People respond to incentives, so if you want something done, reach for your wallet. And if you want something done quickly, you had better pull out a large note.
Unsurprisingly in Roman epic things work more subtly – at least on the surface. C. outlines Roman economic morality, which is rooted in the socio-economic position and concerns of the Roman elite. Senators tended to shun association with commerce as undignified recognising that the volatility of gains from earned wealth could potentially leave them vulnerable to rapid changes in social status. They subscribed to the belief that the upper class male should devote his time to public affairs not commerce. Instead Roman elites preferably handled their affairs through the exchange of gifts and favours. Rather than conducting a commodity transaction, which reckons values carefully and leaves no debt or obligation, they weave a net of relations through reciprocal exchanges characterised by gratuitousness, granting more than necessary for an equal exchange. They look for an ongoing relationship that achieves a general sense of equity over the course of multiple transactions. The reciprocal model spawns the two extremes of the generous and the prodigal man, the commodity model that of the thrifty and the mercenary. C. goes on to examine how Roman economic morality applies to Latin epic providing two chapters each on Virgil's Aeneid, Lucan's Civil War and Statius' Thebaid. The first chapter of each pair surveys the socio-economic landscape of each poem, while the second focusses on the metaphoric use of economic language to gain insights into the thoughts and dispositions of their respective central characters. In Homeric epics the heroes favour reciprocity through gift exchange and mutual hospitality. Aeneas emulates this behaviour when exchanging gifts with Dido and Latinus. But while in the Iliad the Achaeans can be seen participating in commodity exchange without dishonour when buying wine, Virgil imposes Roman sensibilities on the Aeneid when making Dido the only (elite) character who does any shopping. Her purchase of the land for Carthage constitutes the sole literal and explicit commodity exchange in the poem – as we all know, a transaction that establishes an ultimately doomed business. Virgil clearly makes the Aeneid a projection of Roman aristocratic economic ethics rather than any attempt to embrace economic realities. While Aeneas' reciprocal exchanges make him a model of virtuous generosity, interactions with the divine are typically put into the commodity form of a do ut des contract, which lacks the stigma of commodity exchange between mortals. Thus, when Iarbas calls on Jupiter (Aen. 4.215–18) he does not hesitate to point out his many offerings in the latter's temples. The same framework applies to Priam's request that the gods may ‘repay’ Pyrrhus for killing Priam's son in front of him (Aen. 2.535–9). It therefore comes as no surprise that Juno pursues her agenda employing mercantile language for revenge and punishment as well as trade-offs with her partners in crime – hock a nymph, get a storm (Aen. 1.74). Reciprocity, however, has its pitfalls, too, and a theme of violated hospitium and deadly gifts runs through the Aeneid. C. insightfully discusses the characters of Dido, Nisus and Euryalus, as well as Turnus and Ascanius under these aspects. Nisus and Euryalus' mission is doomed from the start as they set out ‘to buy honour with their lives’ but instead end up ‘paying a penalty’ (Aen. 9.205–6 and 422–3). Turnus is characterised throughout as a character preferring commodity exchange, a view to which he holds true until his very end. When Latinus suggests granting Lavinia to Aeneas and offers compensatory gifts plus another Latin bride to Turnus (Aen. 12.21–5), the latter prefers to trade his life for glory (12.48–9). Under these auspices war in the Aeneid is the consequence of reciprocal exchanges such as the pact between Aeneas and Latinus based on gratia, fides and hospitium being corrupted by the mercantile interests of commodity exchanges.
When reading Lucan's Civil War C. characterises the epic's three main protagonists by their preferences for commodification and the calculating language of commerce (Caesar, unsurprisingly, and also Curio) and the hankering for a Republican system of reciprocity that has ceased to function in a world of civil war (Pompey). Pompey's death in particular exposes his over-reliance on aristocratic norms of hospitium (BC 9.131–2). C.'s persuasive account enlightens many of Lucan's more enigmatic expressions, the mercantile subtext of which had previously never been fully explored. Cato, the third major figure in Lucan's epic, stands out and is marked by bearing traits of his great ancestor Cato the Elder. He offers a model that incorporates reciprocity but also features of commodity exchange. His household's actions are dictated by his desire for utilitas, which causes him to offer his wife Marcia to his friend Hortensius. This yields a gain for a friend (= children) without any loss to Cato himself as if he was conducting a commodity exchange, but simultaneously he creates a social bond between two households as if conducting a reciprocal exchange. Careful and minimal use of resources both strengthens the individual household and also knits the Roman community together. Utilitas here stands for the virtuous form of the merchant's interest. That Cato's approach must fail is signified both by the fact that in reality Marcia never bore any children to Hortensius and by Cato's inability to return to his household once he has entered civil war.
In Statius' Thebaid C. highlights destructive consumption as the key dynamic in the poem's socio-economics. Jupiter follows the sacrificial logic of one and many, rather than one for many, when Menoeceus' deuotio, his self-sacrifice, in which he offers his life in exchange for peace, fails. He is ‘spent/wasted’ (impensus, Theb. 11.653) to feed the gods' uoluptas for violence. The gods enjoy the spectacle but give nothing in return, reciprocity has been rejected. C. discusses the characters of Coroebus, Niobe, Adrastus and Amphiaraus under this aspect. Only pietas and clementia offer some support to long-suffering humans, the former, however, takes the form of personal fidelity divorced from any interaction, and the latter offers individual consolation without the need for communication with divinities or mortals. While both sides unite in mourning the youth Parthenopaeus, they are united only by a common experience of misery rather than any reciprocity that unites families and nations. C. paints the world of the Thebaid as beset by the mercantile pursuit of self-interest and subject to an inexhaustible and calamitous desire for consumption (p. 240). In the final chapter C. proposes to read Eteocles and Polynices, whom the majority of scholars considers to be fundamentally similar, as fundamentally different. In his view they are characterised by their approach to exchange and consumption: Polynices lives in careless prodigality but lacks any taste for the pleasure of violence, while Eteocles calculates the human blood necessary to achieve his aims in a mercantile fashion and is not averse to delighting in the destruction he causes.
Throughout C. sharpens our sensibility for the language of exchange through masterful close readings of individual passages. His approach allows him to shed new light on even some of the most frequently discussed verses of Latin literature and adds to our understanding of the poetics of Latin epic. C. is to be congratulated on this beautifully produced, well-argued and original volume.
