Roman polemic could be vicious, intended to inflict lasting harm and constricted only by the degree1 of social superiority of the speaker, or his sense of temerity.Footnote 1 Calumniators might pride themselves on the fact that the rhetorical flagellation of allegedly nefarious behaviour was for the moral benefit of the community. Cato the Elder’s denunciation of fellow-citizens won him the censorship of 184; indeed, it was the habit of his lifetime, his denigratory observations often couched as moral maxims.Footnote 2 In the next generation, Lucilius was remembered as having ‘cut the whole city to pieces’ (Persius, Sat. 1.114) – though his victims were often, we may suspect, more politically targeted.Footnote 3 Juvenal saw Lucilius as something of an epic hero, his war chariot cutting a swathe through the battlefield of the forum (Sat. 1.19–21), informed by contemporary politics and his pen an unsheathed sword (1.165–66), striking the fear of posterity’s moral disapprobation into the very bellies of his victims. When Lucilius raged, said Juvenal, his victim blushed, his stomach perspiring in the knowledge of his secret guilt (165–167). That reference to secret guilt (tacita culpa) is apropos to the argument that follows. Lucilius’ friend, P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, ready to take up Cato’s mantle as the uncompromising instructor of the community, drew, in a broad sense, on that well, practising in Spain on those recalcitrants whom he regarded as unworthy – both troops and subordinate officers alike.Footnote 4 This suited a national predilection: ‘The collective conscience commented, as shamelessly as it pleased, on anyone’s life. This was considered not gossip but legitimate censure, reprehensio.’Footnote 5 In reality, in Rome of the second century bc, it served competitive self-interest – and became almost second nature within the elite.
Obiter dicta, with the element of spontaneity, could be just as ferocious, carrying the expectation of their survival as apophthegms.Footnote 6 Malediction, it is just as important to note, was frequent – almost characteristic of public life; Cicero speaks of Rome as a maledicta civitas (Cael. 38): a body-politic given to, and avid for, slander.Footnote 7 The following article wishes to explore one celebrated spontaneous observation on the part of P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, its possible innuendo, and the extent to which a suspicion planted might have become a rumour nurtured.
Scipio Aemilianus’ Denunciation of Tiberius Gracchus
We begin with the wider context. Scipio disapproved of the political actions of his cousin and brother-in-law, Ti. Sempronius Gracchus (trib. pl. 133) – doubtless his ‘methods’ rather than Gracchus’ original program, since agrarian reform was earlier mooted by Scipio’s intimate associate C. Laelius.Footnote 8 Cicero, in historical recall, willed Scipio’s public disapprobation (delivered in 130/129 under some compulsion to a public meeting) to be unambiguous: Gracchus had been justly killed (iure caesum).Footnote 9 Velleius Paterculus indicates that Scipio’s pronouncement was to a meaningful degree more circumspect: ‘if he was of a mind to seize control of the State, he had been justly killed (si is occupandae rei publicae animum habuisset, iure caesum).Footnote 10 This has the gravity of a public sententia, with words weighed carefully for posterity (and pinpointing the issue of political overreach).Footnote 11
But Scipio had already passed a highly adverse sentence on his cousin – and, although it had been an off-the-cuff apophthegm, Scipio must have known that it would become public (as it did).Footnote 12 And it carried the nuance not of political criticism but of moral opprobrium: Gracchus’ behaviour had been shameful and disreputable.
In 133, whilst still investing Numantia, Scipio first heard of Gracchus’ violent death. His reaction was quick and unequivocally damning – though allusive. He pronounced, in fine voice, an Homeric verse: ‘Thus perish all others who attempt such’ – or perhaps ‘so die all who would wish to imitate him’ (Plut. TG 21.4). The apophthegm had also been transmitted by Diodorus (34/35.7.3), preserved in the Byzantine Excerpta de Sententiis.Footnote 13 The utterance was quasi-public. Both surviving sources add the passing detail that the declaration was made loudly: ἐπιβοῆσαι (Diodorus), ἀνεφώνησεν (Plutarch).Footnote 14 The item is believed to have been drawn by Diodorus from Poseidonius, and possibly came to Plutarch via the same source. Although the utterance no doubt became public currency within a short time of reaching Rome, it may also have been vouchsafed in the writings of first-hand witnesses, amongst whom we would suggest was Sempronius Asellio who published a history early in the first century bc based upon his own experiences (see Appendix 1). These multiple channels of relay, we would say, underscore the variant ways in which the item is likely to have been transmitted. The historicity of the pronouncement was not contested; its interpretation was. Its reception in Rome by those favourable to Gracchus was hostile (see above, n. 12); Scipio’s judgment produced outrage. In the literary tradition, we suggest, it is likely to have been handled with respect and gravity, an authoritative endorsement of Gracchus’ violent end.Footnote 15 After 133, Rome was a grievously divided community and this affected memory (anything but collective) and the interpretation of otherwise uncontested historical data. Exegetical interpretations of so resonant a declaration, inevitably partisan, will have been similarly variant.
How much was read into Scipio’s words on the occasion of their delivery and subsequently? The line itself came from Homer’s Odyssey (1.47), and is Athena’s pronouncement upon Aegisthus’ murder at the hands of Orestes, following Zeus’ fuller denunciation of Aegisthus as the exemplum of human vice in taking Agamemnon’s wife and then slaying the man/her husband, despite explicit divine injunction on both counts (Od. 1. 28–43).
Scipio’s borrowed judgement is rarely probed by commentators who generally rest content with noting its provenance.Footnote 16 Perhaps the resonance of Homeric Greek is considered sufficient.Footnote 17 Tiberius Gracchus was, it was surely being suggested, a man who had acted badly – very badly, and had met with just desserts (at the hands of avengers, we might add, led by the pontifex maximus).Footnote 18
A Political Interpretation of the Allusion
That uncomplicated interpretation of the apophthegm’s point and force may satisfy most – and, indeed, no more can be said with absolute confidence. Yet such allusions amongst a learned elite often carried added value: the piquancy of esoteric relevance – and Scipio Aemilianus, being a man of both high culture and savage tongue, might be looked to for such a payload.Footnote 19 Such quotations were expected to be alert to, if not play upon, the contexts from which they were drawn.Footnote 20 Thus Paula Botteri poses the question: can the choice of this particular line (on the face of it, rather straightforward, if not trite [en apparence le vers est banal]) – even if we accept it as a clever device of anti-Gracchan propaganda – be considered coincidental (le fruit du hasard)?Footnote 21 Professing herself at a loss for any closer comparison of Aegisthus and Gracchus, she takes her enquiry no further than the suggestion registered above (n. 18) – that Scipio was alluding to a deserved death (and the legitimate use of force to terminate an illegitimate reign). The invited comparison, however, bears further thought.
Aegisthus, a figure familiar enough to Latin audiences through the many treatments of the house of Atreus on the Roman stage, was an illegitimate ruler – a tyrannus.Footnote 22 Aegisthus the tyrant had strode the Roman stage almost from the beginning, proclaiming his maiestas, demanding the compliance and subordination of others, and intruding upon sacred places.Footnote 23 The parallel with the claims that would later become commonplace with regard to Gracchus (which were probably in circulation in 133 and which would have been reported to Scipio in Spain before he heard the news of his cousin’s death) is clear: Gracchus, it was said, was aiming at some form of regnum.Footnote 24 At the level of first reception that is surely the note struck (and intended). There is more. Aegisthus, from the very limited amount we know of his appearances on the Roman stage in the second century bc, might well have been known as a populist tyrant. The evidence is spare; indeed, it rests on a single item (out of its precise context). Nonius preserves two lines from Pacuvius’ play Dulorestes (‘Slave-Orestes’): extemplo Aegisthi fidem / nuncupantes conciebunt populum (‘straightway, those proclaiming the pledge of Aegisthus will incite the populus’).Footnote 25 A single sentence taken out of context hardly allows for the appropriate exercise of hermeneutical rigour, but the potential applicability of this image is striking. The Dulorestes was, moreover, a play with which Scipio was more likely than not to have been familiar. And he will have found the association attractive.Footnote 26
Aegisthus, then, was a tyrant – and possibly one with demagogic tendencies bent on overthrowing legitimate authority.Footnote 27 We are inclined to think that Scipio expected this to come to his hearer’s minds. The allegation of tyranny was more often than not levelled at individuals of a populist bent – as, indeed, was regnum.Footnote 28 Interestingly, Cicero in the first Book of the De republica puts into the mouth of the revered Scipio a version of Plato’s definition of a tyrant – from ‘an excess of freedom’ emerges a tyrant who gratifies the People with the property of private individuals, who is given powers that are then renewed, and who surrounds himself with armed men. The state can only be saved if the tyrant is suppressed by the optimates (1. 68).Footnote 29
But was there still more? We think it can be taken further. Aegisthus’ villainy was remarkably of a more personal kind – and Scipio Aemilianus was likely to be attuned to every nuance. Aegisthus not only betrayed Agamemnon; he was also Agamemnon’s cousin. Ti. Gracchus and Scipio were cousins. Could Aemilianus have identified himself with Agamemnon? It is not implausible. Agamemnon, as military supremo, cut a positive figure in the world of Roman symbolism. We must draw our evidence from a slightly later period, though it is clear that the image of Agamemnon carried, in the late Republican Roman mind, no adverse baggage from hostile portrayals by an earlier generation. Pompey was likened to Agamemnon (at least, after he had returned laden with the spoils of the Orient) and seems to have encouraged that line of thought. Before him, Lucullus seems to have exploited the image.Footnote 30 As the Romans sought appropriate heroic associations within the confines of republican sensitivities, that of the primus inter pares had obvious merits.
Aegisthus was the antithesis of a hero of foreign wars. He lurked behind – his Homeric epithet is dolometis (δολόμετις), wily or crafty of mind (Od. 3.308), ‘deceptively clever’, as Robin Mitchell-Boyask renders it.Footnote 31 While Agamemnon gathered forces and traversed foreign lands, acquiring noble wealth, Aegisthus devised woeful work at home (3.303-10).
Edwin Judge, rightly suspecting a loaded innuendo, once suggested that Scipio was alluding to his cousin Gracchus as ‘the renegade in the house’, an acknowledgment of the competition between Aemilianus as the man who had inherited the mantle of Africanus and those who could also make it their proud claim (and did so claim) that they were the grandsons of the same man.Footnote 32 Scipio was known to be sensitive on this score, having been adopted into the Scipiones himself (not that adoption in any way made Scipio the less legitimate heir). We know that he carried a burden of doubt, suspicious that the community wondered whether he was the sort of man required to shoulder the expectations and needs of his family (Polyb. 31.23). That said, he was the legitimate heir of Africanus (see Polyb. 31.26–27 for his handling of inheritances and the payment of dowries for his aunts), and the irrefutable pretensions of the Gracchi as the grandsons of Africanus must have irked him (even while he promoted, as duty demanded, their careers). And we might speculate that the Gracchi and their cousin P. Scipio Nasica, through their mothers’ genes, physically resembled the great Africanus in a way that Aemilianus, Africani Minor, could not. Aemilianus had to assert himself.
An Innuendo of Sexual Depravity and Moral Turpitude?
Can we go still further?Footnote 33 We explore the possibility of doing so at two levels. First, there are the insinuations that Scipio may have expected his listeners to discern. Second, there were the potential nuances that awaited interpretative re-readings. At this distance, and given the lack of evidence, it is not possible to disentangle Scipio’s intent from later embellishment.
The allusion to Aegisthus, however, bears re-examination. The important question to ask is what sprang to the Roman mind at the mention of this villain? A populist tyrant, perhaps. Yes, but something else (almost certainly). Given the scarcity of evidence for the second century (this has been established above), we must turn to the Ciceronian period: Aegisthus was an exemplar of criminal libido (Cic. ND 3.91).Footnote 34
nec cum Aegisthi libidinem aut cum Paridis videmus a deo causam requirimus, cum culpae paene vocem audiamus
Nor, when we see the lust of Aegisthus or of Paris, do we enquire into divine causation; the guilt practically speaks for itself.Footnote 35
Pompey, according to Suetonius, called Caesar Aegisthus, on account of the latter’s intimacy with Mucia, Pompey’s third wife (and mother of his three children).Footnote 36 One has to suspect that this tale has come to Suetonius by way of the ‘unauthorised’ tradition (to wit, the anti-Caesarian squib written by the two Curiones to which Suetonius had just referred)Footnote 37 – and this would explain why Pompey is spoken of as ‘groaning’ in enunciating the complaint; one can scarcely imagine Pompey engaging in self-diminution, and other evidence suggests that Pompey never publicly proclaimed the reasons for his divorce of Mucia.Footnote 38 Whatever one believes to be the case here, the important observation is the symbol that Aegisthus represented. Together with Paris, he was the adulterer par excellence (if we may use so inappropriate a phrase to mark their pre-eminence in this respect).Footnote 39
The idea that Aegisthus was, to the Roman mind, first and foremost the adulterer can be provisionally expanded with another argumentum e silentio. What is intriguing, in the light of Roger Dunkle’s study of the tyrant-figure in Roman invective (see above, n. 29) is the inevitable contemplation of the ways in which Aegisthus might have been mentioned (to take one’s cue from Dunkle), but is not. In Greek tragedy, Aegisthus used an armed bodyguard to impose his will (Aesch. Ag. 1650); it was the mark of a tyrant.Footnote 40 Antony acts in the same unacceptable fashion, and is thus traduced at Phil. 2.8; 15; 19 (as Dunkle points out) – but he is not called in that context an Aegisthus. The name of Aegisthus was proverbial, as we have seen in two items of Roman allusion, but not for his clear associations with tyranny. If mythical models of tyranny were required, Phalaris and Peisistratus were the alternative examples that sprang to Cicero’s mind (Att. 7.20.2), the former being the model of viciousness.Footnote 41 Otherwise, it was Aegisthus’ uncle, Agamemnon’s father, Atreus, who was established by Accius’ play (of the same name) as the exemplar – the tyrant Romans loved to hate (Cic. Off. 1.97): ‘the negative role model of despotic savagery in Late Republican Rome’.Footnote 42
Let us return to Aegisthus the adulterer. Aegisthus not only betrayed his cousin Agamemnon; he also treacherously dishonoured the absent general’s bed. The implication is staggering, so staggering that many readers may desert us at this point – but we shall press on. Could Aemilianus have really been suggesting improper relations between his cousin Gracchus and his wife Sempronia (Gracchus’ sister)? Such an accusation was not foreign to Roman invective – albeit that it was a claim conveying a sense of grave wrongdoing.Footnote 43 We referred in the introduction to Cicero’s characterisation of Rome as a maledicta civitas. The enormity of allegations was sometimes breathtaking, embracing, as these allegations do, such a range of misdemeanours as murder and incest (or both). They could strike at those in the highest echelons of society. One thinks of Clodia Metelli, whose case is too well known to require elaboration here. A woman of the highest nobility accused (informally, in the sense that these were allegations never tested in court) of adultery, incest – and murder. Traducers need only to allude to rumours, hatched in polemic, to activate memories that served their aggressive purposes.Footnote 44 (In the exploration of such accusatory claims, there is no suggestion that we are probing the ‘truth’ of any historical reality other than the ferocity of Roman polemic and insinuation.) Moreover, in examining the attack upon Clodia, we see the example of a disaffected ex-husband (in this case of one of Clodia’s sisters, also accused of adulterous incest), who might even be willing to add his auctoritas to gossip that hinged on his own loss. L. Licinius Lucullus produced witnesses from amongst his slave staff to testify to his own wife’s infidelity to him with the same brother.Footnote 45 What is clear is that, amongst Roman husbands, there was not the same concern with the image of the cuckold that infected the victims of other cultures and ages (and this observation will become more obviously relevant below).Footnote 46
We return to 133 (and Scipio’s pronouncement upon Gracchus). If that was the allegation that Scipio intended at the time (or which was subsequently read into the observation), it is an example of calumny that did not gain a foothold in historical memory (as it survives).Footnote 47
Circumstances would have conspired to nurture this interpretation of Scipio’s dark words, both at the time and subsequently. Between Scipio and Sempronia there was reportedly no affection. The marriage was childless, and Sempronia was ‘unloved’.Footnote 48 After Scipio’s negative assessments of Gracchus, doubtless the relationship did not improve (and if the suggestion here is taken up, one can imagine that domestic relations were to all intents and purposes beyond repair). It is clear that the bond between Scipio and his Gracchan kin had been shattered. Private hostilities infected the political arena. In 130, or more probably 129, Gaius Gracchus was amongst those who were publicly calling for Scipio’s head (almost literally) and he was probably the one who led the call.Footnote 49 The cry was ‘Kill the Tyrant!’ (Plut. Apophth. Scip. Min. 23 [= Mor. 201F]). (Who was Aegisthus now?) Plutarch describes those who made this murderous demand in a circumspect way (τῶν . . . περὶ τῶν Γάιον βοώντων) – a reference that might be read as alluding to those associated with Gaius Gracchus; to Gracchus and those about him; or simply to Gracchus himself? It is almost certain that Plutarch wishes to convey Gaius Gracchus’ direct involvement. Whilst it is generally understood that this peri + accusative formula may be a periphrastic way of referring to a single individual – if not always the caseFootnote 50 – the disquieting implication of this being a reference to a homicidally inclined Gaius alone seems to have commended alternative readings, translators preferring a reference to a Gracchan crowd or to ‘those who followed Gracchus.’ Thus, Alan Astin glosses the passage as a reference to ‘a Gracchan mob’, implicitly extracting Gaius.Footnote 51 That is the one option (i.e. detaching Gracchus from the volatile ‘mob’), that is not open to us, if we follow Stefan Radt.Footnote 52 Wherever a context supplies certainty, the idiom (even when it is intended to convey something closer to its literal sense – i.e. a group) is always inclusive of the individual named. Gaius, who had quite possibly been present in Spain when Scipio made his chilling assessment of Tiberius Gracchus’ lynching, wanted to see Scipio dead.Footnote 53
We return to the relationship between Scipio and Sempronia. The marriage was never officially terminated (Scipio had made no formal complaint and laid down no formal charge), but the toxic reality of their relationship was public knowledge and fuelled speculation in the light of dramatic developments shortly after the public attacks on Scipio, when the latter, the towering figure of his age, in his fifty-sixth year, unexpectedly died – in his bed – on the eve of delivering a speech on the problems caused by the Gracchan land distributions (App. BC 1.20.83).Footnote 54 He was said to have been in robust good health ([Liv.] Per. 59).Footnote 55 The death was mysterious, its explanation vulnerable to conjecture. Foul play was suggested, and Sempronia was one of the parties suspected of his surmised murder.Footnote 56 Cornelia, ‘mother of the Gracchi’, was another.Footnote 57 This is not to claim that the allegations of Sempronia’s involvement in her husband’s premature death were grounded in anything more than public knowledge that the atmosphere in their household was poisonous, but they are an indication that familial relations were (and were known to be) exceptionally unpleasant. Rumour asserted that Sempronia would have been gladdened by Scipio’s death. And this was rumour that took hold. Sempronia’s reputation in the imperial period was compromised by it,Footnote 58 as evidenced by Appian’s registration of the suspicion (listing Sempronia as one possible suspect) and the appearance of that allegation in the so-called ‘Livian tradition’ (where she alone is mentioned in this regard). Orosius, indeed, goes further, emphasising that amongst this perfidious family, born to the ruin of the fatherland, the impious seditions of its men were matched by the crimes of its women. This embroidery doubtless was Orosius’ own editorial elaboration (grist for his mill), but it underlines the material at his disposal. Modern scholarship has paid scarce attention to the accusation, so lacking in proof, so clearly the fruit of partisan polemic and so characteristic of the misogynistic inclination of Roman gossip.Footnote 59 Yet it remains indicative of the narrative circulating in the public domain, a narrative that cast Sempronia as a deadly ally of her brothers.Footnote 60 Were there some who reflected upon Scipio’s apophthegm and mused that Sempronia had now earned her stripes (so to speak) as Clytemnestra?Footnote 61
A Rumour Takes Root in the Popular Imagination?
Some of the discussion above has underlined the extent to which an apophthegm might have taken on a life of its own, the plaything of subsequent exegetical interpretation. A suspicion planted might become a rumour nurtured (and subject, in a bitterly divided community, to interpretations received in radically alternate fashions).
The chief objection to the hypothesis that an incestuous relationship between Gracchus and his sister may have been read into Scipio’s characterisation of Gracchus as Aegisthus will be the disbelief that such an allegation, if such an innuendo was intended, either went unnoticed or sank without later trace (and did so in a context beset by polemic, both contemporary and subsequent). Did it? One would think that such an allegation could only be made with hostile intent. But such rumours might take traction across that partisan divide referred to above. There would have been those – and their numbers may have been found amongst those who performed sympathetic and wishful cult at the places where the Gracchi had been slain (Plut. CG 18.2)Footnote 62 – who wanted to believe that Gracchus had been survived by an illegitimate son (the three who were born to him by his wife Claudia not surviving);Footnote 63 L. Equitius rose to the tribunate in December 100 bc (an office he enjoyed for less than a day) largely on the strength of an alleged birthright. He claimed to be Tiberius Gracchus’ bastard.Footnote 64 Equitius was described as a monster (Firmo Piceno monstrum: Val. Max. 9.15.1), that is, to give monstrum its technical force, a prodigy requiring expiation.Footnote 65 He made public claim to this filiation at the census of 102/101, and one of the censors, Q. Metellus Numidicus, risked his personal safety in rejecting the profession (Val. Max. 9.7.2).Footnote 66 An unnamed tribune – often assumed to be the populist L. Appuleius Saturninus – sought public confirmation from within the family in support of the man’s claims. From whom? From Sempronia. Possibly, yes, as the last survivor of the immediate family.Footnote 67 Her reception of Equitius was to be celebrated as proof of his descent. What was demanded of her was nothing less than a kiss acknowledging kinship (3.8.6).Footnote 68 Valerius Maximus, who has no doubt that the claim was evidens mendacium (9.15.1), professes shame at bringing her even the celebrity that inclusion in his repertorium will bestow. But he does so, claiming that her rectitude proved her a paragon (in sharp contrast to the portrait purveyed, as we have seen, in the ‘Livian tradition’). The result will be honorata memoria (3.8.6). In the face of threatening public pressure, though she could not resist the summons to the rostra of a tribune, she refused to partake of the shameful charade. Her rejection of his kiss repudiated the propinquitas of the man.Footnote 69 Of her alleged nephew?
The establishment was shaken by the claim; Equitius’ popularity was clearly dangerous. The crowd was baying, but Equitius was not the crowd’s quarry – the multitude was crying for his acceptance.Footnote 70 It might seem difficult to comprehend why this non-entity (sine tribu, sine notore, sine nomine, according to Florus) should have been such a threat, but he was.Footnote 71 Parallel events would show how effective these ‘impostors’ might be at arousing the passion of the crowd.Footnote 72 In 101 or 100 (the date is disputed) – and presumably following Metellus Numidicus’ refusal to accept Equitius amongst the citizen body and the consequent civil disturbance – no less a figure than the consul Marius had incarcerated Equitius. But Marius’ auctoritas was not enough; the populus broke open the gaol and carried Equitius away, triumphantly, on its collective shoulders.Footnote 73 In the year 100, it seemed as though he could not be stopped. He was elected to take up tribunician office in 99. But it was decided he had to die. He did not perish, we would argue, during the mayhem that saw the deaths of Saturninus, C. Servilius Glaucia, C. Saufeius and their many confederates. His assassination would occur pointedly and later, on the day he took up office.Footnote 74 It was not enough to kill the man; his credentials must also be destroyed. The surviving sources are unanimous: there had never been a bastard son of Tiberius Gracchus.Footnote 75 The subject of bastard sons was anathema to the Roman nobility – almost, it would seem, taboo. In this area, it has been argued, even within a high aristocracy so exposed to the public gaze, secrecy prevailed. It is a paradox challenging the very concept of nobilitas: ‘. . . oligarchies have their arcana. Many of the activities of the Roman nobilitas evaded publicity or are only casually disclosed. Much therefore depends on guess or reconstruction.’Footnote 76 The subject, Syme suggests, may have been off-limits: ‘. . . a suspicious paternity may have been common knowledge among the nobility, accepted but not talked about. A governing class has various arcana of rule. One is . . . the decent suppression of uncomfortable truth.’Footnote 77 In this instance, it seems, with the legacy of Tiberius Gracchus in question, the political ramifications were simply not to be contemplated. This was not an item that would become an element in the character assassination of Tiberius Gracchus. It would be buried: a trail marked false.
Of this, we can be certain: the tradition, as it survived, would not countenance the idea of a bastard son to Tiberius Gracchus. That degree of certainty does not carry over into the earlier hypothesis with which this paper is chiefly concerned. That hypothesis – namely that Scipio alluded to Aegisthus not only with the expectation that most would think of a political malefactor, but that some would think of an adulterer – remains speculative. If the foregoing speculation is given any credence at all, it might only be taken as an indication of the depths to which relationships within the Scipionic-Gracchan nexus had fallen and of the distance which Scipio Aemilianus, in the light of that deterioration, was prepared to travel along the path of derisive insinuation – at least amongst those within his immediate circle (allusion might play on two levels, no matter how public its delivery).Footnote 78 If the conjecture is to be taken still further, in the way that it has been in the concluding part of this paper, we might suggest that such rumours formed the basis of a claim that the Roman establishment found so outrageous.Footnote 79
It is time to revisit Valerius Maximus’ treatment of the Equitius episode at 3.8.6 (and read it in this light):
What do women have to do with a public meeting? If ancestral manners are followed, nothing. But when domestic tranquillity is shattered by the waves of sedition and the authority of ancient custom is subverted, force is more compelling than persuasion and constrains modesty. Thus, Sempronia, sister of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, wife of Scipio Aemilianus, I would not snatch you up, injecting you in any inappropriate fashion by means of malignant report into grave male affairs.Footnote 80 On the contrary, since you were produced before the People by a tribune of the Plebs at a time of the greatest confusion but did nothing to diminish the grandness of your family, I shall proffer an honoured memory. Forced to stand at that place where the leaders of our state are accustomed to appear troubled, you faced a mighty power bearing down on you with a savage demeanour and uttering threats; the ignorant multitude clamoured; the whole Forum with a fierce earnestness strove to have you offer a kiss to Equitius, claiming a false right to membership of the Sempronian clan as the son of your brother Tiberius. You, however, repelled this portent drawn up from which dark shadow I do not know, as he advanced with execrable daring to claim a propinquity that was not his.
Valerius Maximus was (or affected to be) ill at ease in transmitting this item, drawing as it did the reluctant Sempronia on to the stage a second time (even if in a literary commemoration which must ultimately redound to her credit).Footnote 81 ‘And so, Sempronia, sister of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, wife of Scipio Aemilianus, I will not snatch you up, inserting you in a discordant fashion into grave male affairs by means of malignant report (itaque te, Sempronia, Ti. et C. Gracchorum soror, uxor Scipionis Aemiliani, non ut absurde gravissimis virorum operibus inserens maligna relatione comprehendam).Footnote 82 Was Valerius so embarrassed for the sake of the estimable Sempronia in the case of an issue that touched her only tangentially, in so far as her brother had fathered a bastard child outside of Rome?Footnote 83 And/or in so far as the impulsive and importunate appearance of that nothus threatened public stability in the vain use of her family’s name? Maligna relatio (with regard to her) was not Valerius’ intention – and would, he emphasises, be inappropriate. And yet he is still uncomfortable affording her celebrity – and will make amends (honorata memoria prosequar [loc. cit.]). Is it the fact that the report itself might be seen as malicious that concerns Valerius? Was it simply the shame of public appearance? (quid feminae cum contione? si patrius mos servetur, nihil [Val. Max. loc. cit.]).Footnote 84
Valerius’ diffidence here, at 3.8.6, is certainly in marked contrast with the way in which he presents the other women who appeared in public. His uneasiness is underlined by the apostrophe. The use of that figure of speech is scarcely unique to this item; it can be seen as a part of Valerius’ declamatory habit, used as a means ‘to collapse the distance between author, text, and reader’, and a feature of his style.Footnote 85 But it is also there, in many cases, to emphasise the author’s self-consciousness;Footnote 86 we would draw attention to the association of apostrophe and what Martin Bloomer calls the ‘posture of doubt’.Footnote 87
If the speculation offered above is entertained, rumour may have touched Sempronia more deeply. Domestica quies had been shattered by public sedition (Val. Max. 3.8.6). This is often translated as peace at home (as opposed to abroad). We wonder. Does it not rather mean that her private life had been invaded? Domesticus is used by Valerius in such a way at 3.2 ext. 6 (in domestico lectulo moriens – dying in one’s own bed). As Syme’s paper argued, sexual transgressions may have been considered frequent and accusations of infidelity part and parcel of rhetorical fencing; it was the accidental product of such liaisons that was unspeakable. Was this the abhorrent nature of Equitius’ ghastly and repellent claim?Footnote 88
Conclusion
In sum, we have suggested that Scipio, in clear condemnation of his cousin and brother-in-law, pronounced an Homeric tag that, at its most obvious, vindicated Gracchus’ assassination; but also that he probably expected those who heard him to contextualise the verse and equate Gracchus with the mythical Aegisthus whose villainy was beyond the pale. Again, at its most apparent, the reference likened Gracchus to a tyrant (possibly a populist one) – perhaps inspired by Pacuvius’ tragedy, the Dulorestes. The context also provides a domestic allusion: Aegisthus had been treacherous and his treachery hurt the family. (Aegisthus, at the general level, was an illegitimate interloper; more specifically, his perfidy injured his cousin, Agamemnon, the king of kings.) The familial milieu invited auditors to consider Gracchus’ place as Scipio’s cousin, with Scipio identifying himself with Agamemnon betrayed. Perhaps Scipio intended to leave it there, perhaps not. In any case, interpreters of the apophthegm (which was transmitted in different ways and which met with similarly diverse receptions) would have been able to run with the analogy and cast Scipio’s maxim as a denunciation of his cousin in a monstrous light: Gracchus’ adulterous incest with Scipio’s unloved wife, Gracchus’ sister, Sempronia (for which, we reiterate as emphatically as is possible, there is no independent testimony). Such a reading, if it circulated, can only have been fuelled by the subsequent suspicion that Sempronia had been murderously involved in the unexpected death of Scipio in 129. (Perhaps the latter scuttlebutt excited the recirculation of Scipio’s original pronouncement, exegetically enhanced.)
It is known that, c. 102-100, the otherwise obscure Lucius Equitius gained considerable popularity by claiming to be the natural son of Ti. Gracchus. We have explored the possibility that the rumour of incestuous union between Gracchus and his sister had taken a perverse hold on the popular imagination, and that Equitius was seen as the product – not in calumny (though the Gracchan family could only have regarded it as such), but in celebration. It was Sempronia who was asked to confirm Gracchus’ paternity of the pretender.Footnote 89 Valerius Maximus struggled (or, at least, professed discomfort) with his reportage of the incident. Was his celebration of her courage in facing this threat to her honour greater than the disgrace he risked inflicting upon her by recording the event (the full horror of which he will not spell out)? One thing can be said with certainty; Sempronia would lend no credence to what she chose to portray as a travesty, even if it was perpetrated by those who professed to revere her brother’s memory.Footnote 90
Appendix 1. Did Asellio transmit the Apophthegm (and in what manner)?
Diodorus is generally believed to have derived this item from Poseidonius; in fact, the item is generally accounted a fragment of the latter (frag. 1110f. FGrH); see, e.g. A.H. Bernstein, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. Tradition and Apostasy (Ithaca and London 1978) 225 n. 74. Perhaps Poseidonius served, as we have said above, as Plutarch’s source as well.Footnote 91 To seek the ultimate source for the incident, since any words of Scipio were of sufficient historical significance to be ensured wide distribution, is perhaps unnecessary (report would have outstripped record); yet we suggest that it may have been recorded in the work of Sempronius Asellio.Footnote 92 Asellio served under Scipio at Numantia as a military tribune, and Aulus Gellius, who is the source for that datum (NA 2.13.3), specifically reports that Asellio wrote an account of ‘the things in which he himself participated’; and, more to the point, indicates that he recorded the pronouncements of Scipio.Footnote 93 If we are correct in identifying Asellio as one who passed on Scipio’s denunciation of Gracchus, the dictum was, then, ‘confirmed’ in the transmission by a primary source, the item, however, being in circulation well before Asellio published.Footnote 94
Whilst contemplating the transmission of the item, it is not irrelevant to remark upon the antithetically variant readings to which it might have been subjected in a polarised community. If Asellio conveyed the anecdote, did he – as one who believed that the value of History lay in its delineation of that which was admirable and that which was disreputable (frag. 2 Peter, Cassignet and Cornell [= Gell. 5.18.9]) – present Scipio’s delivery of this ‘maxim’ in a neutral sense; by way of criticism of Scipio’s callous assessment of his kinsman’s demise; or by way of endorsing Scipio’s judgement: the weighty verdict of a sage princeps? In the bitterly divided state following Gracchus’ death, we know that one sector of the community (Plutarch characterises that group as the dēmos) saw this as to the discredit of Scipio (see n. 12). And Asellio? Mark Pobjoy is tentatively inclined to see a hint of sympathy for Gracchus in one of the two surviving fragments that pertain to him.Footnote 95 We, on the other hand, are inclined to see a critical attitude in the other fragment (Histories 5, frag. 6 Peter, 7 Chassignet and Cornell [= Gell. NA 2.13.4], a reference to the extraordinarily large retinue that followed Gracchus about); the quality of those composing the unruly entourage is known to be a criticism laid against Gracchus by Q. Metellus Macedonicus (contra Ti. Gracchum frag. 3 Malc. [= Plut. TG 14.3]). Moreover, Asellio’s report of Scipio’s endorsement of his father’s military advice has a reverential tone (see above, n. 93). It seems more likely to us that Asellio, if he included this item in his work, would have sanctioned, whether explicitly or implicitly, Scipio’s grave sentence upon Gracchus. The point is, as we have suggested in the text above, that the maxim thus deployed probably became the site of contested readings – and perhaps exegesis.
Appendix 2. Was Scipio familiar with Pacuvius’ Dulorestes?
extemplo Aegisthi fidem / nuncupantes conciebunt populum (Nonius 90, 5 = Pacuvius Dulorestes 140-141 Ribbeck2; 142-143 Warmington; 163-164 D’Anna; 100 Schierl)Footnote 96
Forthwith, those proclaiming the pledge of Aegisthus will incite the populus.Footnote 97
Therein, Aegisthus would seem to be painted as a populist tyrant. Ditto, given the line from Nonius 181, 20M (frag. 149 Ribbeck=144 Warmington=168 D’Anna=115 Schierl [heu, non tyrannum novi temeritudinem]), open to the charge of temerity. We suggest that Scipio would have found the association attractive and that he is likely to have been familiar with this material. That assertion will benefit from elaboration. Leaving aside Pacuvius’ general celebrity (which is too well established to require elaboration here), Ennius’ nephew was no stranger to the Scipionic house.Footnote 98 He was Laelius’ amicus and hospes (Cic. Amicit. 24);Footnote 99 his praetexta, entitled Paulus, his sole praetexta so far as we know, almost certainly celebrated Scipio’s father, L. Aemilius Paullus, and quite possibly was commissioned by Scipio and his brother for the funeral games commemorating Paullus.Footnote 100 Perturbations arise (Sir Ronald Syme might have said) from the fact that the Dulorestes is usually accounted one of Pacuvius’ last plays (the poet died in 131/130);Footnote 101 that it was regarded (by the reading of some) as ‘recent’ in 129; and that Scipio had left for Spain in early 134. (In such a case, memories of the Dulorestes might be thought less likely a part of the cultural baggage that Scipio had taken with him to Spain.) These concerns seem less substantial upon reconsideration. Pacuvius was born in 220 and died, in virtual ‘retirement’ at Tarentum, just short of the age of ninety.Footnote 102 The tragedian’s lines that have been used to date the play (representing a celebrated scene between Orestes, Pylades and an unnamed persecutor [unnamed, that is, in the surviving fragment – but taken by some to be Aegisthus]) are said by ‘Laelius’ in the de Amicitia (24), dramatically dated to 129, to have belonged to a nova fabula performed recently (nuper).Footnote 103 A number of points undercut certainty as to the application of the latter observation to the Dulorestes and the date of its performance. First, the term nuper does not permit chronological precision; a play performed in 135 might still fill the bill.Footnote 104 More significantly, it is likely that the lines emanate from Pacuvius’ Chryses.Footnote 105 In this case, the date of the Dulorestes remains unknown. Yet scholars have persisted in regarding Dulorestes as a ‘late’ play – albeit in most cases, not so late as to preclude Scipio having seen the play in performance before 134. Bronislaw Biliński, contentiously, saw Pacuvius prompted by a degree of sympathy with the victims of slavery and by the conditions that gave rise to the Sicilian slave revolt of the mid-130s (Accio ed i Gracchi. Contributo alla storia della plebe e della tragedia romana [Rome 1958] 26); exploring that theme more fully, he posited that the thematic proximity of the two plays suggested that the Dulorestes and the Chryses were written successively (‘Dulorestes de Pacuvius et les guerres serviles en Sicile’, in Hommages à Léon Herrmann [Coll. Lat. 44, Berchem-Bruxelles 1960] 160-70). Even still, he dated the Dulorestes earlier, assigning the Chryses, on the evidence of ‘Laelius’ to 135-134, the Dulorestes to 140-135. Whether or not the choice of material allows such a putative dating remains open to question; cf. Schierl (n. 97) 247. Manuwald tentatively proposes (Pacuvius [n. 98] 143), based on a premise of the growing intricacy of Pacuvian plot-structures, that one can, in the absence of evidence for an absolute dating, discern a relative chronology. On the basis of its complexity, Manuwald would place the Dulorestes with the Chryses (which she dates ‘around 130’) amongst the ‘late’ plays. (This is usefully glossed in Roman Republican Theatre [n. 99] 214-5.) Her argument is learned and her authority in this regard high, yet an argument which accords such productivity to an aged tragedian must remain speculative.
But let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that (i) the Dulorestes was, indeed, one of Pacuvius’ last plays (and that, as we have seen, is not based on explicit evidence); and (ii) Pacuvius, having produced a play, we know, when he was eighty years old and in quasi-retirement at Tarentum (Cic. Brut. 229; and at a time, we also know, when he found old age ‘enfeebling’ [Gell. NA 13.2.2]), produced the Dulorestes in his late 80s (he will have been between 86 and 89 years old) sometime between 134 and 131 (that is, whilst Scipio was absent from Rome). In that case, we might entertain two alternative options: (i) that Scipio did not need to be in Rome to be in receipt of one of Pacuvius’ plays; or (ii) that Scipio’s dictum did not draw upon Pacuvius’ play, but inspired it.
Appendix 3. Bastardy in Roman Republican Scuttlebutt
As mentioned above (see nn. 76-77), Sir Ronald Syme suggested that the Roman oligarchy was inclined to suppress ‘uncomfortable’ rumours of illegitimate births that affected its ranks (‘Bastards in the Roman Aristocracy’, PAPhS 104 [1960] 323-7, at 324). The hypothesis is an interesting one, and matches the argument of this article. (Cf. Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome [Cambridge 1993] 49-50, who takes on board Syme’s observation – and underlines it, exploring ways in which the offspring of adultery might have been few.) But when Syme says ‘[t]ransgression being so common, and language so free, one looks for allegations that a man is not the true son of his ostensible father. And one looks in vain’ (325), the last part of that observation is not strictly correct. One thinks of the item vouchsafed by Plutarch (Cic. 25.4) in illustration of Cicero’s unrestrained wit. One of the sons of M. Crassus (cos. 70, 55) so much resembled ‘a certain Axius’ as to cast doubt on his mother’s good name (a reputation compromised by other allegations, we read in Suet. Div. Iul. 50.1). Taste would not prevent Cicero from playing on the theme. When the younger Crassus had made a successful senatorial speech, Cicero proclaimed (in Greek) Axios Crassou. Syme was perhaps thinking that an Axius was not one of the nobility. That is true, but the Axii had reached the lower ranks of the senate by the Late Republic (SIG 3 747; Varro RR 3.2.1; cf. RE ‘Axius’ 4 and 7; MRR 2. 115, 433, 475; 3. 33; T.P. Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate 139 B.C. – 14 A.D. [Oxford 1971] 216 [nos 61 and 62]; M.H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage [Cambridge 1974] I 411-12 [no. 400], patronymics indicating more than a nuclear family in play) – and so belong in this discussion. To this may be added Cicero’s slur against the paternity of Q. Metellus Nepos (Plut. Cic. 26.6 [= Apophth. Cic. 6 = Mor. 205A]).
Patrick Tansey makes the valid point here that these were the type of jibes that no-one was supposed to take literally. Snide remarks such as these were common currency – but not such that we should expect that they were underpinned by common gossip. Hence, perhaps, they were not entertained by Syme.
One other item perhaps deserves more attention. Syme was confining himself to a discussion of bastard sons. Beyond that confinement, we might note Cicero’s apparent allusion in the In Toga Candida (frag. 19 Crawford) to the fact that Catiline, in marrying Aurelia Orestilla, had married his own daughter by adultery with the young woman’s mother. Asconius (91C) comments that ‘it was said’ (dicitur) that Catiline had committed adultery with the woman who would subsequently become his mother-in-law and that Catiline’s wife was the product of that union (a further reminder that there were very few limits both to the enormity of crimes that polemic would posit and that popular gossip would transmit). Tansey will deal with the Orestilla case in a fuller paper.
The allegations were clearly not beyond the bounds of Roman imagination or accusation. But Syme’s main point stands. The idea of cuckoos in aristocratic nests was not something dwelt upon.Footnote 106
