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to The Jeweled Style
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2 • THE LITERARY TRADITION
AND ITS REFINEMENT
tThis division is derived from Jacques Fontaine, "Le melange des genres dans Ia
poesie de Prudence," in Forma Futuri: Studi in onore del Cardinale Michele Pellegrino
(Turin, 1975). 758-60 (=Etudes sur Ia poesie latine tardive d'Ausone aPrudence [Paris,
1980], 4-6), and "Unite et diversite du melange des genres et des tons chez quel-
ques ecrivains latins de Ia fm du IV siecle: Ausone, Ambroise, Ammien," in
Christianisme et formes litteraires de l'antiquite tardive en occident, Fondation Hardt,
Entretiens 23 (Vandoeuvres, 1977), 431 (=Etudes, 31).
2So, e.g., Priscian (sixth century, translation of the Progymnasmata attributed to
Hermogenes): "Fiunt autem descriptiones tam personarum quam rerum et tern-
porum et status et locorum et multorum aliorum" (Praeexercitamina 10; 558.25-26
Halm). Descriptions of works of art were a form of ecphrasis particularly popular
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 39
in the East (see Paul Friedlander, Johannes von Gaza, Paulus Silentarius, und Pro-
kopios von Gaza: Kunstbeschreibungenjustinianischer Zeit [Leipzig, 1912; reprint Hil-
desheim, 1969], 85), but the term covers any visually realized description. From
this point of view, G. Downey's article, "Ekphrasis," RAC 4 (1959), 921-44, is
incomplete.
3In the first century A.D., praeexercitamina might be taught by thegrammaticus or
the rhetor. Quintilian (1.9.6 and 2. 1. 1-13) complains about the appropriation of
what was properly the business of the rhetorical schools by grammatici. The
ecphrasis, as one of the more difficult exercises, was more suited to the rhetorical
school. For the progymnasmatic tradition, see Georg Reichel, Quaestiones Progym-
nasmaticae (Leipzig, 1909), and Michael Roberts, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Para-
phrase in Late Antiquity, ARCA, Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Mono-
graphs 16 (Liverpool, 1985), 5-28, 64-67.
4E.g., Servius identifies Virgil, Aen. 10.653-55, as a descriptio and compares
8.416ff.
SRhet. ad Her. 4.55.68, in Caplan's translation (slightly adapted). The Latin is
"demonstratio est cum ita verbis res exprimitur ut geri negotium et res ante oculos
esse videatur." The term evidentia is found in Cicero and in Quintilian. The former
also uses sub oculos subiectio. Enargeia seems to be the preferred technical term in
later authors. For a collection of references, see Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der
literarischen Rhetorik: Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschafi, 2 vols. (Munich,
1960), I:4Q0-401.
6So Nicolaus of Myra (fifth century), Progymnasmata (68. 11-12 Felten): tj [)£ (sc.
bu:pgams) :n:EtQci'tm -ftw'tas 'toils axouovms tgya~w-ftm. There is good reason to
believe that the Greek progymnasmatic treatises of late antiquity are reliable evi-
dence for Western practice. Jacques Fontaine, Isidore de Seville et Ia culture classique
dans l'Espagne Wisigothique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1959), 1:326-28, discussing the section
on progymnasmata in Isidore's Etymologiae, fmds evidence for a common Greco-
Larin tradition that is best represented in Latin by the scattered allusions in the
Institutio Oratoria. Cf. Quintilian 6.2.32, "tvagyEta, ... quae non tam dicere
videtur quam ostendere, et adfectus non aliter quam si rebus ipsis intersimus
sequentur."
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40 The Jeweled Style
on
7 lha<pEQEt 1)£ xal xm:' txECvo tf)~ I>LlJyi)oEro~. ii IJ.EV ta xaMA.ou, ii 1>£ ta
xata j.l.tgo~ t!;Eta~EL (68. 19-20). The attribution of this chapter to Nicolaus is
doubtful (Felten, iii-vii).
8 "Est igitur unum genus, quo tota rerum imago quodam modo verbis deping-
itur."
9"Interim ex pluribus efficitur illa quam conamur exprimere facies."
lOA third-century rhetorician. The title, Pro Gallio, is also supplied by Aquila.
Aquila's text differs from Quintilian's in other minor respects. He also supplies an
additional sentence between oscitantis and Humus erat: "Versabatur inter hos Gallius
unguentis oblitus, redimitus coronis" (De figuris sententiarum et elocutionis 2;
23.16-17 Halm).
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 41
with wine, and some yawning from yesterday's drinking. The floor
was filthy, awash with wine and covered with wilting garlands and
the bones of fish.
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42 The jeweled Style
convivium luxuriosum: "Quid plus videret qui intrasset?" (8.3.67). Demetrius, Eloc.
4. 209, is more emphatic: 1:0 yaQ EvaQYt; EJ(.EL £x m-o :n:av1:a ElQf)attm 1:a ouJ.I.f3a(-
vovta, xat f.LTJ :n:aQaAEAECq:>-ltm f.LTJl'ltv.
15 "Sed quoniam pluribus modis acdpi solet [sc. evidentia], non equidem in
omnis earn particulas secabo, quarum ambitiose a quibusdam numerus augetur"
(8.3.63). Quintilian's teachings here have much in common with the modern
theories of Philippe Hamon in his Introduction a !'analyse du descriptif(Paris, I98I).
Hamon (I40-4I) speaks of the possibility of a single-word summation (he calls it
"pantonym") of the content of a description and likens the procedure of"opening
out" the word to the declension of a grammatical paradigm-it is instead the
declension of a lexical stock (43-45). Hamon (54-55) also uses the analogy of a
grid or grille of the characteristic disposition of words in a description. Overall
there is a good deal of coincidence between Hamon's results and my own, despite
our differences in terminology and corpus of texts-Hamon works mainly with
the French nineteenth-century realist novel. Perrine Galand has already made a
start in applying Hamon's results to late antique texts in an article which brought
Hamon's book to my attention; "Les 'fleurs' de !'ecphrasis: Autour du rapt de
Proserpine (Ovide, Claudien, Politien)," Latomus 46 (I987), 87-I22.
t6Hermogenes, Prog. IO (22.I9-23.6 Rabe; cf. Theon, Prog. II; II9.I4-21
Spengel), Aphthonius, Prog. I2 (37- I I-I3 Rabe).
t7 Aphthonius, Prog. I2 (37-9-I I Rabe), Nicolaus, Prog. (69. I2-I7 Felten); cf.
Victorinus, Explanationes in Rhetoricam ... Ciceronis r. 8 (I 82. 19-2 I Halm).
18£x "tOW :ltEQLE)(.6V"twv xat Ev au"tot; u:n:aQJ(.6V"tWV, Aphthonius, Prog. I2
(37. I3-I4 Rabe). It is recommended that the seasons be described in the same way.
One would imagine places could also be described linearly, from left to right or
from right to left, just as a person is described "from fi~st to last," i.e., from head
to toe.
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 43
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44 The Jeweled Style
ture, but Quintilian provides the best guide to the stylistic tech-
niques of the ecphrasis. The illustration from Cicero's Pro Gallio is
especially revealing. Here are many of the techniques we have
found in late antique poetry: the analysis of a scene or event into its
constituent parts; composition by enumerative sequence; frequent
use of figures of parallelism (and, in the case of chiasmus, varia-
tion); and a tendency to favor short units of composition (commata
rather than cola). There are, of course, important differences. The
Cicero passage lacks the articulating system of antitheses that is
characteristic of the late antique authors (the antithesis intrantis :
exeuntis is purely local in scope). The passage thus loses in density
of texture. Its effect is more linear. Each enumerative sequence is
confined to a sentence, then abandoned for a new sequence
(though there are cross-references, e. g., vino in the last two sen-
tences). In this way the description is more open to its context than
the typical late antique passage, which functions as a self-contained
and self-defining unit. Classical rhetoric, with its special status for
forensic oratory, was wary of the tendency of descriptive passages
to become detached from their context. The fully developed
ecphrasis is treated as a digression by Quintilian, most suitable
between the narratio and probatio; 22 it should always directly serve
the speaker's case. 23
The analytical procedures of leptologia produce regularity of
structure, and regularity in tum directs attention to the differences
within the repeated units (cola and commata) that qualify sim-
ilarity. This means that the individual word, its choice and posi-
tion, receives greater emphasis than would be the case in other
styles of composition. The minute attention to word selection,
sound, and order is a necessary consequence of leptologia. Ques-
tions of this kind were addressed by rhetorical theory under the
name of variation (varietas/variatiol1toLXLALa), 24 one of the func-
tions of which was to diversify an enumerative sequence, and it is
to that term that I now tum.
Stylistic variatio performs two principal functions in rhetorical
theory. The first is the embellishment of the hypothetically simple
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 45
25 Cf. Rhet. ad Her. 4· 13. 18; Cicero, De Or. 2.9.36; Quintilian 4.2. rr7-19,
5· 14.32, 6. I.2·
26Heinze, 359-60, and Wilhelm Kroll, Studien zum Verstiindnis der rom ischen Liter-
atur (Stuttgart, 1924), 362-64. For examples in biblical poetry, see Roberts, Biblical
Epic, 198-207, and for examples in Nonnus' Dionysiaca, see Martin String, Unter-
suchungen zum Stil der Dionysiaka des Nonnos von Panopolis (Hamburg, 1966), n-
4!.
27Quintilian records the contemporary practice of memorizing lists of syn-
onyms but disapproves of it (10. r. 7); Fronto recommends the collection and ex-
ercises in the use of synonyms (De Eloquentia 3.5; II 76 Haines). The papyrus BM
Add Ms 37533 (= Pack 2 2712) contains a list of verbs and the cases they take,
ordered in groups of synonyms (Erich Ziebarth, Aus der antiken Schule: Sammlung
griechischer Texte auf Papyrus, Holzta.feln, Ostraka, 2d ed., Kleine Texte ftir Vor-
lesungen und Obungen 65 [Bonn, 1913], 24-27).
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46 The Jeweled Style
28Rutilius Lupus 1. 7 (I 1. I 5-20 Brooks). Both Quintilian and Rutilius treat this
figure as a form ofanaphora; cf. Carmen defiguris 9I-93·
29"Deinde in catalogo suo curavit Vergilius vitare fastidium .... Hie [sc. Ver-
gilius] autem variat velut dedecus aut crimen vi tans repetitionem."
30"[Epitheta] qui bus velut sideribus micat divini carminis variata maiestas."
3t De Or. 2.41. I77· The full quotation is "tractatio autem varia esse debet, ne aut
cognoscat artem qui audiat aut defetigetur similitudinis satietate." The emphasis
on concealing art is classical and characteristically Ciceronian. Writers oflate antiq-
uity, by contrast, preferred to parade their literary expertise. For variation as the
avoidance of similarity, see also Cicero, Inv. 1.41. 76.
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 47
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48 The Jeweled Style
see also Att. 2. I. 1, De Or. 2.45. 188. Color is also used of the style or character of a
speech or part of a speech (see, in general, ThLL 3· 1720.43-72).
35ThLL 3. 172!.47-1722.47· Quintilian does not use colores of the techniques of
rhetorical ornatus.
36De Or. 3.25.96 (in conjunction with lumina, and varietas colorum [98]); Or.
19.65 (varietas colorum); Brut. 17.66 (lumen), 66.233 (lumen), 87.298 (pigmenta, col-
orem). Flos is also used of rhetorical ornamentation in Farad., Pr. 2.
37"Modus autem nullus est florentior in singulis verbis neque qui plus luminis
adferat orationi."
38 Style of the sophists Or. 19.65; 27.96 (florens orationis pictum et expolitumgenus).
Demetrius of Phaleron's style is described as jloridior, ut ita dicam, quam Hyperides,
quam Lysias (Brut. 82.285). The qualification ut ita dicam apologizes for the
"flower" metaphor; cf. the double use of quasi in De Or. 3.25.96.
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 49
For the most part, Quintilian avoids this sense of }los, 39 prefer-
ring the word lumen, probably because he associated a highly
"flowered" style with the schools of declamation and their exces-
sive use of rhetorical embellishment. Quintilian refers disparaging-
ly to "this self-indulgent modern style" with its "flowerets" of
rhetoric (recentis huius lasciviae flosculis, 2. 5. 22), a brilliant but in-
substantial feature, along with farfetched vocabulary, of the cor-
rupt declamatory style popular in his own day. 40
The license enjoyed by speakers in the schools of declamation
tended to blur the distinction between rhetorical prose and poetry,
especially in vocabulary, tropes, and figures. Already in Cicero,
flores are associated with epideictic, the type of oratory most
closely allied to poetry. 41 The notion of a poem being like a gar-
land woven from flowers 42 must have contributed to the belief that
flores were a form of embellishment particularly characteristic of
poets. So Columella, writing in the 6os, says of the fourth book of
Virgil's Georgics: "He lent luster (illuminavit) to the subject of bees
with poetic flowers" (poeticis floribus, 9.2. 1). But the metaphor is
found only rarely in the surviving literature of the first century
A.D. It was destined for vast expansion in late antiquity, with a full
exploration of the latent implications of the image.
It is characteristic of late antiquity that the distinction between
prose and verse, in style and subject matter, progressively broke
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50 The Jeweled Style
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 5I
46 The connection with spring often seems somewhat attenuated, even in the first
century A.D. So Columella (10.270) uses the word simply to mean "blossoming"
(vernantia Iilia). For vernus as an epithet of }los, see ThLL 6.937·38-40.
47for other examples, see Symmachus, Ep. 8.22. I; Sidonius, Ep. 4.3.6; Tauren-
tius, Ep. ad Ruric. 3, facundiae }lore vernantes (CSEL 2I; 445.9); Ennodius, Dictio I
(424.25 Hartel) and IO (458. 11); Bruhn, 40.
48Apuleius, Met. I0.29. Prudentius, Psych. 862-63, Perist. 3.I98-2oo, I2.53-54
(prata vernis jloribus renident); cf. Claudian, Rapt. 2.90-93, Reposianus, De Con-
cubitu Martis et Veneris 37-44, Lucretius 5. I395-96; Culex 70-7I; Paulinus, C.
21.85-86.
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52 The jeweled Style
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 53
52Prudentius, C. Symm. 1.633; Paulinus, Ep. 32·4 (278.24 Hartel); cf. Bruhn, 37.
S3So already in the first century Pliny the Younger speaks of prata .florida et
gemmea (Ep. 5.6. II); c£ Columella I0.258; Culex 70; and ThLL 6.I758.7J-76. The
Lucretian herbae gemmantes rore recenti (2.3I9; cf. 5.46I) is a different image. It is
relevant here that gemma is widely used of the buds of plants. This was in all
probability its original sense (see ThLL 6.I753.78-I754.32).
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54 · The Jeweled Style
54Ennodius 7.29 (195. 17 Hartel); cf. 1.4 (7. 13), 2.13 (53.4); ThLL 5-946.53-63.
SSRhet. ad Her. 4.23.32; for other passages, see ThLL 7.2.1820.26-59·
S6"Cuius oratio cum sedate placideque liquitur, tum illustrant earn quasi stellae
quaedam tralata verba atque immutata."
57"Deinde verba, quae his adiunguntur locis, decentissime variantur."
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 55
nibus inluminatus), and Augustine may well have had this passage in
mind when discussing Amos. 58
58Compare Quintilian 12.10.33, Symmachus, Or. 2.24, and Ep. 1.14.4; in the
latter passage, Symmachus praises Ausonius' catalog of fishes in the Mosella as
quam nominibus varia tam coloribus. For the principle that proper names and exotic
language were adornments to poetry, see Kroll, 21-22; Andre Loyen, Sidoine
Apollinaire et !'esprit precieux en Gaule aux derniers jour de !'empire, Collection
d'etudes latines, serie scientifique 20 (Paris, 1943),25, andJ. Marouzeau, Traite de
stylistique latine, 4th ed., Collection d'etudes latines, serie scientifique 12 (Paris,
1962), 91-95. Harald Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics, 2 vols., Studia
Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia 20 (Goteborg, 1967), does not note the Cicero-
nian parallel.
59Qf flowers, ThLL 7.2. 1817.19-23 (e.g., Columella 10.96-97, "varios, ter-
restria sidera, flores, I candida leucoia et flaventia lumina calthae"); of jewels,
ThLL 7.2. 1817.5-18. The adjectivegemmatus was used in late antiquity not only of
flowers in a meadow (ThLL 6.1758.73-76) but also of stars in the sky (ThLL
6. 1758.69-73).
60Donato Gagliardi, Aspetti della poesia latina tardoantica: Linee evolutive e culturali
dell' ultima poesia pagana dai novelli a R. Namaziano (Palermo, 1972) and "Linee di
sviluppo della poesia latina tardoantica," in La poesia tardoantica: Tra retorica,
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56 The Jeweled Style
teologia e politica, Atti del V. Corso della Scuola superiore di archeologia e civilta
medievali ... 6-I2 Dicembre I98I (Messina, I984), 5I-73; Margherita Principato,
"Poesia familiare e poesia descrittiva in Ausonio," Aevum 35 (I96I), 4I3-I6; Pierre
Fargues, Claudien: Etudes sur sa poesie et son temps (Paris, I933), 285-328; Alan
Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, I 970),
269-73; Isabella Gualandri, Aspetti della tecnica compositiva in Claudiano (Milan,
I968), 8-9; Wifstrand, I 53-54; String, 7-9; Klaus Thraede, Studien zu Sprache und
Stil des Prudentius, Hypomnemata I3 (Gottingen, I965), 125-26; Loyen, I I4-I9;
Isabella Gualandri, Furtiva Lectio: Studi su Sidonio Apollinare, Testi e documenti per
lo studio dell' antichita 62 (Milan, I979), 33. The poets in question are Ausonius,
Claudian, Nonnus, Prudentius, and Sidonius, but the list could be greatly
expanded.
61Gualandri, Aspetti, I7-I8, comments on the minuteness ofClaudian's descrip-
tions and the impression of exhaustivity they communicate; Principato, 4I, speaks
of Ausonius' accurate abundance of particulars in the Mosella (i.e., leptologia; cf.
Wifstrand, I 5 I-54).
62Principato, 4I7-I8; Maria Rosa Posani, "Reminiscenze di poeti latini nella
'Mosella' di Ausonio," SIFC, 34 (I962), 59-6I; Gualandri, Aspetti, 9; Cameron,
Claudian, 264-65; Rudolf Keydell, "Nonnos," RE I7. I (I936), 9IO; String, I6;
Peter Krafft, "Erzahlung und Psychagogie in Nonnos' Dionysiaka," in Christian
Gnilka and Willy Schetter, eds., Studien zur Literatur der Spiitantike, Antiquitas 1.23
(Bonn, I975), 9I-94; Loyen, 3; cf. Reinhart Herzog, "Probleme der heidnisch-
christlichen Gattungskontinuitat am Beispiel des Paulinus von Nola," in Chris-
tianisme et formes litteraires de l'antiquite tardive en occident, Fondation Hardt, En-
tretiens 23 (Vandoeuvres, I977), 409-Io; Wolfgang Kirsch, "Strukturwandel im
lateinischen Epos des 4.-6. Jhs," Philologus I23 (I979), 40-41.
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 57
63Qn this, see esp. Friedrich Mehmel, Virgil und Apollonius Rhodius: Unter-
suchungen uber die Zeitvorstellung in der antiken epischen Erziihlung (Hamburg, I940),
99-I32. For the symbolic language of Latin panegyric, see Sabine G. MacCor-
mack, "Latin Prose Panegyrics: Tradition and Discontinuity in the Later Roman
Empire," REAug 22 (I976), 46-54, and for the symbolic language of art, see
Andre Grabar, "Plotin et les origines de l'esthetique medievale," CArch I (I945),
I9-22, and Sabine G. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, The
Transformation of the Classical Heritage I (Berkeley, Calif, I98I), 3 I.
64Gualandri, Aspetti, 8; see also Michael Roberts, "Rhetoric and Poetic Imitation
in Avitus' Account of the Crossing of the Red Sea (De Spiritalis Historiae Gestis s.
37I-702," Traditio 39 (I983), 70. I have found the following studies especially
valuable: on Ausonius, see Posani, Woldemar Gorier, "Vergilzitate in Ausonius'
Mosella," Hermes 97 (I969), 94-II4; on Claudian, see Cameron, Claudian, 279-84,
and Ursula Keudel, Poetische Vorliiufer und Vorbilder in Claudians De Consulatu
Stilichonis: Imitationskommentar, Hypomnemata 26 (Gottingen, I970); on the
Hymns of Ambrose, see Jacques Fontaine, "L'apport de la tradition poetique
romaine ala formation de l'hymnodie latine chretienne," REL, 52 (I974), 342-52
(= Etudes, I46-83), and Fontaine, "Unite," 447-50 (= Etudes, 47-50); on Pruden-
tius, see Fontaine, "Melange," 758 (=Etudes 4); on Sidonius, see Gualandri, Fur-
tiva, 84-I04. Klaus Thraede, "Epos," RAC, 5 (Stuttgart, I962), I034-4I, and
Reinhart Herzog, Die Bibelepik der lateinischen Spiitantike: Formgeschichte einer er-
baulichen Gattung, vol. I, Theorie und Geschichte der Literatur und der schonen
Kiinste, 37 (Munich, I975), I:I89-200, propose elaborate classifications of imita-
tion techniques in Christian poetry.
6S"Ostendere cupio quantum Vergilius noster ex antiquiorum lectione profecerit
et quos ex omnibus flores vel quae in carminis sui decorem ex diversis omamenta
libaverit." The speaker is Furius Albinus.
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58 The Jeweled Style
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 59
Optatian Porfyry and the Field of Roman Verse," TAPA IIS (1985), 245-69.
Ausonius, in his prefatory letter to Pacatus, emphasizes that his work's originality
lies in form not in content: "in quibus nullus facundiae locus est, sensuum nulla
conceptio, propositio, redditio, conclusio aliaque sophistica, quae in uno versu
esse non possunt: set cohaerent ita, ut circuli catenarum separati" (126. s-7 Prete).
The last phrase, "they hold together like the individual links in a chain" (trans.
Evelyn-White), envisages a comparison with chainmail armor. Cf Sidonius, Ep.
9. 14.6, on versus recurrentes (verses that can be read forward or backward): "En
habes versus, quorum syllabatim mirere rationem. Ceterum pompam, quam non
habent, non docebunt."
70So Gordon Williams, Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire
(Berkeley, Calif, 1978), 215. For catalogs in the poets oflate antiquity, see Ludwig
Deubner, "Zum Moselgedicht des Ausonius," Philologus 89 (1934), 256-58 (Aus-
onius); Cameron, Claudian 284-86, 345; Keudel, 138-40 (Claudian); Loyen, 14-19,
25 (Sidonius); Salvatore Costanza, "11 Catalogo dei pelleg.rini: Confronto di due
tecniche narrative (Prud. Per. XI 189-213; Paolino di Nola Carm. XIV 44-85),"
BStudLat 7 (1977), 316-26, Roberts, Biblical Epic, 201-6 (Prudentius, Paulinus, and
the biblical poets).
71See Epilogue, n. 8, and cf Ps.-Rufinianus, De schematis lexeos 20 (52.35-53·3
Halm; the figure is called am)vbetov).
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6o The Jeweled Style
To whom the sow, stag, lion, Giant, Amazon, host, bull, Eryx,
birds, Lycus, thief, Nessus, Libyan, peaks, apples, maiden, snake,
Oete, Thracian horses, Spanish cattle, wrestling river, three-formed
dog, and burden of the heaven gave the heavens.
Here are vinegar, gall, reed, spittle, nails, lance; his gentle body is
pierced, blood and water flows out. By the flood the earth, sea, stars,
world are cleansed.
72Virgil, Aen. 11.329, 12.197; Lucan 7.635-36, 8.599, 9.402; Silius 11.563-64;
Statius, Theb. 10. 768; in other first-century poetry: Seneca, Phaed. 939; Octavia
176; Statius, Silv. r.6.44, 2.7.85-86.
73 Fontaine, "Unite,'' 440-45, 447-52, 466-67 (=Etudes 40-45, 47-52, 66-67).
Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard
R. Trask (New York, 1953; reprint 1963), 285-86 and 291, cites this figure as an
example of late antique mannerism. But by no means all late antique poets made
extensive use of congeries. I have counted seventy-one examples in the poetic
corpus ofSidonius, but only eight in Claudian (only one longer than three words).
For the continuation of the practice in the medieval period, see Harry E. Wedeck,
"The Catalogue in Late and Medieval Latin Poetry," M&H 13 (196o), 3-16.
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 61
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62 The Jeweled Style
77for the Horatian ethics, see Michael Roberts, "The Masella of Ausonius: An
Interpretation," TAPA II4 (1984), 349·
78Zoja Pavlovskis, Man in an Artificial Landscape: The Marvels of Civilization in
Imperial Roman Literature, Mnemosyne, Suppl. 25 (Leiden, 1973), traces the influ-
ence of Statian architectural description on the poets of late antiquity; for the
epithalamia of Statius, Claudian, Paulinus, Sidonius, Dracontius, and Ennodius,
see Camillo Morelli, "L'epitalamio nella tarda poesia latina," SIFC 18 (1910), 319-
432, and Zoja Pavlovskis, "Statius and the Late Latin Epithalamia," CPh 6o (1965),
164-77. Herbert Cancik, Untersuchungen zur lyrischen Kunst des P. Papinius Statius,
Spudasmata 13 (Hildesheim, 1965), 45, 70, 78-79, speaks of the role ofbrilliance in
Statius' aesthetic in the Silvae.
79Macrobius, Sat. 5· I. 7, "[Genus] pingue et floridum in quo Plinius Secundus
quondam et nunc nullo veterum minor noster Symmachus luxuriatur"; Sidonius,
Ep. I. I. I. "Quinti Symmachi rotunditatem, Gai Plinii disciplinam maturitatem-
que vestigiis praesumptuosis insecuturus."
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 63
For every day there was present before the mind of all the picture of
you, a person burdened by years and weakened by ill-health, yet of
distinguished birth and revered for your holiness, who out of no
motive but affection broke down so many barriers and conquered so
many difficulties put in your way-the length of the journey, the
shortness of the days, the abundance of snow and the shortage of
provisions, the expanse of wilderness and the discomfort oflodgings,
the state of the roads, broken up by rainwater or made uneven by the
cold and frost; in addition, highways rough with unfinished stone,
rivers treacherous and icy, rugged hills to climb, and valleys leveled
by continual landslides. Yet through all these hardships, because you
sought no private benefit you gained the love of the people.
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64 The Jeweled Style
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The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 65
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