sicilia’, in Gualandi, M. L., Massei, L. and Settis, S. (eds), Nuove ricerche e studi sulla Magna Grecia e la Sicilia antica in onore di Paolo Enrico Arias (1982), vol. 2, 611–14Google Scholar (= Aspetti culturali dell’imperialismo romano (1993), 79–88).

⁸⁶ Brandt, H. ‘Marcellus’ successioni praeparatus’, Chiron 25 (1995), 1–17Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Flower, H. ‘The tradition of the spolia opima: M. Claudius Marcellus and Augustus’, ClAnt 19 (2000), 34–59Google Scholar, at 46–59 considers Augustus’ re-invention of the ‘tradition’ of the spolia opima among other attempts to foster links with this Republican hero (who had himself, she suggests, originally invented the tradition).

⁸⁸ Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 116–20.

⁸⁹ Poulle, B. ‘Le théâtre de Marcellus et la sphère’, MEFRA 111 (1999), 257–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horsfall, N. ‘Virgil and Marcellus’ education’, CQ 39 (1989), 266–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jaeger, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 98.

⁹⁰ Suet., Aug. 16.2: ‘ne rectis quidem oculis eum aspicere potuisse instructam aciem, uerum supinum, caelum intuentem, stupidum cubuisse, nec prius surrexisse ac militibus in conspectum uenisse quam a M. Agrippa fugatae sint hostium naues.’ Cf. App., BC 5.121.

⁹¹ Livy 24.34.1–2; Sil., Pun. 14.300–2.

⁹² Suet., Aug. 94.6: ‘infans adhuc, ut scriptum apud C. Drusum exstat, repositus uespere in cunas a nutricula loco plano, postera luce non comparuit diuque quaestius tandem in altissima turri repertus est iacens contra solis exortum.’

⁹³ Vitr. 9 praef. 10.

⁹⁴ Suet., Aug. 85.2 (‘Sicily’, Ajax and the baths): ‘poetica summatim attigit. unus liber exstat, scriptus ab eo hexametris uersibus, cuius et argumentum et titulus est Sicilia; exstat alter aeque modicus epigrammatum, quae fere tempore balinei meditabatur. nam tragoediam magno impetu exorsus, non succedenti stilo, aboleuit quaerentibusque amicis, quidnam Aiax ageret, respondit, Aiacem suum in spongeam incubuisse.’ For Dionysius the tragedian, see Cicero's dim view, one shared by the Greeks, at Tusc. 5.63: ‘poetam etiam tragicum — quam bonum, nihil ad rem: in hoc genere nescio quo pacto magis quam in aliis suum cuique pulcrum est’; Zuretti, C. O. ‘L’attività letteraria dei due Dionisii di Siracusa’, RFIC 25 (1898), 529–57Google Scholar; 26 (1899), 1–23; Süß, W. ‘Der ältere Dionys als Tragiker’, RhM 109 (1966), 299–318Google Scholar; E. Simon, ‘Dramen des älteren Dionysios auf italiotischen Vasen’, in Gualandi, Massei and Settis, op. cit. (n. 85), 479–82. For fragments of his work, see Nauck, A. (ed.) Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (2nd edn, 1889)Google Scholar, 616–19 and Snell, B. (ed.) Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 1 (1971)Google Scholar, 240–6.

⁹⁵ Athen. 3.98d.

⁹⁶ Suet., Aug. 87.2: ‘ponit assidue betizare pro languere, quod uulgo lachanizare dicitur’; 98.3–4: ‘nullo denique genere hilaritatis abstinuit. uicinam Capreis insulam Apragopolim appellabat, a desidia secedentium illuc e comitatu suo’; 89.1: ‘non tamen ut aut [Graece] loqueretur expedite aut componere aliquid auderet; nam et si quid res exigeret, Latine formabat uertendumque alii dabat’. See Adams, J. N.Bilingualism and the Latin Language (2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 11, 311, 331–2, 420.

⁹⁷ See Bowersock, G.Augustus and the Greek World (1965)Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ Augustus: Plin., HN 3.49: ‘ex descriptione Augusti’; 3.46: ‘discriptionemque ab eo factam Italiae’; Isid., Or. 5.36.4: ‘Romanum orbem descripsit’. Archimedes: Livy 25.31.9: ‘[Archimeden] intentum formis quas in puluere descripserat’; Val. Max. 8.7 ext.7: ‘dum animo et oculis in terra defixis formas describit’; Cic., Fin. 5.50: ‘qui dum in puluere quaedam describit attentius’.

⁹⁹ Clarke, op. cit. (n. 57), 210.

¹⁰⁰ Suet., Aug. 92.2.

¹⁰¹ Suet., Aug. 72.2, 98.5.

¹⁰² Suet., Aug. 47.1.

¹⁰³ Suet., Tib. 40: ‘Capreas se contulit, praecipue delectatus insula, quod uno paruoque litore adiretur, saepta undique praeruptis immensae altitudinis rupibus et profundo mari.’ Cf. Suet., Aug. 98.1: ‘tunc Campaniae ora proximisque insulis circuitis, Caprearum quoque secessu quadriduum impendit, remisissimo ad otium et ad omnem comitatem animo.’

¹⁰⁴ Plin., HN 12.5.10. See Thomas, E.Monumentality and the Roman Empire (2007)Google Scholar, 255 on the architectural concept of nidificatio.

¹⁰⁵ See Coarelli, op. cit. (n. 18) and Macdonald and Pinto, op. cit. (n. 18), 81–94.

¹⁰⁶ SHA, Pertinax 11.5–8: ‘enimuero tantum odium in Pertinacem omnium aulicorum fuit, ut ad facinus milites hortarentur superuenerunt Pertinaci. cum ille aulicum famulicium ordinaret, ingressique porticus Palatii usque ad locum qui appellatur Sicilia et Iouis cenatio … uerum cum ad interiora prorumperent … ’ The notion of a tyrant's impenetrable lair is present in Pliny's picture of Domitian in Panegyricus 48–9 (and see Lundén, S., ‘The Palatine Labyrinth’, Caerdroia 34 (2004), 7–14Google Scholar; thanks to Edmund Thomas for this reference).

¹⁰⁷ SHA, Pertinax 13.1: ‘imperium et omnia imperialia sic horruit, ut sibi semper ostenderet displicere, 13.3 ‘uoluit etiam imperium deponere atque ad priuatam uitam redire.’

¹⁰⁸ Unless, as Jonathan Prag suggests to me, Sicilia was in fact just a triangular room.

¹⁰⁹ Suet., Claud. 10.1.

¹¹⁰ SHA, Alex. Seu. 26.9: ‘in matrem Mamaeam unice pius fuit, ita ut Romae in Palatio faceret diaetas nominis Mamaeae, quas imperitum uulgus hodie “ad Mammam” uocat.’

¹¹¹ Ep. 2.17.20. See Henderson, J. ‘Portrait of the artist as a figure of style: P.L.I.N.Y's Letters’, Arethusa 36 (2003), 115–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 123: ‘Pliny shapes his ideal as a frozen, timeless, self-contained, self-sufficient privacy, where he can concern himself with the writings which may give him immortality.’

¹¹² Stat., Silv. 2.2.131.

¹¹³ Montaigne Essays III: 3 [C], trans. M. A. Screech (1993): ‘There I have my seat. I assay making my dominion over it absolutely pure … Wretched the man (to my taste) who has nowhere in his house where he can be by himself, pay court to himself in private and hide away!’

¹¹⁴ ‘At Bollingen I am in the midst of my true life, I am most deeply myself’ (Jung, C.Memories, Dreams, Reflections, trans. R. and Wilson, C. (1989)Google Scholar, 225).

¹¹⁵ Bachelard, op. cit. (n. 15), 29 — a loose paraphrase, in fact, from C. Baudelaire's ‘Les projets’ in Le spleen de Paris: ‘Non! ce n’est pas dans un palais que je voudrais posséder sa chère vie. Nous n’y serions pas chez nous. D’ailleurs ces murs criblés d’or ne laisseraient pas une place pour accrocher son image; dans ces solennelles galeries, il n’y a pas un coin pour l’intimité.’

¹¹⁶ See Grimal, op. cit. (n. 27), 69 on solitude as a trait shared by Dionysius and Julius Caesar: ‘Le tyran cherche en vain un ami.’ See also Plut., Dion 9.3 for a picture of Dionysius’ son, the future Dionysius II, who spent his childhood locked up in a room making wooden toys.

¹¹⁷ Grimal, op. cit. (n. 27), 73: ‘Et c’est toute l’histoire sicilienne qui apparaît ainsi comme une sorte de laboratoire politique aux yeux du consulaire romain.’

¹¹⁸ At Rep. 1.28, Cicero contrasts Dionysius’ destructive ‘achievements’ with the ‘inactivity’ that produced Archimedes’ sphere: ‘cum ipsam sphaeram, nihil cum agere uideretur … effecerit.’

¹¹⁹ See Yavetz, Z. ‘The personality of Augustus: reflections on Syme's Roman Revolution’, in Raaflaub, K. A. and Toher, M. (eds), Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and his Principate (1990), 21–41Google Scholar, at 39: ‘In his self-representation, Augustus underscored mainly his humanitas, which should be interpreted as it is by the Younger Pliny [Ep. 9.5] as the gift of endearing oneself to the lowly while at the same time winning the affections of the eminent.’ On Augustus’ jokes, he notes a ‘tendency to dissimulate … [he] preferred ambiguous formulations to clear ones’ (35).

¹²⁰ Suet., Claud. 4.5: ‘qui [Claudius] uellem diligentius et minus μετεώρως deligeret sibi aliquem, cuius motum et habitum et incessum imitaretur.’ Socrates in the Clouds justifies his basket on the grounds that a suspended state allows him to make meteorological discoveries: Ar., Nub. 227–30.