Gaius Cilnius Maecenas has become more than simply a historical person: he has evolved into an idea and a symbol, a byword for patronage and generosity. For someone associated with a life of shady retirement, Maecenas occupies a strikingly prominent position at the intersection of culture, politics and the arts. Emily Gowers’s ambitious new study investigates the history of this compelling yet allusive figure, examining the texts that shaped Maecenas’ image from the Augustan poets and their early Imperial successors to his post-classical reception. G. uncovers a protean Maecenas, appearing variously as Augustus’ ruthless associate, an ideal patron of a golden circle of poets, a tyrant susceptible to Eastern luxuries and morbid fears, and an infamous exemplum of mollitia, whose style of living and of speech was ‘as loose as it was louche’ (7) — a veritable Vertumnus (223–5).
G. stresses that her ‘overarching assumption will be that poets construct their patrons on the page and that Maecenas’s individuality is not recoverable from their works’ (49). This premise allows G. to pursue Maecenas’ vestigia through the works that represent him, exploring how each text differently constructs a Maecenas shaped to conform with its discursive aims and generic orientation.
G. begins with a critical overview of Maecenas’ life, previewing the themes that will emerge from his ‘multiple biographies’ (1). In subsequent chapters, G. focuses on Maecenas’ manifestations in specific authors, works, periods, sites and materialities. Ch. 2 examines Maecenas’ role as patron, largely as represented in Horace, who, more than any of his contemporaries, set the parameters for Maecenas’ later receptions. As G. aptly asks, ‘to what extent would there be “Maecenas” without Horace?’ (51). Virgil’s Georgics, examined in ch. 3, mentions Maecenas much more sparingly. Yet G., observing that ‘it may be the sheer vagueness of his representation that makes Maecenas so versatile an addressee’ (111), finds subtle traces of him throughout the poem: for example, Virgil’s polysemic bees, when focalised through Maecenas’ eyes (Georgics 4.1–5), evoke the aesthete’s ‘topsy-turvy’ subversion of scale (143), the patron’s household (144) and ‘Eastern-style kingship’ (147). Ch. 4 turns to Horace’s Odes, characterised by G. as a ‘hedonistic excursus from the here and now of masculine-centred Roman politics’ (153). Horace’s lyric Maecenas suits his inflection of the genre — ‘a glittering, stately, melancholy figure’, who, like Cleopatra (Carm. 1.37), is tinged with Eastern and Dionysiac connotations (154). Yet lest we mistake Horace’s fellow symposiast for the ‘real’ Maecenas, G. reminds us that Horace’s lyric addressee is less a ‘historical personality than a tissue of textual memories from Greek poetry and historiography of those tyrants whose cares were sung away by lyric poets’ (154–5). Completing the Augustan sequence, Ch. 5 explores Propertius’ elegiac Maecenas, both an ‘authoritative role model’ and ‘a mirror for the ambidextrous relationship of elegiac poetry to the (notionally) separate worlds of love and war’ (197). Given that Propertius mentions Maecenas more infrequently and with less evident emotion than Horace, some scholars have questioned whether Maecenas was truly a patron to the elegist. Yet, as G. convincingly argues, the ‘oscillation’ between gestures of ‘distance and contrast’ and those of ‘intimacy and respect’ is exactly what is at stake in the patronage relation (200).
In ch. 6, ‘Maecenas as a Figure of Style’, Maecenas’ sometimes enigmatic appearances in the Elder Seneca encapsulate his transition from staunch defender of poets to ‘master of proto-Tacitean innuendo’ (243–4). By the time we get to the Younger Seneca’s vicious hit piece (Epistles 114), the discourse has shifted — for reasons thoughtfully canvassed by G., including the evident pleasure Seneca takes in shattering the image of ‘the ideal poetic circle that Horace so carefully fashioned in his Satires’ (266). In the Neronian and Flavian receptions of Maecenas discussed in ch. 7, ‘Everyone is a Pest … shut out of a charmed circle’ (270). There follow a short but fascinating exploration of Maecenas’ association with seals and gems (ch. 8) and a survey of the properties and structures ascribed to him (ch. 9). G. is sceptical as to the very existence of Maecenas’ ‘tower’, casts doubt on imaginative hypotheses about his so-called ‘auditorium’ and, in general, throws cold water on the ‘fusion of poetry and life’ some have sought in actual or supposed material remnants (356, citing O. Murray, JRS 75 (1985), 43). This matches her overall scepticism regarding attempts to excavate a real Maecenas from the ruins, including scholarly commonplaces such as Maecenas’ gift of Horace’s Sabine farm (161). Such rigorous scepticism contrasts with G.’s (to my mind, fruitfully) experimental and open approach to Maecenas’ textual presences, the many instances where she discerns a spectral Maecenas haunting passages in which he is not explicitly mentioned: Propertius’ Vertumnus (223–5), Pliny’s praise of Titinius Capito (313–14), Virgil’s gardener (148–50). Is this a methodological contradiction? Perhaps not. What might be termed a ‘referentiality bias’ once dominated and still influences approaches to ancient lives. G. contributes to a broader tendency in recent scholarship seeking to redress the imbalance.
The book closes with a survey of Maecenas’ ‘afterlives’ (ch. 10). Given that this, too, is rich in insights, it may seem ungrateful to find fault. Nevertheless, crowding Maecenas’ post-classical reception into 39 pages feels cursory and arbitrary. I might have preferred two or three exemplary deep dives to a series of quick takes. But this is a small complaint. Rome’s Patron is an expansive treatment of a fascinating figure, at once authoritative and enlivened with keen observations on nearly every page. Throughout, G. writes with precision and flair. Even the translations are worth savouring: e.g. ‘downwardly mobile ambition’ (2: praepostera ambitio, Tac., Ann. 16.17), ‘style consultant’ (285: elegantiae arbiter, Tac., Ann. 16.18), ‘it’s all good’ (25: benest, Maecenas, fr. 1L = 4C = 187H). An appropriately stylish treatment of a man known for his unforgettable style.
