Department of the Classics, Harvard University

Graecia Capta: Roman Views of Greek Culture

Author(s): Albert Henrichs
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 97, Greece in Rome: Influence, Integration,
Resistance (1995), pp. 243-261
Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/311309 .
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GRAECIACAPTA:
ROMAN VIEWS OF GREEK CULTURE
ALBERTHENRICHS

Y topic today is "Graecia Capta: Roman views of Greek Culture."Of the subtitle's five words, two are problematic:"views"
and "culture."Now, by "views"we might mean either opinions or more
casual glimpses--or both. And the word "culture"has virtuallylost its
depth of meaning throughrecent overuse, such that "culture"is now a
catch-all word signifying something vague like "way-of-life."So, am I
proposing to examine "Romanglimpses of the Greek way-of-life"? It
would indeed be revealingto squeeze a history of Greek civilization out
of Roman sources, and to see the ancient Greeks throughthe cultural
bias of Roman eyes. Roman comedy and satire, Cicero's Letters, and
the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, to mention but a few, might offer a
variety of amusing material for such an approach. But these provide
just brief observations and contrived caricatures,not of Greece in its
greatness and of the Greeks we care most about today, but of a Greece
much reduced-the Roman province of Achaea-and populated by
epigones referredto by the Romans, more condescendingly than lovingly, as Graeculi.1To take but one example, when Gellius talks about
his studentdays in Athens, he describes how the young Roman wouldbe intellectualscelebratethe Saturnaliain the shadowof the Acropolis:
Accordingly, a number of us Romans who had come to Greece,
and who attended the same lectures and devoted ourselves to the
same teachers, met at the dinnertable. Then the one who was giving the entertainmentin his turn, offered the work of some old
Greek or Roman writer and a crown woven from laurel as a prize
for solving a problem, and put as many questions as there were
guests present. .... Now the questions that were proposed were of
1 OLD 770 s.v.

244

AlbertHenrichs
this kind: an obscure saying of some early poet, amusing rather
than perplexing; some point in ancient history; the correction of
some tenet of philosophy which was commonly misinterpreted,the
solution of some sophistical catch, the investigationof a rare and
unusual word, or of an obscure use of the tense of a verb of plain
meaning.2

Happily, my project is rather different, at once more modest and

more sublime. I propose to explore how some of the leading members
of the Roman world-stateconceived of Greece's political and intellectual past and of the contributionseven a captive Greece might be able
to make to Rome.3But we must not assume thatRomanopinions on the
Greek achievementwere unanimous:to the contrary,they varied over
time and, to a lesser extent, at any given time. By some Romans, Greek
contributionsto artistic and intellectual life were deemed exemplary;
for others,Greekintellectualand popularculturerepresenteda composite of sordid threatsto solid Roman values-although by the middle of
the 2nd century B.C.this latter view was surely waning. From then on,
Romans tended to idolize not only Greece's past glory, but those
Greeks whose creationit was, as well.
I
One of the most ferocious Roman critics of the Greeks was Cato the
Censor. A novus homo born of peasant stock at Tusculumin 234 B.C.,
he was just aboutas Roman as can be imagined. Shrewd,tenacious, and
2 Gell. 18.2.2-6 ed. J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Class. Libr. (trans.
slightly modified) conveniebamus autem ad eandem cenam conplusculi, qui Romani in Graeciam veneramus
quique easdem auditiones eosdemquedoctores colebamus. tum qui et cenulamordinesuo
curabat,praemiumsolvendae quaestionisponebat librumveteris scriptoris vel Graecum
vel Latinumet coroname lauroplexam, totidemqueres quaerebatquot homines istic eramus.
quaerebantur autem res huiuscemodi: aut sententia poetae veteris lepide
.... non anxie, aut historiae antiquioris requisitio, aut decreti cuiuspiam ex
obscura,
philosophia perperam invulgatipurgatio, aut captionis sophisticae solutio, aut inopinati
rariorisqueverbi indagatio,aut tempusitem in verboperspicuo obscurissimum.
3 Cf. W. Schmid, "R6mer und Griechen," in his Studien zum Verstdindnisder
rimischen Literatur(Stuttgart1924, repr.Darmstadt1964) 1-23; E. Fraenkel,"Romeand
Greek Culture"(InauguralLecture, Oxford 1935), in Kleine Beitriige zur klassischen
Philologie (Rome 1964) 2.583-598.

GraeciaCapta:RomanViewsof GreekCulture

245

conservative,he served with distinction as a military man, as a provincial governor,as senatorand consul. As censor, he was stem and merciless, ever determined to raise the Roman moral conscience and to
reform the political elite of his nation; he was a prolific orator,a landholder, and farmer and, almost accidentally, a towering figure in the
earliest phase of Roman literature,both as the Roman patronof Ennius
and as a man of letters in his own right.4He was assigned militarycommands in Sicily, Spain, and Greece. In 152, he led the embassy to
Carthagethat would set the stage for the city's destruction.
Despite his ostentatious antihellenism, Cato was as thoroughly
familiar with the Greeks and their culture as any Roman of his time.
This paradox lies at the heart of much of the current debate about
Cato's mindset and writings.5His travels had broughthim into contact
with every sort of Greek. As a young officer he had seen the Greek
cities of southernItaly and Sicily. In 191, four years after his consulship, he visited Athens as militarytribuneand negotiatedwith the Athenians through an interpreter,even though he could speak Greek.6 As
usual, Cato's Latin was pithy and terse, and the Athenians noted with
surprise how much more time it took the interpreterto render Cato's
words in Attic Greek than it took Cato to express himself in Latin.
Cato mentions Themistocles and Pericles and was familiar with Greek
books, including Homer and Isocrates-whose oratory he ridiculesbut he had no abiding interest in Greek literatureper se.7 He despised
and pilloried those membersof the Roman aristocracywho in his view
went too far in their emulationof the Greeks.
Takethe case of A. PostumiusAlbinus, consul in 151, as reportedby
Polybios. Steeped in Greek culture since childhood, his philhellenism
4 G. B. Conte, LatinLiterature:A History (Baltimore 1994) 85-91.
5 See most recently A. E. Astin, Cato the Censor (Oxford 1978) 157-181 ("Catoand
the Greeks")and E. S. Gruen, Cultureand National Identityin RepublicanRome (Ithaca
1992) 52-83 ("Cato and Hellenism"). According to Gruen, Cato's ambivalentrole "as
fierce foe of Hellenism and as learned disciple of Hellenic culture"(61) reflects a "cultural strategy"through which he "approachedGreek culture not as an enemy of Hellas
but as an advocateof Rome" (80 f.). In orderto make his point, Gruenmust downplaythe
vehemence and candorof Cato's most virulentattackon the Greeks(below, nn. 14-15).
6 Plut. Cat. Mai. 12.5, 7. Astin (above, n. 5) 159-161, 166-168 and Gruen (above,
n. 5) 56-59 rightly reject the claim of some ancient sources-including Cic. Luc. 5, Sen.
8.26; Plut. Cat. Mai. 2.5-that Cato came to the study of Greek literatureonly in the
leisure of his old age.
7 Plut. Cat. Mai. 8.14, 9.3, 23.2.

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AlbertHenrichs

offended the political leadership. He was ridiculed by Cato when he

followed the example of Q. Fabius Pictor and L. Cincius Alimentusboth of whom had written Roman annales in Greek8-and published
his own Roman history,also in Greek, while apologizing in his preface
for his insufficientmasteryof the language. Polybios adds that Albinus
had adopted two of the worst vices of the Greeks (r
XOv
Xpto(t
s
namely love of pleasure and aversion to toil (waxiyp
'EXX1Tvticov),
v K0ai(py6nrovo;).9In a similarvein, Livy later characterptwri68ovo;g
izes the Greeks as "a race more valiant in words than in deeds" (8.22.8
gens lingua magis strenua quam factis). Roman stereotypes of the
Greek characterare not exceptional. But one would not expect to find
them spouted by a writer of Greek origin. The shifting loyalties that
must have colored this formativestage of Greek and Roman acculturation were such that Polybios, himself a Greek,went so far as to ridicule
his own people in order to expose Albinus' shortcomings. Clearly,
Polybios had begun to identify with his captors.10Where Scipio and
Polybios are concerned,it is not the Roman past undergoingHellenization, but indeed the Romanpresent.
Unlike Albinus, Cato despised the Greeks and was deeply mistrustful of all things Greek. He was hardly alone in his rejection of Greek
culture, but with the exception of his loud voice of protest, the antiGreek currentin RepublicanRome perishedvirtuallywithout a trace.11
In his instructionsto one of his two sons, he gives vent to his suspicions
in no uncertainterms:
I will tell you in the appropriateplace, my son Marcus, what I
found out aboutthose Greeks in Athens, and that it is a good thing
to have a taste of their literature,but not to devour it. I will drive
home the point that their race is utterly vile and indocile. And
believe you me, I speak as a prophet:once that race gives us its
8 Cf. E. S. Gruen, The Hellenistic Worldand the Coming of Rome (Berkeley 1984)
1.253-255. Cato's own Origines was, as far as we know, the first historical work to be
writtenin Latin.
9 Polyb. 39.1 f., Gell. 11.8, Plut. Cat. Mai. 12.6.
10Cf. A. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom:The Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge 1975)
22-49, esp. 29, 36 f., 48.
1 A generationafter Cato, the graecomaniaof T. Albucius-a formerpraetorsteeped
in Greek manners-was derided by Q. Mucius Scaevola and satirized by Lucilius fr.
89-95 Krenkel;cf. Gruen(above, n. 5) 257 f. and 290 f. On philhellenismin Republican
Rome and its detractorssee Gruen(above, n. 8) 1.250-272, esp. 260-266.

GraeciaCapta:RomanViewsof GreekCulture

247

literature,it will corrupt everything, and it gets even worse if it

sends us its doctors. They have taken an oath12amongst themselves to kill all barbarianswith their medicine, but they do this
only for a fee so that they may be trustedand may bring ruin the
more easily. They often refer to us, too, as barbariansand they
defile us more foully than they do others by calling us "Opikoi."'3I
have thus forbiddenyou dealings with their doctors.14
Cato does not mince words. In fact his strongrhetoricsuggests that his
attackon Greek characterand Greek medicine may have been intended
for a wider Roman audience.15His verdict is remarkablefor its tone of
moral superiorityand its demonizationof an entire foreign culture, as
12 Does iuraruntrepresenta Roman
misinterpretationof the Hippocraticoath, render-

ing it as a sort of political coniuratio?

13 To Roman ears,
'Ontico'/Opici-the Greek term for "Oscans"-was tantamountto
"simpletons."Cf. M. Dubuisson, "Les opici: Osques, occidentauxou barbares?"Latomus
42 (1983) 522-545.
14 Pliny HN 29.14 citing Cato Fil. 1 Jordan(echoed by Plut. Cat. Mai. 23.2 f.): dicam
de istis Graecis suo loco, M.fili, quid Athenis exquisitumhabeam, et quod bonumsit illorum litteras inspicere, non perdiscere. vincam nequissimumet indocile esse genus illorum, et hoc puta vatem dixisse: quandoqueista gens suas litteras dabit, omnia conrumpet, tumetiam magis, si medicos suos hoc mittet.iuraruntinter se barbarosnecare omnes
medicina, sed hoc ipsum mercedefaciunt, utfides iis sit etfacile disperdant.nos quoque
dictitant barbaros et spurcius nos quam alios Opicon appellationefoedant. interdixitibi
de medicis. At the end of the first sentence, I follow the articulationadoptedlong ago by
H. Jordan,M. Catonis praeter librum de re rustica quae extant (Leipzig 1860) 77, and
more recently by OLD 2064 s.v. uinco 4d, as well as by Gruen (above, n. 5) 80 n. 167.
Less plausibly, Astin (above, n. 5) 170 f. and 334 takes vincam with the previous sentence.
15 Cato's attack on Greek culture and Greek doctors is conventionallyassigned to his
Ad Marcumfilium, on which see Astin (above, n. 5) 183, 332-340 and Gruen (above,
n. 5) 76-80. The title, character,and purpose of this work remain very problematic.
According to Otto Jahn'shypothesis of 1850, which became the communisopinio, it was
a comprehensiveencyclopedia comprising agriculture,medicine, and rhetoric. Rejecting
Jahn's construct, Astin 183 and 332-340 postulates an informal collection of precepts
addressed by Cato to his elder son, M. Porcius Cato Licinianus, who died as a praetordesignate in 152 B.C.,some three years before his father. But as Gruen points out, the
work envisaged by Astin is difficultto reconcile with Plutarch'sassertion(Cat. Mai. 23.2)
that Cato was an old man when he warnedhis son to keep his distance from the Greeks.
Gruen argues that Cato's "anti-Greekpronouncements"reflect deliberateposturing and
do not represent"the core of Catonianthought"(80). Both Astin 332 and Gruen77 dismiss the possibility that Cato may have composed Adfilium as a legacy to his younger
son, M. Porcius Salonianus,who was born when Cato was an octogenarian.

248

AlbertHenrichs

well as for the mixed signals it sends. He condemns the Greeks

because they are ignoramuseswho threatenRoman mores, and he concedes only an evil sort of cleverness on theirpart. But he stops shortof
condemningtheir language or their literature. He allows that Greek literaturemay be useful in small quantities-regrettably his more detailed
discussion of this is lost to us16-but he has absolutely no tolerancefor
Greek doctors.17His xenophobia reflects anxieties similar to those
expressed by the Atheniansduringthe plague of 430 when they feared
thatthe Peloponnesianshad poisoned theirwells.18
Pliny the Elder,to whom we owe this excerpt,tells us that Cato preferred the Romans' homespun cures, which he taught to his son.
According to Pliny, Cato creditedthese cures with his own achievement
of a ripe old age.19 Some specimens of Cato's prescriptionscan be
found in his De agricultura. His preferred treatment was cabbage
(brassica). Cato thought this leafy and fibrous plant a veritable
panacea, an effective remedy for a host of ills from indigestion to
arthritisto tumors-"in a word, he says, it will cure all the inner organs
His antidoteto snakebiteis instructive:
that are suffering."20
When a snake has bitten an ox or any other quadruped,grind two
ounces of black cumin, which the physicians call smurneum,into
half a pint of old wine. Administer it through the nostrils, and
apply swine's dung to the wound itself. Treata person in the same
way if occasion arises.21
16 Cato's criticism of Socrates and Isocrates
(Plut. Cat. Mai. 23) most likely derives
from his treatmentof Graecae litterae.
17Cf. Astin (above, n. 5) 171 f. The doctor Archagathos,son of Lysanias,who came to
Rome from the Peloponnese in 219 B.c. and was grantedcitizenship, earned the epithet
"butcher"(carnifex)while giving Greek medicine a bad name (Cassius Hemina ap. Pliny
HN 29.13). On Romanoppositionto Greekdoctorsfrom Cato to Pliny the Elder see J. C.
Scarborough,"RomanMedicine to Galen,"in W. Haase ed., ANRWII 37.1 (Berlin 1993)
3-48, esp. 22-29.
18S. Hornblower,A Commentaryon Thucydides 1 (Oxford 1991) 319 f. on Thuc.
2.48.2.
19 Pliny HN 29.15. On the agrarianremedies advocatedby Cato see J. Ilberg, "A. Cornelius Celsus und die Medizin in Rom" (1907) in H. Flashared., AntikeMedizin (Darmstadt 1971 [Wege der Forschung 221]) 308-360, at 311-314; W. H. S. Jones, "Ancient
Roman Folk Medicine," Journal of the History of Medicine 12 (1957) 459-472;
S. Boscherini, "La medicina in Catone e Varrone,"in ANRW II 37.1 (above, n. 17)
729-755, esp. 730-740; and Scarborough(above, n. 17) 13-22.
20CatoAgr 157.7 uno verbo omnia sanafaciet introquae dolitabunt.
21Cato Agr 102 si bovem aut aliam quamvis quadrupedemserpens momorderit,

GraeciaCapta:RomanViewsof GreekCulture

249

Cato's prescriptionsounds ghastly, but it lay well within the perimeter

of the medicine of his day. The therapeuticuse of animal feces was
widespreadin Greek medicine from the HippocraticCorpusto Galen's
time and beyond.22Still, in the light of his condemnationit comes as a
surprisethat Cato refers to the medical profession, which was predominantly Greek, and gives both the Latin and Greeknames for the medicinal herb in question. Herein lies a larger truth:the "medicine of the
conquered" had captured Rome and was overtaking indigenous
approaches to healing.23 From that moment on, medicine in Rome
remainedso firmly in Greek hands that the two leading Roman writers
on medicine, TerentiusVarroand Cornelius Celsus, wrote on medicine
not as doctorsbut as encyclopedists.24
Cato's outlook on the Greek achievement was as pragmatic and
down-to-earthas the man himself. As we have seen, Greek doctors
surely piqued his ire, yet other benefits of Greek culture aroused his
interest,if not his admiration. Still, Cato was the last of the detractors.
The climate changed rapidly with the next generation, that of P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus Aemilianus, the natural son of L. Aemilius
Paullus and adoptive grandsonof P. Cornelius Scipio AfricanusMajor.
Cato had the highest respect for Scipio Aemilianus as a militaryleader,
but in their attitudestowardother culturesin general, and the Greeksin
particular,the two men stood worlds apart.25Let us briefly consider the
case of Carthage before we return to Greece, for if Cato hated the
melanthiacetabulum,quod medici vocant zmurnaeum,conterito in vini veteris hemina. id
per nares indito et ad ipsummorsumstercus suillumadponito. et idem hoc si usus venerit
hominifacito.
22H. von Staden, "Womenand Dirt,"Helios 19 (1992) 7-30, esp. 7-13. Black cumin
(Nigella sativa) as an antidotefor snakebiteis also mentionedby Nic. Ther 43 and Pliny
HN 20.182. On melanthionand smurneum(cgupveov), which makes better sense than
zmurnaeum/C.opvacov, as active ingredientsin Cato's cure see S. Boscherini, Lingua e
scienza greca nel "de agri cultura" di Catone (Rome 1970 [Ricerche di storia della lingua latina 8]) 51-58.
23On the Hellenization of Roman medicine see the exemplary study by V. Nutton,
"Roman Medicine: Tradition, Confrontation,Assimilation," in ANRW II 37.1 (above,
n. 17) 49-78 (quotationon p. 75).
24F. Stok, "La medicina nell'enciclopedia latina e nei sistemi di classificazione delle
artes nell'eta romana,"in ANRWII 37.1 (above, n. 17) 393-444. On Celsus' De medicina in particularsee the contributionsof Alf Onnerfors,Philippe Mudry, and Werner
Deuse in the same volume. The fragmentsof Varro'streatmentof medicine in Book 8 of
his Disciplinae are discussed by Boscherini (above, n. 19) 740-751.
25Polyb. 36.8.7, Plut. Cat. Mai. 27.6; Astin
(above, n. 5) 280 f.

250

AlbertHenrichs

Greeks, he feared the Carthaginians. Indeed, during the last years of

his life he kept reminding the Roman Senate that "Carthagemust be
destroyed."26
II
A Roman army led by Scipio Aemilianus finally capturedCarthage
in the spring of 146, almost three years after Cato's death. The Senate
ordered the city destroyed, its walls razed, and its ruins plowed over.
As a memberof Scipio's entourage,Polybios was at hand to commemorate the strange scene that unfolded as the city lay in ashes. Here is
Polybios' recollectionas preservedby Appian:
Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing
and in the last throes of its complete destruction,is said to have
shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being long
wrapped in thought, and realizing that all cities, nations, and
authoritiesmust, like men, meet their doom; that this happenedto
Ilium, once a prosperouscity, to the empires of Assyria, Media,
and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the
brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberatelyor the verses
escaping him, he said (Iliad 6.448 f.): "A day will come when
sacredIlion shall perish, and Priam,and the people of Priamof the
strong ash spear." And when Polybios, speaking with freedom to
him for he was his teacher,asked him what he meantby the words,
they say that without hesitation he named his own country, for
which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things
human.27
26Diod. 34/35.33.3; Plut. Cat. Mai. 27.2; Pliny HN 15.74; Florus 1.31.4. Cato's
famous verdict is unattestedin the form in which it is usually quoted (ceterum censeo
Carthaginemesse delendam). Cf. Astin (above, n. 5) 127 n. 71.
27App. Pun. 132 = Polyb. 38.22 ed. W. R. Paton, Loeb Class. Libr.(trans.modified) 6
teXtrcoGav ;qniavoXE0piv EdxrIv
ip8nrlv
8, Icnioev I6Xtv 6pi(ov ... 6.re
lyVeat
s EIi ioXo-) 8' vvoug
gyv Sa p?Goat Kcaipavepb; yevEoOat XcXao)v
rInep
p'
no.leio)v
'e
ici
K;
Kcai
,6EXt
cal ovi8C&Ov
AOvrlKcai&Ppx; &idoa; Sei8
8 t
aCuroi) yev6pgevd;
ge'rcpalXcv l6onrep&vOptrnou; 8aigova Kcait2ol0O'iEaOEgEv "IXIov,e i)XTS;note
yevoinei-vot;F i' 'Aoiopiov icai Mi"8ovicai Hepov i'n'
&pylPi TlLGTlor
nt6Xt;,'na8Oe
i MaICe56vow,
(EiV i V) ...
EitTE
Ji~VT cai 7i ji6oXarraijVayxo; iao a
d1CCVEiTE
airzbv Tzo6 to3 Enou-; " ooGeat LAgapz'av nozr'6tXhrlt"IXto; ipil / Icai
tpoqVuy6vTo;
ggaiXabo
Hpi-ago; ca
HI-loXioi 8' ab'btv pogjivovoGOvnappiloia
eXio HI-ptadoto."
6
(Icai y&pAv abro3 cai ta6GICaho;)0 zt poAotoro06yo'
0paoiv o1 qp
a.adagevov

GraeciaCapta:RomanViewsof GreekCulture

251

It is hard to imagine Scipio Aemilianus in tears, especially in his hour

of glory; it is perhaps even harderto assume that Polybios fabricated
the scene out of whole cloth. In his delightful discussion of Scipio's
tears, Arnaldo Momigliano compares other illustrious tears preserved
by Polybios and Plutarch--the tears shed by Antiochus III, by the Elder
Scipio, and especially by Aemilius Paullus, who had tears in his eyes
and Fortune's vicissitudes on his mind when Perseus surrendered.
Although we are clearly witnessing a literary motif at work,
Momigliano concludes that"Scipio did cry" and that "classical scholars
are thereforeentitled to ask how many tearshe shed."28
Regardlessof its historicity,the episode certainlyserves as a moving
Roman epitaph for Carthage. But exactly how Roman are the sentiments revealedby this passage and ascribedto Scipio? There can be little doubt that Polybios' portrayalof Carthage'sfinal hour also standsas
a deliberatemonumentto a side of Scipio's that transcendedthis historical moment and strucka more familiarchord with Greeks and Romans
alike, namely his deep and pervasive Hellenism that could on occasion
efface his more Roman traits.29In this particularinstance, the effects of
Scipio's Hellenism almost appearto be on a collision course with his
stature as supreme military commander and his public image as exconsul and scion of one of Rome's leading families. How un-Roman,
especially in the eyes of a Cato, would have been the sight of a victorious Roman general, at the end of a long and intense bellum iustum,
shedding tears over the destructionof the enemy's capital while at the
same time contemplatingthe mutability of human affairs and quoting

( oyt,
ol
d
pa &vC ptiEt &pop- v 8F-8iet. Two addi6vo'oait
zYlv
ntptextzcc
irtzpi~a
tional summaries
of Polybios' lost
are preserved in the Excerpta de sententiis of
Codex Vaticanus73. In the shorterof the two--a fragmentof Diodorus' lost account of
the fall of Carthage(Diod. 32.24)-Scipio also sheds tears and quotes the same Homeric
lines. The longer passage, known as Polyb. 38.21.1-3 (4.501 Buettner-Wobst),preserves
the essence of Scipio's dictum but omits his tears as well as the Homeric quotation. All
three texts are reprintedas dicta Scipionis nos. 9a-c in A. E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus
(Oxford 1967) 251 f. and discussed by him on pages 282-287 ("Scipio's Tears at
Carthage").
28Momigliano (above, n. 10) 22 f., in response to Astin (above, n. 27) 285 f., who tries
to limit Scipio's tears.
29Fraenkel(above, n. 3) 597 comments on Scipio's quoting Hektor'spredictionof the
fall of Troy:"Itis a Greek outlook on life and a Greekconception of history,the theory of
the necessary vicissitudes of humanfate and of the cycle in the life of nations."

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AlbertHenrichs

the lines from the Iliad in which Hektorpredicts the fall of Troy? The
high dramaof a tearful Scipio fearing for the future of Rome when he
is at the height of his power doubtless contains an importantkernel of
truth,but it is a truthveiled in artifice.
Scipio's paradoxicalbehavioris strongly reminiscentof Herodotos'
Xerxes, the Persian king of kings, who breaks into tears when he
reviews his troops on the plain of Abydos.30When asked by Artabanos
why his mood changed so suddenlyfromjoy to sadness, he replied that
he was reminded of the brevity of human life, adding that "of these
innumerablemen not one will be alive in a hundredyears' time" (7.46).
The two occasions are different as are the two men, Xerxes and Scipio-although in Greek eyes they both rankedas barbarians,that is as
non-Greeks-but the sentiments expressed are very similar indeed.
What is more, the tears as well as the thoughtsthat broughtforth those
tears are essentially heroic, tragic, and Greek. In a departurefrom the
gender codes of ordinarylife, Homeric heroes such as Achilleus and
Odysseus could shed tears without the risk of being consideredeffeminate, and many heroes of tragedy follow suit, even though their tears
tend to be more delicate, and more costly.31The Sophoclean Ajax does
not weep, but he bewails his tragic error,and, what is more, in the socalled deception speech he speculates on the mutability of all things
and seems ready to admit that former enemies could become friends.32
Ajax's train of thought ultimately propels him into suicide. Xerxes'
moment of gloom foreshadows the eventual destructionof his army,
and his own defeat. For Scipio, too, the Roman victory casts a dark
shadow and triggersthoughtsof Rome's inevitable fall. Such attention
to the pride that goes before the fall is the stuff tragedies are made of.
30

Other Herodoteancharactersweep for similar reasons (see 3.14.7ff, and 9.16.3ff.).

Cf. S. Flory, "Laughter,Tears and Wisdom in Herodotus,"AJP 99 (1978) 145-153, who
comparesHdt. 7.46 and comments (146, n. 2): "If Polyb. had not read Hdt., Scipio had."
True enough, but the psychology of Scipio's tears is ultimately more interestingthan the
question of theirhistoricity.
31On male tears in Homeric epic and Attic tragedy see C. Segal, Euripides and the
Poetics of Sorrow:Art, Gender,and Commemorationin Alcestis, Hippolytus,and Hecuba
(Durham 1993) 62-67, and "The Female Voice and Its Contradictions:From Homer to
Tragedy,"GrazerBeitriige, SupplementbandV (1993) 57-75, esp. 59 f.
32 Soph. Aj. 317-322, 646-692. Cf. Segal, "The Female Voice" (previous note) 65 f.;
O. Taplin, "Yielding to Forethought:Sophocles' Ajax," in G. W. Bowersock et al. eds.,
Arktouros:Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M. W Knox on the Occasion of his
65th Birthday(Berlin 1979) 122-129.

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A similar concern lies behind the tragic reading of history that begins
with Herodotos.
Any attempt to disentangle the complex web of Scipio's genuine
feelings and Polybios' embellishments,of Greek and Roman sentiment,
of statesmanshipand human compassion in the episode of Scipio at
Carthage is problematic. Polybios himself, of course, speculates at
length on the lifespan of governments. He compares the constitutions
of Carthageand Rome, observing that "every organism,every form of
government (inoXhtria)and every action undergoes a naturalcycle of
growth, reaches its acme, and finally decays" (6.51).33 Prior to the
events at Carthage,he had spent seventeenyears of his life, from 167 to
150, in virtualcaptivityin Rome as one of the 1,000 Achaean hostages.
He was in his early to mid-thirtieswhen he arrivedin Rome and met
the young Scipio, who was only eighteen but had alreadydistinguished
himself the year before at Pydna under the command of his natural
father,Aemilius Paullus.34Paullus' victory at Pydnahad broughtMacedonia under Roman rule and had opened the door for the Roman conquest of Greece. The defeated king Perseus and his family were
paraded as captives through the streets of Rome. Of the enormous
Macedonianspoils Paullus kept only Perseus' library-the first in what
would become a long succession of Greeklibrariescapturedin war and
shippedto Rome.35
But more than Perseus' books, which were available to Scipio, this
first encounter between Polybios and Scipio inaugurateda prolonged
meeting of minds that allowed Greek cultureto take root in the heartof
Rome. As a Greek hostage in Rome, the figure of Polybios embodies
the spirit of the Greek contributionto Roman life in the middle of the
second century and personifies the paradoxexpressed so poignantly in
Horace's Epistle to Augustus (156 f.): "Greecethe captive capturedher
wild victor and brought her arts into rustic Latium" (Graecia capta
ferum victoremcepit et artes / intulitagresti Latio). When readingthese
lines, it is hard for us to avoid imagining Polybios. A Graecus captus
in the most literal sense, he captivatedAemilius Paullus, the victor of
Pydna, and Scipio Africanus, the victor of Carthage, with his Greek
33Polyb. 6.51.4.
34K. Ziegler, "Polybios,"RE 21.2 (1952) 1450 f.; Astin (above, n. 27) 14 f.
35 Paullus gave the Macedonianroyal libraryto his two sons-a gift that fostered the
friendshipbetween Scipio Aemilianus and Polybios (Plut.Aem. 28.11; Polyb. 31.23.4).

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paideia and converted the rustics of Republican Rome, including the

likes of Cato, to Greekculture.
III
But, of course, the Hellenization of Republican Rome was not so
simple a process. It had begun before Polybios arrivedon the scene
and continued long after his returnto Greece. If read as an historical
comment on Greek and Roman cultural relations, Horace's Graecia
capta must be viewed as more complex, and more elusive, than its literal simplicity might suggest. Horace goes on to describe the gradual
disappearanceof the native Saturnianverse and the eventualHellenization of Latin letters, with emphasis on the Roman adaptationof Greek
drama.36As a poetic sketch of the beginnings of Latin literaturethese
lines pose several problems. Horace's suppressionof the names of any
early Latin poets is one problem,the vagueness of the implied chronology is another. "Not until late,"says Horace,did the wild victor "apply
his shrewdnessto Greek texts, and only in the peaceful days after the
Punic wars did he begin to inquire what service Sophocles could render, and Thespis and Aeschylus."
The various chronological difficulties converge in the striking
expression with which the passage begins-Graecia capta. Niall Rudd
comments:"Thephrasetakes a very long view, telescoping events from
the capture of Greek cities in Sicily during the first Punic war
(264-241) to the sack of Corinth in 146."37If Graecia capta does
indeed take the long view, which is surely the most naturalinterpretation, it follows that Graecia refers to the Greekcities of Magna Graecia
such as Tarentum,the home of Livius Andronicus, as well as to the
cities of Greece proper such as Corinth and certainly Athens-the
home of the three tragedians mentioned by Horace. But, as Rudd
points out, if the following lines describe the beginnings of Roman
drama,the period defined as post Punica bella must antedatethe third
Punic war as well as the events that culminatedin the sack of Corinth.
He concludes that "Horaceis talking about the years following the end
36 Hor. Epist. 2.1.157-163 sic horridusille / defluxitnumerusSaturnius,et graue uirus
/ munditiaepepulere; sed in longum tamen aevum/ manserunthodieque manentvestigia
ruris. / serus enim Graecis admovit acumina chartis, / et post Punica bella quietus
quaererecoepit, /quid Sophocles et Thespiset Aeschylusutileferrent.
37N. Rudd,Horace, Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones (Cambridge1989) 101.

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255

This would mean, however,that

of the second Punic war in 201 B.C."38
far from taking the long view, Horace is describing a more circumscribed period prior to the Roman conquest of Macedonia and Greece
and that Graecia capta should refer primarily,if not exclusively, to the
Greek cities of southern Italy and to the earliest phase of Greek and
Roman acculturation.
Horace was a poet, not a historianof Latinliterature,and it would be
risky business indeed to demand documentaryaccuracyfrom him. We
must not press him too hard on such matters. Yet the ambivalenceof
Graecia capta is instructivein ways that go much beyond the Horace
passage. As Glen Bowersock and John Scheid point out in this volume,
the Greek world was far from uniform,not only from a Roman Republican point of view, but also for Greeks like Aristoxenos of Tarentum
and Strabo of Amaseia in Pontus. We must never forget that "Greekness" was polyvalent and meant different things to different people.
Different categories of Greeknessalso implied differentdegrees of Hellenization and foreign influence: according to Strabo, the Greek cities
of Magna Graecia---exceptfor Tarentum,Rhegium, and Naples-never
recovered from extreme exposure to "barbarization"(KsPEPapPapoo0at), that is Romanization;and Albinus was considered insufferably Greek by his Roman countrymen and perversely Greek by
Polybios.39
Horace's letter to Augustus is about literatureand the cultivationof
literary taste, an art he says the Romans learned from the Greeks.
Where Horace's concern is with the Greek influences on Roman literature, Virgil has a separateagenda and takes a broaderview. In what has
been styled "themost famous sustainedpassage in the whole Aeneid,"40
Virgil comparesthe two culturesmore broadly,but surprisinglyhe does
so withoutthe slightest referenceto literatureand his own art.
Otherswill forge more supplely breathingbronzes
-this, I believe-and drawfrom marblelifelike faces,
plead theircases better,and with a pointermark
38 Rudd (above, n. 37) 102.

39Strab. 6.1.2, 253 C.; Ath. 14.31, 632 = Aristoxenos fr. 124 uses the same verb to
make a similar point about the inhabitantsof Poseidonia (Paestum). On PostumiusAlbinus' philhellenismsee above, section I.
40 R. G. Austin, P VergiliMaronis Aeneidos liber sextus (Oxford 1977) 260 on lines
847-853.

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the movementsof the heavens and declarethe rising stars:

you, Roman,rememberto rule peoples by imperium
-these will be your arts-and to impose orderupon peace,
to sparethe conqueredand to vanquishthe proud.41
While I will not pretendto say anythingnew about these well-studied
lines, I would like to drawattentionto severalfeaturesthathave a direct
bearing on Roman attitudestoward the Greeks, or at least on Virgil's
representationof these attitudes.
First, we must consider the propheticcontext of this passage and its
setting in the underworld. The lines are spoken by the shade of
Anchises as an epilogue to his vision of Rome's future greatness and
the long line of Roman heroes to come. Prophets usually admonish
those in the here and now while talkingaboutthe future. Anchises, too,
shifts from the futuretense to the imperativemood. The emphaticform
of address-Romane-is paralleledby other Roman oracles,42but here
Virgil merges the predictionof the oracularutterancewith the instruction of father to son. In this self-definition of the Roman nation, the
Romans are identifiedby name, while the Greeks appearallusively and
anonymously as the cultural Other. The Greeks' namelessness is in
keeping with the rhetoric of the priamel43as well as with oracular
style-after all, the variousartsthatdistinguishthe Greekcultureof the
classical and Hellenistic period were, in Anchises' day, still waiting to
be discovered. The categoricalotherness suppliedby alii is also a distancing device that draws the line between the two cultures, and in so
doing sharpensthe comparison. Virgil's Anchises presents Greece and
Rome not as "two complementarycultures,"as a recent commentator
has put it,44but ratheras two distinct culturalrealms whose preoccupations and accomplishmentsare different and which, in fact, compete
with each other.

41 Aen. 6.847-853 excudent

alii spirantiamollius aera / (credo equidem),uiuos ducent
de marmoreuultus,/ orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus / describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent: / tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento/ (hae tibi erunt
artes), pacique imponeremorem,/parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.
42E. Norden,P VergiliusMaro,Aeneis Buch VI3 (Leipzig 1927, rep. Darmstadt1957)
338 on line 851.
43See Norden (above, n. 42) 335 on alii ... tu ... memento.
44Austin (above, n. 40).

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This emphasis on othernessmust be a deliberatearchaism,as if Virgil sought to turnback the clock in orderto evoke a distanttime, a pristine state, in which the two cultures pursued their separate paths and
when Romanness representeda way-of-life more concerned with military conquest than with the arts. In the world of Augustus, Greeks and
Romans, far from being separate,were blended in a melting pot. I can
think of no-better illustrationthan the story about Augustus on Capri
reported by Suetonius. Elated by the sight of an Alexandrian ship
whose passengersbestowed lavish praise on the emperor,Augustusdistributed Roman togas and Greek himatia while stipulating "that the
Romans should use the Greek dress and language and the Greeks the
Roman."45
Culturalcomparisonsinevitably embrace a particularpoint of view.
Herodotos believes that Greeks are more clever than barbarians,and
that the Athenians reportedly surpass all the other Greeks in wisdom
(1.60.3). In a Hellenistic praise of Athens, an unknowndevotee of Isis
expresses the desire "to visit in Greece Athens, and in Athens Eleusis,"
addingthat he "considersAthens the glory of Europe,and the sanctuary
of Demeter the glory of Athens."46Caesarwrote his excursus on Celtic
customs to illustrate the cultural superiority of the Celts over the
Germans.47Virgil, too, makes a point, and he does so emphatically. He
casts Anchises' prophecyin the literaryform of the priamel. In Martin
West's definition,the priamelis a figure of speech "in which a series of
three (occasionally more) paratacticstatementsof similar form serves
to emphasize the last."48This literary device is eminently suitable for
comparisons in which the speakerrejects or belittles one viewpoint in
favor of another. Indeed, while Virgil allows that there are certain
endeavours-sculpture, rhetoric, and astronomy, to be precise-in
which Romans have made an effort but have failed to reach the superior
level of Greek practitioners, this poet's immediate concern is with
the comparativelygrander and more useful Roman skill of defeating
and pacifying other cultures. Thus the concessionary catalog of the
45 Suet. Aug. 98.3 lege proposita ut Romani Graeco, Graeci Romanohabitu et sermone
uterentur. Cf. G. W. Bowersock "TheBarbarismof the Greeks,"in this volume.
46 Y. Grandjean,Une nouvelle aritalogie d'Isis a Maronde (Leiden 1975) 17 f., lines
39-41.
47Caes. BGall. 6.11-24.
48M. L. West, Hesiod, Works& Days (Oxford 1978) 269 on lines 435-436.

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various Greek artes serves as an elegant prelude to Anchises' paternal

admonitions.

IV
Anchises' vision of Rome's mission was shared by many Romans,
including Cicero. In De officiis, he relates his view of justice toward
the vanquished:
Our forefathersadmittedto full rights of citizenship the Tusculans,
Aequians, Volscians, Sabines, and Hernicians, but they razed
Carthage and Numantia to the ground. I wish they had not
destroyed Corinth;but I believe they had some special reason for
Not only
what they did-its convenient situation, probably.
.... conquered
must we show considerationfor those whom we have
by force of arms but we must also ensure protectionto those who
lay down their arms and throw themselves upon the mercy of our
generals, even though the battering-ramhas hammered at their
walls.49
It is significantthat Cicero entertainsanxieties about the destructionof
Corinth,"thebrightstarof Hellas"o5in the words of an unknownGreek
poet, while having no such qualms about Carthage. Corinth was
sacked, burned, and razed by Lucius Mummius, who perpetratedan
enormousartheist in the process.5'In 44 B.C.,the city was refoundedas
a Roman colony by Julius Caesar.
By 146 B.C.-the year in which Mummius plundered Corinth and
Scipio reduced Carthageto the rubble it remained until Julius Caesar
49 Cic. Off 1.35 (ed. W. Miller, Loeb Class. Libr.; cf.
maiores
3.46,
Off.
Verr.2.55)
nostri TusculanosAequos Volscos Sabinos Hernicos in civitatem etiam acceperunt, at
Carthaginem et Numantiamfunditus sustulerunt; nollem Corinthum,sed credo aliquid
secutos, opportunitatemloci maxime.... et cum iis, quos vi deviceris, consulendumest,
tum ii, qui armis positis ad imperatorumJidem confugient, quamvis murum aries percusserit, recipiendi.
50oDiod.32.27.1 = TrGF vol. 2, fr. adesp. 128; cf. Cic. De Imp. Cn. Pomp. 5.11
Corinthumpatres vestri totius Graeciae lumenexstinctumesse voluerunt.
51 Strab. 8.6.23, 381 C. = Polyb. 39.2; Livy Epit. 52; Paus. 2.1.2 and 7.16.7 f. Cf.
M. Pape, Griechische Kunstwerkeaus Kriegsbeute und ihre bffentliche Aufstellung in
Rom (diss. Hamburg1975) 16-19. K. W. Arafat,Pausanias' Greece: AncientArtists and
Roman Rulers (Cambridge 1996) 89-97. For the most valiant attempt to rehabilitate
Mummius' tarnishedimage see Gruen(above, n. 5) 123-129.

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establisheda colony on the site of that destroyedcity as well52-Athens

had ceased to be the center of Mediterraneanand pan-Hellenic culture.
The creative and intellectualenergy of fifth- and fourth-centuryAthens
had long since dissipated. The Hellenistic period had witnessed the rise
of Alexandria,Pergamon,and Antioch as centers of learning and commerce, while the cities of the Greekmainlandhad been subjectedto virtually unceasing internaland external strife from which the expanding
Roman Republic understandablytook enormouscomfort. With so little
left of Carthaginianpower in 146, and with genuine resistance to
Roman expansion evident among the Greeks, why did Rome choose to
annihilateCarthageand to save so little of its culture-Mago's treatise
on farming, for example-while, at the same time, preserving that of
the Greeks?
The answer lies to some extent in a view of Greek culturethat idolized the Greek achievement and the intellectual accomplishmentswhich had their epicenter at Athens-mentioned by Horace and Virgil.
When Sulla took Athens in 86 B.C.,he killed off the population, yet
sparedmost of the city, which survivedas an artifact,a memorialto its
own past greatness.53Cicero's concern, however, was not only with
Greece's cultural past, but also with the Greek cities of his day. In a
letter to his brother Quintus, who was assuming the governorshipof
Asia in 59, he again draws a distinction between Greeks and others
under Roman rule whom he terms "barbarians."He praises the Greeks
with termsPliny would laterecho in a similar situation:
If chance had put you in charge of brutaland barbarouspeoples in
Africa or Spain or Gaul, as a civilized man, you would still take
thought for their needs and you would protect their interests and
safety. But, since we are governing not only the very people in
whom civilization resides, but the people from whom civilization is
thoughtto have spreadto others, surely above all we must shareits
52 The
nearly simultaneous destruction of the two cities-Polybios witnessed both
events-inevitably invited comparison of their different fates: see Polyb. 38.1.3-9,
echoed by Diod. 32.26.1-2. On the total destructionof Carthagesee R. T. Ridley, "Tobe
Taken with a Grain of Salt: the Destruction of Carthage,"CP 81 (1986) 140-146 and
S. T. Stevens, "A Legend of the Destructionof Carthage,"CP 83 (1988) 39-41.
53Plut. Sull. 14.5 ff.; cf. App. Mith. 38, Paus. 1.20.4-7. See Arafat (above, n. 51)
99-102, C. Habicht, Athen: Die Geschichte der Stadt in hellenistischer Zeit (Munich
1995) 304-310.

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benefits with those from whom they were received. I say this now
without shame, as surely in my life and my accomplishmentsthere
resides no suspicion of laziness or triviality: that which I have
achieved, I owe to those pursuitsand skills that have been handed
down to us throughthe works and teachingsof the Greeks.54

In Cicero, we see how far the two cultures have come since
Anchises' mythical prophecy. Cicero identifies himself-and indeed
all Rome-as beneficiaryof Greek greatness:the blessings of civilization are sharedby all Romans and even by others now governed from
Rome, and his own achievements,indeed not small ones for a novus
homo, he creditsto the inspirationand instructionof Greekthoughtand
practice. In Pro Flacco, which dates from the same period, Cicero
shifts the emphasisfrom Greece to Athens itself for reasons thathave to
do with the special circumstancesof the speech:
Presentare men from Athens, whence, it is thought,arose the civilization, learning,religion, fruits of the earth,rights, and laws that
have been spreadthroughall lands. As the story goes, on account
of its beauty, even the gods contended for possession of that city,
which is of such antiquity that its citizens are said to have been
produced by its very soil. The same earth is called "parent,"
"nurse,"and "fatherland."Athens has, moreover,such dignity that
the name of Greece-now weakened and virtuallybroken-is supportedby the reputationof thatcity.55

54Cic. QFr 1.1.27 f. quod si te sors Afris aut Hispanis aut Gallis praefecisset,
immanibusac barbaris nationibus, tamen esset humanitatistuae consulere eorum commodis et utilitati salutique servire; cum vero ei generi hominumpraesimus non modo in
quo ipsa sit sed etiam a quo ad alios pervenisse putetur humanitas,certe iis eam potissimum tribueredebemus, a quibus accepimus. non enim me hoc iam dicere pudebit,praesertim in ea vita atque iis rebusgestis in quibus non potest residere inertiae aut levitatis
ulla suspicio, nos ea quae consecuti simus iis studiis et artibus esse adeptos quae sint
nobis Graeciae monumentisdisciplinisquetradita. Cf. Pliny Ep. 8.24.2-4.
55 Cic. Flac. 62 adsuntAthenienses, unde humanitasdoctrina religiofruges iura leges
ortae atque in omnes terras distributaeputantur; de quorum urbis possessione propter
pulchritudinemetiam inter deos certamenfuisse proditumest; quae vetustate ea est, ut
ipsa ex sese suos cives genuisse dicatur et eorum eadem terra parens altrix patria
dicatur; auctoritate autem tanta est, ut iam fractum prope ac debilitatum Graeciae
nomen huius urbis laude nitatur.Cf. Isoc. Paneg. 24 f., 28 f.

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In this instance, even more than in the letter to his brother,Cicero constructs a mythical image of Athens that is as artificialas it is sublime.
By referringto "the weakened name of Greece,"debilitatumGraeciae
nomen, he acknowledges the wide gap that separateshis ideal Greece
from the Greeks of his own time. In doing so, he remindsus of the disparity between the Greek past and the Greek present of his day,
between Athenians and other Greeks, as well as between conflicting
articulationsof Greekness-a topic that has been at the heart of this
conference.56
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

561 am extremely grateful to my colleagues ChristopherJones and RichardThomas,

who organizedthe conference on Greece and Rome, for affordingme, as a Hellenist, the
opportunityto think and talk about things Roman, and to read Latin aloud in Boylston
Auditorium;to ErnstBadian,Zeph Stewartas well as otherparticipantsin the conference
for valuablecomments;and to MauraGiles for her last-minuteediting of the originalpresentationas well as for her numerousimprovementsin the final version.