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Beyond Disgust: The Politics of Fastidium in Livy’s AUC1

Ayelet Haimson Lushkov

The topic of this paper is the Latin word fastidium (often translated ‘disgust’; OLD s.v. 1-

5), and the largely political and rhetorical contexts in which the word tends to appear in

the Roman historian Livy. As Robert Kaster has shown, Roman fastidium came in two

main forms: first, a more or less reflexive disgust, for instance as aroused by rotten flesh

or a foul stench, and usually leading to a physical and visceral reaction, a sense that is

generally absent from Livy, at least in its most physical forms. The second type is a more

calculated version of the emotion, wherein disgust emerges not automatically, but as a

conscious aversion to those things one perceives as beneath one. Kaster refers to this type

of fastidium as ‘deliberative ranking’ or ‘aversive connoisseurship’.2

Of the two options, political disgust hews more closely to the ranking kind, which

is to say that it is moral rather than physical in nature.3 It also tends to be either

1 I am grateful to Don Lateiner, Dimos Spatharas, Pramit Chaudhuri, and the participants

at the Disgust panel at the Edinburgh CCC for their help and comments. I am especially

grateful, however, to Bob Kaster, with whose work this paper engages, and from whose

generous notes it benefits tremendously.

2 Kaster 2005: 104-33.

3 On moral and physical disgust: Herz 2012: 205: ‘physical disgust and moral disgust are

connected (i.e., in the brain), but they are not two sides of the same coin’; Kelly 2011:

144 on the ‘co-opt thesis’, which holds that the ‘disgust response acquired a number of

auxiliary functions in addition to protecting against poisons and parasites… More

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rhetorically manufactured or hypocritical in nature, standing in for a host of other

emotional states, and located not in the speaker, but rather in the audience.4 Thus,

political disgust is semantically flexible, and its rhetorical presentation is often crucial in

demarcating its type and scope; indeed, as I shall argue, rhetoric is responsible for

recruiting disgust even and especially when none exists. Finally, political disgust is

motivated and interested rather than purely instinctual: it can be reactionary or

constructivist, but can also promote or facilitate change. In this, at least, descriptions of

fastidium are not terminal – they do not end simply in registering the emotion – but rather

the idea of disgust and its potential overcoming initiates a dialogic process aimed at

removing or neutralizing that sense of disgust.5 Again, rhetoric is crucial, since it allows

the speaker to recruit disgust not only to exclude or define a group identity, but also to

harness that sense of moral superiority to effect some change, if only in the mentality of

the audience.

Those three things – politics, rhetoric, and change – are closely interrelated, and

they comprise a significant percentage of Livy’s usage. The word fastidium and its verbal

cognates occur in Livy 15 times, divided fairly evenly across the first and fourth decade,

specifically, it became involved in the cognition of social norms and group boundary

markers.’

4 For the mis-identification of disgust and anger: Herz 2012: 202 ‘when we say we are

“disgusted”, it is in fact more likely that we are angry’; Hertz and Hinds 2013.

5 On the necessary (and Nietzschean) shift from ‘defensive expenditure’ to ‘aggressive

pathos’ entailed in overcoming disgust, see Menninghaus 2003: 167-203.

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with only one mention in the third decade.6 All fifteen instances occur in overtly political

contexts, whether in Rome or elsewhere, so that it’s fairly safe to say that fastidium in the

AUC is fundamentally a political emotion, by which I mean it is an emotion that occurs in

political contexts and about political things. Further, fastidium seems fairly consistently

to be a contional sentiment, that is, found in the context of debate and argumentation,

specifically in the contio, and frequently invoked in speeches given there. It is also a

sentiment located in people or actions other than the speaker himself – of the fifteen

instances, only two, in speeches by Fabius (28.40.9-10, to which I will return below)

along with the tribune Valerius in the discussion of the lex Oppia (34.5.13), refer to the

self, and even those are in the oblique subjunctive – ‘I should feel fastidium’, implying,

‘but I do not’. Of the remaining thirteen, nine ascribe fastidium to others or urge them to

feel or not feel fastidium – e.g., at an alliance with Rome (42.62.14), at admitting

plebeians to the consulship or the priesthood (4.3.13, 6.40.8, 6.41.2), or at holding certain

magistracies (32.7.10, with further discussion below). The last four instances are of Livy

describing the existence or non-existence of fastidium: twice related to Africanus

(34.54.7, 38.50.12, on the latter of which more below), and twice in the context of two

separate cases of agrarian legislation (2.41.4, 3.1.7). So fastidium, we can add, is not just

something that happens to other people, but more specifically it’s an emotional absent

6 They are: 2.41.4, 3.1.7, 4.3.13 (twice), 6.40.8, 6.41.2, 10.8.6, 28.40.9, 32.7.10, 32.21.30,

32.21.35, 34.5.13, 34.54.7, 38.50.12, 42.62.13.

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presence, something which nobody is explicitly said to feel, but which is rhetorically

useful to invoke.7

Here it might be useful to contrast the impersonal verb piget, which also connotes

a feeling of disgust.8 Like fastidium, piget is used reservedly by Livy: only 13 times, of

which the majority occur in the first and third decade. All 13 instances are all products of

speech. Unlike fastidium, the brand of disgust described by piget is actually felt, not least

by Livy himself, who uses it no less than five times to describe his aversion to setting

down a particular account or particular sources, and twice more to describe in his own

voice the feelings of his characters.9 Indeed, piget seems usually to describe a simple

process: if you feel disgust at a particular situation, as the use of pigere suggests that you

do, you must in consequence act in a certain decisive way. Thus the Sabine women

exhort their husbands and fathers to turn on them, if they are disgusted at their marriages

(1.13.3 si conubii piget), while Aemilius Paulus, on the eve of departure for war, suggests

to his fellow Romans that their aversion to fighting (44.22.14 si quem id facere piget)

should result also in an aversion to advising. In all these cases, disgust is conceived as an

occurrent emotion, that is, an emotion that someone is actually feeling, rather than a

7 See in this context Miller 1997: 182: ‘the fastidious person calls attention to himself

with regards to just those facets of life which decorum requires that we must publicly

pretend not to exist.’

8 On the dynamics of piget in Latin more generally, see Kaster in this volume.

9 Piget in Livy’s own voice: sources: 9.18.4, 10.18.7, 10.31.15, 23.5.12, 26.49.1;

editorializing: 8.2.12, 26.37.6. Piget in character speech: 1.13.3, 5.4.12, 5.53.7, 5.53.9,

42.40.9, 44.22.14.

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rhetorically constructed disposition. Fastidium, on the other hand, I argue, shows exactly

the opposite tendency: unlike its more direct cousin piget, fastidium is deployed to

manipulate an audience, gesturing to a feeling one could feel but doesn’t, rather than to

attest to any felt emotion.

For reasons of space, this paper will focus on four particularly rich cases: the

election of Flamininus to the consulship (32.7.10); the speech of Appius Claudius on

plebeian suffrage (6.40.1-41.12); the speech of Fabius during the Sicilian debate in book

28, which is the only occurrence of fastidium in the third decade (28.40.9); and the

speech of Scipio Africanus during his trial in 187 B.C. (38.50.4-60.10, with the speech in

38.50.12), which I argue reciprocates the earlier speech of Fabius. This group isn’t

necessarily exemplary, but all four together illustrate the aspects of fastidium outlined

above: its contional context, its versatility as an emotional signifier, and its function as an

absent presence.

Contional Disgust: Fastidium, Superbia and Indignatio

In 199 B.C., Flamininus, the future Liberator of Greece, stood for the consulship, not

only before meeting the minimum age threshold, but also without working his way

through the cursus honorum.10 Two tribunes of the plebs therefore attempted to obstruct

his candidacy, and while personal animosities cannot be ruled out, the tribunes’ speech

focuses not on Flamininus himself, but rather on a moral and ethical objection to his

rushing the proper order of a political career:

10 Haimson Lushkov 2015: 154-8, with further references.

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quae ipsa per M. Fuluium et M’. Curium tribunos plebis impediebantur, quod T.

Quinctium Flamininum consulatum ex quaestura petere non patiebantur: iam

aedilitatem praeturamque fastidiri nec per honorum gradus, documentum sui

dantes, nobiles homines tendere ad consulatum, sed transcendendo media summa

imis continuare. (Livy 32.7.8-12).

These [i.e. the elections] were held up by M. Fulvius and M’ Curius, tribunes of

the plebs, because they would not allow T. Quinctius Flamininus to seek the

consulship after the quaestorship: they said that noblemen now spurned the

aedileship and the praetorship, and did not strive for the consulship through the

steps of office, thus giving proof of themselves; instead, through skipping the

middle offices, they joined the lowest to the highest.

Here, most of the conditions of fastidium identified above are present: the context is

contional, that is in an assembly of the Roman people; Flamininus is alleged to feel

fastidium, but there is no demonstrable proof that he actually feels this way; and even if

he did feel fastidium, it is doubtless not a physical recoiling he feels towards the prospect

of being aedile or praetor, but rather a snobbery of which the tribunes disapprove (cf.

OLD s.v. ‘fastidium’ 4 a-b). The result is a protracted debate through which the

normative boundaries of Roman political life are slightly expanded to allow for

Flamininus’ canvass, thereby setting a precedent for later generations.11

11 Flamininus is neither first nor last to face this problem, a fact that attests that such

normative realignments were a continuous preoccupation: cf., e.g., the aedilician election

of Scipio Africanus (Livy 25.2.6–7), and the election of Scipio Aemilianus to the

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What makes this speech particularly interesting, however, is the fact that the

tribunes take issue with Flamininus not in his own right, but rather as a representative of

a larger tendency by young noblemen to feel fastidium towards the aedileship and

praetorship, and therefore to try and skip them, showing thereby the kind of fastidium

Kaster calls ‘deliberative ranking’.12 More broadly, however, deliberative ranking, and

the fastidious ambition it generates, describes an attitude fostered by the republican

political system, where elections functioned as an entrée to higher offices and an

increasingly exclusive political club. This attitude existed in some tension with another

prevailing ideology among the Roman ruling class, that of parity among equals. Here, an

ethic of ciuilitas – the civic feeling that regulated republicanism – policed a fine line

between ambition and superbia, the quintessential quality of kings and tyrants.13 The

tribunes’ ascription of fastidium, therefore, not only constructs Flamininus as displaying

the emotion, but also imagines him as critical of the cursus honorum, and thereby setting

consulship of 147 B.C. (App. Pun. 112). In all cases, the people’s enthusiasm trumps any

legal considerations, but Flamininus’ is the only case in which disgust is explicitly

evoked.

12 Kaster 2005: 113 defines this kind of fastidium more generally as applying both to

one’s idea of oneself as superior, and to one’s idea of the object of fastidium as inferior.

13 I am grateful to Bob Kaster for drawing my attention to this point. On superbia as the

quality of kings in Roman political discourse: Dunkle 1967, Baraz 2008, Arena 2014:

244-5. For ciuilitas as the quality of a citizen, cf. e.g. Livy 38.56.9, with Briscoe 2008:

199 ad loc., and Wallace-Hadrill 1972.

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himself also against the prevailing spirit of aristocratic cooperation.14 In other words,

built into the tribunes’ speech is a reaction to an imagined insult, a feeling of having been

the recipient of someone else’ ranking fastidium, and in turn feeling indignant, angry, or

themselves disgusted at Flamininus’ presumption.

Deeply embedded within a political (and especially in a contional) context,

fastidium – even an imagined one – generates a response, which itself demands resolution,

such that the whole political community is now embroiled in a debate on how the cursus

honorum ought to work, and, equally, what emotions could be felt in relation to it. Thus,

in Flamininus’ case, I would suggest, fastidium actually signifies not felt disdain, but

rather a more dispositional form of the emotion, which to say a modified version of

aristocratic superbia. Flamininus, the tribunes allege, is the kind of person who feels

haughty disdain, where in the eyes of the tribunes he is supposed to feel not pride but a

more civic-minded humility, pietas, or uerecundia, or some other type of sensus

communis, the shared sentiment that makes for group solidarity, and which would have

naturally held him back from his display of civic fastidium.

Indeed, superbia can be related to fastidium quite frequently in Livy, but perhaps

nowhere more so than in association with Appius Claudius Crassus, grandson of the

decemvir, and scion of a family that very much embodied aristocratic hauteur. Claudius’

long speech at the end of book 6 lays out the case against the Licinio-Sextian rogations, a

14 Note here the traditional aristocratic complaints about elections as inepta res (Cic. de

Orat. 1.112, Val. Max. 4.5.4), in which societal gradations were perverted as the high and

mighty had to beg (petere, rogare, supplicare) for offices from the common crowd: Cic.

Planc. 7-9, 11-2, Tatum 2013: 133n. 3.

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set of reforms which established the plebs as a more or less equal participant in Roman

politics.15 It is a locus classicus of Roman class bias, and fastidium duly appears twice as

a means of discrediting the tribunes Licinius and Sextius as tyrants in disguise:

1) an hoc, si Claudiae familiae non sim nec ex patricio sanguine ortus sed unus

Quiritium quilibet, qui modo me duobus ingenuis ortum et uiuere in libera ciuitate

sciam, reticere possim L. illum Sextium et C. Licinium, perpetuos, si dis placet,

tribunos, tantum licentiate nouem annis quibus regnant sumpsisse, ut uobis negent

potestatem liberam suffragii non in comitiis, non in legibus iubendis se

permissuros esse? ‘sub condicione’ inquit, ‘nos reficietis decimum tribunos.’ quid

est aliud dicere ‘quod petunt alii, nos adeo fastidimus ut sine mercede magna non

accipiamus’? (Livy 6.40.7-9)

But even if I did not belong to the Claudian family, nor were I born of patrician

stock, but merely as one of the citizens I knew that I was born of two free parents

and lived in a free city, would I be able to keep silence, when that L. Sextius and

C. Licinius, tribunes of the plebs – heavens! – practically for life, have become so

impudent over their nine years of kingship, that they deny you the free exercise of

your suffrage – both in elections and in passing laws! ‘You’ll have us as tribunes

for the tenth time on one condition’, they say. But how is that different from

saying: ‘what others strive for, we deem so beneath us that we won’t accept it

without due compensation.’

15 On the speech: Kraus 1994: 305-27, Oakley 1997: 695-716.

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2) quomodo extorqueant, non quomodo petant honores, quaerunt; et ita maxima

sunt adepturi, ut nihil ne pro minimis quidem debeant; et occasionibus potius

quam uirtute petere honores malunt. est aliquis, qui se inspici, aestimari fastidiat,

qui certos sibi uni honores inter dimicantes competitores aequum censeat esse, qui

se arbitrio uestro eximat, qui uestra necessaria suffragia pro uoluntariis et serua

pro liberis faciat. (Livy 6.41.1-2)

They ask how to extort honors from you, not how to compete for them; they will

get the greatest rewards, yet owe you for not even the smallest ones; they prefer to

seek offices that are convenient rather than on their merits. There’s many a man,

the kind too proud to be inspected and evaluated, who would think it fair that

honors should go to him alone among all his squabbling competitors, who would

remove himself from your judgment, who would make your vote compulsory

rather than voluntary, and enslaved rather than free.

Both these usages share some structural commonalities: they ascribe fastidium to a

putative opponent (Licinius and Sextius in the first passage, an imagined aliquis in the

second), and they embed fastidium within the rhetoric of regnum and a loss of libertas. In

this, they are an inverted and more explicit version of the rhetoric of the tribunes in the

Flamininus passage, for whom Flamininus’ presumed fastidium hints at radicalism, but

not necessarily tyrannical aspiration. Claudius carries the rhetoric of superbia to its

logical extension, but what matters more in setting the two instances side by side is that

fastidium works to produce the same effect, but from diametrically opposite ideological

positions. Of course, the irony of Appius Claudius’ complaints about tribunician superbia

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is rich and plentiful.16 As such it appropriates and reverses exactly the kind of rhetoric

normally applied to Appius Claudius himself, and indeed precisely the disdain of which

Flamininus was accused.

Claudius refers to this part of his speech as de indignitate, and this perceived

diminution of public prestige continues the association of fastidium with the ranking

snobbery Kaster has identified, as an emotion which intends to police and maintain the

social order.17 But of course there is also considerable irony in Claudius’ presentation,

since he is manifestly urging the plebeians to feel the resentment he himself feels for

them and their tribunes. The fastidium he imputes to their leaders is self-reflexive, not

only in pitting plebeians against other plebeians, but also in encouraging the plebs

towards an emotional congruity with Claudius by way of indignation against their own

leaders. His ascription of fastidium to either the tribunes or to the imaginary aliquis is

therefore far from facile, but reveals instead a shrewd emotional transference. As in the

case of Flamininus, ranking fastidium here appears as nasty surprise, a revelation that

threatens to remove the dignitas of the tribunes, thus preventing any attack on Claudius’

16 Kraus 1994: 320 ‘a masterpiece of perversity’. For the rhetorical strategy of the speech

more generally: Walter 2001.

17 6.41.4 de indignitate satis dictum est – etenim dignitas ad homines pertinent (‘I’ve said

enough about the loss of prestige – for truly, prestige is a matter for mortal men’). On

indignitas as encapsulating the idea that a man ‘ought to be worthy of office by reason of

his ability, integrity, and, perhaps, birth’, see Oakley 1997: 706 s.v. ‘indignos’. On class

bias and disgust, see, e.g, Miller on Orwell’s dictum that ‘the lower classes smell’: Miller

1997: 235-56.

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own dignitas. Fastidium’s association with snobbery is therefore bi-directional: to feel

fastidium is to feel above one’s peers and one’s inferiors, and to be the object of fastidium

is to be encouraged to feel below them. But in the attribution of superbia, which recruits

the full range of anti-tyrannical sentiment in Rome, the accusations work precisely in the

opposite direction: they impute fastidium, i.e., superior feeling, as a means of presenting

the fastidiosus as one who ought to belong below, rather than above, his peers, and

towards whom fastidium is the correct response.

Together, this set of emotions embeds fastidium within a range of feelings of

superiority: an accusatory gesture, ascribing to someone a dispositional feeling of disgust

towards his fellow men, or towards the mechanisms that keep those men in balance with

each other. But fastidium emerges also as a training mechanism, an attempt to marshal

emotions to teach particular kinds of civic feeling.18 As such, fastidium is also a marker

for resistance to political change, an aversion not to a specific person or custom, but to

change itself. Both the Flamininus and Claudius instances showcase the same aversion:

an attempt to block a new phenomenon by categorizing it as unpleasant. This type of

fastidium is therefore inherently reactionary, but it is invoked, almost by default, in a

losing cause: the senate allows Flamininus to stand, and the Licinio-Sextian rogations

pass, despite Appius’ best efforts.

18 On the sociology of emotions in politics more generally, see Miller 1997: 206-34,

Berezin 2002, Clarke, Hogget, and Thompson 2006. On emotions as a political guide in

Rome: Haimson Lushkov 2015: 46-60; for the quite different idea expressed, e.g., in

Thucydides’ Funeral Oration: Palmer 1982, Ludwig 2002: 319-76, Wohl 2002: 30-72.

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Fastidium and the emotional praeteritio

In contrast to the previous two instances, which invoke fastidium as a ranking mechanism,

the following section explores Kaster’s first category of disgust – the per-se recoil – as a

rhetorical mannerism. A few qualifications are in order. Kaster defines per-se disgust as

recoil from a noisome object, without the need to make finer distinctions of type: one is

disgusted at rotten fruit, rather than specifically rotten pears or apples. This kind of

disgust is bodily and immediate, and as such can be forgiven as not entirely the

responsibility of the disgusted person.19 The following examples invoke fastidium as

taedium, a satiety or surfeit, in this case of (self-)praise, and this state may well have been

felt bodily, as both Cicero and Quintilian hint.20 It is not, however, the recoil from a

physically repellent object, but rather the result of a discursively constructed norm. More

specifically, it is the absence of such anticipated feelings of disgust that both examples

have in common, a fastidium that appears only to reassure the audience that it does not, in

fact, exist.

19 Kaster 2005: 105-12; for a scientific account of human recoil from the disgusting, cf.

e.g., Curtis 2013: 19-35, 113-5.

20 On praise in republican political oratory, see Hölkeskampf 2011, Steel 2011; on the

invidiousness of self-praise: Tempest 2011. On oratorical excess and fastidium: Quint.

Inst. 9.4.116 optime…de illa iudicant aures, quae…redundantia et nimia fastidiunt (‘the

ears are especially adept at judging these things, which…abhor what is excessive and

unnecessary’), cf. Cic. de Or. 3.100. On the problems of stopping praise-speech: Gibson

2010 on Pliny’s Panegyricus.

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The first of the two examples comes from the first day in the Trial of the Scipios,

the protracted (and highly problematic) account of various attempts to make the brothers

Publius and Lucius Scipio stand trial for embezzlement:

iussus dicere causam sine ulla criminum mentione orationem adeo magnificam

de rebus ab se gestis est exorsus ut satis constaret neminem umquam

nequem melius neque uerius laudatum esse. dicebantur enim ab <eo>

eodem animo ingenioque quo gesta erant, et aurium fastidium aberat, quia

pro periculo, non in gloriam referebantur. (Livy 38.50.11-12)

Commanded to plead his case, without any mention of the accusation, he [Scipio

Africanus] began a speech so grand on his own deeds that there was general

agreement that no one had ever offered better or more truthful praise. For his

deeds were spoken in the same spirit in which they were accomplished, and he

avoided the disgust of his listeners, because they were brought up as a bolster

from danger, and not with an eye to glory.

The elision of Africanus’ speech is the first thing to notice, an account of his own res

gestae that Livy describes as an oratio magnifica – a really good speech, to be sure, but

also a speech that quite literally ‘makes great’ the accomplishments of Africanus and

thereby the man himself. More important still is the response of the audience: they agree

that this is the best – and most truthful – praise-speech, and they do not experience

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fastidium at hearing this self-praise.21 The absence of fastidium is, we assume, surprising,

given the self-praising content of the speech, and it also confirms its success, so good that

even the emotional side-effect of excessive praise is avoided. The absence of fastidium is

also pointed, precisely because noting it is unnecessary; had Livy not reported the

absence of fastidium, there is no reason to think the reading audience would have thought

it had occurred, however familiar they may have been with the phenomenon of over-

indulgence in praise. Livy’s account is, effectively, an emotional praeteritio: I could be

disgusted by what you, Scipio, are saying or doing, but the circumstances are extenuating,

and you’re doing it so well, that I simply do not feel the fastidium I might otherwise have

felt. The effect is a framework around which to structure our fastidium-response: a

context – boastful praise – in which fastidium is plausible and legitimate as a response, as

well as some criteria to assuage or prevent the emotion from occurring. The somewhat

odd result, however, is that we as readers are effectively told not to feel fastidium at a

speech we did not read, and which we could not have felt fastidium towards in the first

place, had Livy not graciously told us it was even an option. Livy has sketched out a

typical fastidium-inducing situation, only to immediately diffuse its potential to disgust.

Clearly, then, the important thing for Livy in this case are the elements of Scipio’s

presentation that prevent fastidium from arising: that this is a defense speech, superbly

executed, and truthful, but also that the whole business is a bit fastidium-inducing at

21 Haimson Lushkov 2010: 111-3. On the phrase fastidium aurium: Briscoe 2008: 181.

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heart.22 In other words, fastidium here works as a signifier without a signified – there is

no fastidium here at all, there is just the potential for it, and the conditions that prevent it.

Why then invoke it? I have already indicated as a partial answer that the structures

of value that govern Roman rhetoric demand it: self-praise draws fastidium. But it is also

worth noting that the absence of fastidium in the episode taken as a whole escalates. In

the course of his defense, Africanus engages in ever more grandiose acts, including

drawing the audience away from the trial and leading them around Rome in thanksgiving

for his victory at Zama. The audience, for their part, buy it wholesale, so that they go

from a mere non-feeling of fastidium to active and enthusiastic participation and support.

The emotional praeteritio thus appears to have significance for the ways the episode is

plotted, since it both excuses Scipio’s braggadocio and helps construct his behavior

exactly as disgust-inducing.

Scipio’s success matters on several levels. The most topical is that the audience’s

inclination towards Scipio explains in part the power dynamics between Scipio and the

tribunes, and in part the conclusion of the whole episode, which turns out to be a lesson

in the management of excessive inuidia.23 Despite the legal victories achieved by the

tribunes – Africanus in exile and Asiaticus found guilty and fined – book 38 ends with a

resounding moral victory for the Scipios: 38.60.10 uerteratque Scipionum inuidia in

praetorem et consilium eius et accusatores (‘and envy towards the Scipios turned against

22 On self-praise in defense speeches, see also Spatharas 2011 on Plutarch, and Whitton

2013 on Pliny, Ep. 2.4 ad loc.

23 Inuidia is thematic in the episode, occurring seven times: 38.51.5, 52.1, 53.7, 54.10,

56.11, 59.7, 60.10.

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the praetor and his council and the prosecutors.’) 24 If the episode ends up being really

about inuidia, the jealousy which Scipio’s excessive success had produced in the tribunes,

the absence of fastidium turns out to be of crucial importance. Devoid of one of the

markers of disgust – the feeling of having had too much of a good thing – the audience is

in effect inoculated not only against disgust, but also against the jealousy it invites.

One of the many interesting questions this passage raises is about the contrast

between the internal and external audience. Scipio’s internal audience feels no fastidium,

but what is the reading audience meant to feel? The fact that the speech is absent from the

historical record raises considerable problems, since whatever it was Scipio may have

said, we have no direct access to it. Instead, the reading audience must either rely on a

generic familiarity with the boastful speeches of self-praise, or refer instead to a more

readily available narrative of Scipio’s res gestae, that is to Livy himself.25 In this way,

spoken res gestae are transmuted into the written narrative historiography, importing also

a small element of generic competition in parallel with the emotional response.

Historiography subsumes oratory in its ability to preserve accounts of the deeds of the

past, since Livy implicitly presents himself as the one able to reconstruct either the

narratives of Africanus’ career, or the events of the trial.

Alongside this passage, I want to discuss a passage, which seems to me to be

almost its mirror image. This passage comes from a senatorial speech made by Fabius

Maximus late in the Second Punic War, as part of a debate on whether or not Scipio – not

coincidentally the interlocutor – should take the war to African soil. In the face of almost

24 On the survival of the Scipios: Gruen 1994, Haimson Lushkov 2014.

25 For the authorial contestation this entails in the episode: Haimson Lushkov 2010.

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overwhelming support for the African plan, Fabius begins his speech with a captatio

beneuolentiae, defending himself from two prospective accusations: one is that he likes

delaying, his quintessential characteristic, and the other that his objections are rooted in

simple jealousy:26

a qua suspicione si me neque uita acta et mores mei neque dictatura cum quinque

consulatibus tantumque gloriae belli domique partae uindicat ut propius

fastidium eius sim quam desiderium, aetas saltem liberet. quae enim mihi

aemulatio cum eo esse potest qui ne filio quidem meo aequalis sit? (Livy 28.40.9-

10)

If my life and deeds and customs do not clear me of this charge, nor my

dictatorship, nor my five consulships and so much glory accrued at home and

abroad that it produces almost more disgust in me than joy, surely then my age

will clear me of suspicion? For what comparison can there be between me and

someone who isn’t even the same age as my own son?

The mirroring effect between the two passages is clear enough: both passages are

moments of intense self-praise, indeed, of translating achievement into political capital

through the use of self-praise. We also find here the emotional praeteritio, and this time

doubled. First, Fabius worries that it will cause fastidium to list his achievements, but

does it anyway. His fastidium-avoidance then acts as a model for the audience: ‘you

could be feeling fastidium, but you see me feeling it, and so you won’t.’ In either case,

Fabius plays both speaker and audience, in a situation parallel to that we saw with

26 On Fabius as the quintessential ‘delayer’: Roller 2011.

19

Africanus, except that the fastidium here is nearer the surface. The listing of offices

almost makes Fabius sick of himself, though of course really it doesn’t at all and is

instead a joy. This kind of emotional praeteritio, adverting to an emotion that isn’t

present, seems to be at some level apotropaic: ‘if I tell you that you shouldn’t be

disgusted at something, I have a rhetorical advantage, though of course I’ve also now

planted the idea of disgust in your head – so it’s really quite a good thing I’ve told you

not to be disgusted in the first place,’ and so on.

Fabius’ interlocutor is a younger Scipio Africanus, and in this sense, too, the two

episodes complement each other: the fabulous res gestae that Africanus recounts in his

trial have their originary moment here, in the senate’s decision whether to allocate Africa

to him or not. Africanus has clearly minded Fabius’ rhetorical technique as well, since in

his own eventual trial, he both mimics and caps Fabius’ stance here, asserting his own

greatness while avoiding the attendant fastidium. Indeed, it is almost possible to see

Scipio learn the rhetorical strategy. His speech to the senate begins by responding to

Fabius’ arguments one by one, and exposing precisely the preteritive techniques Fabius

had used:

et ipse Q. Fabius principio orationis, patres conscripti, commemorauit in sententia

sua posse obtractationem suspectam esse; cuius ego rei non tam ipse ausim

tantum uirum insimulare quam ea suspicio, uitio orationis an rei, haud sane

purgata est. sic enim honores suos et famam rerum gestarum extulit uerbis ad

exstinguendum inuidiae crimen tamquam mihi ab infimo quoque periculum sit ne

mecum aemuletur, et non ab eo qui, quia super ceteros excellat, quo me quoque

niti non dissimulo, me sibi aequari nolit. (Livy 28.43.2-4)

20

Conscript Fathers: Quintus Fabius himself, at the start of his speech, announced

that his opinion might be suspected of being spiteful. I would not dare insinuate

such a thing against such a great man, but – maybe because of a fault of the

speech or perhaps the business itself – the accusation nevertheless still stands. For

in order to expunge the charge of envy, he so exalted his honors and the fame of

his accomplishments as if there were a risk to my position of rivalry even from

people of the lowest sort, and not from him who, since he towers above all others

(a position to which I won’t conceal my aspiration), wouldn’t want me equated

with him.

Scipio goes on to discuss the dynamics of competition in more detail, but even from this

short segment it is possible to see how precisely he turns Fabius’ tactic on its head. Most

tellingly, fastidium becomes inuidia, a semantic change which is not only consistent with

Africanus’ own later experience, but changes too the complexion of the emotion and

therefore of the impression we are meant to draw. Here it is relevant to ask what kind of

fastidium it is that Fabius purports to almost feel, for himself or on behalf of his audience.

At a primary level, the emotion (and the rhetorical gesture) is rooted in a sense of surfeit

and satiety. Fabius has had too much of fame and fortune, and has neither need nor desire

for more. His fastidium is therefore, as Bob Kaster argues, understandable and forgivable,

because it mimics so perfectly the biological reaction to having eaten too much or too

lavishly.27 But is this the kind of fastidium that Fabius intends to be seen as feeling? To

some degree this is surely so, but the polysemy of fastidium means that his display of

27 On the speech and its fastidium: Kaster 2005: 107.

21

emotions can be interpreted in different ways. For example, Fabius must also intend a

pose of mannered embarrassment, a fussy reluctance to puff oneself up, or be seen in the

act of squashing the upstart, an understated but nevertheless effective way of reminding

the people not only of Fabius’ past success, but also of his modesty and civic-mindedness.

Scipio’s response, naturally, offers exactly the opposite interpretation, with fastidium as

code for envy, a pose designed to assert himself in the face of the upstart, and as such

suggesting, if anything, an insecurity which makes Fabius sound fairly invidious. Thus,

regardless of what Fabius’ fastidium actually represents, Scipio’s interpretation changes it

from a reflexive emotion to a hierarchical one. Fabius, he suggests, sees me as beneath

him, and my deeds as being no threat, because he so towers over us all. In fact, Scipio

goes to claim, in effect, that fastidium (or a feeling recognizably similar to fastidium)

threatens nothing less than a halt to human progress!28 Such rhetorical escalation, where

fastidium threatens the audience’s ability to see things ‘as they really are’ (that is, as the

speaker wishes them to appear) is precisely the gambit Scipio will go on to deploy in his

own trial. His success at avoiding a negative reaction there exposes all the more Fabius’

failed effort here; for what Scipio tries to do is to cast Fabius as invidious, as feeling

28 28.43.7-8 illud nec tibi in me nec mihi in minoribus natu animi sit ut nolimus

quemquam nostri similem euadere ciuem; id enim non eorum modo quibus inuiderimus

sed rei publicae et paene omnis generis humani detrimentum est. (‘[F]or this should not

be the spirit in which you regard me, or I those younger than me, that we should not want

any citizen to attempt something similar to us. For that would be a hindrance not only to

those at whom we are invidious, but also to the republic, and practically the whole

world.’)

22

fastidium not at his own surfeit of honors, but at everyone else’s – especially Scipio’s –

lack of them.29

Conclusion

What draws the preceding set of examples together is twofold: first, that fastidium can

generate, and substitute for, a host of emotional responses, not all of which are grounded

in disgust, but most of which are grounded in reciprocal positions of hierarchy and power.

Second, that fastidium is essentially a mark of awkwardness and anxiety – a cultural

fussiness which is generated by things that are new, excessive, or unfamiliar, or implies

them for the purpose of the speaker’s rhetorical advantage. The fact that fastidium is

more often absent than present underscores the idea that disgust is not only transitive but

also transitory – we can all, in the end, get over ourselves. In this sense, and especially

given the way fastidium responds to the literary dynamics of the text, Livy’s fastidium

opens up a substantive debate on what is normal, and on the means of accommodating

disdain, disgust, or discomfort within the political system. For Africanus, Fabius,

Claudius or Flamininus – indeed, for Livy himself – fastidium works precisely through its

self-referentiality, as the disgust-that-wasn’t, and because the audience, internal as well as

external, can now move, slowly but surely, beyond disgust.

29 The senatorial response suggests the mixed reception of the speech. It was not

favorably received, but the point of contention is the rumor that Scipio would force his

mandate through the assemblies if denied by the senate (28.45.1). Fabius himself fades

form the debate, but soon after (29.19) leads the senatorial attempt to recall Scipio from

Sicily to answer for atrocities committed by his legate Pleminius.

23

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