C. Sergius Orata was famous for the oysters that he raised on the Lucrine lake, where he also bought and renovated villas, reselling them at a profit. His oysters changed the market for gourmet seafood by creating a new standard in taste around 100 b.c., and he grew rich enough from this trade to enjoy the luxuries that he purveyed.Footnote 1 He was a path-breaking entrepreneur in luxury goods, ‘the first Campanian speculator to cater to the leisure of the great grandees’, as D'Arms described him.Footnote 2 Instructive as this interpretation is, it does not address the way Orata is presented in the sources.Footnote 3 While the ‘facts’ may be reliable enough to establish a biographical sketch, their presentation has another story to tell because Orata is known from rhetorically coloured portraits that reveal less about him as an individual than about elite identity generally. Fish and fishponds were a favourite target of Roman moralizers concerned with elite behaviour and attitudes.Footnote 4 Oysters in particular have a long history as a signal luxury.Footnote 5 Orata is a prime example in this tradition, and his name became nearly a trope: ‘Orata’, as I will write when I mean this reputation and not the man himself. A cognomen was a sign of family identity, but it also could be used as an indicator of character. Although Kajanto rejects this interpretation of Orata's name because of its association with fish,Footnote 6 it is the very association with fish that made his name powerful as a literary example, whether or not it reflects anything about his actual personality. No more can be said about the Orata family reputation because he is the only man with this cognomen in our sources. For Roman moralizers, ‘Orata’ represented the contested relationship between wealth, commerce and status, because his oyster ponds were both a symbolic luxury and a commercial success.
In the Late Republic and Early Empire, the elite was variously understood. The nobilitas, narrowly defined as ex-consuls, represented an ‘inner’ elite within the political elite of office-holding senators.Footnote 7 Election was a competitive process that depended on public display and personal character as well as family reputation and wealth. Electoral success brought opportunities for building resources of reputation and wealth to finance a continuing public career as well as private luxuries, such as villas and fishponds that manifested their owner's status.Footnote 8 The Roman elite also included men who grew rich from commerce, holding either no political office or only a lower magistracy (for example, quaestor or aedile, not praetor or consul).Footnote 9 These men travelled in the same social circles as the political elite and were in many ways indistinguishable from senators, often sharing family background and name with their politically minded relatives. Sometimes the same individual was known both for political success and for wealth, such as Q. Hortensius Hortalus or L. Licinius Lucullus. Naming practice further complicated the distinctions. While the cognomen was the usual form of address among elites, it was also used by non-aristocrats to mark their inclusion in the elite.Footnote 10 Moreover, the political climate of the Late Republic raised the stakes, as senators challenged traditional practices and wealth became a channel to influence even for those outside the traditional elite. Could the real elites be recognized by name? Was it enough to be rich and to enjoy a cultured lifestyle? Where did the traditional criterion of public office fit?
‘Orata’ was a focus for reflections on these issues in Late Republican and Early Imperial literature. Different versions of the figure are created by Cicero, Varro, Columella, Valerius Maximus and Pliny the Elder. This paper examines the various ‘Oratas’ and analyses the on-going dialogue about elite identity surrounding them. The sources are treated in chronological order for the most part to show, where possible, the relationship between different versions. As is typical of the Romans, change appears as problematic, but to varying degrees, and this variety not only reflects actual diversity in the elite class but also a guarded, sometimes whole-hearted, acceptance of the non-political elite.
As a subsidiary argument this paper also addresses Orata's actual status. No source reports Orata's status or origins or office-holding. Like Catiline, he may have belonged to the branch of the gens Sergia that produced consuls in the Early Republic, as Wikander suggests reviving Nicolet's view.Footnote 11 Most modern opinions follow D'Arms, cited above, acknowledging Orata's ties to the aristocracy but assuming a purely business relationship. Few are as extreme as Maiuri's description of him as ‘a good Campanian oyster farmer’.Footnote 12 In fact, the only evidence for his status are the attitudes conveyed by the literary sources analysed here. By taking into account the rhetorical and moral colouring of these sources, this paper presents a fresh perspective on Orata's actual status. Because writers such as Cicero and Varro used the figure of Orata to reflect on elite identity, it stands to reason that the man belonged to the elite. The argument is necessarily circumstantial and somewhat circular, but may gain traction when we acknowledge, with Edwards, that ‘for us these highly rhetorical texts are Roman reality’.Footnote 13 In turn, this conclusion about Orata's identity contributes to the larger argument of this paper by offering him as a real and not just rhetorical example of diversity among the Roman elite. Recognizing Orata as elite helps to correct an overly narrow view of status identity in the scholarship that insists on sharp distinctions between senators and all others. Instead, the boundaries of the elite were subject to negotiation.Footnote 14 Romans disagreed about who was ‘in’ and who was ‘out’, and even about appropriate criteria. Orata was a case in point, and the various ‘Oratas’ in the literary sources offer us insight into the contested nature of elite status.
LUXURY AND LAWSUITS
Cicero is the earliest writer to mention Orata, first in De oratore (c. 55 b.c.) and later in three of his treatises from the 40s b.c.: Hortensius, De finibus and De officiis. Cicero focusses on two aspects of Orata's reputation, luxury and commerce, and treats each in two of his works. His ‘Orata’ usually serves as a negative example, that is, his inappropriate behaviour and attitudes illustrate by contrast Cicero's ideas about elite morality.
In De oratore and De officiis, Cicero examines Orata's business practices, in particular his use of lawsuits to pursue commercial advantage. Orata was involved in two lawsuits, both connected with a property on the Lucrine lake that he sold to M. Marius Gratidianus and then, some time later, repurchased from him with the intention of farming oysters on the lake.Footnote 15 When the Roman state contracted the fishing rights on the lake to the publicani, Orata challenged this arrangement in court, his first lawsuit. The details are sketchy but it appears that Orata lost this legal battle and his right to raise oysters on the lake and consequently his hope of profit from the property. In an attempt to recover his loss, Orata then initiated a second lawsuit against Gratidianus in which both parties were represented by famous advocates: L. Licinius Crassus (cos. 95 b.c.) for Orata and M. Antonius (cos. 99 b.c.) for Gratidianus. The legal claim in this second lawsuit arose from the law of sale. Orata alleged that Gratidianus had acted fraudulently because he did not disclose before the sale that the property was burdened by a servitude, that is, a legal arrangement similar to an easement that could affect the use and price of property. Since Orata had himself previously owned the property, he could reasonably have been expected to have known about the servitude. Thus, the case posed a tricky question: should a seller be liable for not revealing a defect in the property when the buyer already knew about it? At the time of Orata's lawsuit, the law was not clear about the distinction between fraud and accidental omission. Crassus exploited this indeterminacy and won the case.Footnote 16
Cicero gives two different perspectives on Orata's lawsuit against Gratidianus, one negative in De officiis and the other in De oratore, which is, if not enthusiastically positive, at least morally neutral. In De oratore, Orata's lawsuit is mentioned by Crassus when he explains that the orator should know the law (De or. 1.178). Because Crassus won the case for Orata, the example not only supports the rhetorical lesson but also reflects glory on Crassus. Nothing in the presentation invites disapproval, nor does Antonius respond to Crassus on this point anywhere in De oratore.Footnote 17 Moreover, Cicero is careful to omit any mention of fishponds which could undermine Crassus' authority because he, too, had a reputation as a fish fancier. His colleague in the censorship, Cn. Domitius, once mocked him for mourning the death of his pet eel like a daughter, atratus tamquam filiam luxit (Macrob. Sat. 3.15.4).Footnote 18 Yet Crassus showed no embarrassment, instead boasting of his appropriate expression of duty and affection, neque id confiteri Crassus erubuit sed ultro etiam, si dis placet, gloriatus est censor, piam affectuosamque rem fecisse se iactitans (Macrob. Sat. 3.15.5). Whether or not Macrobius preserves Crassus' actual words, the morally loaded language (gloriatus, iactitans, piam affectuosamque) shows how his response was perceived and judged both by those who heard it and by subsequent audiences who knew it by report – including, presumably, Cicero and his audience. Thus, if Cicero had wanted to impugn Orata and his oysters, he could have done so by alluding to Crassus' devotion to fish. But he did not do so, because fish rhetoric would have undermined his characterization of Crassus as an expert as well as his argument about the orator's legal knowledge. As a result, somewhat by circumstance, ‘Orata’ appears in a fairly positive light in De oratore.
In De officiis, Cicero explicitly condemns Orata's use of law as immoral (Off. 3.67). Cicero summarizes the arguments made by both sides in order to contrast justice based on strict interpretation of the law (ius) with justice based on the spirit (aequitas). Even though Gratidianus did not declare the servitude, he should not have been convicted of fraud because Orata was not deceived. The case should have been decided on the facts rather than a legal technicality. Gratidianus should not be penalized because his silence conforms to the spirit if not the letter of the law. By contrast Orata's strict application of the law was unfair and dishonest. His legal claim represents apparent expediency (utile) that should not be confused with what is right (honestum). Clever men like this, Cicero wrote, do not find approval among our ancestors, non placuisse maioribus nostris astutos (Off. 3.67). Cicero's negative judgment of Orata is amplified by contrast with his whitewashing of Gratidianus in this passage, for Gratidianus exemplifies the same kind of destructive morality later in De officiis (Off. 3.80) and elsewhere in Cicero's works.Footnote 19 Orata's use of the law was contrary to traditional elite morality, which was oriented around service to the state, especially in Cicero's view.Footnote 20 Orata's legal manoeuvring threatened the republic by undermining trust among citizens generally and, specifically, in the rule of law, which should ideally conform to the broader ethical code.
Cicero seems to have identified a real problem since Orata's approach to the law was typical of Roman elites, entrepreneurial and otherwise, who expected to be able to manipulate the legal system to their own advantage. According to Frier, in Cicero's day the Roman elite was divided into two groups, ‘a status elite who thought of the Praetor's court as an extension of the existing social order … and the “outsiders”, who like Cicero saw the court as a source of law that was constant and abiding, at least relatively autonomous from social contingency’.Footnote 21 Orata could have used his connections with Crassus to gain information about the law that would have strengthened his position, since Crassus had a lifelong association with the jurist Q. Mucius Scaevola.Footnote 22 Potentially, then, Orata manipulated the legal system both by personal influence and by strategic interpretation of the law. His legal strategies had an economic pay-off, allowing him to recoup some of the costs of the lost opportunity to farm oysters on the Lucrine lake. Orata's lawsuit thus illustrates a potential moral problem that commerce posed for elite morality by raising the incentive to put self-interest ahead of the common good. Cicero disapproved of these practices and attitudes, and he hoped to correct them with an appropriate philosophical reorientation.Footnote 23
While De oratore and De officiis examine the commercial side of ‘Orata’, Cicero's Hortensius and De finibus focus on his private life. In both works, Cicero uses ‘Orata’ to illustrate the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure, or at least a version of Epicurus' ideas that serves as a straw man for Cicero's moral prescriptions.Footnote 24 ‘Orata’ does not represent authentic Epicurean principles but instead a misguided use of wealth that betrays the elite values that it should support.
Cicero's Hortensius gave a detailed picture of Orata, judging by the surviving fragments.Footnote 25 Although he is not named, four short fragments are associated with Orata, because they present details connected with him elsewhere: invention of fishponds,Footnote 26 an ingenious technique for breeding oysters,Footnote 27 supreme delightsFootnote 28 topped by a long and healthy life.Footnote 29 He is named in the longest fragment, transmitted in Augustine's De beata vita in a passage that is generally thought to be a quotation of Cicero's words.Footnote 30 This ‘Orata’ is superlatively rich, charming and elegant (ditissimum amoenissimum deliciossissimum). He has desirable villas and delightful friends in abundance as well as excellent health (praediis quaestuosissimis et amicis iucundissimis, quantum libuit, abundavit et illis omnibus aptissme ad salutem corporis usus). Such strings of superlatives are characteristic of aristocratic funeral laudations, and the specific adjectives here also add an element of sophistication.Footnote 31 But appearances can be deceiving, if the superlatives should be read as sarcastic, as Castner suggests.Footnote 32 Cicero's language would then imply that Orata's delightful life was only an apparent pleasure and not true philosophical happiness.Footnote 33 This interpretation coheres with the usual reconstruction of the Hortensius as a dialogue structured around two speeches, the first given by Hortensius advocating Epicurean ideas, with the second being a critique by Cicero in which Orata figured as a negative example.Footnote 34 On this reading, Orata exemplifies those who think that they achieve the blessed life, because they live luxuriously, but in fact miss the mark because their pleasure is purely self-serving.
‘Orata’ makes a powerful example because his life seems charmed, full of the very comforts enjoyed by elite Romans and coveted by aspiring elites. The effect was enhanced by what must have been a detailed description of his fishponds. As Purcell has argued, fish exposed the gap between rich and poor, the poverty of the fisherman and the wealth of those who dined on seafood.Footnote 35 Orata's progression from poverty to luxury bridges the gap. His fishponds were a luxurious novelty and a technical marvel that represented the power of his wealth as well as his social status. The more amazing they appeared, the sharper the contrast between the appearance of success and Cicero's judgement that Orata was actually a failure in moral terms. In addition, Orata was a particularly appropriate example in Hortensius, because he was famous for fishponds just like Q. Hortensius Hortalus (cos. 69 b.c.), the well-known senator for whom the dialogue was named and with whom Orata is often associated, as will be discussed shortly.
In De finibus, ‘Orata’ illustrates the same moral lesson: a luxurious lifestyle should not be mistaken for the true life of philosophical virtue. Here he heads a list of men famous for luxurious living: illud quaero, quid ei qui in voluptate summum bonum ponat, consentaneum sit dicere. quid affers, cur Thorius, cur †Chius Postumius† cur omnium horum magister, Orata, non iucundissime vixerit? (Cic. Fin. 2.70). Interpreting ‘Orata’ in this passage is complicated because only one of the other hedonists can be identified securely – L. Thorius Balbus who was Metellus' legate in Spain in 80 b.c. (Flor. 2.10.6, Plut. Sert. 12.3) and probably also the moneyer known from a denarius of 105 b.c. (RRC 1.323, no. 316).Footnote 36 The other names are uncertain because of a textual crux, though some editors accept the name Chius Postumius because it has manuscript authority.Footnote 37 ‘Chius Postumius’ is better understood as two names on grounds of both style and content. First, Orata and Thorius are identified by a single name and, as Hutchinson pointed out, omnium horum makes more sense of three than two.Footnote 38 Second, the name Chius Postumius is hard to fit into Cicero's context, though Münzer describes this person as a well-known playboy (‘Lebemann’), referring to the reputation of the island of Chios for luxury (Petron. 63.3).Footnote 39 No other Postumius is a known pleasure-seeker.
The crux is better resolved by emending, ‘Chius’ to ‘Hirrus’ and ‘Postumius’ to ‘Postumus’, as Madvig proposed.Footnote 40 Hirrus should be identified as C. Lucilius Hirrus (tr. pl. 53 b.c.), Pompey's envoy to the Parthian court in 49/8 b.c. and the first to specialize in raising eels.Footnote 41 Postumus occurs in one family of manuscripts of De finibus (φ in Reynolds' edition), and this man should be identified as C. Rabirius Postumus, the wealthy banker and supporter of Caesar whom Cicero defended in 54/3 b.c. Reference to him by his cognomen follows Cicero's regular practice.Footnote 42 This emendation could be criticized because it produces three cognomina (Hirrus, Postumus, Orata) and one nomen (Thorius), where we might expect Cicero to use the cognomen of his elite peers.Footnote 43 But ‘Thorius’ may have been preferred by Cicero to avoid confusion with another man with a reputation for luxury, Caesar's banker, L. Cornelius Balbus. Moreover, when these names are restored, the list includes four men with a similar profile, as might be expected in a group of examples, providing a context that clarifies Cicero's use of ‘Orata’ in De finibus.
Thorius, Hirrus, Postumus and Orata shared a reputation for wealth and luxury. Postumus’ rise from poverty by commercial success parallels the biography assigned to Orata in the Hortensius, though Postumus was not known for innovative luxury as were the other three. Orata designed oyster ponds and Hirrus invented artificial ponds for eels (Plin. HN 9.171). Fewer details survive about Thorius; we do not know what he invented, but Cicero's audience probably did. In any case, Cicero highlights his ingenuity in devising pleasures earlier in De finibus Book 2 (erat et cupidus voluptatum et eius generis intellegens et copiosus, Cic. Fin. 2.63). Innovation for the sake of luxury, especially in the kitchen, was a typical element in moralizing. Compare, for example, the chef in Horace, Satires 2.4, a certain Catius whose culinary expertise illustrates misguided philosophy.Footnote 44 Orata and his comrades have a similar function in De finibus as they pursue pleasure instead of virtue.Footnote 45
All four exemplary hedonists also had political ties, sometimes involving luxury items. Orata had a long association with Crassus, probably supplying him with oysters for his private parties, and may have hoped for a political career.Footnote 46 Similarly, Hirrus gave two thousand pounds of eels to Caesar, presumably for a public banquet (Varro, Rust. 3.17.3).Footnote 47 Postumus had close ties to Caesar, whom he helped with financial services, and who later made him a senator.Footnote 48 Thorius served with Metellus, as noted above, but in De finibus his political role is downplayed because his luxurious life serves to contrast with the public virtue of M. Atilius Regulus (Fin. 2.63–5).Footnote 49 If Regulus is the standard, Orata and the others hardly measure up, not just because they did not compete for status in the traditional way (that is, elected office), but because they influenced politics from outside, using their wealth to buy influence with lavish gifts. Cicero's rejection of their novel luxuries conveys his dismay at their personal immorality and its troubling public corollary, the privatization of political power around a few powerful men.
Cicero's negative characterization of Orata has been interpreted as evidence that the real Orata was from the lower classes, a Campanian outsider to the Roman elite, perhaps because critics have themselves been influenced by Roman prejudices, for example senatorial bias against commerce or the ethnic stereotype of Campanians as wily entrepreneurs and hedonists.Footnote 50 Other interpretations are possible. The location of Orata's property on the Lucrine lake does not prove Campanian origins, because many Roman senators owned property in Campania. Neither poverty nor participation in commerce is itself diagnostic of low status. Old patrician families fell on hard times as, for example, Varro dramatized in his portrait of Ap. Claudius (Rust. 3.16.1–3). Even Cicero recognized that large-scale trade could be praiseworthy (Off. 1.151),Footnote 51 and certainly any business that created wealth on Orata's scale cannot have been small. Moreover, Cicero's criticism of Orata in De officiis reflects elite attitudes toward the law, as argued above. By the Late Republic, not just the elite but the senate itself was a diverse group that included men who held public office as well as others who pursued careers in commerce but shared the same private pursuits of luxury and philosophy as politically minded senators. In fact, the expansion of the senate by Sulla and Caesar to include some of their financial backers may lie behind Cicero's choice of examples in De finibus.
Cicero's ‘Orata’ represents not a low-class contrast to the elite but an alternative elite lifestyle that Cicero hoped to discourage. The real Orata provides an effective example for Cicero's moral lessons because he exhibited behaviour typical of socially and economically powerful men at Rome. Cicero's emphasis on the refinement of Orata's private life accords with the lifestyle enjoyed by senators and other elites. His focus on Orata's oyster ponds in Hortensius plays on the long-standing rhetoric of fishponds as well as Cicero's own banter: he used the term piscinarius to disparage certain contemporaries who were more zealous about fishponds than politics (Att. 1.18.6, 1.19.6, 1.20.3, 2.1.7). Similarly, in a public speech, P. Clodius mocked his political opponents, calling them piscinarium Tritonibus, ‘Tritons of their fishponds’ (Cic. Att. 2.9.1). Orata fits right in here, though modern treatments of Orata as a speculator exploit the negative view of these behaviours as implied evidence for his low social status. Yet the moral lesson of ‘Orata’ is more effective if he shares elite status with Cicero's audience. If he had been a low class Campanian, Cicero and his audience would not have been surprised by sharp dealing and self-indulgence, since it fulfilled their expectations. His behaviour is reprehensible because he is not a low-class hustler from the sticks. Thus, an appreciation of Cicero's rhetorical elaboration of ‘Orata’ provides a clearer view of the man Orata as a member of the elite and, additionally, further evidence for diversity among the Republican elite.
NAME AND NOBILITAS
Where Cicero invokes ‘Orata’ to give an express lesson about elite morality, Varro proceeds allusively when he mentions Orata with Murena in his introduction to the topic of fishponds in Book 3 of De re rustica (Rust. 3.3.10). Varro treats fish, along with birds and game, as villatica pastio, specialty livestock that could be raised in the villa for profit. Orata's oysters would be a prime example, but Varro does not mention them. Instead, only Orata's name appears in a highly wrought pair of rhetorical questions that use wordplay to destabilize the relationship between name, reputation and status.
For Varro, fish and fishponds, or rather a man's attitudes towards them, are an index of social identity. Varro develops the theme through five rhetorical questions (Rust. 3.3.9–10). In the first three questions, knowing the ‘right’ kind of fish defines the socially ‘in’ group. In the past, who kept a fishpond except with fresh water and ugly fish in it? But now, who claims not to care for gourmet fish, even if his stagnant pond holds only frogs? When Ummidius served Philippus a beautiful river bass from his own stream, didn't he taste it and spit it out and say, ‘I'll die if I think that's a fish!’?Footnote 52 The oppositions in these questions – past versus present, salt versus fresh, undiscriminating, ugly and in bad taste (literal and figurative) versus refined, gourmet taste – establish a framework for interpreting the symbolism of fishponds in the last two questions, which introduce two sets of famous fishpond owners:
Sic nostra aetas in quam luxuriam propagavit leporaria, <h>ac piscinas protulit ad mare et in eas pelagios greges piscium revocavit. Non propter has appellati Sergius Orata et Licinius Murena? Quis enim propter nobilitates ignorat piscinas Philippi, Hortensi, Lucullorum? (Varro, Rust. 3.3.10)
Thus our generation, with the same extravagance with which it enlarged its game preserves, extended its fishponds to the sea and summoned marine herds into them. Weren't Sergius Orata and Licinus Murena named on account of them? After all, who doesn't know the fishponds of Philippus, Hortensius and the Luculli on account of their reputations?
The quick mention of names implies that these men were easily recognized as fishpond owners. Indeed, L. Marcius Philippus, Q. Hortensius Hortalus, and the brothers M. and L. Licinius Lucullus were identified with Cicero's piscinarii, as noted by Macrobius (Sat. 3.15.4–5).Footnote 53 Murena and Orata are also recognizable as the names of actual fish – eel and giltfish (or gilthead sea bream) respectively – presumably the fish that each raised and enjoyed.Footnote 54 Some ancient readers understood their cognomina this way, judging by Columella and Macrobius, both of whom report the same jokes about Orata's and Murena's cognomina and credit Varro as their source. After a verbatim quotation of Varro (Rust. 3.3.9), Columella mentions Orata and Murena, comparing their names with honorific cognomina derived from conquered nations: velut ante devictarum gentium Numantinus et Isauricus, ita Sergius Orata et Licinius Muraena captorum piscium laetabantur vocabulis (8.16.5). Macrobius also equates name and fish because of the men's affection for fish (effusissime delectati sint, carissimi), a typical feature of this rhetoric and a morally dubious manifestation of extravagance: compare Crassus' mourning for his eel, discussed previously (Sat. 3.15.1–3). But Macrobius does not simply ‘explain’ the wordplay in Varro, because his account combines details from sources other than De re rustica, probably Cicero and Columella.Footnote 55 Moreover, Varro's expression itself shows that more was involved than the identification of man and fish.
The connection between name and fish is not entirely straightforward for either Murena or Orata. This Murena is credited with inventing artificial fishponds, but he was not the first Licinius to bear the cognomen nor was he as closely identified with eels as was C. Hirrus.Footnote 56 He was praetor in 100 b.c. (or 88 b.c.), and the father or grandfather of the Murena defended by Cicero (Cic. Mur. 15, 85).Footnote 57 The fish connection is more tenuous for Orata because his name is not etymologically connected with ostrea, oyster, the ‘fish’ that he was famous for raising. Varro draws attention to this gap in meaning when he writes that Orata and Murena were named for their fishponds, not for their fish, propter has [piscinas] appellati. The slippage between what Varro says and what the names seem to mean alerts attentive readers to a disjunction of name and identity. Just what did their name mean? What were they known for? Macrobius, perhaps recognizing the gap, explains that Orata's name came from a fish, the aurata (giltfish or sea bream), which sounds like Orata. But the aurata does not appear in De re rustica in connection with Orata or elsewhere, though it may have appeared in Varro's now lost works. Nor is there independent evidence that Orata raised giltfish, even if these fish populated the Lucrine lake.Footnote 58
Varro's wordplay depends on figurative meanings of ‘Murena’ and ‘Orata’ that connect fish with other qualities. For Orata, a second ancient etymology is reported in Paul's compilation (eighth century a.d.) of Festus' (second century a.d.) abridged edition of the De verborum significatu by the Augustan scholar Verrius Flaccus. Although the evidence is second-hand at best, it should probably be traced to Verrius Flaccus' work, based on the form of Paul's citation.Footnote 59 In Paul's lemma, Orata's name is connected with the giltfish and also with gold itself:
Orata genus piscis appellatur a colore auri, quod rustici orum dicebant, ut auriculas, oriculas. itaque Sergium quoque quendam praedivitem, quod et duobus anulis aureis, et grandibus uteretur, Oratam dicunt esse appellatum. (Fest. p. 196 L.)
Orata, the type of fish, was named from the colour gold which rustics pronounce ‘orum’, like ‘oricula’ for ‘auricula’. And so also, they say that a certain very rich Sergius was called Orata because he used to wear two heavy gold rings.
Though the derivation of orata from aurum is not linguistically sound, such etymologies based on similarity of sound are common in Roman sources, including Varro's own De lingua latina. It is not unlikely that Varro and his audience recognized the relationship between gold and giltfish and may have already connected one or both with Orata.Footnote 60 Gold rings, like gourmet fish and fishponds, were accoutrements of wealth, and Varro's misdirection about naming – propter has [piscinas] appellati – invites his audience to question the relationship between man and fish, gold rings and fishponds, the symbols of Orata's wealth and the means to earning it. A gold seal ring could represent both commercial agreements and the potential to falsify them, encoding what Maiuri called the ‘cold, calculating cunning of his commercial spirit’.Footnote 61 Similarly, Murena's name is not to be taken at face value, as Kajava writes, ‘Murena may have been a suitable name for a man who was thought to be as clever and aggressive as a murena’.Footnote 62 Both names say more about character than career, associating luxurious pleasures with the commercial success that made them possible.Footnote 63 The figurative meanings of ‘Orata’ and ‘Murena’ inform Varro's allusive moralizing, even if they did not raise the specific fish whose names they bore.
A different set of issues arises in Varro's second rhetorical question about fishpond owners. Here, the wordplay circles around nobilitas and is signalled by the etymological connection in ignorat. Who doesn't know the fishponds and their owners because of their reputations, nobilitates? But what do they know? Who, or what, has a reputation for nobilitas, the men or the fishponds, or both? And the plural suggests multiple reputations. Nobilitas like nobilis had a range of meanings: the simple fact of being known, celebrity, high-minded character, aristocratic status either of birth or office.Footnote 64 Taken in its most general sense of reputation, nobilitas includes both Orata and Murena as well as the piscinarii who were all known as wealthy fishpond owners.Footnote 65 The names of politically prominent senators – Philippus, Hortensius, Lucullus – signal the political connotation of nobilitas as the political class. Of course, the reputational problem for these men was that they were better known for fishponds than for politics.Footnote 66 Columella made the point explicit when he quoted Varro's wordplay about Orata's name: a cognomen should reflect a man's public status rather than his private enthusiasms, and earning a name for fish was criticized in the past and, Columella implies, should be still, though it may now be acceptable and even praiseworthy (Rust. 8.16.5).
Varro's wordplay raises the possibility that a man is not what he appears to be. Orata and Murena appear to be fish but are really clever businessmen.Footnote 67 Similarly, the younger Philippus, Hortensius and Lucullus appear to be nobiles but are instead fish enthusiasts, as Varro shows in his full treatment of fishponds later in Book 3 (Rust. 3.17.5–9). Even a family name creates confusion for Varro's fish fanciers. The fishpond owner Philippus (Rust. 3.3.10) is not to be confused with his father who, as Ummidius' guest, rejects river bass (Rust. 3.3.9).Footnote 68 The elder Philippus, whose words proclaim fastidious gourmet tastes, is revealed by his actions to be rude and fussy. In turn, the younger Philippus appears to be a fishpond owner but is in fact a political mover, consul in 56 b.c., involved with Caesar. Similarly, the Murena who invented fishponds may have had an entirely different character from the Murena of Varro's generation.Footnote 69 The wordplay in Varro's introduction to fishponds shows that identity is multivalent and reputation is more complex than name or family or career. As the puns on Orata and Murena illustrate, a name could represent various, not always compatible, aspects of a man's reputation.
Varro's rhetorical questions, then, should be read as part of a broader moral conversation in which fishponds have symbolic value. Rather than condemning the fishponds' owners, as Cicero does, Varro questions the nature of their reputation. Both authors respond to changes or perceived changes in the elite class, especially the role of wealth. The senatorial class was a diverse group, and many if not most senators participated in commerce to some extent, despite the traditional bias against it. Fishponds were a focal point for reflection on this diversity because they were flashy status symbols prized by both senators and other wealthy men. Such shared luxuries of private life blurred the distinction between traditional insiders and those who aspired to elite status, because anyone with the cash could buy a fishpond. Conversely, even men from noble families sometimes failed in elections or withdrew from public life, as Hortensius and Lucullus did, and still enjoyed private luxuries – exactly the behaviour that Cicero criticizes in the piscinarii. Varro's wordplay links the symbolism of fishponds with other signs of status, such as wealth and political participation, to reveal uncertainty about the boundaries of the elite. Should everyone who could afford a fishpond be recognized as one of the elite?
In the Late Republic, such questions concerned not just individuals but also the nature of the political regime because leaders such as Sulla and Caesar had changed the composition of the senate, promoting supporters from the commercial classes to the senate and exploiting their economic power for their own political aims.Footnote 70 Both Cicero and Varro respond to these political realities with moralizing about luxury and fishponds. Where Cicero offers a prescription for return to traditional elite values, Varro's wordplay destabilizes traditional signs of status, balancing a witty acceptance of the new realities with a persistent awareness of their instability.Footnote 71
Finally, Varro's treatment of Orata's name has influenced modern views of Orata's actual status. Although Varro's expression is not discussed by modern scholars, most understand his rhetorical questions as contrasting Orata and Murena on the one hand with the political elite (nobiles) on the other. This assumption, combined with a literal reading of the wordplay (orata = giltfish), has led to the conclusion that Orata was a lowly Campanian oyster farmer. But Varro's pairing of Orata with Murena and his wordplay on nobilitas connect Orata with both the senatorial elite and the ‘inner’ consular elite, though these arguments are not made explicitly by those who identify him as senatorial.Footnote 72 The real problem is that discussions of Orata's status assume a false dichotomy, namely, that Orata is either senatorial or not. A preoccupation with a strictly political definition of the elite misses the point of Varro's wordplay on Orata's name and the social situation that it addressed. While nobilis can be limited to senators who had been consul, it was used more broadly of elites and also of men not aristocratic by birth, who were ennobled by their lives and choices. Varro plays on this indeterminacy to highlight diverse elements in elite identity. Thus, there is a third option for Orata's actual status, namely a member of the broader group of elites, some senators, others in commerce, who all enjoyed wealth and the luxury and influence that it could buy.
REVISED REPUTATION
The figure of Orata continues to be a powerful example in literature of the first century a.d. Columella reports the wordplay on his name, as discussed above. In addition, Valerius Maximus and Pliny the Elder give fuller portraits of Orata that respond to earlier treatments and also to each other. As before, ‘Orata’ and his fishponds are a symbol of luxury in moral lessons about appropriate elite conduct.
Orata is the first example in Book 9 of Valerius Maximus' Facta et dicta memorabilia, the book entitled De luxuria et libidine.Footnote 73 It is by far the most sensational picture of Orata and his fishponds, repeating and recombining many of the same details that appear in Cicero and Varro. Valerius mentions Orata's lawsuits and adds a joke told by Crassus at the trial. His description of Orata's fishponds uses some of the same language as in Hortensius, for example, balnea for fishponds and the clay tiles, tegulis.Footnote 74 Details from Varro also appear in Valerius Maximus. For example, Orata's fishponds harness the tides for circulation as Lucullus' do in Varro, aestuariis intercipiendo fluctus (cf. Rust. 3.17.9). They also separate fish by species into different tanks, diversos greges separatim molibus includendo, similar to the fishponds that Varro compares to paint boxes with compartments for different colours (Rust. 3.17.4). The description fits Fagan's reconstruction of Orata's fishponds, though the design may have been common; similar fishponds are depicted on glass vessels from Baiae.Footnote 75 If Orata was not the only one to have such fishponds, he was known as the first to do so. In addition to the design of his fishponds, the motives that Valerius ascribes to ‘Orata’ also find precedents in earlier fish rhetoric. Recall Crassus' mourning for his eel (Macrob. Sat. 3.15.4–5), and the delight that Murena and Orata took in their fish (Columella, Rust. 8.16.5). In Varro, similarly extravagant emotions characterize the piscinarii who lavish care and expense on their fish (Rust. 3.17.5–9). Lucullus' devotion takes physical form as he tunnels through a mountain to bring fresh water to his fish, rivalling Neptune, Neapolim L. Lucullum … Neptuno non cedere de piscatu (Rust. 3.17.9). Orata in Valerius Maximus is likewise grandiose, also challenging Neptune (videlicet ne gulam Neptuni arbitrio subiectam haberet). In both Varro and Valerius, rivalry with Neptune exalts the fascination with fish and at the same time deflates it, because rivalry with a god tends to end badly for the mortal.Footnote 76
Despite these similarities, Valerius Maximus' ‘Orata’ is distinctly different from earlier versions because he is a slave of his stomach. Where Hortensius and Lucullus are motivated to protect the welfare of their fish, Orata aims to satisfy his appetite, gula, which means both the physical passage, the gullet, through which food enters the body, as well as an appetite for food.Footnote 77 He challenges Neptune not for control of the sea but for control of the seafood on his table: ut nulla tam saeva tempestas inciderit, qua non Oratae mensae varietate ferculorum abundarent. His rivalry is expressed in mealtime pageantry when his fish are served on fercula, platforms used in religious processions for carrying sacred displays.Footnote 78 His legal dispute is reduced to the pursuit of oysters through Crassus' joke: Orata was so fanatical about oysters that he could find them even on the roof, namque ea … in tegulis reperturum. The humour resides in a pun where tegula refers both to the roof of a house (an unlikely place for oysters) and to the ceramic tiles that were used as a platform for growing oysters in artificial ponds, Orata's innovative technique.Footnote 79 A second pun, involving word division, te gula, reprises the theme of bodily appetite.Footnote 80
Valerius Maximus' ‘Orata’ resembles the figure of the parasite from comedy, who is driven to extremes by his gula.Footnote 81 In contrast to the elite piscinarii, whose devotion ennobles their fish, Orata is brought down by his stomach.Footnote 82 Rather than seeking the finest fish, this Orata wants to have it all, his exaggerated appetite reflecting the same kind of misguided motives that Cicero criticizes in De finibus. Though Valerius Maximus' moral lesson is typical, his characterization of Orata as a parasite was novel and not entirely appropriate, as Pliny the Elder recognized.
Pliny mentions Orata in Book 9 of his Natural History (on marine animals) in a digression featuring anecdotes about fishpond owners: Vedius Pollio's sixty-year-old fish, Lucullus' channel to the sea, Murena's invention of artificial fishponds, Hirrus' gift of eels to Caesar, Hortensius' doting affection, and Fulvius Lippinus' cultivation of enormous snails (HN 9.167–74). Orata is the second example, and his accomplishments are described in some detail: invention of artificial oyster ponds, renovation of villas and the excellent taste of his oysters, which introduces a short digression within the digression (a catalogue of the best seafood from each region), and finally Orata's role in popularizing oysters from the Lucrine lake (HN. 9.168–9)
Pliny addresses the commercial aspect of Orata's activities more than any other source, using his elegant villas and gourmet seafood not to condemn luxury but to emphasize his success in business. He corrects Valerius Maximus, explaining that Orata's invention of oyster ponds was motivated by greed not appetite, nec gulae causa sed avaritiae (HN 9.168). Moreover, his oysters are evidence of Orata's keen business sense because they captured the market at a time when the only other source was Britain. Though Pliny does not explain, he and his readers could understand the economics of Orata's success. Since local oysters would sell at a lower price because transport costs were lower, a savvy businessman could set his price just low enough to undercut the competition but high enough to generate profit.Footnote 83 Pliny's description of Orata's real-estate dealing is consistent with this picture. He bought villas, renovated them adding fishponds and resold them at a profit: ostrearum vivaria primus omnium Sergius Orata invenit in Baiano aetate L. Crassi oratoris ante Marsicum bellum, nec gulae causa, sed avaritiae magna vectigalia tali ex ingenio suo percipiens, ut qui primus pensiles invenerit balineas, ita mangonicatas villas subinde vendendo (HN 9.168).Footnote 84 Rather than a symptom of immoral luxury, Pliny recognized Orata's success as a triumph of talent, ex ingenio suo.
Yet Pliny is ambivalent about Orata's success. The motive that he ascribes to Orata, avaritia, is a target of conventional moralizing. His description of Orata's renovated villas as mangonicatas also implies criticism because it has connotations of fraud or deceptive deals. Mangonicare most often refers to prettifying slaves with rouge to make them more attractive to buyers, a practice deceptive in itself and symbolic of the bad reputation of slave sellers.Footnote 85 So far, Pliny's critique echoes Cicero's in De officiis. But Pliny continues with a tone of approval: Orata changed the market for gourmet shellfish by branding oysters from the Lucrine lake as the most desirable and distinctive so that gourmets boasted of their ability to discern an oyster raised in the Lucrine lake from others: is primus optimum saporem ostreis Lucrinis adiudicavit … Orata Lucrina nobilitabat … ne lis esse inter duos sapores, nuper excogitatum famem longae advectionis a Brundisio conpascere in Lucrino (HN 9.168–9).Footnote 86 The same refined taste that Varro mocked is redeployed in Pliny to commend Orata's commercial success.
Pliny's ‘Orata’ also addresses the political element in elite identity. His use of nobilitare exploits an apparent contradiction between selling fish and senatorial status. Nobilitare, of course, echoes the status term, nobilis, but it most often occurs in battle contexts with a sense approaching epic kleos. Footnote 87 In Pliny, nobilis and its cognates have this range of meanings, though most often they mean simply ‘known’ or ‘known for’.Footnote 88 Here, used of marketing, nobilitare blurs the distinction between oysters and senators, gourmet taste and social status, aristocratic excellence and commercial success. Pliny's account thus engages with the same discourse that enlivened the puns on Orata's cognomen in Varro and Columella.Footnote 89 Similarly, his use of a legal term (lis) for the contest about taste of oysters may recall Cicero's criticism of Orata's legal wrangling. In Pliny, the contrast between mangonicare and nobilitare captures the ambivalence about Orata's entrepreneurial spirit and its disruptive effect on elite identity. The suggestion of deceit reflects anxiety about changing attitudes that confused rank and identity, undermining traditional moral categories and making it hard to know who should truly be regarded as nobilis.
Both Pliny and Valerius Maximus reflect elements of earlier portraits of Orata. Pliny, like the earlier writers, gives Orata mixed reviews because of his commercial success. Valerius Maximus by contrast creates a one-sided portrait that reduces Orata to a low-class parasite driven by his belly. His portrait has been especially influential because it has been read as background to earlier sources such as Cicero and Varro.Footnote 90 Along with the details, it seems, the inherent assumptions about status that inform Valerius Maximus' characterization of Orata have been projected back on to the earlier sources even though, in these sources, he appears in contexts where a real parasite would be out of place. As a result, these sources have been interpreted as indicating that Orata was a Campanian oyster farmer, an outsider different from the audience of De officiis and from the piscinarii in De re rustica. Such inferences are unwarranted because Valerius Maximus' ‘Orata’ owes more to rhetorical embroidery than to objective evidence of Orata's status or origins, which is anyway lacking. Pliny, in his remark about gula, recognizes Valerius Maximus' rhetorical colouring and rejects it, returning the focus to problems of elite identity arising from wealth and luxury.
CONCLUSION
Once the rhetoric is unpacked, it become clear that Orata was a member of the elite, if not a politically active senator, certainly one of their social group, whose behaviour and choices signalled diversity in elite practice and values. Traditionally, the inner elite built a reputation on military success, public service and family name, though wealth was always a necessary component. In the Late Republic, elite identity was destabilized both by the increase in wealth and changes in the composition of the senate, viz. recruitment of wealthy men from outside the inner elite by Caesar and Sulla. The inclusion of new senators like Hirrus and Murena among the fish fanciers may reflect their actual interests, but it also reflects diversity in this elite society overall. While commercial success could be recognized as a legitimate path to status, it also created wealth that could buy political influence for individuals who were traditionally outside the inner elite. Here economic and political criteria for status intersect in ways that upset traditional moral assumptions and status identity. Fishponds became a symbol of this uncertainty because they were visible and colourful and because they were popular among both elites and aspiring elites. A man's attitudes towards fish and fishponds served as a proxy for social identity in elite moralizing. Excess or errors reflected a gap between traditional morality and individual choices, exposing the instability of elite group identity.
‘Orata’ symbolizes an unresolved conflict about the proper relationship between wealth and status in elite identity at the end of the Republic. For Cicero, he was paradigmatic of troubling changes in traditional values. Valerius Maximus repeats this lesson with dramatizing details. Pliny the Elder responds to these negative portrayals accepting a broader definition of the elite. All these treatments respond to Varro's wordplay on Orata's name and the term nobilitas. Name was shorthand for reputation in Latin, especially the cognomen among the political elite.Footnote 91 Varro's wordplay probes the inherent instability of elite identity: how could insiders with exclusive status be distinguished from aspiring outsiders? Because Orata's name was associated with fish, he became a prominent example in the rhetoric of fishponds, representing an alternative path to elite status. Thus rhetoric and biography converge, and Orata can be recognized as a pivotal example of the politically and socially engaged entrepreneur, innovative and eager for profit, who supplied luxuries to politically powerful patrons in exchange for advancement.
