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Imperial Deportment: Two Texts and Some Questions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

M. P. Charlesworth
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Extract

A scholar usually manages at some period in his life to read Xenophon's Cyropaedia, but probably rarely re-reads it. For the Cyropaedia has suffered from a change of fashion; once it was regularly read, and an admirable school commentary upon it by H. A. Holden is still purchasable. Now it is certainly not a school book, and it was mere chance brought me upon a passage which seems to raise questions about the development and propagation of a tradition, which may interest the great and friendly scholar to whom this volume is dedicated. But the topic ranges over so many territories into which I have no right to enter that I must ask him to forgive me for offering him a short essay rather than a rigorously reasoned and documented statement; I wish merely to put before him two texts, with brief observations.

In the Cyropaedia Xenophon depicts an ideal ruler. One important thing about that ruler is that he must not only be in every way a better man than those whom he commands, but must be admittedly and visibly so.

Type
Papers Presented to N. H. Baynes
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 1-2 , November 1947 , pp. 34 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © M. P. Charlesworth 1947. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

*

I acknowledge with gratitude my debt to Sir Ellis Minns, Professors Adcock, Last, Nock, and Previté Orton, and to Miss Joan Hussey, Dr. M. A. Murray, and Dr. Jocelyn Toynbee, for kind help and suggestions in the writing of this paper.

References

1 Though W. Jaeger, Paideia III, ch. 7, has some remarks about the Cyropaedia.

2 I doubt whether there is any connection here with Egypt, where the faces of gods were rouged; hence the λαμπρὰ π`αρεῖα of Mandulis, as seen by Maximus in his vision, Manteuffel, De opusculis Graecis …, Warsaw, 1930, App. No. 1, p. 198 f., I, 26 (and see generally Nock, A. D., ‘A Vision of Mandulis-Aion,’ in Harv. Theol. Rev. XXVII, 1934, 53–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar); so, too, the rouging of the face of the triumphator seems unconnected; see Reid, J. S., ‘Roman Ideas of Deity’, JRS VI, 1916, 170Google Scholar (esp. p. 182), and Deubner, L., ‘Die Tracht des romischen Imperator,’ Hermes LXIX, 1934, 316Google Scholar. On wigs in antiquity, see Daremberg-Saglio, s.v. ‘Caliendrum’ and ‘Galerus’. There must have been some difference between κόμαι προσθέτοι and κόμαι προσθέτοι though I am not sure what; the one perhaps a wig intended to conceal baldness, the other a formal headgear. There is a surviving Egyptian wig made of sheep's wool; presumably some wigs might be made of human hair, requisitioned from his subjects by a ruler, otherwise the story of the trick related in ps.-Aristotle, Oecon. II, 2, 14, 1348a, 27 (κόμας ἀποστεῖλαι εἰς προκόμια) has less point.

3 I follow here the interpretation that Bigg seems to give of the polemical passage reproduced in Eusebius, , HE 5, 18Google Scholar, 11, προφήτης, εἰπέ μοι, βάπτεται προφήτης στιβίӠεται; προφήτης φιλοκοσμεῖ; κτλ.

4 Nicolaus in Stobaeus, , Floril. 14, 7, 11, 33–5Google Scholar ( = Kock, , Com. Alt. Frag. III, p. 383Google Scholar): Josephus, , Ant. Jud. XVI, 233Google Scholar.

5 Xenophon, Oeconomicus 10.

6 For Hannibal, see Polybius III, 78: for Nero, Dio LXI, 9, 2, and cf. Suetonius, Nero 26.

7 Dio LIX, 26, 6 ff. For the adoption of an Egyptian ritual see L'Orange, H. P., Symb. Oslo XXI (1941), 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Herodian v, 6, 10. There is nothing corresponding to this statement in the SHA Heliogabalus, though Alex. Sev. 18, 3, does charge him with introducing another Persian ceremony, adoratio.

9 Chaeremon, fr. 10 in H. R. Schwyzer, Chairemon (Leipzig, 1932), 41 ff., who notes the correspondences with Philo, de vita contemplativa, cc. 26 ff. About the prestige enjoyed in the Graeco-Roman world by the Egyptian priests, see Festugière, A. J., La révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste (Paris, 1944), 1Google Scholar, L'astrologie et les sciences occultes, 27 ff.

10 On this topic see a delightful chapter in the late T. R. Glover's Greek Byways (152–179).

11 See, for example, E. Herzfeld, Iran in the Ancient East, 1941, ch. 111 and plates.

12 As Ammian says, XVI, 10, 11, ‘patientiae non mediocris indicia.’

13 For Pompey, see Plutarch, , Pompeius 48, 12Google Scholar; for Tiberius' fidgetiness, see Suetonius, , Tib. 68, 3Google Scholar.

14 See especially the recent full studies by A. Alföldi, ‘Die Ausgestaltung des monarchischen Zeremoniells am römischen Kaiserhofe’ (Mitt. d. Deutsch. Arch. Inst., Röm. Abt. 49,1934), and ‘Insignien und Tracht der römischen Kaiser’ (ib. 50, 1935).

15 Dio LIX, 24, 1 and cf. LXI, 10, 2 for the same phrase.

16 See Dio LXIII, 1–7, and Pliny, , NH xxx, 16Google Scholar, with Fr. Cumont's article in Riv. Fit. LXI, 1933, 145–154Google Scholar. On the Domus Aurea of Nero as inspired by Persian models and as showing the influence of Eastern notions, see a valuable paper by L'Orange, H. P., in Serta Eitremiana (Oslo, 1942), 68 ffGoogle Scholar. and cf. Boethius, A. in Eranos XLIV (1946), 442 ffGoogle Scholar.

17 On this topic, see the thesis of Kleinguenther, A., “Πρῶτος Εὑρετής,” Untersuch. zur Geschichte einer Fragestellung, Phil. Suppl. XXVI, I, 1933Google Scholar.

18 Though, as Professor Adcock points out to me, Seleucid coins, where they give portraits, hardly suggest that the kings adopted a formal wig. But the recently discovered Sassanian inscriptions, to which Sir Ellis Minns kindly called my attention and at the same time lent me his own Greek transscript, suggest that under Ardashir or Sapor there was a considerable elaboration of court officials and court ceremony. In the new great inscription of Sapor, which Rostovtzeff (Berytus vil, 1943, 17 ff., and 61 ff.) has entitled the Res Gestae Divi Saporis, the Greek version, as transliterated by M. Sprengling, Amer. Journ. Sent. Lang and Lit. LVII, 1940, 341 ff., especially at 403 ff., and LVIII, 1941, 169 ff., reveals a large number of important officials—δειπνοκλήτωρ, ὁ ἐπὶ τῆς ἀννώνης, ὁ ἐπὶ τοῦ οἰνου, ὁ καοτελλοφύλαξ, ὁ ἐπὶ ἐπισολῶν, and one which Sprengling declares must be a Chef du protocole or Hofmeister.

19 For Cleon, see Aristotle, Resp. Ath. 28; for Demosthenes, see the malicious remarks of Aeschines in c. Ctesiph. 167; for the elder Antonius, see Cicero, , Tusc. Disp. 11, 57Google Scholar.

20 For the seclusion and inaccessibility of the Persian King, see Herodotus I, 99, and the notes upon that chapter by A. W. Lawrence in the None-such translation of Herodotus, 1935, 62–3, and cf. a curious passage in ps.-Aristotle, de Mundo, 6, 398a, 13 ff. (a late first-century work). For the ceremonial of the Sassanian court, see A. Christensen, L'Iran sous les Sassanides, 1936, 392 f. and 395 f. For the same phenomenon in the later Roman Empire, see Alföldi, op. cit., and Ensslin, W. in CAH XII, 361 ffGoogle Scholar., and cf. the protest of Synesius to Arcadius in his peri Basileias (Migne, , PG LXVI, 1076–7Google Scholar), quoted in my article in PBSR xv, 1939, 10Google Scholar.

21 The identification of the Barletta statue with Valentinian is by no means certain, and this is typical. Cf. what Herzfeld says about the rock-sculptures near Firuzabad, op. cit., 311. ‘This art is far from aspiring to portraiture. Faces and bodies are in no way individual, but invariable types. In this picture they are deadly rigid. The robes look like stiff leather…’