"Inglorius labor?: The Rhetoric of Glory and Utility in Plutarch's Precepts and Tacitus' Agricola"...

Classical World, vol. 110, no. 1 (2016) Pp.87–117

Inglorius labor? The Rhetoric of Glory and Utility in Plutarch’s Precepts and Tacitus’ Agricola*

ADAM M. Kemezis

ABSTRACT: Two contemporary texts in different languages, Plutarch’s Precepts and Tacitus’ Agricola, display remarkable com-monalities in how they present elite political activity. Specifically, both texts idealize figures who do work for their communities that is useful but apparently lacks glory and requires subordination to superiors in the imperial hierarchy. The authors attempt to reconcile these activities with the traditional aristocratic ethic, while at the same time characterizing overt resistance to the hierarchy as useless display. This article will trace this rhetoric through both texts and place it in its immediate historical setting (alongside contemporary authors including Dio Chrysostom) and in the larger context of Roman imperial discourse.

Introduction

For anyone exploring the political life and culture of the Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire, Plutarch’s Political Precepts is a very useful text, in an unspectacular sort of way. The seventy-page collection of sage injunctions and illustrative anecdotes will never figure in any list of the classics of political theory, and modern readers tend to use it to an-swer questions about its larger context, rather than allowing it to assert any rhetorical agenda of its own. Nonetheless, by virtue of answering those questions, the Precepts quietly exerts a considerable influence on

* I am most grateful to my fellow panelists and audience members from the Chicago APA; to CW’s editors and anonymous readers; to several friends who commented on a draft of this paper as posted on Academia.edu; and to Rebecca Langlands, Christopher Mallan, Konstantin Markov, Fran Pownall, Selina Stewart, and Ivo Topalilov for sugges-tions, references, and other valuable assistance. All translations are my own unless other-wise noted.

CLW 110.1 1st proof text.indd 87 10/12/2016 11:19:19 AM

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our modern view of the imperial Greek city and has continued to do so long after many another more ambitious piece of prose has vanished. In so doing, one may say, Plutarch’s text is neatly enacting the ethos it en-joins upon its addressee. One of the most consistent running themes the Precepts imposes on its heterogeneous subject matter is a strong dichot-omy between utility and display, and a strong privileging of the former. Plutarch’s idealized statesman seems to be a municipal oligarch who aims above all to do good for his city, seeking the people’s attention and applause when it serves that end but disdaining to pursue them for their own sake when no larger objective is gained thereby. Much of his most important work is done in inconspicuous or humble settings, although he still has the need for glory and status that is characteristic of the elite Greek male at all periods of antiquity.

Thus far, this is scarcely an original or controversial reading of the Precepts. Scholars have certainly noted the unglamorous nature of its content, and have indeed often taken it for granted. In large part, this is because it seems to match the sociopolitical setting in which Plutarch is speaking. Current scholarship has many, and not always compatible, models of the “imperial Greek city,” but most of them share a view of political life as oligarchic, inward-looking, and circumscribed, comfort-ably or otherwise, by the fact of Roman domination.1 Plutarch’s low-key view of politics seems like the natural product of such a milieu, although there are differing readings of how Plutarch feels about the situation: to some, he is pleased as a philosopher and aristocrat to have the “best men” quietly running the show; to others he is grudgingly resigned to Hellas’ loss of freedom but determined to preserve what autonomy

1 For an overview of the “imperial Greek City” and recent scholarly approaches, see M. Gleason, “Greek Cities under Roman Rule,” in D. S. Potter, ed., A Companion to the Roman Empire (Oxford and Malden, Mass., 2006) 387–421; O. Van Nijf and R. C. Alston, “Political Culture in the Greek City after the Classical Age: Introduction and Preview,” in R. C. Alston and O. Van Nijf, eds., Political Culture in the Greek City after the Classical Age (Louvain 2011) 1–26. Several recent readings of imperial Greek civic politics (e.g., A. Zuiderhoek, “On the Political Sociology of the Imperial Greek City,” GRBS 48 [2008] 417–45; G. Salmeri, “Reconstructing the Political Life and Culture of the Greek Cities of the Roman Empire,” in Alston and Van Nijf 197–214) have tried to incorporate a greater role for democratic, or at least popular, aspects of city politics than that seen in standard models in which the boule is the nearly exclusive locus of decision-making (e.g., H. W. Pleket, “Political Culture and Political Practice in the Cities of Asia Minor in the Roman Empire,” in W. Schuller, ed., Politische Theorie und Praxis im Altertum [Darmstadt 1998] 204–16), but the standard model has been dominant in much work up to the present.


Kemezis | Glory and Utility in Precepts and Agricola 89

remains.2 The key point is that his rhetoric is seen as specifically Greek, characteristically shared in varying degrees by other authors of the “Sec-ond Sophistic” and by their less verbose contemporaries whose political mentality is reflected in the ample inscriptional record of Asia Minor and other eastern regions of the empire.

The aim here is not to deny such a reading of Plutarch but to com-plicate it by suggesting other contexts in which to place the Precepts. In particular, the utility–display dichotomy in the Precepts functions in ways that are both odd in themselves and strikingly similar to what can be seen in a roughly contemporary Latin text, Tacitus’ Agricola.3 Tac-itus and Plutarch are certainly very different authors in their cultural outlook and their rhetorical objectives. My argument here is not that one author has read the other, or that they are necessarily like-minded people with a shared ideological agenda. Rather it is that they pursue their different agendas based on certain shared preconceptions and ways of talking about the relationship of political life to elite identity. These views can also be seen in their other writings and in other texts of the same period in both languages, but they are in many ways specific to a particular moment in Roman political history and to the changing nature of the imperial elite under the Flavians and Trajan. Plutarch and Tacitus are playing separate games with different boards and pieces, but the rules and objectives are surprisingly similar.

This article will consist chiefly of positing a series of thematic com-monalities and exploring how each in turn functions in the Precepts and then in the Agricola. These commonalities concern the dichotomies

2 Readings of Plutarch’s Precepts in relation to his overall political mentality and larger models of Greek civic politics under the empire include C. P. Jones, Plutarch and Rome (Oxford 1971) 110–21; P. Desideri, “La vita politica cittadina nell’impero: Lettura dei Praecepta gerendae rei publicae e dell’An seni res publica gerenda sit,” Athenaeum 64 (1986) 371–81; S. Swain, Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, AD 50–250 (Oxford 1996) 161–83; H. Halfmann, “Die Selbstverwal-tung der kaiserzeitlichen Polis in Plutarchs Schrift Praecepta gerendae rei publicae,” Chi-ron 32 (2002) 83–95; M. Trapp, “Statesmanship in a Minor Key?” in L. De Blois et al., eds., The Statesman in Plutarch’s Works (Leiden 2004) 189–200; Salmeri (above, n.1).

3 Readings of Plutarch’s Precepts alongside contemporary Latin texts are not com-mon, but see Desideri (above, n.1) 372 for Plutarch and Quintilian both adapting cul-tural material from an earlier era to a more restricted present,; M. R. Alföldi, “Die Stiefel des Statthalters,” in R. Gunther and S. Rebenich, eds., E fontibus haurire: Beiträge sur römischen Geschichte und zu ihren Hilfswissenschaften (Paderborn 1994) 332, citing Pliny’s Panegyricus, though with a considerably more pessimistic reading of both texts than my own.


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between utility and display, between real and specious glory, and between the authors’ traditional cultural norms and the authoritarian political re-alities of their contemporary world. First, however, it may be helpful to describe briefly the content of the two principal texts under study.

The Precepts is an epistolary treatise ostensibly addressed to a young man named Menemachus who is embarking on a political career in his native Sardis and has asked Plutarch as a philosopher to give him some advice regarding his future career. The advice consists not of a sustained philosophical argument but of a series of suggestions as to what behav-iors a young politician should either pursue or avoid, each supported by exempla. Although these latter are taken mainly from classical Greece and republican Rome, the addressee is clearly meant to function in Plutarch’s contemporary world of quasi-democratic poleis within Ro-man-governed provinces. The behaviors in question relate mostly to how a statesman should cultivate his public image so as to have the most po-litical influence in such an environment. The question of how one should actually use that influence in governing gets less attention, and what sug-gestions there are focus on how to maintain political prominence once it has been gained. For Plutarch, the maintenance of stable, aristocratic “good government” appears to be an end in itself.

The Agricola is a highly laudatory life of the title character, a promi-nent senator of the Flavian period who was Tacitus’ father-in-law. It has much greater literary pretensions than the Precepts. Although it centers on its subject’s political career and especially his military conquests in Britain, it extends across generic boundaries and includes geographical and ethnographic material as well as a full-scale historiographical bat-tle description complete with speeches. It also has an explicit political agenda that positions its hero as a victim of Domitian’s tyranny who nonetheless lived up to the ideals of Roman senatorial behavior, and its author as part of a revival of Roman elite political discourse under Nerva and Trajan.4 This agenda is expressed with considerable ambiv-alence, however, and there is at least the suggestion that the problems Agricola faced are inherent in monarchy rather than specific to any one villainous emperor.

4 On the link that Tacitus constructs between his literary activity and Agricola’s po-litical and military achievements, see D. Sailor, Writing and Empire in Tacitus (Cambridge 2008) 51–118.



II. Work Horses and Show Horses

Both texts, then, posit an idealized individual politician trying to do good for his community and gain approval for doing so. In both cases, however, the relationship between those two objectives is complicated. It is assumed that each can be fulfilled without the other: one can do good and not get properly recognized for it, and one can gain specious praise that is based on no real achievements. Given the terms in which the authors construct the dichotomy, it is all but inevitable that the first of those outcomes is made to seem superior to the second. The speakers and readers alike are meant to identify with the people in this world who do real good, even if they do not always get the credit.

Right at the start of the Precepts, Plutarch places himself on the correct side of the divide, defining himself in opposition to τοὺς προτρεποµένους τῶν φιλοσόφων διδάσκοντας δὲ µηδὲν µηδ’ ὑποτιθεµένους (“those phi-losophers who exhort but do not actually teach or explain anything,” 798B). Unlike these characters, Plutarch will actually deliver the goods, in the shape of concrete advice and examples. This reads like standard epistolary banter (“since it turns out you actually want my advice, I guess I’ll have to give you some”) but nonetheless prepares Menema-chus for Plutarch’s first topic, which is seriousness of purpose. Polit-ical activity (πολιτεία) must be based on ἡ προαίρεσις ἀρχὴν ἔχουσα κρίσιν καὶ λόγον, ἀλλὰ µὴ πτοίαν ὑπὸ δόξης κενῆς ἢ φιλονεικίας τινὸς ἢ πράξεων ἑτέρων ἀπορίας (“a resolved purpose that is the product of judgment and reason, not an impulse coming from some empty notion, or a need to quarrel, or a lack of anything else to do,” 798C). There follows a long consideration of what happens to various types of people who get into politics for the wrong reasons, usually because of a desire for personal aggrandizement or advantage. These people lack the char-acter and selflessness that Plutarch desires in his ideal politician, but also and crucially they are mistaken about the nature of politics. They think it is all about power and renown and have not considered its more unglamorous realities.

It is these realities that will preoccupy Plutarch for most of his treatise. Traditionally, Greek and Roman descriptions of public life em-phasized two activities above all, namely warfare and oratory, both of which were key sources of glory for the elite male. Plutarch’s vision of municipal politics in the Roman Empire naturally lacks a military di-mension, but even oratory is neither as prominent nor as elevated as one


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might suppose. The Precepts spends most of its time on activities that take place away from the speaker’s platform and generate no applause. Sometimes, in fact, Plutarch seems positively to embrace the banality of local politics, as when he defends himself against those who mock him for personally supervising the delivery of building materials on a public construction project (811B–C).

In that case, the dichotomy between glory and utility is relatively simple, and Plutarch can unproblematically portray himself as someone who puts public service before public image. Usually, however, the re-lationship is more complicated. In the Precepts, politics is above all the art of managing people, of getting them to do what you want by yourself appearing to do what they want. “People” includes one’s entire political community from the full assembly through one’s fellow magistrates, and it is assumed that one’s own desires are virtuous and public-spir-ited, whereas those of most other people are irrational and often down-right harmful to the body politic (813A, 818E). For Plutarch, properly manipulating such people is the “utility” side of politics, in that this is how one actually gets things done, as opposed to what the foolish people at the start of the treatise thought politics was about. But unlike in the case of the construction supplies, the “utility–display” dichotomy does not map easily onto that of “reality” and “appearance,” because Plutarch’s ideal useful statesman is keenly interested in the manipula-tion of appearances.

The city imagined in the Precepts is an imperial Greek polis, and as such Plutarch’s speaker assumes that actual decision-making should be done by an aristocratic few, but it seems that on a practical level it takes quite a lot of work to ensure that this can happen smoothly and that the formally democratic parts of the political process function “correctly.”5 Sometimes Plutarch recommends outright deception of the people, as when he counsels that a statesman advancing a salutary measure should have a few of his like-minded friends feign opposition in the assem-bly and then pretend to be won over (813B). This might strike us as an immoral subversion of democratic processes in the service of class dominance, but Plutarch entirely obfuscates the moral and ideological

5 Thus the observation of Van Nijf and Alston (above, n.1) 9, apropos Precepts, that “Plutarch thought it self-evident that popular assemblies were still the main arena for local politics.” This emphasis on the assembly is a major argument for those who want to give more prominence to the democratic aspects of imperial civic politics.



dimensions of the stratagem. It is simply one of those tedious things one has to do in politics because that is the way people are.6

The preoccupation with appearance goes far deeper than political ruses, however, and extends to the statesman’s entire self-image. One must seem to be the sort of politician the people want, and thus the long treatments of the statesman’s character (799B–801C) and eloquence (801C–804C) are remarkably instrumental.7 Plutarch does not tell Me-nemachus he has to be virtuous (this is perhaps taken for granted) but that he must give the appearance of being so. He gives the example of Themistocles (800B), who, on his entry into politics, gave up his carous-ing, not because drunkenness is inherently disgraceful or because sobri-ety leads to better decision-making, but, it is implied, because people do not respect or listen to hard-drinking politicians. Similarly, one must as an orator project a character that combines nobility, sincerity, and foresight (803A), not because these are good qualities in themselves, but because they are what people trust.

Of course, elite males in the Greco-Roman world were always con-cerned with the impression they created, and indeed their entire educa-tional system can be read as equipping boys to give the correct image of a man.8 There were all kinds of different ways of constructing the relationship between the inner and outer man, but Plutarch’s approach in the Precepts is singularly open about the pretense involved. It is not a question of ensuring that one’s outward manner corresponds to one’s genuine virtues, or even of pretending to be more virtuous than one really is. Plutarch’s statesman must be what others want him to be,

6 Esp. at 813A, Plutarch imagines the assembly as opposing “beneficent” actions of the elite not because of any real or imagined class interests but because παντὶ δήµῳ τὸ κακόηθες καὶ φιλαίτιον ἔνεστι πρὸς τοὺς πολιτευοµένους (“in every people there is mean-ness and fault-finding towards political men”) and this means that any time all of the lead-ing men agree on something, people assume it is a self-interested conspiracy and oppose it, thus necessitating the false appearance of dissent.

7 G. Roskam (“Two Roads to Politics: Plutarch on the Statesman’s Entry in Political Life,” in A. G. Nikolaidis, ed., The Unity of Plutarch’s Work: ‘Moralia’ Themes in the ‘Lives,’ Features of the ‘Lives’ in the ‘Moralia’ [Berlin 2008] 333) notes that Plutarch (Prec. 805C–D) advises against attacking virtuous fellow statesmen not because it is bad in itself, but because it does not gain one public favor. Roskam, however, sees this as a sort of “virtuous circle” in which noble and useful means and ends converge to allow the statesman to achieve the final end of τὸ καλόν.

8 With specific reference to imperial Greek culture, see M. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton 1995).


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and this means subordinating his will and personality to theirs, at least initially. At the start, Plutarch uses a remarkable simile: the statesman must be like a drink of wine that ἐν ἀρχῇ µὲν ὑπὸ τῶν ἠθῶν κρατεῖται τοῦ πίνοντος ἡσυχῆ δὲ διαθάλπων καὶ κατακεραννύµενος αὐτὸς ἠθοποιεῖ τὸν πίνοντα καὶ µεθίστησιν (“at first is made subject to the character of the one drinking it, but then itself imperceptibly, by diffusing its heat and mixing itself in, shapes and alters the drinker,” 799B). He goes on to specify that there is no one right course to follow, because different cities require different qualities in their politicians, and one’s personal-ity must accordingly be malleable.9 This adaptability to one’s inferiors is matched by a need for deference to superiors. This most famously includes Roman governors, as when Plutarch notes that Menemachus must as ‘magistrate’:

Say to yourself also this: “Though you rule, still you are ruled, since the city is subject to proconsuls, the stewards of Caesar. ‘These are not the fields of the spear,’ neither is this ancient Sardis or the famed armies of the Lydians.” You must be extra careful in your dress and look away from the general‘s post towards the speaker‘s platform. Do not take a presumptuous confidence in your garlands of office, since you see the boots above your head. Instead be like actors, who impart to their per-formances emotions and character and qualities of their own, but who listen to the prompter and do not deviate in timing and meter from the scope allowed them by those in power.10

(Prec. 813E–F).

While this passage has often been quoted as Plutarch’s acknowledgment (resentful or resigned as the case may be) of his status as a colonial sub-ject, it is important to realize that the remark is integrated into a larger argument that is not about Roman domination, but about life in a po-litical hierarchy more generally.11 The governor is only the most overtly

9 Prec. 799C–D. The specific examples used are easygoing Athenians vs. severe Carthaginians.

10 On the interpretive and textual issues relating to λόγχης πεδία, ἀπὸ τοῦ στρατηγίου and φρόνηµα πιστεύειν see A. Caiazza, ed., Plutarco: Precetti politici (Naples 1993) 245–46.

11 For readings of this passage, see Jones (above, n.2) 133; Swain (above, n.2) 165–68; L. De Blois, “Classical and Contemporary Statesmen in Plutarch’s Praecepta,” in L. De Blois et al., eds., The Statesman in Plutarch’s Works (Leiden 2004) 43–55; C. Kokkinia, “The Governor’s Boot and the City’s Politicians: Greek Communities and Rome’s Representatives under the Empire,” in A. Kolb, ed., Herrschaftsstrukturen und



powerful of the very large number of people before whom a statesman is obliged to play a part. The great majority of these people are fellow Greeks, and Plutarch spends just as long exhorting Menemachus to show respect to, and even endure abuse from, magistrates, because their offices must be reverenced, even when occupied by people of lesser wealth and status than himself (816F–817C). Similarly, being sensitive to the egos of one’s superiors takes precedence over gratifying one’s own, even when the gratification is justified. Plutarch once again tells a story in which he plays an unspectacular role: as a young man, he was chosen for an embassy to the governor, along with an apparently more senior colleague who, however, failed to show up (816D). Plutarch was able to pull off the job alone, but on his return was privately advised by his father to alter his report to pretend that the other man had been there as well and give him half the credit. Plutarch presents this as just benevolent good manners (ἐπιεικὲς τὸ τοιοῦτον καὶ φιλάνθρωπόν ἐστιν), and the situation will appear routine to anyone who has ever worked in a hierarchical or-ganization. What seems odd is not what happened, but Plutarch’s frank way of talking about it in what is ostensibly a prescriptive philosophical treatise designed to foster a young man’s laudable ambition.

A last key element that is revealed in the embassy anecdote is the private nature of “public life” in Plutarch’s world. The anecdote seems to take it for granted that for every political action there are two stories: the one that goes in the report and the one that really happened. Even when the first is not actually false, it still omits the most important events because, as with Plutarch’s father’s advice, they happen behind closed doors. The public acts of decision-making, in councils and assemblies, are stage-managed, and the Precepts has much to say about how they are to be managed, but there is remarkably little about what sorts of deci-sions the managers should make in private. Perhaps this is because situa-tions vary so much from city to city, or conversely because the objectives of oligarchic politics are so well known as not to need explanation, but at all events Plutarch evidently thinks he can more profitably advise Me-nemachus about his public conduct than about anything we would call actual policy-making.12

Herrschaftspraxis: Konzepte, Prinzipien und Strategien der Administration im römischen Kaiserreich (Berlin 2006) 181–89.

12 On the ends of politics in the Precepts, and their separation from public activity in the assembly, see Desideri (above, n.1).


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To sum up, Plutarch’s ideal politician takes self-control at times to the point of self-effacement. His vision is scarcely likely to appeal to those who enter politics because they enjoy giving orders and exercising their egos, and Plutarch realizes that these prescriptions are not easy, especially for young aristocratic males. In his case, the justification for such behavior leans heavily on the idea of homonoia, the internal har-mony of the elite that is a constant motif of Greek civic rhetoric in this period.13 Still, there are plenty of ways of talking about harmony with-out stressing its ego-denial aspects. The indisputable salience of homo-noia in the wider society cannot by itself explain Plutarch’s rhetorical choices in the Precepts, still less the reasons Tacitus makes choices that turn out to be so similar.

No alert reader of the Agricola can miss how preoccupied the work is with distinguishing real from false glory, and genuine from specious service to the res publica. Tacitus’ aim, at least on the explicit level, is to put Agricola forward as the closest one can come in contemporary mo-narchical Rome to fulfilling traditional ideals of what a senator should do for his community.14 Tacitus himself, by properly praising Agricola, exemplifies what such a man’s community should do for him in return.15 As such, the text features a constant series of oppositions in which Agri-cola is invariably on the correct side.16 Like Plutarch’s statesman, he en-ters public life with a serious attitude, and as a youthful military tribune takes the time to establish a relationship with his general and learn sol-diering, while his fellow tribunes enjoy dissipation and extended leaves

13 For a reading of homonoia as a guiding principle in the Precepts and similar texts, see Kokkinia (above, n.11). For the wider context, see A. R. R. Sheppard, “Homonoia in the Greek Cities of the Roman Empire,” AncSoc 15–17 (1984–86) 229–52; for epigraphic evidence, see G. Thériault, Le culte d’Homonoia dans les cités grecques (Lyons, 1996).

14 It is generally accepted that Tacitus idealizes Agricola to a great degree; for a dis-senting view, see S. J. Bastomsky, “The Not-So-Perfect Man: Some Ambiguities in Tacitus’ Picture of Agricola,” Latomus 44 (1985) 388-93. G. S. Knabe, (“Tacitus’ Agricola and Roman Biography,” Vestnik Drevnej Istorii = Journal of Ancient History [1980] 53–73, in Russian with English abstract) gives a reading of Tacitus’ idealization that corresponds on many points to that found here. I regret that I am not able to engage fully with the Rus-sian-language scholarship on this point, but am grateful to Konstantin Markov for drawing my attention to this article and to Ivo Topalilov for kindly translating portions of it.

15 This aspect of the Agricola is explored most fully by Sailor (above, n.4) 52, who speaks of an attempt at “reconciliation of reality and representation.”

16 For an overview of this technique, see B. C. McGing, “Synkrisis in Tacitus’ Agri-cola,” Hermathena 132 (1982) 15–25, who shows how nearly every other person in the Agricola can be read as a foil for the title character.



(5.1). As a governor of Britain in the late 70s to early 80s, he earns real victories, as opposed to the token gestures per quae fama aucti officii quaereretur (“by which the reputation of having expanded one’s province was gained [by other governors],” 14.2). His genuine achieve-ments also contrast sharply with what Tactius characterizes as the false triumph that his emperor, Domitian, claimed in Germany (39.1) and the showy but ultimately fruitless acts of resistance committed by the oppositional figures of the Flavian era, whom moderns often refer to as “Stoic martyrs.”17

While the Agricola is ostensibly a work praising a public man for his highly visible deeds, there remains a sense, more explicit than in Plutarch, that much of what is seen and praised in this world is not actually good, and much of what is good is neither seen nor praised.18 The negative behaviors that Agricola avoids are frequently characterized with the vocabulary of ambitio, which refers not to the character trait of “ambition” but to a set of attitudes and behaviors that one adopts to be seen by and impress others.19 Thus where most governors spend their first few months in office on ostentationem et officiorum ambitum (“displaying oneself and eliciting displays of deference from others”), Agricola prefers labor et periculum in the shape of a military conquest (18.5). That conquest is, to be sure, a highly visible gesture that does enhance Agricola’s reputation (clarus ac magnus haberi), but Tacitus portrays that visibility as a military strategy designed to instill terror and make future victories easier. The general markedly refuses to brag about his victory, precisely because in his view it is the sort of minor achieve-ment that other men try to inflate into a triumph (8.6).20

17 On Tacitus’ juxtaposition of Domitian and Agricola in these passages, see Sailor (above, n.4) 92–103.

18 For consideration of fama and its problems in the Agricola, see P. Hardie, Rumour and Renown: Representations of Fama in Western Literature (Cambridge 2012) 273–84.

19 See OLD s.v. ambitiosus 2 (“Anxious to win favour, eager to please”), 2b (“[of ac-tions] dictated by a desire to please, self-seeking, interested”) and 5 (“ostentatious, preten-tious, showy”). In addition to the example cited here, see 29.1, where Agricola’s behavior after the loss of a son is characterized as nec ambitiose (which in this context means he did not ostentatiously refuse to display grief); 40.4, where ill-informed people are said to measure a man’s greatness per ambitionem and most famously 42.4, where the deaths of Stoic martyrs are referred to as ambitiosa morte.

20 The campaign in question was the conquest of Anglesey, which had previously been attacked by Suetonius Paulinus. Tacitus’ description of the earlier incident (Agr. 14.3) makes it clear that that campaign had happened at least fifteen years before and had


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In many instances, however, Agricola’s praiseworthy actions will be considerably less glamorous and less visible than even a minor military conquest. His soldierly craft extends to the unromantic work of holding onto conquests after they are made. In an echo of Plutarch’s labors on the building site, Tacitus claims that Agricola was unequaled at siting and constructing fortifications (22.2).21 This also applies to Agricola’s much commented-on practice of encouraging British elites to adopt Roman customs (21). Tacitus portrays this as the quiet but effective prevention of rebellions that would otherwise have had to be suppressed violently. In that instance, while Agricola is portrayed as the moving force behind the changes, he does not simply order the construction of Roman cities. Instead, he makes it clear to the Britons in private that this is what he wants, and then applauds and assists when they take the hint and start the process themselves.22 In this case, Agricola’s action can only be effective if he is not seen to act at all. The same applies to much of his earlier career in the 50s through early 70s, as when under Vespa-sian he is appointed to command a legion in Britain that had behaved mutinously during the wars of 69–70. Agricola succeeds in reimposing discipline, but is able enough and sufficiently shrewd to do so with-out ostentatiously punishing past actions, which would have embittered the soldiers and embarrassed his predecessor (7.3).23 In this he is said to display rarissima moderatione, a characteristic that will become as

been abandoned because of Boudicca’s revolt. Agricola is being overly scrupulous, both out of pietas to his former commander and for the more generalized reasons that will be explored below.

21 Earlier, at 20.3, it had been noted that, thanks to well-placed castella, Agricola’s new conquests in Wales “came over unharmed” (inlacessita transierit) whereas earlier commanders had apparently left newly conquered and disarmed Britons to the mercy of their still independent neighbors.

22 This is conveyed by the distinction at 21.1 hortari privatim, adiuvare publice. This follows the interpretation of H. Heubner (Kommentar zum Agricola des Tacitus [Göttin-gen 1984] 68–69), and in my mind the critical distinction concerns who takes (or appears to take) the initiative. Standard English translations, however, follow R. M. Ogilvie and I. A. Richmond, eds. (Tacitus: Agricola [Oxford 1967] 222), who render the phrase “he encouraged individuals and helped communities.”

23 Once again Tacitus compresses the situation into an epigrammatic sentence: suc-cessor simul et ultor electus rarissima moderatione maluit videri invenisse bonos quam fecisse. The main emphasis of the passage has been on the inadequacy or malfeasance of other generals; thus P. Soverini, ed. (Cornelio Tacito: Agricola [Alexandria 2004] 140–41) is correct to see the moderatio as moderation in one’s self-presentation toward peers and superiors, rather than as equivalent to clementia directed toward the soldiers (as most other commentators take it).



much of a hallmark for him as the preservation of homonoia was for Plutarch’s ideal statesman.24

Like Plutarch, Tacitus is taking a much-used word with vague but positive connotations and deliberately emphasizing those aspects of it that fit into his basic distinction between utility and display. In both cases, however, these aspects create complications for the personal au-tonomy and identity of the supposedly idealized hero. Before he can get his great military command in Britain, Agricola has to survive and get ahead in senatorial politics, and as we have already seen, this involves much that is far from glamorous. On some occasions, notably under Nero (inertia pro sapientia fuit, 6.3), Agricola is obliged to accommo-date himself to the times by hiding his talents and avoiding notice, but on other occasions, as during his quaestorship in Asia (6.2), the chal-lenge is to maintain his autonomy and avoid being corrupted. His career alternates between posts where he has scope for displaying his virtues (Habuerunt virtutes spatium exemplorum, 8.2) and ones where his vir-tues are if anything an impediment.25 The key determinant between the two is his hierarchical superiors: thus when Agricola was legionary leg-ate under a governor who was uninterested in campaigning, he temper-avit . . . vim suam ardoremque compescuit, ne nimium cresceret, peritus obsequi eruditusque utilia honestis miscere (“restrained his energy and repress his eagerness, so that he would not gain too much distinction, since he was skilled in obedience and knew how to combine the useful with the honorable,” 8.1).26 Even when serving under a general who gives him much more scope for high deeds, Agricola is still as careful as Plutarch’s father to insure that his superiors get credit for his actions. When he wins victories under Cerialis, Agricola nec . . . umquam in suam famam gestis exultavit; ad auctorem ac ducem ut minister for-tunam referebat. Ita virtute in obsequendo, verecundia in praedicando extra invidiam nec extra gloriam erat (“never boasted of his deeds to

24 J. Christes (“Modestia und moderatio bei Tacitus,” Gymnasium 100 [1993] 514–29) surveys the usage of modestia and moderatio throughout the Tacitean corpus with particular reference to the Agricola at 524–26.

25 On the economy of glory in Agricola’s early career, see Sailor (above, n.4) 73–80.26 For ne nimium cresceret rather than the manuscript ne incresceret, see Sover-

ini (above, n.23); D. R. Shackleton Bailey, “Notes on Tacitus’ Opuscula,” CJ 77 (1982) 255–58. The manuscript reading is retained without comment by A. J. Woodman (Tacitus: Agricola, with C. S. Kraus [Cambridge, 2014]), who sees a continued fire metaphor in compescuit . . . incresceret.


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increase his reputation, but as a subordinate always gave the credit to the general in overall command. Thus by excellence even in his obedi-ence and modesty even in proclaiming good news he avoided envy but not glory,” 8.3).27

What applies to one’s immediate superior is all the more true for the supreme ruler. Bad emperors are inherently hostile to any talent they cannot corrupt, as Agricola’s father Graecinus had found out under Caligula, at the cost of his life (4.1). Just as Agricola is able to avoid attracting Nero’s resentment, the post-Britain phase of his career con-sists largely of placating Domitian, whose suspicious and resentful na-ture “was softened by the restraint and discretion of Agricola, in that he did not court fame and destruction with a stiff neck and a hollow display of freedom.”28 Good emperors are notably less discussed, and their goodness seems chiefly to consist of not interfering with the careers of aristocrats.29 Either way, in all of Tacitus’ descriptions there is the same sense as with Plutarch of a political world where the real story does not get told, and the people who really deserve the credit cannot always expect to get it. And just as Plutarch has little to say about how decisions actually get made, Tacitus is remarkably reticent about the behind-the-scenes aspects of Agricola’s career. We hear a lot about the impression Agricola sought to make on the emperors and the glory he did or did not gain from conquering Britain, but we know frustratingly little about his actual relationship with the Flavian dynasty, or what were the objectives of the British campaigns and who determined them.30

27 Woodman (above, n.26) 119–20 attractively suggests giving the ins of in obse-quendo and in praedicando a mild adversative or concessive force (OLD in 40c).

28 Agr. 42.3 moderatione tamen prudentiaque Agricolae leniebatur, quia non con-tumacia neque inani iactatione libertatis famam fatumque provocabat. Christes (above, n.24) 525 notes that the use of moderatio as opposed to modestia is unusual when speak-ing of an inferior’s behavior to a superior, and tends to suggest an active role for Agricola in managing Domitian rather than just putting up with him.

29 E.g., at Agr. 17.1 Sed ubi cum cetero orbe Vespasianus et Britanniam recuperavit, magni duces, egregii exercitus, minuta hostium spes (“When Vespasian recovered Britain along with the rest of the world, generals were great, the army was outstanding, and the enemy’s hopes were small”). On the significant absence of emperors in general from the British sections of the Agricola, see K.-H. Schwarte, “Trajans Regierungsbeginn und der Agricola des Tacitus,” BJ 179 (1979) 162–64; M. B. Roller, “The Difference an Emperor Makes: Notes on the Reception of the Republican Senate in the Imperial Age,” Classical Receptions Journal 7 (2015) 11–30 for the senate in the Tacitean corpus more generally.

30 For the Agricola in its military-historical context, see W. S. Hanson, “Tacitus’ Agri-cola: An Archaeological and Historical Survey,” ANRW 2.33.3 (1991) 1742–84. For more



What Roman domination is for Plutarch, monarchy is for Tacitus. As a general in Britain, Agricola temporarily gains a measure of autonomy for the expression of his talents that is beyond what Plutarch’s municipal politician could expect, but taking his career as a whole, he also has to spend a great deal of time managing people and suppressing his own ego. Both authors realize that such traits do not always fit smoothly into a traditional aristocratic ethos that prized service to the community but always required plenty of room for the pursuit of individual glory. When Tacitus speaks of virtute in obsequendo (“excellence even in obedience”) and utilia honestis miscere (“blending the honorable with the useful”) we are certainly meant to ask how compatible these ideas really are.

III. The Past and Its Abuses

The tension discernable in these pointed expressions of Tacitus points up a larger issue in both authors regarding the relationship of past to present. Tacitus’ and Plutarch’s idealization of their respective heroes is tied to an ethos and a canon of examples that is located firmly in the past. To be specific, in a selectively remembered past—the mid-to-late Roman Republic for Tacitus; in Plutarch’s case mainly classical Hellas, with a secondary role for republican Rome—in which the rela-tionship between achievement, public service, and personal glory was more direct. Both men acknowledge on some level that a critical gap exists between that past and the contemporary world of authoritarian power structures in which their idealized public figure has to operate. In rhetorical terms, both authors want to describe how such a man can at the same time overcome the challenges presented by the contempo-rary world and honorably live up to the examples set by ancestors in a very different world. This presents a knotty discursive problem: how do the various dichotomies of utility versus display, past versus present, and praiseworthy versus reprehensible action map onto one another? Is virtue always to be found in the past, or does the present have claims of its own? Is this virtue from the past actually helpful in solving the problems of the present, or is it an entirely separate, even incompatible,

recent developments, see A. R. Birley, “Britain 71–105: Advance and Retrenchment,” in L. De Ligt, E. A. Hemelrijk and H.W. Singor, eds., Roman Rule and Civic Life: Local and Regional Perspectives (Amsterdam 2004) 97–112, although some of Birley’s conclusions are based on problematic textual emendations.


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good that one must somehow contrive to maintain at the same time as functioning well in the present? Plutarch and Tacitus come up with somewhat different answers, but both are in some way ambivalent as to whether their protagonist’s achievements fully correspond to the vir-tues of the past. In addition, both men create an antitype to their hero, a “bad statesman” whose failings stem in large part from invoking the idealized past in a misguided fashion that prevents him from function-ing usefully in the present.

Plutarch’s Precepts are usually cited for their explicit acknowledg-ment of the gap between the past and present, especially one key passage (814A–C) in which Plutarch reminds Menemachus that he no longer lives in the age of Marathon and Plataea. This passage will be addressed below, but before doing so, it is necessary to establish a proper interpre-tive background for understanding it. Specifically, we must consider the overall content of the Precepts: the treatise is full, from beginning to end, of exemplary stories from that same idealized age, and the vast majority of them are told without any reservations about their applicability in the present. Plutarch’s general-precept-to-specific-example method suggests a relatively simple model of exemplarity in which the ancient statesman’s job is basically the same as Menemachus’ and the problems and solu-tions of that time are still those of today.31

The author of the Precepts appears genuinely committed to this underlying logic and does not ironically undermine his own premises, but he is certainly not naive. The examples Plutarch selects constitute a selective, not to say eccentric, version of the Hellenic (and Roman) tra-dition. They are all designed to illustrate the maintenance of homonoia, and the subtler means by which right-minded politicians influence the public. Much of Greek history is evidently unsuitable for this purpose, for all its splendor. Immediately after the passage cited above on “not trusting in your garlands of office,” Plutarch specifically deprecates the use of Persian War battles as examples (814A–C). The theme of fighting for national liberation may bring out empty pride in unthinking audi-ences, but for that reason it is best left to sophists. He instead gives a series of more appropriate exempla. These range from the Athenians’

31 Compare the discussion of exemplarity at Progress in Virtue 84B–85B, in which Plutarch seems to imagine a contemporary student of virtue being inspired equally by ob-serving his living peers and by reading about figures from the distant past. I am grateful to Rebecca Langlands for this reference.



amnesty after the restoration of the democracy in 403 to an incident in which the Athenians are holding a mass search of their own houses but are gracious enough to exempt a newlywed couple.32 Once again, however, the issue is much broader than the specific point of not pro-voking Roman intervention. Throughout the Precepts we find exempla featuring either obscure characters, such as Leon of Byzantium making jokes about his own short stature, or familiar ones in unexpected roles, such as Epaminondas as a “sanitation commissioner” in Thebes.33 The mention of sophists in the passage cited above is not simply dismissive: compared to their version of history-as-spectacle, Plutarch is putting forth a deromanticized but useful history analogous to the version of politics set forth above.

Such a history is by its nature highly selective, characterized as much by what it leaves out as what it includes. Plutarch was surely con-scious of this fact, especially if, as it appears, he culled his examples from the vast materials he had assembled for the Parallel Lives.34 He realizes how much of the past is unsuitable for his current purposes, and not simply because in his world political freedom is circumscribed by the Romans. The relative obscurity of Plutarch’s examples strongly suggests, to him and to his readers, that his version of harmonious gov-ernment was more the exception than the rule in classical Hellas, and for that matter in republican Rome. The ancients may outclass the moderns in terms of grandeur, but not necessarily when it comes to the orderly

32 On the specific examples used at 814A–C, see B. L. Cook, “Plutarch’s ‘Many Other’ Imitable Events: Mor. 814B and the Statesman’s Duty,” in L. De Blois et al., eds., The Statesman in Plutarch’s Works (Leiden 2004) 201–10; F. Ursin, “Handling Traumatic Events in Greek Past: Plutarch’s Political Precepts as a Struggle Between Memory and Oblivion,” in E.-M. Becker, J. Dochhorn and E. K. Holt, eds., Trauma and Traumatization in Individual and Collective Dimensions: Insights from Biblical Studies and Beyond (Göt-tingen 2014) 289–307.

33 For Leon, see 804A–B, an anecdote repeated with variants by Philostratus (VS 485). For Epaminondas as telearch, a post whose meaning is obscure but includes dung removal and drainage maintenance, see 811B. L. Prandi (“Gli esempi del passato greco nei Precetti politici di Plutarco,” RSA 30 [2000] 91–107) makes several important observa-tions about the different function of exempla in the inward-looking context of the Precepts as opposed to the Lives.

34 On the use of exempla in the Precepts and the Lives, see Prandi (above, n.33); C. Cooper, “The Moral Interplay between Plutarch’s Political Precepts and Life of Demosthe-nes,” in A. G. Nikolaidis (above, n.7) 67–83. For similar issues in a similar treatise, see S. A. Xenophontos, “Plutarch’s Compositional Technique in the An seni respublica gerenda sit: Clusters vs. Patterns,” AJP 133 (2012) 61–91.


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and productive functioning of day-to-day politics, and it is with this last that Plutarch encourages readers to identify. Plutarch’s approach here is analogous to Pausanias’ “de-democratization” of key Athenian sites of memory (see Hogan forthcoming in CW 110.2). The manipulation of the past, like that of public assemblies, has important class and ideological implications that Plutarch ignores in favor of the rhetoric of utility.

Thus in the passage cited above, Plutarch conjures up negative ex-amples of statesmen who, as part of a larger pattern of irresponsible po-litical behavior, invoke the past in unsuitable ways. What exactly these men are doing is not specified, although one of them, Pardalas of Sardis, is named in a way that suggests Menemachus will be familiar with his history.35 It is evident from the Persian War examples these men use that they are deploying the rhetoric of national liberation, whether against the Romans or domestic opponents or some combination of the two. It would obviously be useful to know more, but we cannot, precisely because Plutarch refuses to engage with these men on an ideological level.36 Instead, he reduces the question to political competence: it is not made explicit, but we are presumably meant to assimilate these men to the negative figures from the start of the treatise, the men who went into politics without proper thought or preparation. Thus in this passage they fail to anticipate the serious, even life-threatening, consequences of foolish political behavior that calls down the wrath of a Roman gov-ernor. They are not exactly wicked or full of wrong ideas: rather they are foolish lightweights who lack the seriousness and substance that for Plutarch are the key virtues of a real public man, and also of a correct interpreter of the past.

In Tacitus’ case, the problem of the past and its ideological im-plications is much closer to the surface, even though the question of utility still remains critical. The Agricola, like Tacitus’ subsequent long historical works, begins with a preface that invokes a past when both political realities and literary culture were very different from the nar-rator’s own time. The key issue in the Agricola preface is how famous

35 For this character, see Jones (above, n.2) 117.36 Kokkinia (above, n.11) 182–85 makes a cogent argument that the Precepts as a

whole artificially emphasizes horizontal divisions within the polis (boule vs. demos vs. Romans) in order to play down vertical ones (factional or patronage-based). However, Plutarch wishes to occlude the class aspects of the situation and thus portrays the boule vs. demos distinction as basically ethical rather than ideological.



men are to be praised. Tacitus asserts that apud priores (“in earlier generations,” Agr. 1.2) memorable actions were both more common and more openly performed than now, and that in turn prominent au-thors needed no incentive to write in praise of them. Indeed, he adds, it was not unheard of then for statesmen to write in praise of their own actions, and readers were neither reproving nor skeptical. Nowadays, by contrast, the times are saeva et infesta virtutibus (“cruel and hostile to excellence,” 1.4).37 Given the content of the preface to this point, this hostility should be seen as existing in the literary sphere, so that Tacitus affects to expect complaints from a public more receptive to invective than praise.38 The clear implication, however, is that it also holds true for the sphere of political action, and that prominent Romans no longer do the kind of deeds they used to, presumably due to the menaces of envious and insecure monarchs, or perhaps of the monarchical system itself. This question is further explored in the rest of the preface, first in the negative context of Domitian’s reign (2), when writing a life of a martyred senator was grounds for one’s own martyrdom, and then in the guardedly positive context of Trajan’s reign (3), when political discourse is (perhaps) regaining vigor, as exemplified by Tacitus’ au-thorship of the book we are now reading.

37 There is much interpretive dispute over the way that past and present time are constructed in the Agricola preface; my own view on the various discrete semantic ques-tions broadly follows that of A. D. Leeman, “Structure and Meaning in the Prologues of Tacitus,” YCS 23 (1973) 199–208; see also Sailor (above, n.4) 51–72. Contrary views on several points are expressed by P. Soverini (“Note al proemio dell’Agricola di Tacito,” Bollettino di studi latini 26 [1996] 19–38) and A. J. Woodman (“The Preface to Tac-itus’ Agricola,” in A. J. Woodman, ed., From Poetry to History: Selected Papers [Ox-ford 2012] 257–90), and by those same two scholars in the relevant portions of their respective commentaries. On the particular question of tam saeva et infesta virtutibus tempora, I take the phrase to refer to the monarchical period generally, including the narrative present, as defined in relation to the idealized republican past (antiquitatus . . . apud priores) of the previous paragraph. I hope in a future publication to give a fuller justification for this and other readings of disputed passages in the Agricola preface found in the following notes.

38 This appears to me to be the sense of a much-disputed passage at Agr. 1.4, At nunc narraturo mihi vitam defuncti hominis venia opus fuit, quam non petissem incusaturus: tam saeva et infesta virtutibus tempora. Nunc refers to the moment of narration, as Tacitus is about to recount Agricola’s life (narraturo) and the venia in question is the “pardon” that Tacitus has just sought from his readers in 1.1–2. My reading is thus in line with that of Leeman (above, n.37) 201–2 and Heubner (above, n.22) 7–8 as against the various interpretations of Ogilvie and Richmond (above, n.22), Soverini (above, n.37), and Wood-man (above, n.37) 262–64.


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The next question is how the strong privileging of the past that we see in the preface fits with the emphasis on utility as against display that I have posited for the narrative that follows. There are certainly some correspondences. Based on the preface, it would seem that the dichotomy between utility and display was less of a problem in the past, because then it was permissible to display and get praised for genuine excellence that could, one gathers, serve both one’s own inter-ests and those of the res publica. It is only in modern times that men like Agricola have to be so careful about the good they do, while their less talented or conscientious fellows engage in hollow ambitio. There is an intuitive plausibility to this. It was recognized then as now that in the Rome of the emperors, there were some forms of praise, and thus some praiseworthy acts, that were reserved for the imperial house and were forbidden or at any rate dangerous for subjects. This is espe-cially true of military glory, so that Agricola anticipates a scene in Tac-itus’ later work, where Corbulo is recalled from a promising German campaign and can only protest that beatos quondam duces Romanos (“the Roman commanders of old were fortunate”), while Germanicus is feared and resented by a Tiberius who bears a singular resemblance to Domitian.39

Tacitus recognizes as explicitly as Plutarch the difference between the splendor of a free past and the constraints of an authoritarian pres-ent. But just as in Plutarch, Tacitus constructs this divide in such a way that there are virtues that the present has and perhaps the past did not. Agricola is not in fact portrayed as simply a republican hero who had the misfortune to be born in a lesser age. His trademark moderatio and his willingness to suppress his own ego are distinctly “modern” qualities that allow Agricola to survive under the monarchy, but for all that, they also are genuine virtues that are part of what makes Agricola a good

39 Ann. 11.20 beatos quondam duces Romani. The reasons given for Corbulo’s recall (11.19: formidolosum paci virum insignem et ignavo principi praegravem) have several echoes of Agr. 39–40, where Agricola’s victories are characterized as formidolosum to Domitian and Tacitus opines that militare nomen grave inter otiosos. For an extended comparison of Agricola and Germanicus, including on this point, see I. Cogitore, “De l’Agricola aux Annales: Une préfiguration de Germanicus dans le portrait d’Agricola?,” in O. Devillers, ed., Les opera minora et le développement de l’historiographie tacitéenne (Bordeaux 2014) 149–62. Knabe (above, n.14) 66, however, draws a contrast between Agricola and precisely these two commanders, based on his refusal at Agr. 7.3 to resort to harsh disciplinary measures.



man whom Tacitus ostentatiously gives an impression of having liked.40 They are what makes him a fine civilian administrator who can avoid pompous or standoffish behavior in social settings without impairing the authority he commands while on the job. They are what makes him a model husband who lives with his wife in mira concordia, per mutuam caritatem et in vicem se antepondendo (“remarkable harmony, through mutual affection and deference to each other,” 6.1). Plutarch, as author of the Amatorius as well as the Precepts, would understand the implications.41

The idea that the free and illustrious past lacked the virtues of peace had a long history going back to the foundation of the Principate. In a Tacitean context it is most associated with the Dialogus de oratoribus, which ends in a speech by Maternus (Dial. 36–41) arguing that the great oratory of the past was inseparably linked to political disorder, and that in a well regulated monarchical state there should be no need for a Ci-cero. In that case, Maternus’ argument invites at least a partially ironic reading, because it sounds too much like Flavian propaganda, coming from the mouth of a character whose discontent with Vespasian’s regime is ostensibly the entire reason why the various characters are having this debate.42 Fictional interlocutors aside, it is hard to believe that the future author of Tacitus’ Histories genuinely thought of Vespasian’s reign as a time when the state was in the hands of sapientissimus et unus (“the one wisest man,” 41.4) and prosecutions could be dispensed with because tam raro et tam parce peccetur (“offenses are so rare and so slight”). It is possible, however, to reject a rosy picture of the present while still accepting the corresponding critique of the past, and one can imagine a Tacitus who on some level agreed that est magna illa et notabilis elo-quentia alumna licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocant (“that great and

40 See Woodman (above, n.26) 102. Naturally, the virtues of moderatio and mod-estia were not inventions of the principate, and had their histories in philosophical and republican discourse, but Tacitus is using that historical authority to confirm his own answers to questions that he constructs as peculiar to the monarchic state.

41 For a reading of the Amatorius in terms of the civic ideology of homonoia seen in Plutarch’s political writings, see G. Tsouvala, “Integrating Marriage and Homonoia,” in A. G. Nikolaidis (above, n.7) 701–18.

42 For the difficulties of taking Maternus’ speech at face value, see A. Köhnken,(“Das Problem der Ironie bei Tacitus,” MH 30 [1973] 32–50), who calls for a thoroughly ironic reading. For alternative, less ironical, interpretations, see C. S. Van den Berg, The World of Tacitus’ Dialogus de oratoribus (Cambridge 2014) 186–207).


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renowned oratory [of the late Republic] is the offspring of the excess that fools call liberty,” 40.2).

In the Agricola, however, the problem of irony works the other way round. It is not the monarchical critique of republican politics and lit-erature that seems suspiciously neat, but rather the traditionalist ide-alization. Does Tacitus, who is such a trenchant critic of flattery and self-praise under the emperors, really believe in a republican world in which great men received only deserved and disinterested praise from all the best authors and even from themselves? This might be to misread the Agricola through the lens of the Annals, but it is worth considering the two concrete examples that Tacitus uses in his otherwise very vague picture: the autobiographies of Rutilius and Scaurus, leading men of the Senate in the 110s to 90s BC.43

First of all, these two figures were political rivals, and it seems likely that their autobiographies contained incompatible and mutually vitu-perative accounts of the same events, which creates difficulties for Tac-itus’ claim that nec id Rutilio et Scauro citra fidem aut obtrectationi fuit (“Rutilius and Scaurus met neither disbelief nor reproof [for self-praise]”).44 Tacitus’ readers might of course have been unfamiliar with the historical circumstances and the texts themselves, but this only leads to a second problem. Were these really the first names that would have come into readers’ minds once the topic of republican political autobi-ography was broached in the abstract?45 Would they not have thought

43 On Scaurus and Rutilius as autobiographers, see J. M. Candau, “Republican Rome: Autobiographies and Political Struggles,” in G. Marasco, ed., Political Autobiog-raphies and Memoirs in Antiquity: A Brill Companion (Leiden 2011) 133–47; C. B. R. Pelling, “Was There an Ancient Genre of ‘Autobiography’? Or, Did Augustus Know What He Was Doing?” in C. Smith and A. Powell, eds., The Lost Memoirs of Augustus and the Development of Roman Autobiography (Swansea 2009) 42–43. Their fragments have re-cently been reedited by C. Smith as nos. 18 (Scaurus) and 21 (Rufus) in T. J. Cornell, ed., The Fragments of the Roman Historians (Oxford 2013).

44 Note that the nec . . . et construction emphasizes the idea of the two men as a pair. Soverini (above, n.23) 105 recognizes that the selection of two rivals must be deliberate, but reaches the opposite conclusion, that the ability of both men to write successful ac-counts is a testimony to their shared integrity and the reading public’s respect for it.

45 The order of thought within the sentence is suggestive: Tacitus first introduces the general idea of political autobiography as a statement of moral confidence and leaves his readers time to come up with their own examples before finally naming Rutilius and Scaurus. It is generally assumed by moderns that Rutilius’ was much the more widely read of the two works in its own time and immediately after. Cicero (Brut. 132–33) does claim that Scaurus’ work is nearly unknown. However, the sources of testimonia and fragments



rather of later and even more problematic examples: Sulla, Julius Caesar, and Augustus himself? As with the stories cited from the Precepts, the avoidance of more familiar examples points up a discursive problem. In this case, however, there is no real resolution. On the one hand, it is ob-vious why Tacitus does not bring up these names, since they would not serve his purpose of idealizing the economy of praise and glory under the Republic. On the other hand, he cannot prevent readers from thinking of them, nor does he really want to do so. Caesar in particular is a con-stant and inevitable presence in the Agricola, given the British subject matter. In Tacitus’ version, Caesar is the man who boasted of but failed to achieve a conquest that was actually realized, with considerably less fanfare, by Agricola and other generals of the Principate. Furthermore, Tacitus’ tendentious account of Agricola’s recall (Agr. 39–40) insinuates the suggestion that that general did what Caesar so famously would not do: avoid civil strife by obeying, at the cost of his own dignitas, orders from Rome to give up his army.

The ambiguity that surrounds Tacitus’ treatment of the past also ex-tends to more recent figures. After the part of his preface dealing with apud priores, he moves on to more recent times, and begins to discuss oppositional figures of the Neronian and Flavian eras, including Thrasea Paetus, Helvidius Priscus the Elder, Herennius Senecio, and Arulenus Rusticus (Agr. 2.1.). This group is sometimes characterized in modern scholarship as a unified, ideologically motivated opposition to the Flavi-ans and the Roman monarchy more generally.46 While these anachronis-tic readings of a “Stoic Opposition,” are less popular now than they used to be, it is enough for our purposes that in the Agricola Tacitus identifies them as a discrete group whose behavior is suggested as one possible response to tyrannical rule. What exactly Tacitus thinks of this response is a trickier question, and one not confined to the Agricola.47 The initial

for Scaurus include three early imperial authors (Valerius Maximus, Pliny the Elder, and Frontinus) compared with none for Rutilius’s De vita sua (as opposed to his Greek-lan-guage histories).

46 The fundamental “strong” reading of these men as an oppositional group is that of R. MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest and Alienation in the Em-pire (New York and London 1966) 46–94, but for more recent and nuanced assessments, see J. L. Penwill, “Expelling the Mind: Politics and Philosophy in Flavian Rome,” in A. J. Boyle and W. J. Dominik, eds., Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text (Leiden 2003) 344–68; Gering (above, n.17) 306–15.

47 See T. Whitmarsh, “’This In-Between Book’: Language, Politics and Genre in the Agricola,’ in B. C. McGing and J. M. Mossman, eds., The Limits of Ancient Biography


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reference in the preface seems highly complimentary: the men and their writings are portrayed as virtuous victims of Domitian’s tyranny, and the latter are called monumenta clarissimorum ingeniorum (“memorials of outstanding genius,” 2.1.).48 The praise is delivered in indirect discourse, however, as something the narrator and his contemporaries have read (legimus) in other authors whose views they may not fully endorse.49

At all events, the behavior of Agricola in the narrative is very dif-ferent from that of Priscus and the rest, and in case we have missed this point, Tacitus makes it all but explicit at the end. Immediately after the passage already quoted in which Domitian moderatione tamen prudenti-aque Agricolae leniebatur (“was softened by the discretion and restraint of Agricola”), Tacitus becomes unexpectedly polemical:

To those who like to admire whatever is forbidden, may it be known that there can be great men under bad emperors, and that obedience and discretion, if activity and vigor are also present, can reach that same level of praise that many have attained by dangerous means, and those men attained that splendor through an ostentatious death that brought no good to the commonwealth.50

This must refer to the same men mentioned in the preface, and to their approving readers.51 Like Plutarch’s turbulent Greek politicians,

(Swansea 2006) 305–33; Sailor (above, n.4) 113–18. W. Turpin (“Tacitus, Stoic exempla, and the praecipuum munus annalium,” CA 27 [2008] 359–404), arguing largely from the Annales, reads Tacitus as much more sympathetic to the oppositional Stoic figures and Stoicism in general.

48 As A. J. Turner (“Approaches to Tacitus’ Agricola,” Latomus 56 [1997] 590) notes,, it is designedly ambiguous whether the clarissimorum ingeniorum are the biog-raphers or their subjects, although celeberrimus quisque ingenio in the previous section (1.2) clearly refers to writers.

49 The legimus has created much interpretive difficulty, because it seems strange that Tacitus should be learning from written sources about events through which he lived per-sonally and indeed later implies that he witnessed (45.1) The best reading seems to me that of J. Pigo�, “Some Remarks on Tacitus’ Agricola 2.1,” Eos 75 (1987) 323–33, for whom legimus refers to encomiastic literary accounts of the deaths of Domitian’s Stoic victims that would have emerged in the immediate aftermath of that emperor’s death. For a differ-ent interpretation, see Woodman (above, n. 26) 76–77.

50 Agr. 42.4. This is the manuscript text as printed in Delz’s Teubner and Woodman (above, n. 26). Many editors have found the transition at plerique per abrupta, sed in nul-lum too harsh; see Soverini (above, n.23) 290–91 for suggestions, none of them notably more satisfying than the transmitted text.

51 The reference to the “Stoic opposition” is generally accepted, though Woodman (above, n.26) 303 is agnostic as to the identity of the people in question, given the more



they are not refuted on an ideological level but on an ethical and prac-tical one. They are motivated by ambitio, the self-serving ostentation that has been consistently opposed to Agricola’s praiseworthy moder-atio. They garner praise (laus), but it is no greater than what Agricola is getting (at least now that Tacitus is writing), and cannot be justi-fied by concrete results. Their admirers similarly are merely victims of the perverse human tendency to be attracted to things simply because someone has made a rule against them. The martyrs’ inani iactatione libertatis (“hollow display of freedom”) evokes the Republic and shows them to be misinterpreters of the past who choose the wrong examples to imitate. Tacitus’ attack here invites us to reread the preface as setting forth first a praiseworthy but ambiguous republican past (1) and then two responses to it. The “martyrs” (2) try to write like the wrong sort of republicans under the wrong sort of emperor; Tacitus himself (3), who survived and prospered in silence under the Flavians, waits for a better ruler and describes a subject who embodies ancient virtues in a way more suited to the world he lives in.

IV. Conclusion: The Flavian–Trajanic Context

Thus far, this essay has been a reading of two rather isolated literary texts, but these have been selected as particularly suitable case studies for a phenomenon that I contend can be found throughout both Latin and Greek literature in the decades either side of AD 100. The phenom-enon is what I call the “rhetoric of utility and display” and consists of a series of related lines and patterns of argument: the assertion that public activity is desirable and fulfills the traditional need for glory; a some-what paradoxical embrace of certain aspects of public life that in an aristocratic culture might seem mundane or even sordid; a correspond-ing recognition that one gets along in the world by managing people and sometimes suppressing one’s own personality; an anxiety about how

sympathetic portraits of Helvidius and Thrasea elsewhere in Tacitus. Turpin (above, n.47) 397–98, while acknowledging that Helvidius et al. are meant, does try to read the passage as non-polemical. In his view Tacitus is positioning Agricola’s and the Stoics’ different responses to tyranny as equally valid without prejudice to the latter. This requires him to read in nullum rei publicae usum as “had little effect on the state” and ambitiosa morte as “by a resolute death.” Given how the critical words usus and ambitiosus and their cognates are used elsewhere in the Agricola, it seems to me impossible to sustain such an interpretation.


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such behavior works within a value system that idealizes a freer past in which glory worked differently; a tactic of claiming that one’s opponents are all show and no substance and are misusing the exemplary past. Neither author is wholehearted in his embrace of this ethos, and Taci-tus especially does not ignore the contradictions involved in Agricola’s version of an aristocratic career.52 In addition, the two have different visions of the global and local. For Tacitus, the locus of political ac-tivity is in Rome, at the highest level, while equestrian administration and municipal politics are the world from which one rises to that emi-nence. Plutarch is closely focused on the local scene, and elsewhere in his writings he explicitly deprecates ambition for higher office, although in doing so he reveals the increased scope that was becoming available to his younger contemporaries.53

Tacitus and Plutarch are asking different questions and getting dif-ferent answers. What do they share, however, are certain assumptions about how political questions are framed, notably that, for an individual, the central dilemma of politics is how to perform a useful function for one’s community while still gaining traditional forms of glory, all within constraints imposed by a power structure that often fails to provide ad-equate scope for either of those ends. The final question, naturally, is whether these assumptions and the mentality they suggest can be found elsewhere in the literature of the period. Certainly, elements of what we see in the Agricola recur throughout the Tacitean corpus, notably in his characterization of his own Annales as in arto et inglorius labor (“a constricted work, lacking glory,” 4.32) that will nonetheless be non sine usu (“not without use”). In his case it figures into an exploration of the role of the Roman elite under monarchy that is uniquely his own, but it resonates more broadly with the Latin literature of his period in ways that would require exploration beyond the scope of a collection primar-ily about Greek literature.

To consider the Greek side a bit more fully, Plutarch’s other long political treatise, written at about the same time, Should Old Men Take

52 The fullest exploration of the ambiguities involved in the Agricola is Whitmarsh (above, n.47). Halfmann (above, n.2) is perhaps the most thoroughly “pessimistic” read-ing of Plutarch’s Precepts.

53 See Precepts 814D; On Contentment 470C, with Halfmann (above, n.2) 92–93. For the divide between imperial-level and local-level political careers among Greek-speak-ing elites, see J. M. Madsen, Eager to Be Roman: Greek Response to Roman Rule in Pontus and Bithynia (London 2009) 59–102.



Part in Politics? takes a similar view to the Precepts, though its tone is somewhat more upbeat. Thus where the Precepts talked about serious-ness of purpose in admonitory terms, the Old Men is exhortatory. “Polit-ical service (πολιτεία),” Plutarch asserts, “is not a set task (λειτουργία) that ends when some need ceases, but it is one’s life as a civilized, com-munal, social being (βίος ἡµέρου καὶ πολιτικοῦ καὶ κοινωνικοῦ ζῴου) whose nature it is to live out one’s allotted time as a citizen loving the good and one’s fellow man (πολιτικῶς καὶ φιλοκάλως καὶ φιλανθρώπως,” 791C). The Old Men has a similar stress on the behind-the-scenes as-pects of politics: even when it is no longer appropriate for a man to oc-cupy highly visible magistracies, he can still do much good through the private influence he exerts on the younger men who have the fancy titles (see, for example, 796E–F).

Perhaps more surprising are the many strong echoes of the Precepts that one can find in Plutarch’s close contemporary Dio Chrysostom.54 In many ways, Dio looks like a much showier figure than Plutarch: his persona is that of a paradoxical “superstar philosopher” who had a prominent career in Rome and went on to address mass audiences in great cities throughout the east.55 He also trades much on (and likely exaggerates) his connections with good emperors and his conflicts with bad ones.56 Less spectacularly, he also made and circulated a series of speeches given in his home city of Prusa and in neighboring Bithynian cities, and in these one sees repeated nearly all the salient points noted above from the Precepts. These speeches are a mix of general exhor-tations to homonoia and good behavior with specific accounts of his own (evidently not uncontroversial) actions in local politics, notably his sponsorship of civic building projects. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dio stresses the utility of his projects, but he also echoes Plutarch’s stress on the mundane nature of the “petty and inglorious” (σµικρὰ καὶ ἄδοξα,

54 Plutarch and Dio are often seen as representative of broadly the same political mentality, but for an exception, see C. Mueller-Goldingen (“Politische Theorie und Praxis bei Plutarch,” WJA 19 [1993] 211–12), who contrasts Dio the nostalgic romantic Stoic with the more realistic Platonic–Aristotelian Plutarch.

55 For a full overview of Dio’s career, see C. P. Jones, The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom (Cambridge, Mass. ,1978); T. Bekker-Nielsen, Urban Life and Local Politics in Roman Bithynia: The Small World of Dio Chrysostomos (Aarhus 2008) 119–46.

56 H. Sidebottom (“Dio of Prusa and the Flavian Dynasty,” CQ 46 [1996] 447–56) points out how tenuous the evidence is that Dio was genuinely prominent in Flavian court circles. For a reconstruction of Dio’s conflicts with Domitian as based on his own writings, see A. Verrengia, ed., Dione di Prusa: In Atene, sull’ esilio (Or. XIII) (Naples 1999) 66–85.


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47.1) activities he has undergone. He has had his own taste of the con-struction business, in his case an expedition to remote stone quarries.57 He talks up his own behind-the-scenes role as a personal mediator be-tween his city and the emperor, as opposed to opponents who take the more public course of petitions and embassies (Or. 45.3–4). He berates his audiences for misapplying past examples: when they feud with neigh-boring towns, they place themselves in the role of Athenians and Spar-tans, not realizing that the “primacy” they are contending for is illusory (Or. 38.24–29). The major difference is that where Plutarch is giving advice, Dio is mostly reproving or in many cases simply complaining. He frequently shows exasperation with what he sees as the blinkered and ungrateful mentality of his fellow townsfolk and their pointless quarrels with himself and one another.58 One gets the impression that for Dio local politics is a chore, rather than, as with Plutarch, a fulfilling and critical aspect of an elite male’s career.

Nonetheless, it is crucial to realize that Dio chose not only to un-dertake this political work but also, and perhaps more significantly, to circulate these speeches and incorporate his political activities into his literary persona. People of his class had always been active in local pol-itics, but they had not always seen it as a subject for literary discourse. What is remarkable is that even though Dio’s experiences are largely negative, he still seems to think that people want to read about them and that presenting himself in this role will enhance his self-presentation as a Greek philosopher and elite male. As I argue elsewhere, this literary approach to politics is shared by Plutarch and Dio and by their Latin contemporaries and can be linked to two important changes in the po-litical landscape of the imperial elite, namely the increasing dominance of euergetic ideologies in Greek cities and the expanding role for both Latin and Greek provincials in the imperial administration under the Flavians and Trajan.59 The local elites of both halves of the empire saw

57 This is the most usual interpretation of Or. 40.7, where Dio speaks of εἰς τὰ ὄρη φθειρόµενος (“wandering into the mountains”). In the same passage he speaks of taking tedious measurements as part of the architectural planning.

58 See his self-comparison with Socrates at the end of Or. 43, his conversation with an imagined critic at the end of Or. 47, and most of the content of Or. 45 and the first half of Or. 40. Bekker-Nielsen (above, n.55) 125–27 argues that Dio’s opponents are the hereditary bouleutic elite of the city, to which Dio’s family did not belong.

59 The fuller argument is given in A. M. Kemezis, “Flavian Greek Literature,” in A. Zissos, ed., A Companion to the Flavian Era (Oxford, 2016).



their political roles redefined: this meant new opportunities for power and responsibility, but also new frustrations and even dangers when one ran up against the limits of Roman imperialism in the provinces and monarchical authority at the center.

This had broad ramifications for the cultural self-definition of the elite, and it is thus that we see Plutarch and Tacitus preoccupied with the struggles and compromises required to live up to traditional ethical roles while at the same time doing tangible good for one’s various po-litical communities within the hierarchical, authoritarian constraints of the contemporary political scene. The issues they address would persist throughout the next century, as we can tell from the inscriptional record, but after the generation of Plutarch and Tacitus they would cease to be of such compelling literary interest. The attitudes we have seen in the Pre-cepts and Agricola are little in evidence in the writings of Aelius Aristides or Lucian, or those of Apuleius, Fronto, and Gellius.60 They are charac-teristic of the Flavian and Trajanic period, when these questions were new, and when they were played out in the self-presentation of emperors themselves. The ethos of utility that we see in Agricola and in Plutarch’s municipal politician is not that far from the administrative efficiency with which the Flavians were credited, even by a basically hostile tradition, and Trajan himself was a characteristic product of that same elite.61

It should be stressed, however, that what I have identified here is not, on the explicit level, a unified, dominant “imperial ideology.” It is not that Tacitus and Plutarch took cues from above, made a collective fetish of utility and sincerely embraced the mundane aspects of adminis-tration while laying aside any old-fashioned concerns about freedom and glory. Rather than being imposed by rulers on ruled, the rhetoric of util-ity, as I have constructed it, was a discursive resource that the empire’s elites, at all levels from Rome to the provinces, could use to imagine their role as rulers within a hierarchy.

The imperial monarchy as it evolved in the first century AD was, it is well known, remarkably good at co-opting and reshaping existing elites, whether provincial notables or Roman senators. All of these groups had

60 For the contrast between Dio and Aristides in this respect, see Kemezis (above, n.59).

61 This can be seen in Suet. Vesp. 8–10, Dom. 10. There is a modern tradition of seeing Domitian especially as a competent administrator, which is summarized by Gering (above, n.17) 303–304.


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lost some degree of their traditional autonomy, and defeat in civil wars or wars of conquest had a major role in their collective memories. How-ever, they still possessed the economic, social, and cultural resources without which the new order would be unable to function, and which indeed that order was ideologically committed to preserving. Thus it was in the interests of both the various elites and of the system as a whole that those elites occupy privileged positions within the imperial power structure, and that they come to identify themselves with the system and with one another as fellow beneficiaries of it. This process was some-what easier in that these positions were lucrative and allowed for the exercise of considerable power. Still, it created the discursive problem that Tacitus and Plutarch are facing, because it entailed a degree of sub-ordination—to an emperor, to “the Romans” as the case might be—that was at odds with traditional forms of elite self-definition. Being a sen-atorial administrator or a bouleutic aristocrat was attractive enough in itself, and preferable to any obvious alternative, but it was still not fully compatible with the traditional roles of senator and citizen of a polis. Those roles had been defined in very different political circumstances, but contemporary elite males continued to use them as a critical part of their self-image, in part because the roles were embodied in the literary traditions on which their educations were based.

The “rhetoric of utility,” as I have identified it, solves this problem by recasting subordination as a virtue that can be articulated through traditional topoi as well as through commonsense arguments based on observable results. It serves as a subtler and more versatile complement to the explicit ideology of consensus that was another crucial part of Roman imperial discourse. In texts like these from Plutarch and Tacitus, a thoughtful and intelligent author can express doubts and reservations about the political system of which he is a part, while still endorsing assumptions that lead him to advocate remaining within that system and doing one’s part to make it work and to disparage those who reject the assumptions and seek alternatives.

This process can be made to sound deceptively benign, and it is im-portant to recognize its drawbacks. The emphasis on utility that we see in these texts remains, to a great degree, a technique for maintaining exist-ing inequalities of power, status, and wealth. It does so by moving discus-sion out of the ideological realm altogether, and treating monarchy and imperialism as established facts to be dealt with as best one can, rather than as ongoing processes that need to be justified or, if that is impossible,



resisted. The authors use arguments from practical necessity in order to exclude other options and to avoid much more difficult debates about the ethical status, and even the ultimate practical advantages, of the courses of action they are praising. In our own political context, it is difficult not to see parallels with how ostensibly democratic governments of na-tion-states talk about their various accommodations to different forms of global capitalism. We have our own examples of how existing elites can use traditional and commonsensical arguments that appear ideologically neutral—in our case about fiscal responsibility and the dangers of finan-cial collapse—to take the place of ideological political debate. Such ar-guments may be sincere or on their own terms correct, but they still tend to reinforce those elites’ privileged positions by restricting the ideological and practical space in which one might seek alternatives.

The Roman Empire was extremely good at convincing elite constit-uencies of all kinds not only that supporting it was right and opposing it was wrong, but also that support was the profitable, natural, and intelli-gent course for people like them, while opposition was harmful, eccen-tric, and stupid. Moreover, like any political system that is equipped to last, it was so constructed as to provide strong practical arguments for those convictions, since individuals or communities who failed to acqui-esce could count on objectively negative results for their social, cultural, and economic standing.62 Tacitus and Plutarch show us how this process is at work even in texts that on other levels seem to question the mo-narchical form of government or the dominance of the imperial center over local communities. It is still, I would argue, possible to read such literature as “oppositional,” especially given the many layers of irony and self-questioning that an author like Tacitus can generate. But if we are to identify a critique of monarchy and imperialism within these texts, we have to be aware that they emerge from a political culture that provided a surprising amount of room for discontent among its elite members while still retaining varied and sophisticated discursive means of neu-tralizing that discontent.

UNIVERSITY OF [email protected]

62 For the argument that power relationships tend to generate the conditions for their own legitimation, see D. Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (New York 2013) 56–63.


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