"Opposition Augustanism" and Pope's Epistle to Augustus

Opposition Augustanism" and Pope's Epistle to Augustus THOMAS KAMINSKI The term "Augustan" has suffered many indignities in recent years, especially since the publication of Howard Weinbrot's Augustus Caesar in "Augustan" England. Many scholars have declared the term ambiguous or useless, and many more have simply abandoned it silently. Much of the antagonism to "Augustan" can be traced directly to Weinbrot's work, in which he demonstrates that the "tradition of Augustus as usurping tyrant" was wide spread in the eighteenth century and was founded on the writings of Tacitus and other ancient historians.1 This point is in fact beyond dispute. But I wish to suggest that the verdict of die ancient historians, on which Weinbrot based so much of his argument, represented only one aspect of the "Augustan myth." Several of the post-Augustan Roman poets, especially Martial and Juvenal, depicted die court of Augustus as a place of benevolent patronage, and this depiction not only survived the vigorous attempts of seventeenth- and eighteenth -century historians to pull down Augustus's beneficent image, but actually became one of the bases of opposition attacks on George II and his minister, Sir Robert Walpole. In fact, the work of Martial and Juvenal contributed to die development of what I call "opposition Augustanism," which formed the basis of Pope's criticism of his monarch and society in die Epistle to Augustus. We must begin with the ancients. Wiüiin a hundred years of the death of Horace, Roman writers had begun to speak of die decline of letters, in which 57 58 / KAMINSKI Üiey included oratory as well as poetry. For Tacitus, the decline in oratory seemed traceable to the end of the Republic.2 But why were mere no more Vergils? To explain tins, Martial and his contemporaries pointed to the decay of patronage.3 Conditions for writing poetry were no longer what they had been under Augustus. No one valued genius anymore, they argued, and one does not write Aeneids on an empty stomach. We find this theme over and over in Martial. Take, for example, Epigrams, 1.107.1-6. Saepe mihi dicis, Luci carissime IuIi, "Scribe aliquid magnum: desidiosus homo es." otia da nobis, sed qualia fecerat olim Maecenas Flacco Vergilioque suo: condere victuras temptem per saecula curas et nomen flammis eripuisse meum.4 [Often you say to me, dearest Lucius Julius, "write something great. You're lazy." Give me such freedom from care as Maecenas once provided for his Horace and his Vergil; then I should try to compose works to live through the ages and to snatch my name from the flames.] In the eighth book of Epigrams, we find Martial telling his friend Flaccus, "Let there be Maecenases, and Vergils will not be wanting."5 When Nerva succeeded Domitian to the imperial throne, Martial hoped for a return to an Augustan age of patronage. In book 11 of his Epigrams, he boasts that his poems are wildly popular: they are read by all classes at Rome; the centurion on station along the Danube thumbs his book; even remote Britain sings his verses. And yet, quid prodest? nescit sacculus ista meus, at quam victuras poteramus pangere Chartas quantaque Pieria proelia flare tuba, cum pia reddiderint Augustum numina terris, et Maecenatem si tibi, Roma, darent! {Epigrams, 11.3.6-10) [What does it get me? My purse does not know it. But what everlasting pages I might write, what battles I might blare with Pierian horn, if, now that the gods have returned Augustus to the world (i.e., in the person of Nerva), they would also give you, Rome, a Maecenas!] Even an emperor, however wise and good, needs men of taste to encourage poets. "Opposition Augustanism" and Pope's Epistle to Augustus / 59 By far the greatest work expounding this theme is Juvenal's Seventh Satire . It is a scathing attack on the Roman nobility, who lavish money on charioteers and musicians but neglect literature. Even Juvenal, renowned during the eighteenth century for his defense of liberty and his hatred of tyrants,6 returns to the age of Augustus to find patrons who appreciated literary merit: quis tibi Maecenas, quis nunc erit aut...