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CLAUDIAN'S ARMA: A METALITERARY PUN*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2015

Catherine Ware
Catherine Ware*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
Catherine.Ware@ed.ac.uk
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Extract

In his article ‘On the shoulders of giants', Don Fowler argues for the identification of the Aeneid with its opening arma, saying that in post-Augustan Latin verse arma is always seen as significantly intertextual. The word may apply to the Aeneid itself, or, more generally, to imperial epic or epic in the style of Virgil.

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Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 894 - 896
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

In his article ‘On the shoulders of giants', Don Fowler argues for the identification of the Aeneid with its opening arma, saying that in post-Augustan Latin verse arma is always seen as significantly intertextual.Footnote 1 The word may apply to the Aeneid itself, or, more generally, to imperial epic or epic in the style of Virgil.Footnote 2

This double meaning of arma enlivens the lengthy speculum principis in Claudian's panegyric of a.d. 398 on the fourth consulship of the emperor Honorius.Footnote 3 The speech is put in the mouth of Honorius' father, the emperor Theodosius, who, having dealt with the requirements for good government, had come to the arts of war. Honorius, who could have been no more than ten when the scene was supposed to have taken place,Footnote 4 responds by begging his father to let him go to battle (IV Cons. 362, 364):

usque adeone puer? …

per strages equitare libet. da protinus arma.

Am I still such a child? …

I want to ride through slaughter. Give me arms at once! …

The notion is itself humorous and Claudian reinforces the humour with a pun. Honorius is eager but unprepared. To support his demands, he thinks of appropriate comparisons, the youthful heroes of myth, the great sons of great fathers, and remembers Virgil's reference to Pyrrhus (IV Cons. 366–7):Footnote 5

aequalis mihi Pyrrhus erat, cum Pergama solus

uerteret et patri non degeneraret Achilli.

Pyrrhus was my age when alone he overthrew Troy

and he was no degenerate from his father Achilles.

But does Honorius remember properly? Da protinus arma is not ‘bring me my weapons' but ‘bring me my Aeneid’. He needs his text because his memory is at fault. The reference is there and Pyrrhus, here Neoptolemus, does indeed say that he is no degenerate, but the words are ironic and spoken as the young Pyrrhus is preparing to kill the aged Priam.Footnote 6 When Priam asks him to think of his father, Pyrrhus sneers and replies (Aen. 2.547–50):

referes ergo haec et nuntius ibis

Pelidae genitori. illi mea tristia facta

degeneremque Neoptolemum narrare memento.

nunc morere.

Go, then, and take this message to my father

Achilles. Tell him of my grim deeds

and remember to say that Neoptolemus is degenerate from his father.

Now die.

To compare Honorius and the savage Pyrrhus is far from complimentary and hardly excused by the words being given to Honorius himself. By means of the pun, Claudian removes the sting from the comparison and turns a potentially subversive intertext into a gentle joke at the young emperor's expense. Honorius' martial spirit shows him ready to fight, but his faulty memory of the Virgilian lines shows that his education is far from complete. His father's response, to go back to his books and study his literary models, is therefore completely appropriate (IV Cons. 396–7):

interea Musis, animus dum mollior, instes

et quae mox imitere legas

Until then, while you are young, pay attention to your books

and study those deeds which soon you will imitate.

Footnotes

*

My thanks are due to the Irish Research Council for postdoctoral funding and to Damien Nelis for his helpful comments and suggestions.

References

1 Fowler, D., ‘On the shoulders of giants’, MD 39 (1997), 13–34 Google Scholar, at 20; repr. in D. Fowler, Roman Constructions (Oxford, 2000), 115–37, at 123. On Virgil's own metaliterary use of arma, see G.B. Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation (Ithaca, NY and London, 1976), 72–3.

2 On this theme, see Bloch, A., ‘“Arma virumque” als heroisches Leitmotiv’, MH 27 (1970), 206–11Google Scholar. Ovid, punningly, refers to the age of heroes, Aeneas and the Aeneid in tertia post illam successit aenea proles, | saeuior ingeniis et ad horrida promptior arma (Met. 1.125–6), and specifically to the Aeneid in arma uirumque (Tr. 2.533–4); on Ovid's generic play with Virgilian arma, see Hinds, S., ‘ Arma in Ovid's Fasti—Part 1: genre and mannerism’, Arethusa 25 (1992), 81–112 Google Scholar, at 102–11; see also J.C. McKeown, Ovid: Amores. Volume II. A Commentary on Book One (Liverpool, 1989), 11–12. Statius' arma nocentia (Silv. 1.5.8) refers to his own Thebaid, while arma maiora (Silv. 4.4.95–6) refers to an epic he should be writing about the emperor. In Silius' opening ordior arma (1.1), ordior signals the annalistic past of Ennius and arma refers to Virgil; on Silius and Virgilian arma see Bassett, E.L., ‘Silius Punica 6.1–53’, CPh 54 (1959), 10–34 Google Scholar, at 13.

3 Panegyricus de Quarto Consulatu Honorii Augusti 214–418. On the didactic models for this speech, see C. Ware, ‘Learning from Pliny: Claudian's advice to the emperor Honorius’, in B.J. Gibson and R. Rees (edd.), Pliny the Younger in Late Antiquity (Arethusa 46.2) (Baltimore, 2013), 313–31.

4 The speech is delivered after Honorius' elevation to Augustus in a.d. 393. Honorius was born in a.d. 384. For the context of the speech, see A. Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970), 95–6.

5 On the serious import of this theme, see C. Ware, Claudian and the Roman Epic Tradition (Cambridge, 2012), 93–4.

6 Servius notes the grim humour: sarcasmos est, iocus cum amaritudine. These lines were the source of Tiberius' joke at Suet. Tib. 57.2 and Dio Cassius 57.14.2. See Power, T., ‘Pyrrhus and Priam in Suetonius' Tiberius ’, CQ 62 (2012), 430–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, following Turner, A., ‘A Vergilian anecdote in Suetonius and Dio’, CPh 38 (1943), 261 Google Scholar.