In the preface R.-C. explains that she set out to write the book on the crisis of masculinity in the Augustan era that she felt was missing when she was writing her dissertation. Her volume successfully fills this gap. Masculinity has recently become a hot topic in scholarship on gender and sexuality in antiquity. But while much research approaches Roman masculinity through what it is not (see, e.g., the recent studies on cinaedi: T. Sapsford, Performing the Kinaidos: Unmanly Men in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures [2022]; T. Gazzarri and J. Weiner [edd.], Searching for the Cinaedus in Ancient Rome [2023]) or via specific genres (often elegy, e.g. H. Gardner, The Latin Love Elegists [2023]; E. Zimmermann Damer, In the Flesh: Embodied Identities in Roman Elegy [2019]) or authors (e.g. M. Pope, Lucretius and the End of Masculinity [2023]), R.-C. thinks about the ways in which late Republican and Augustan authors of both prose and poetry engaged with the traditional definition of maleness inherited from the Republic in light of the new power structures crystallising in the empire. As sweeping as the book's scope may seem, it does not claim too much, and instead zeroes in on passages from texts as varied as Cicero's letters from exile and the early books of Livy to the Priapea and Propertius’ elegies, to examine the ways in which Augustan authors and other elites reworked, adjusted or withdrew their public performances of masculinity under Augustus’ shadow.
The introduction poses the book's central question: ‘how could a man prove he was a man when the markers of masculinity have been monopolized by an emperor?’ (p. 3). After a brief overview of Roman masculinity and class structures, R.-C. gives an insightful reading of the Res Gestae. In her view Augustus’ curated document effectively closes the competition of masculine performance for all other elites. She concludes that public monuments, such as the Ara Pacis, may have functioned in part as models of alternative outlets for masculinity (e.g. the family).
In Chapter 1 R.-C. lays the groundwork by examining how Cicero and Catullus in the late Republic, purposefully or not, subvert traditional portrayals of masculinity, ultimately proving them problematic, on their way to irrelevancy or no longer attainable. R.-C. teases out the ways in which Cicero reworks traditional values to his own advantage – as when his consulship won through oratio becomes a new kind of militia or when his cowardice in leaving Rome becomes noble self-sacrifice. This recasting of masculinity, she argues, inadvertently exposes cracks in its traditional definition. The poet-speaker of Catullus, on the other hand, plays with the concept of manliness, performing a full gamut of masculinities from elegiac subservience to priapic aggression in a way that presages the Augustan elegists.
Chapter 2 contains an illuminating analysis of the quintessence of Republican manliness, virtus, in the more ‘acquiescent’ (p. 47) Augustan authors (Horace, Livy and Virgil) in conversation with Augustus’ moral and religious reforms. R.-C. shows that Horace's Roman odes attempt to imbue virtus with a sense of morality, as Augustus is doing, even as he highlights its militaristic aspects. While Horace's treatment of virtus toes the party line, Livy's use of it is more complicated: R.-C. deftly combines a statistical overview of the term's use in Livy's work as a whole with three case studies to conclude that for Livy martial virtus is in the distant past, where it often appears in reference to non-Romans and is ethically neutral or even negative. In Virgil's Aeneid she likewise charts the shift of virtus from Trojans to Latins and, ultimately, to the people who will become the Romans, as she highlights Virgil's ambiguous treatment of the term. Even as Virgil hearkens back to its martial roots, virtus for Virgil often belongs to the dead, and it is never enough to win the day on its own.
In Chapter 3 R.-C. moves from acquiescence to resistance in Augustan authors, which she defines not as outright criticism, but rather as the subtle positioning of the author as an alternative religious or moral authority, spheres in which Augustus has already claimed monopoly. After a brief review of the political careers and literary activities of Pollio and Messalla, she moves to Horace: in his Carmina he establishes himself as an imperial advisor whose ‘resistance is mild, a quiet reminder to Augustus to stay on track’ (p. 101). In Propertius’ poems addressed to Ponticus and Tullus, by contrast, the poet-speaker elevates the elegiac genre and his militia amoris as worthy and moral, as opposed to the corrupting and emasculating politically engaged life. Turning to Ovid, R.-C. argues that the blurring of boundaries in the figures of Pentheus and Janus in the Metamorphoses and the Fasti ultimately deconstructs the very idea of authority.
Chapter 4 examines disengagement through the trope of recusatio in these authors, with similar results: Horace's refusals to write epic absolve him of a sycophantic role and allow him to comment on public affairs from his relatively independent position of lyrical poet, while Propertius’ undermine the kind of elite masculinity promoted by Augustus in favour of his elegiac lifestyle. While Ovid did end up writing epic and tragedy, R.-C. argues that he destabilises generic boundaries in his elegiac recusationes to the extent that there is no longer any ‘standard’ from which to disengage (p. 160). This chapter benefits from a consideration of elite disengagement as portrayed in historical sources and an analysis of Maecenas’ performance of an alternative masculinity and engagement with politics from the sidelines.
The final chapter, which I found the most original, examines the speeches of gods to elucidate different ways of acquiescing, resisting or disengaging from Augustus’ rule. R.-C. deliberately chooses gods marginal to the pantheon (Priapus, Vertumnus and Hercules) who speak in genres other than epic, where divine speeches are a generic trope. By making gods speak as authorities or by portraying them differently from their places in Augustus’ religious programmes, R.-C. convincingly argues, these passages challenge the princeps’ role as the ultimate religious and moral authority. Using the Priapea as a touchstone, R.-C. shows that Horace maintains yet tames Priapus’ sexual aggression to support Octavian's projects, while Tibullus’ Priapus performs the excesses and failures of this kind of aggressive masculinity, to the extent that this praeceptor amoris advises on seducing young freeborn boys. In a brilliant analysis of Vertumnus in Propertius 4.2 R.-C. reads this poem as a meditation on what it means to be a man that blurs the lines between social classes and even genders: she concludes that Vertumnus’ transformations expose the artificiality of the class distinctions – and, thereby, the class control – that Augustus was trying to enforce. Hercules in Propertius 4.9 is similarly at odds with Augustan religious reform: simultaneously feminised and excessively masculine, ‘Propertius’ Hercules is Antonian, not Augustan’ (p. 189).
The brief conclusion considers Tiberius’ masculinity, examines changes under his rule (e.g. the rise of informers) in light of the construction of elite masculinity, and looks at which strategies of masculinity were successful post Augustus – R.-C. includes retreat to positions of local prominence in the provinces or country estates and the ‘care of the self’ through philosophy as strategies of disengagement.
At about 200 pages of text, the book is not long, and there are places where I would have liked more sociopolitical background or expansion of some ideas. But R.-C. has succeeded in writing a clear, readable book on an expansive topic that combines tightly argued, insightful close readings with bigger-picture analysis. The passages are well chosen, the thread of the book is never lost, and the argument is theoretically informed without getting bogged down with jargon or citations. Well-written and well-edited, the book deserves a place on the shelf for anyone interested in gender in antiquity, the Augustan period or the authors under consideration.
