Modo nuntiatus est Silius Italicus in Neapolitano suo inedia finisse uitam. Causa mortis ualetudo. Erat illi natus insanabilis clauus, cuius taedio ad mortem inreuocabili constantia decucurrit usque ad supremum diem beatus et felix, nisi quod minorem ex liberis duobus amisit, sed maiorem melioremque florentem atque etiam consularem reliquit. Laeserat famam suam sub Nerone (credebatur sponte accusasse), sed in Vitelli amicitia sapienter se et comiter gesserat, ex proconsulatu Asiae gloriam reportauerat, maculam ueteris industriae laudabili otio abluerat. Fuit inter principes ciuitatis sine potentia, sine inuidia: salutabatur colebatur, multumque in lectulo iacens cubiculo semper, non ex fortuna frequenti, doctissimis sermonibus dies transigebat, cum a scribendo uacaret. Scribebat carmina maiore cura quam ingenio, non numquam iudicia hominum recitationibus experiebatur. Nouissime ita suadentibus annis ab urbe secessit, seque in Campania tenuit, ac ne aduentu quidem noui principis inde commotus est: magna Caesaris laus sub quo hoc liberum fuit, magna illius qui hac libertate ausus est uti. Erat φιλόκαλος usque ad emacitatis reprehensionem. Plures isdem in locis uillas possidebat, adamatisque nouis priores neglegebat. Multum ubique librorum, multum statuarum, multum imaginum, quas non habebat modo, uerum etiam uenerabatur, Vergili ante omnes, cuius natalem religiosius quam suum celebrabat, Neapoli maxime, ubi monimentum eius adire ut templum solebat. In hac tranquillitate annum quintum et septuagensimum excessit, delicato magis corpore quam infirmo; utque nouissimus a Nerone factus est consul, ita postremus ex omnibus, quos Nero consules fecerat, decessit.
Illud etiam notabile: ultimus ex Neronianis consularibus obiit, quo consule Nero periit.
It has just been reported that Silius Italicus has ended his life by starvation at his Neapolitan estate. His reason for dying – illness. He had developed an incurable clauus, wearied by which he hastened to death with unshakable firmness. Right up to his last day he was happy and prosperous, except that he had lost the younger of his two sons – but he left behind the elder and better of the two enjoying a flourishing career, indeed having attained the consulship. Silius had damaged his reputation under Nero (he was believed to have volunteered his services as an informer), but in his friendship with Vitellius, he had conducted himself with prudence and affability, he had gained distinction from his proconsulship of Asia and had expunged the stain of his previous vigorous activity by praiseworthy leisure. He was one of the leading men of the state, without however exercising power or being subject to odium. He was waited upon in the morning and cultivated, and for much of the time he lay on his couch in his chamber and invariably spent his days in his room attended by many without thought of his wealth and, when not engaged in writing, indulging in highly erudite conversation. He composed poetry with greater care than natural talent and from time to time submitted his poetry by means of recitations to the judgement of others. Most recently, at the urging of his advancing years, he withdrew from the city and stayed put in Campania and could not be dislodged from there even by the arrival in Rome of the new emperor: great praise is owed to Caesar for making such an act permissible, and great praise to Silius for venturing to avail himself of that liberty. He was a lover of beauty – to the point that he attracted criticism for buying too much. He owned several villas in the same location – but falling in love with the new purchases he neglected the older ones. In every place he had a plethora of books, a plethora of statues, a plethora of busts, which he not only possessed but positively venerated, above all those of Virgil, whose birthday he was accustomed to celebrate more reverently than his own, especially at Naples, where he used to visit his tomb as if it were a shrine. In this state of tranquillity he completed his seventy-fifth year, with a body that called for care, but was not actually frail. He was the last consul to be appointed by Nero, and likewise the last to die of all those whom Nero had made consul.
Another fact is worthy of note. He was not only the last of Nero’s consulars to die, but it was during his consulship that Nero died.
Ep. 3.7.1–10
Commentators on the Younger Pliny’s necrology of the politician and poet Silius Italicus have often observed that, on the evidence of the epistle, Pliny seems not to have had a close connection with Silius, such as he enjoyed with other leading political figures of his day, including the elders Verginius Rufus (Ep. 2.1) and Vestricius Spurinna (Ep. 3.1).Footnote 1 They likewise note that, in keeping with the emotionally distant tone of the letter, Pliny exhibits over Silius’ suicide none of the grief that he expresses upon the death of his mentor Corellius Rufus (Ep. 1.12) or his young protégé Junius Avitus (Ep. 8.23).Footnote 2 Far from regretting Silius’ demise, Pliny levels against the dead man in Ep. 3.7 a host of wide-ranging criticisms relating to his political, personal and literary career. Scholars standardly characterise these negative evaluations of Silius as ‘lukewarm’,Footnote 3 ‘subacid’,Footnote 4 ‘acerb’,Footnote 5 ‘chilly in tone’,Footnote 6 ‘distant’,Footnote 7 ‘sardonic’,Footnote 8 ‘a (patronising) pat on the shoulder’,Footnote 9 ‘implicit criticism’Footnote 10 and ‘<characterised> more … by subtle implication than direct castigation’,Footnote 11 to name only some instances. The overall tenor of such readings is that Pliny is practising in Ep. 3.7 a kind of understated criticism, one which certainly contrasts sharply with the ferocity of his attacks on his rival in the centumviral court, M. Aquilius Regulus (Epp. 1.5, 1.20.14–17, 2.11.22, 2.20, 4.2, 4.7, 6.2). The general flavour of this approach is perhaps best captured in the observation of Johnson that, in synthesising Silius’ career immediately after his death, Pliny ‘moves gingerly’.Footnote 12 It is certainly true that – possibly in keeping with the indigenous Roman practice of the laudatio funebris Footnote 13 – several positive notes are sounded in Ep. 3.7 to counterbalance the profusion of negative ones. Relevant in particular here are sed in Vitelli amicitia sapienter se et comiter gesserat, ex proconsulatu Asiae gloriam reportauerat, maculam ueteris industriae laudabili otio abluerat (§3)Footnote 14 and the observation that, in a lengthy retirement from public life, Silius devoted himself to intellectual pursuits and the life of the mind (§4). There is also the matter of the inreuocabilis constantia with which Silius pursued his decision to commit suicide (§2). This has occasioned Henderson’s remark that Silius ‘is remembered for his courageous death’,Footnote 15 while a significant number of scholars have gone further, arguing that his suicide, by inanition, was exemplary, committed in true Stoic fashion.Footnote 16
In contrast to the just noted scholarly consensus, and while taking due cognisance of the inclusion of some points in Silius’ favour, it is the contention of this article that Pliny’s obituary of Silius is a good deal harsher than has been generally recognised. Specifically, we posit that, (1) the account of the dead man is shot through with ambivalences which operate to undermine Silius’ ethical standing, (2) in some of his criticisms Pliny is distinctly unfair to Silius, (3) a number of the ostensibly positive notes in Pliny’s account of Silius are by no means as favourable as they seem at first blush, and, above all, (4) the suicide of Silius is deliberately problematised by Pliny in a manner that has not been properly considered to date. This fourth point, which constitutes the primary focus of the article, turns on the hitherto unexamined nature and identity of the nebulous clauus which occasioned Silius’ suicide. This leads in turn to a pointed contrast with Pliny’s conspicuously detailed account of the suicide, also by inanition, of Corellius Rufus in Ep. 1.12 and, most importantly, to the political implications which can be drawn therefrom, both in relation to Corellius himself and, by extension, to Pliny, Corellius’ close intimate.
Ambivalence
In the synthesis of Silius’ life and career which constitutes the first half of the Epistle (§1–9), virtually every detail which might tell in Silius’ favour is either qualified or negated by some countervailing fact or assertion. The tonal ambivalence is particularly to the fore in pointed antitheses such as erat φιλόκαλοςFootnote 17 usque ad emacitatis reprehensionem, and plures isdem in locis uillas possidebat, adamatisque nouis priores neglegebat. In similar if less terse fashion, the approbatory remark that in retirement Silius doctissimis sermonibus dies transigebat, cum a scribendo uacaret, is followed immediately by a highly caustic verdict on Silius’ Punica, scribebat carmina maiore cura quam ingenio Footnote 18 – criticism made all the more trenchant by a designedly unflattering contrast with the elder Pliny, who, according to his nephew, pari ingenio curaque composuit (Ep. 3.5.3).Footnote 19 Similar equivocation is present in laeserat famam suam sub Nerone (credebatur sponte accusasse), sed in Vitelli amicitia sapienter se et comiter gesserat, ex proconsulatu Asiae gloriam reportauerat, maculam ueteris industriae laudabili otio abluerat (§3). Here however, in a (less forcible) inversion of the preceding schema, a damning aspect of Silius’ career – volunteering his services as delator under Nero,Footnote 20 ueteris industriae,Footnote 21 – is placed first, before being neutralised (abluerat) by his subsequent public service. All in all, Pliny’s summation of Silius’ career oscillates between praise and blame, with the balance, we will suggest, firmly tilted towards the latter.
Unfairness
Silius, Pliny states, possessed multum statuarum, multum imaginum, quas non habebat modo, uerum uenerabatur, Vergili ante omnes, cuius natalem religiosius quam suum celebrabat, Neapoli maxime, ubi monimentum eius adire ut templum solebat (§8). The clear implication of the cluster of sacral terms here (uenerabatur, religiosius, celebrabat Footnote 22 and ut templum) is that Silius’ veneration of Virgil was excessive (in other words, that here, as in other aspects of his life, Silius was given to extremes). But how excessive was this veneration really? It had ample precedent in the Hellenistic worship of HomerFootnote 23 and the erection in various locales of shrines to him, Homereia: Silius was simply extending the practice to Virgil, who became an instant classicFootnote 24 and already in his own day was seen as the Roman equivalent of Homer (Prop. 2.34.65–6). In any case, Silius exercised his veneration in the Greek ambience of Naples, where Virgil was buried,Footnote 25 as did Statius, who like Silius treated the tomb of Virgil as a templum.Footnote 26 Nor was there anything unusual about honouring after their death, and with considerable ceremony, the birthday of a leading figure.Footnote 27 As for the assertion that Silius celebrated Vergili … natalem religiosius quam suum, claims of this sort were by no means unusual.Footnote 28 Horace described the birthday of Maecenas as iure sollemnis mihi sanctiorque | paene Footnote 29 natali proprio (Carm. 4.11.17–18) and Pliny himself averred to his grandfather-in-law debemus mehercule natales tuos perinde ac nostros celebrare (Ep. 6.30.1). Overall, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that Pliny is not a little disingenuous here in couching as over-zealous a practice which was relatively commonplace.
Silius’ veneration of Virgil equally expressed itself in the profound indebtedness of his epic Punica to VirgilFootnote 30 and in his purchase of an estate containing the revered Virgil’s tomb.Footnote 31 But in the light of a highly successful career as an advocate in the centumviral court Silius also it seems touted himself as the inheritor of Cicero (so Mart. 7.63 and 11.48 suggest)Footnote 32 – a mantle Pliny was keen himself to claim.Footnote 33 But of Silius’ formidable forensic skills there is not a single word in Pliny’ death notice. As Tzounakas puts it, ‘it is probably no coincidence that in his obituary Pliny makes no reference whatsoever to Silius’ rhetorical prowess; the only explicit remark he makes to the latter’s literary activity is exclusively in connection to his poetic work: scribebat carmina maiore cura quam ingenio. Moreover ‘Pliny … refrains from mentioning the fact that Silius also owned Cicero’s estate, as disclosed by Martial (11.48), so as to avoid linking him with Rome’s leading orator’.Footnote 34 In short, Pliny’s obituary deliberately elides a central aspect of Silius’ career – a calculated sin of omission.Footnote 35
Next, the statement that Silius ‘had several villas in the same locale, and falling in love with the new purchases, neglected the older ones’Footnote 36 damns him, so to speak, as a desultor uillarum. Neglect of his earlier purchases also insinuates that Silius flouted the principle, championed by the Roman agricultural writers and amply exemplified by Pliny himself,Footnote 37 that the country properties of wealthy individuals should be actual working farms and should be maintained in tip-top condition, not allowed to fall into disrepair.Footnote 38 On the other hand, Pliny, speaking specifically of a friend’s purchase of a rural holding and the attendant difficulty of upkeep,Footnote 39 concedes nihil enim aeque gratum est adeptis quam concupiscentibus (Ep. 2.15.1). And if plures isdem in locis uillas possidebat forms, as seems likely, part of the criticisms levelled against Silius, it is salutary to note that Pliny himself had several properties on the waterfront at Lake Como (huius in litore plures meae uillae, Ep. 9.7.1–2; cf. 7.11.5), in addition to his Laurentian and Tuscan estates (Epp. 2.17, 5.6).Footnote 40
Returning now to the multum ubique librorum, Footnote 41 multum statuarum, multum imaginum … Vergili ante omnes of section 8, both the emphatic anaphora of multum and the proximity of emacitas suggest that we have here another instance of Silius’ tendency to excess.Footnote 42 But the collection of art had become increasingly popular since the first century BCFootnote 43 and there was nothing at all unusual or objectionable about installing multiple statues and busts of literary figures or political giants in one’s home, especially in the library (cf. librorum): these were usually of deceased persons (cf. Plin. Ep. 1.16.8, 4.28.1), as in Virgil’s case, if not invariably so (Mart. 9 praef.). The evidence for this practice is extensive. It includes Plin. HN 35.9–10, Suet. Calig. 34 sed et Vergili ac Titi Liui scripta et imagines paulum afuit quin ex omnibus bibliothecis amoueret, Sen. Ep. 64.9 quidni ego magnorum uirorum et imagines habeam incitamenta animi et natales celebrem?, Tranq. 9.7. Indeed, in Ep. 1.17.3, Pliny actually commends Titinius Capito for exhibiting the same kind of quasi-religious veneration towards the likenesses of his heroes that he objected to in the case of Silius and Vergil (est omnino (‘as a general rule’Footnote 44) Capitoni in usu claros uiros colere. Mirum est qua religione quo studio imagines Brutorum Cassiorum Catonum domi ubi potest habeat). Moreover, as Pomeroy acutely points out,Footnote 45 Silius’ amassing of statues and the like in his country properties has a precedent in his idol Cicero, who, apropos of decorating extensively with statuary his Tusculan villa, writes to Atticus nam in eo genere sic studio efferimur, ut abs te adiuuandi, ab aliis prope reprehendendi simus (Att. 1.8.2).
Insidious Criticisms
In section 3 of Ep. 3.7, Pliny writes that Silius ‘had expunged the stain of his previous busy activity by praiseworthy leisure’. On the face of it, this reads like unalloyed approbation.Footnote 46 But is it really so? For one thing, the juxtaposition of Silius’ otium with maculam ueteris industriae insinuates that his leisure is ‘praiseworthy’ if only in the sense that he has removed himself from public life and can do no further damage. Moreover, the elder statesmen whom Pliny adopts as his models for a commendable old age, Vestricius Spurinna (Ep. 3.1.) and Pomponius Bassus (Ep. 4.23), enjoy a laudable otium as an earned reward for signal service to the stateFootnote 47 – something that in Pliny’s view Silius could hardly lay claim to after a morally chequered public career. Finally, while one of the key themes in Pliny’s wide-ranging treatment of otium is that this should subserve the production of literary work which will afford immortality after death (cf. especially Epp. 1.3Footnote 48 and 9.3),Footnote 49 such an outcome can hardly be said to operate in Silius’ case, in view of the tepid judgement which Pliny passes on his poetry. In that sense, Silius’ situation is somewhat akin to that of Martial,Footnote 50 of whom Pliny, in his obituary for the epigrammatist, opined at non erunt aeterna quae scripsit: non erunt fortasse, ille tamen scripsit tamquam essent futura (Ep. 3.21.6).
In sections 6–7 of Ep. 3.7 Pliny writes ‘recently, at the urging of his advancing years, Silius withdrewFootnote 51 from Rome and stayed in Campania, and not even by the arrival of a new emperor could he be dislodged from there’.Footnote 52 He then comments magna Caesaris laus sub quo hoc liberum fuit, magna illius <sc. laus> qui hac libertate ausus est uti. The sense of ac ne aduentu … liberum fuit is clear enough: first, that it was an ‘extraordinary impertinence’Footnote 53 for a Roman of Silius’ standing not to travel to Rome to greet the new emperor upon his first appearance in the city since his accession to the principate, a charge underscored by ausus est, that is to say he had the audacity to put Trajan’s ciuilitas to the actual test;Footnote 54 second, that an omission of this kind, which would have been perilous under a Domitian, was, in a ‘praiseworthy’ development, permissible under Trajan, in a marker of the far more relaxed regime over which he presided.Footnote 55 Or, to put it another way, Trajan is being praised at Silius’ expense. But what is the meaning of magna illius <laus> qui hac libertate ausus est uti, over which commentators pass in silence? One possibility could be that it was ‘commendable’ of Silius, as the discredited representative of an earlier tyrannical regime, to absent himself from this epochal occasion, lest he sully with his presence the bright new dawn of the Trajanic era.Footnote 56 In other words, the laus which Silius garnered thereby is denuded of the term’s usually positive connotations. Silius is praised for an egregious discourtesy, on the basis that for him to have greeted Trajan in person would have been infinitely worse. The ‘praise’ here is very similar in tone to the irony at Ep. 6.2.4 bene fecit Regulus quod est mortuus, in that something that would normally be deplored is converted, under special circumstances, into a positive.
There is one further instance where a seemingly value-neutral comment on Silius possibly hosts a concealed barb. Pliny is very expansive on the topic of recitations, airing his opinions in a number of lettersFootnote 57 on what he regards as the correct protocols attaching to these. In Ep. 3.7.5 he notes that Silius non numquam iudicia hominum recitationibus <carminum suorum> experiebatur. This observation might seem on the face of it innocuous, but it may in fact contain an implicit rebuke that will be apprehended by readers who are au fait with Pliny’s modus operandi in the matter of recitations. Pliny’s practice, as he repeatedly emphasises, was obsessively to subject his writings to the scrutiny, criticism, and suggested improvements of close friends upon whose judgement and informed knowledge he could rely, before proceeding to publication.Footnote 58 By contrast Silius ‘from time to time submitted his poetry by means of recitations to the judgement of others’. Given that these words are directly preceded by Pliny’s devastating verdict on the worth of Silius’ poetry, scribebat carmina maiore cura quam ingenio, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that non numquam contains a veiled criticism: that Silius dabbled in recitation when it should have been a consistent practice, with the implication that his versifying might have been materially improved by adopting a more exacting procedure closer to Pliny’s own.Footnote 59
Silius, the clauus and Suicide
In this final section of the article, we argue that the oscillation between praise and blame which characterises the rest of Ep. 3.7 is maintained in the – notably brief – account of Silius’ suicide, with the balance however tilted very firmly towards the negative. It is true that some aspects of Silius’ self-killing as described by Pliny are commendable, even admirable; but a range of contingent circumstances relating to the suicide and, in particular, the (largely unexplored) nature of the clauus which occasioned Silius’ decision to end his life call markedly into question the legitimacy of that Selbstmord, in stark contrast to the account of Corellius Rufus’ suicide (Ep. 1.12), which Pliny buttresses with a host of justificatory details. The marked difference in approach in Pliny’s account of the respective suicides is then mined for what it can tell us about how Pliny wished to be viewed in regard to his role under the tyrannical regimes of the past and, more generally, how Pliny uses his death notices to encode a political message.
It was argued above that Pliny’s summation of Silius’ career in Ep. 3.7 is shot through with ambiguities which cumulatively serve to damn Silius, to present him in an unfavourable light. But ambiguity equally informs the death notice proper which opens the epistle. This reads: ‘It has just been reported that Silius Italicus has ended his life by starvationFootnote 60 at his Neapolitan estate. His reason for dying – illness. He had developed an incurable clauus, wearied by which (taedio)Footnote 61 he hastened to death with unshakable firmness (constantia).’ The lapidary brevity of the death noticeFootnote 62 gives it a veneer of objectivity and indeed one or two positive notes, such as inreuocabili constantia,Footnote 63 are sounded. But, as we shall see below, these are countered in the body of the letter by a number of remarks which cast doubt on the necessity or philosophical legitimacy of Silius’ suicide. At all events, we are worlds away here from the expansive, approbatory and apologist tone struck by Pliny when discussing suicides on the part of individuals towards whom he entertained far warmer feelings than for Silius: one thinks of Ep. 3.16, with its extravagant praise of the celebrated Arria’s self-immolation, the highly sympathetic account of the joint suicide of an otherwise anonymous couple from Pliny’s home town Comum (Ep. 6.24) and above all of the lengthy, circumstantial and notably exculpatory accounts of suicides either actualised or contemplated by Corellius Rufus (Ep. 1.12) and Titius Aristo (Ep. 1.22) – letters which it is particularly important to bear in mind in connection with Ep. 3.7, in keeping with Pliny’s constant requirement of his readers that they make meaningful connections between epistles on related topics, whether in the same or a different book.Footnote 64
Within the death notice there is a further locus of ambiguity, this time centred on the single word clauus, which according to Pliny was the reason for Silius’ suicide. The frustrating slipperiness of the term, the complete absence of any detail that might clarify its meaningFootnote 65 – contrast the explicitness of the pathological data which Pliny adduces in Ep. 6.24.3 to explain the heroic decision of the unknown Coman couple to commit suicideFootnote 66 – has elicited a host of guesses, largely unsupported by textual evidence, as to what the clauus might be. Suggestions include a corn or callus,Footnote 67 an ulcer,Footnote 68 a tumour,Footnote 69 a malignant tumour,Footnote 70 ‘perhaps cancer’,Footnote 71 while others have contented themselves with saying that Silius had suffered a long, painful, incurable but unidentifiable illness.Footnote 72 Strikingly, even that indefatigable assembler of parallel passages, J. E. B Mayor, in his stand-alone commentary on Pliny Epistles book 3, has next to nothing to say about the clauus, other than speculatively labelling it a corn.Footnote 73
Clauus, Gk. ἧλος, is a generic term for a callosity or induration which can arise on any surface of the body, most particularly the eyes, eyelids, feet, toes, and hands (Plin. Med. 2.26.1, Paulus Epitomae medicae libri septem 3.80). It derives its name from its similarity in appearance to the head of a nail, clauus.Footnote 74 A clauus may be a serious affliction, or it may be something relatively innocuous. Examples in the former category include the medical compendiarist Aëtius 7.36, who observes:
if a σταφύλωμα [viz. a protrusion resembling a grape on a grape-cluster, σταφύλη] becomes very large, so as to extend beyond the eyelids and becomes hard, when it has become scarred all over in the circle of the eye’s external coating and constricts it, they call this condition a ‘nail’ … it subjects the patient to two evils, damage to sight along with ugliness of appearance. An eye that has succumbed to this condition cannot be restored to its natural state by human skill.Footnote 75
Along similar lines Paulus, Epitomae medicae libri septem 3.22.22 states ‘a prolapse is a protrusion of the choroid membrane of the eye which occurs if the external coating of the eye erodes or ruptures … at its largest, so that it extends beyond the eyelids, the prolapse is called an “apple” or, if it becomes callous, a “nail”’, in which case, Paulus goes on, the condition is untreatable, and, according to a later writer who echoes and amplifies Paulus, causes blindness.Footnote 76 Addressing a different area of the body, Paulus Nicaeensis Liber medicus 114 states ‘a “nail” involves a protrusion of the flesh with an ulcer … “nails” occur on the buttocks and genitals. Sometimes they are mild and painless, at other times malignant and painful. Sometimes they fall off spontaneously, sometimes they are quite untreatable.’ Lastly on the negative side of the ledger there is Marcellus Empiricus 34.48 ‘“nails” … cause incredible difficulty in walking … the round shape of these “nails” is marked out for burning with heated gold, seeing that it is better to suffer intense pain for a moment than to incur the harm of unrelenting infirmity once the cancerous affliction has become inveterate’ (Paulus Epitomae medicae libri septem 6.87 is in essentially the same vein).Footnote 77 It is equally reflective of the potentially serious nature of a clauus that it could be the subject of a redhibitio, that is a legal action laid by the purchaser of a slave against a vendor who knowingly concealed at the time of purchase a defect or disease on the part of the slave which impaired their ability to work (Dig. 21.1.12 pr., quoting the jurist Ulpian).Footnote 78
But by no means were all claui so serious. Pliny the Elder uses the term routinely in the sense of ‘corns on the feet’,Footnote 79 Paulus Epitomae medicae libri septem 6.87 speaks of ‘pulling them out by the roots with a scalpel that has a sharp hook’, which suggests a treatment for corns, while a number of writers variously associate them with warts with a thick neck, subcutaneous warts which cause irritation, carbuncles, calluses, scars that stick out, and boils or pustules.Footnote 80 Marcellus Empiricus treats them essentially under the same head as verrucas, moles, and callosities.Footnote 81 In addition, as was noted in the quote from Paulus Nicaeensis above, ‘nails’, on occasion malignant and untreatable, can equally be mild and painless.
The just noted polyvalence of clauus and Pliny’s failure to append to his use of clauus any identificatory or explanatory detailFootnote 82 has evoked from John Henderson the following remark:
I do not think we can tell from Pliny’s phrasing whether Silius got bored with itchy feet, and just felt like a change of life (i.e. death), the way he was with mansions … Seneca can come across as suicidal all his long adult life over asthma … or persistent catarrh … I might well be with him if it was chronic toothache. What will your Achilles’ corn be?Footnote 83
But beneath the characteristic whimsicality of tone lies an important point: such is Pliny’s niggardliness of detail and so wide the applicability of the term clauus Footnote 84 that it is impossible to tell whether Silius’ suicide could be regarded as justifiable or not or even, as Henderson speculates, committed on a whim. This is particularly the case since Pliny gives no indication of where the clauus was located, what kind of symptoms it occasioned and how far the disease, which according to medical texts worsened over time, had progressed. All this combines, importantly, to inhibit or preclude judgement on the merits of Silius’ self-destruction.
As touched on above, there are other factors in the Epistle too which cast an aura of ambivalence over the legitimacy of Silius’ suicide. On the one hand, the clauus which induced him to end his life was incurable (insanabilis), and according to the Stoics, the dominant philosophical school of Silius’ day and one to which he seems to have subscribed,Footnote 85 to suffer from a disease that could not be cured was an acceptable reason for killing oneself.Footnote 86 Moreover, Silius pursued his death with constantia, the great Stoic virtue,Footnote 87 while his motive for doing so was taedium occasioned by the clauus, a clear allusion to the concept of taedium uitae, ‘being weary of life’, a motive for suicide upon which Roman law looked with a surprising degree of indulgence.Footnote 88 On the other hand, according to the rider which Pliny appends to the death notice proper, Silius, despite having lost the younger of his sons, was usque ad supremum diem beatus et felix and had seen the elder attain the consulship: positive considerations which might reasonably have counterbalanced the decision to dieFootnote 89 – not least the familial circumstances to which Pliny alludes, which in scenes where suicide is mooted routinely act as a brake on a putative suicide’s intention. As Seneca put it, ille qui non uxorem, non amicum tanti putat ut diutius in uita commoretur, qui perseuerabit mori, delicatus (‘self-indulgent’) est (Ep. 104.3); an idea even more explicitly articulated in Plin. Ep. 1.22 by Titius Aristo, who, suffering from a lengthy and painful illness, determined to kill himself should this prove incurable, but conversely stated that, if the illness turned out to be merely ‘difficult and prolonged’, dandum … precibus uxoris, dandum filiae lacrimis, dandum etiam nobis amicis, ne spes nostras, si modo non essent inanes, uoluntaria morte desereret. Furthermore, the observation which concludes the first half of the epistle, that in his seventy-sixth year Silius was frail rather than feeble in body (delicato magis corpore quam infirmo),Footnote 90 rather calls into question any imperative on his part to commit suicide because of debilitation occasioned by the clauus.
There is, we suggest, a further, more insidious criticism of Silius hinted at in the letter. In his review of Silius’ life after retirement from active politics (sections 4–9), Pliny tells us that ‘for much of the time he lay on his couch in his chamber and invariably spent his days in his room attended by many without thought of his wealthFootnote 91 and, when not engaged in writing, indulging in highly erudite conversation’. This sounds like a compliment, but one wonders if there is not perhaps a concealed barb here. Silius, Pliny tells us, had numerous acquaintances with whom he passed his days in learned discourse. Now in Roman scenes of contemplated or intended suicide from the first century BC onwards, friends and family often gather round in an attempt to dissuade the would-be suicide from this course of action or to hear them explain the reasons for the decision to quit life.Footnote 92 Such suicides exhibit, as Hirzel and Griffin have noted, a decidedly social, even performative dimension.Footnote 93 One instance is that of Atticus (Nepos Att. 21–2), who was seized by a griping pain in the bowels, which ‘erupted with such violence in his lower intestines that putrid fistulae burst through his loins’. Having satisfied distinguished friends and his son in law Agrippa that he had left no remedy untried, he explained that he had decided to end his life and urged them not to attempt in vain to deter him from his purpose. Titius Aristo (Plin. Ep. 1.22) was likewise surrounded by a coterie of concerned friends as he weighed the possibility of suicide. But despite the existence of a body of acquaintances who daily ‘thronged’ Silius’ house, there is no indication in Pliny that this subsequently translated into a suicide with an array of concerned amici in attendance.Footnote 94 He is thus deprived of the external validation from friends and state which such emotive scenes and attendant attempts at dissuasion provide: a validation that, as a figure of considerable importance, he had a right to expect. Or is Pliny implying that, in consequence of his culpably premature departure from public life,Footnote 95 which he by implication contrasts with the unremitting energy of the septuagenarian Vestricius Spurinna (Ep. 3.1) and the workaholic Pliny the Elder (Ep. 3.5), Silius had forfeited the right to such validation?
Why should it matter so much whether Silius’ suicide was justifiable or not? For one thing, it was important for a leading figure to have a ‘good’ death (Cic. Off. 1.112 on the suicide of the younger Cato, Plut. Comp. Eum. et Sert. 2, Polyb. 30.6).Footnote 96 More important still, the whole issue of suicide was a deeply contentious one – a Tagesfrage, a hot topic, as Hirzel put itFootnote 97 – which attracted strong opinions both for and against.Footnote 98 Some condemned it as the act of a coward, Julius Caesar included (B. Gall. 7.77.5),Footnote 99 others as μανία, ‘madness’ (Paus. 6.8.4), or even as a regrettable fad;Footnote 100 the Epicurean Marcus Brutus in his younger days expressed disapproval of the suicide of Cato Uticensis (Plut. Brut. 40.7), even though this was widely regarded as an iconic act of self-liberation in the face of tyranny.Footnote 101 There were also certain philosophical critics of suicide who professi sapientiam … uim adferendam uitae suae negent et nefas iudicent ipsum interemptorem sui fieri, with whom Seneca takes issue on the basis that this represents an intolerable restriction of individual freedom (Ep. 70.14).Footnote 102 Notwithstanding his insistence on the licence to liberate oneself from suffering by committing suicide, and a fixation upon the subject of death which features in some half of his Epistles,Footnote 103 Seneca is no apostle of self-killing,Footnote 104 rejecting a ‘one size fits all’ concept of the act (non possis itaque de re in uniuersum pronuntiare, Ep. 70.11). Indeed, leading Stoics, of all the philosophical schools, along with the Cynics, the most supportive of suicide,Footnote 105 hedged it around with reservations, Seneca cautioning against libido moriendi and an ad moriendum inconsulta animi inclinatio (Ep. 24.25), Musonius Rufus stating that one only has the right to die if one is sure that one cannot make oneself more useful by living (frg. 29 Lutz), and Epictetus advising his pupils that if they entertain thoughts of suicide, they should first consult with him (Diss. 1.9.12–16; cf. Diss. 2.15).
Just how much justification might be called for in order to legitimate killing oneself, given the contentiousness of the act, is illustrated by Pliny’s account of the suicide by starvation of Corellius Rufus (Ep.1.12), suffect consul in AD 78 and legate of Upper Germany about 82, thus a person of considerable significance, although not perhaps as important as Silius. Two points particularly stand out in Ep.1.12, which should be read in conjunction with Ep. 3.7. The first is that Pliny offers a detailed, profoundly sympathetic, and philosophically buttressed apologia for Corellius’ suicide which is by contrast absent from the necrology of Silius, whose suicide, we have argued, is at the very least problematised, its validity called into question. In contrast to the fleeting and distinctly opaque mention of the clauus which occasioned Silius’ suicide, Pliny goes into great detail about the agonies suffered by Corellius from a particularly virulent form of gout, stressing that this was a hereditary affliction (patrius … illi), in other words not caused by over-indulgence, as was usually thought to be the case,Footnote 106 highlighting the strict dietary regime which Corellius adopted to master the symptoms, and finally the commendable strength of purpose (uiribus animi)Footnote 107 with which he endured ‘the pangs beyond belief and most degrading tortures’ occasioned by the gout as it grew ever more severe with age – an affliction which, it is relevant to note, Galen (6.311 Kühn) regards as justifying suicide. All in all, Corellius, in the face of a relentless illness, exhibits a number of characteristically Stoic virtues – abstinentia, sanctitas, uires animi, and patientia.Footnote 108 Pliny is likewise exercised to give impeccable philosophical justification to Corellius’ suicide, stating that he was driven to this by ‘the supremacy of reason (summa ratio), which for philosophers is equivalent to necessity’.Footnote 109 This is a clear allusion to the Stoic principle of living one’s life in conformity with reason and in particular to their belief in a εὔλογος ἐξαγωγή, making a rational exit from life;Footnote 110 a concept also alluded to in the κέκρικα, ‘I have decided’Footnote 111 of Ep. 1.12.10, which conveys the idea of a resolve arrived at after careful consideration. This stands in pointed contrast to the ad mortem … decucurrit, ‘he hastened to death’, used of Silius in Ep. 3.7, which perhaps hints at the idea of a suicide executed in reprehensible haste,Footnote 112 a tendency explicitly deplored by Pliny at Ep. 1.22.10 nam impetu quodam et instinctu procurrere ad mortem commune cum multis, deliberare uero et causas eius expendere, utque suaserit ratio, uitae mortisque consilium uel suscipere uel ponere ingentis est animi.Footnote 113 Corellius, in sum, is represented as a paradigm of moral and physical fortitude, endowed with an optima fama unlike Silius, and as one who held firm to his philosophical principles even in deathFootnote 114 – again in contrast to Silius, who, if Epictetus is to be believed,Footnote 115 revealed himself, in the face of suffering, to be a philosophical hypocrite (Diss. 3.8.7).Footnote 116 Indeed, going further along these lines, Tzounakas has recently argued, using intertextual allusions to Seneca’s Epistles and Dialogi, that Ep. 3.7 as a whole represents an attempt on Pliny’s part to besmirch Silius’ posthumous reputation by presenting him as a fake Stoic.Footnote 117
The second point of importance arising from Ep. 1.12 is the way in which Pliny politicises Corellius’ suicide, as he does with two other death notices, those of Verginius Rufus (Ep. 2.1.)Footnote 118 and Gaius Fannius (Ep. 5.5),Footnote 119 which we cannot discuss at length here. In what is arguably the key detail in the epistle, Corellius, Pliny tells us, deliberately postponed his suicide until he had outlived the abhorred Domitian, whom Corellius describes vitriolically as ‘that assassin’ (isti latroni).Footnote 120 And he delays his suicide even though, according to Stoic reasoning, he would have been amply justified in ending his life beforehand, given the agonies he was suffering from an incrementally worsening, incurable disease. In other words, his suicide is invested with an adversarial, anti-Flavian dimension. This manoeuvre on Corellius’ part has its origin in the tendency which became pronounced in the first century AD, to socialise the act of suicide, to treat it as something of a performance, to make of it a public gesture of protest against the oppressive regime that was enforcing suicide upon its detractors, as in the case of Cremutius Cordus,Footnote 121 or members of the so-called Stoic oppositionFootnote 122 such as Thrasea Paetus Footnote 123 or Seneca, with his elaborately staged suicide.Footnote 124 From there it is but a small step for Corellius – or rather Pliny, without whom we might have heard little of Corellius – to politicise his end, even at the cost of distorting the facts. For Pliny asserts that with Domitian dead, Corellius could blithely depart the scene, leaving the res publica now ‘flourishing’ under the new regime,Footnote 125 which was certainly not the case in the period following the succession of Nerva.Footnote 126 And in a second misrepresentation also designed to freight Corellius’ suicide with political import, Pliny deliberately creates the impression that the suicide supervened directly upon Domitian’s assassination, whereas in fact Corellius outlived Domitian by more than a year.Footnote 127 The upshot of all this is that Pliny sets up Corellius as the political and ideological opposite of Silius, who was ‘tainted’ by his willing service as delator Footnote 128 under that other canonically bad emperor, Nero, with whom Domitian was regularly compared,Footnote 129 in part because both countenanced the noxious activities of informers.Footnote 130
Now the suicide of Thrasea Paetus and its congeners, with their distinctly histrionic character, has on the face of it little in common with the bed-bound exitus of Corellius as described by Pliny. But an important commonality remains; both are constructed as principled gestures of protest against imperial tyranny, one overt, the other covert.Footnote 131 Aware that walls have ears (Ep.1.12.7–8), and that under bad emperors, owners had reason to fear their slaves (Plin. Pan. 42.2–4, Tac. Hist. 1.2.3),Footnote 132 Corellius confined his criticisms of the Domitianic regime to his inner sanctum and to his most intimate friends, Pliny not least, upon whose discretion he could rely and upon whom, it is understood, he could count to share his views.Footnote 133 The clear implication is that Corellius and Pliny, while entertaining a mutual detestation of Domitian, preferred to exercise their disapprobation of him in private, rather than bruit about their opposition to tyranny, as did the Stoic opposition, in what Tacitus called an inanis iactatio libertatis (Agr. 42.3) and Martial (1.8) a self-aggrandising bid for posthumous fame.Footnote 134 This stratagem yields two benefits. It allows Pliny to advance the claim – integral to the self-sanitising agenda of the Epistles – that he had always privately deplored the excesses of the Domitianic regime while continuing to serve as a matter of civic duty,Footnote 135 much as did Agricola, according to Tacitus (Agr. 42.4). And it presents Corellius as faithful to his anti-tyrannical stance up to the moment of his death, once more setting up an implied contrast with Silius Italicus, who by his precipitate and lengthy retirement from public life, as Pliny represents it, had ironically preserved in aspic his association with Domitian’s alter ego Nero. This idea is slyly reinforced in the second half of Ep. 3.7, which, while primarily a meditation on the brevity of human life, significantly opens with the remark that Silius was the last to die of the consuls appointed by Nero,Footnote 136 and indeed consul in the very year of Nero’s death, thus reaffirming the nexus between Nero and his willing operative,Footnote 137 and perhaps hinting, despite the claim that Silius had ‘expunged’ the stain of his prosecutorial vigour under Nero (§3), that his reputation was still dogged by the memory of these misdeeds.
To summarise: in a pair of epistles united by the shared motif of suicide, two radically differing accounts are offered of how to conduct oneself at the highest levels of state in matters both of life and death. On the one hand, we have Silius, who early volunteered his services to the brutal Neronian regime, but subsequently, in a reflection of his inconstancy of character and tendency to proceed to extremes, retreated into prolonged civic obscurityFootnote 138 and finally dispatched himself in circumstances both nebulous and philosophically questionable – at least according to Pliny’s telling of it. On the other, we have Corellius, who unwaveringly maintained his principled opposition to Domitian’s tyranny, heroically stayed alive for the sake of the res publica, and crowned his career with a philosophically impeccable suicide. In both cases, death provides the occasion for a politically coloured summation of the life which went before. Given that a fundamental aim of Pliny’s Letters was self-mythologisation,Footnote 139 including prominently the claim that he stayed on the right side of history under the Domitianic regime,Footnote 140 it stands to reason that Silius was a kind of anti-model,Footnote 141 whereas Corellius, a paradigm of self-control and hatred of tyranny, casts a flattering light on his like-minded amici – not least on Pliny himself. Such amici, or boni as Pliny, using an ethically loaded term,Footnote 142 prefers to call those who embraced an anti-Domitianic, anti-tyrannical position,Footnote 143 are united not merely by a shared political stance, but by a code of moral values that, Pliny avers, is common to the grouping and by extension lacking in the opposing group who, according to him, have jettisoned proper ethical values in the interest of advancing their political careersFootnote 144 – persons, that is to say, like Regulus or Silius,Footnote 145 whose arguably collusive careers straddled the reigns of those two archetypally ‘bad’ emperors, Nero and Domitian.
Acknowledgments
Warm thanks are owed to Paul Roche and Michael Hanaghan for helpful and constructive criticisms of an earlier version of this article. Thanks also to Late Art Pomeroy for advice on some specific points. Any remaining weaknesses are our own. This article is dedicated to the memory of Martin Stone, a tremendous scholar, colleague and teacher.
Translations
All translations are our own.
Competing interests
The authors declare none.
