Materiali e discussioni

per Tanalisi dei testi classici

50

2 2 HOV. ? ϋ 0 3

Pisa · Roma
Istituti Bditoriali @

e Poligrafici Internazionali
2003
 6ο Roland G. Mayer

Persona<[> Problems.
T
The Literary Persona in Antiquity Revis is.

/ am not poetic nmgfc toscparmteλ man's

poetry entirelyfromhis character.
Charlotte Heywood in Jane Austen. SamHtan

Jc at a»i autre.
Artiir Rimbaud. La Utvrc Λκ rcydnt

r. Introductory

A brief preliminary word is necessary, since my topic, the literary

persona in antiquity, has been so recently and so ably handled by
Diskin Clay in this periodical (1998) that it might be thought that lit
tie n e w or useful could be said on the matter.
Early in 1997 ί delivered a seminar paper in London's Institute of
Classical Studies on this very topic. M y aim was to establish so far as
possible h o w G r e e k and Roman readers, w h o , significantly, often
comprise writers-as-readers, regarded the literary persona, a strat
egy of representation with which they w e r e fully acquainted. My
evidence, which spanned many centuries, suggested that the an
cient notion of the literary persona w a s fundamentally different
from.ours. .Few if any G r e e k or R o m a n readers were capable of con-
ceiving of the persona in the terms n o w c o m m o n to modern critics.
My approach to the issue w a s thus different f r o m Clay's; lie w a s
specifically looking for w h a t might be called 'pre echoes' or ana
logues of the modern theory of the literary persona - I rely here on
his resume at (1998, 18). In the event, he found virtually none
clus w a s as close as he could identify (1998.38). and he too concluded
that the ancicnts did not entertain notions about the persona at all
similar to ours. S o w e arrived at the same place by different routes.
But, as I wish to stress, my concern w a s to establish, if possible,
what the literary persona was thought to be in antiquity, and for
that reason the evidence 1 have assembled remains valuable, espe-

* A u d i e n c e s at the Institute o f Classical Studies (London), H e i d e l b e r g , Pisa and R u t

gers. as w e l l as this j o u r n a l ' s w o a n o n y m o u s r e f e r e e s , h a v e helped to i m p r o v e the pre-
sentation o f this essay. I a m most g r a t e f u l to Christina Kraus. the late H u b e r t Peters-
maim, G i a n Cia^io C o m e and L o w e l l R d i n u n J s f o r o f f e r i n g m e p l a t f o r m s f r o m w h i c h
to set out m y v i e w s .
 daily the evidence of poets on their predecessors, much of which
was not utilised by Clay, since he was looking for evidence for a con-
cept similar to ours. Such a concept he could not find, and there he
left the matter, asserting a conviction however that ancient poets
did nonetheless create the sort of personae for themselves that
modern critics so readily ascribe to them (1998, 39). He did nor ex-
plain how, as writers, they managed to free themselves from the
common ancient view of the persona, which, as readers, they so of-
ten betray. His account, therefore, in my view, leaves us with a con-
siderable apoiia.
At this point then I part company with him. I do not feel that it is
so easy to demonstrate, on die one hand, that the literary persona
was interpreted in a fundamentally different way in antiquity, an J
then to assert, on the other, that it still existed as it is now deemed
to exist, albeit largely unrecognised by readers (many of whom
were also writers). Granted that the difference is so fundamental, is
it a useful interpretational exercise to impose the modern concep;
upon the ancient writers and texts, when the ancients had their own
understanding of the use to be made of the authorial mask? That is
not an issue to be dealt with axiomaticaliy, and to it I will return in
the course of my discussion of the evidence.

2. lite Problem

Poets who compose in the personal genres of lyric, elegy, and satire
do not always address their audience in their own person. We fuid
right from the start in the earliest Greek lyric that some writers - we
should more properly call them 'singers' - played a role, and in their
poem, or song, they assumed a character with its appropriate per-
sonality. This technique of selfaiVasking was perhaps easily enough
recognized by an audience at a symposium, and even later readers
of texts in antiquity had 110 serious problems of interpreting the use
of the mask, as we shall see. It was left to readers and critics of the
last century to «problematize» the use of the mask or persona, and
for good reason: the persona became a prominent strategic device
among modernist writers, for instance, iizra Pound, who entitled a
collection of his poems Personae (1926), and the Portuguese poet
Fernando Pessoa, whose vciy name (under which lie never pub-
lished), weirdly, means 'persona'. The use of the mask in modernist
lyric prompted critics during the past half century to reread per-
sonal forms of classical poetry in the belief that a similar persona or
mask could be found in them. Such a rereading seemed valid just be-
cause the Greeks and Romans themselves had a notion of the autho-
rial persona and a concept of the use to be made of literary masks.
 The Literary Persona in Antiquity -
7}

T h e r e are in particular passages in Catullus, Ovid, and Martial

which seem to anticipate the modern view, that the writer could
distinguish himself f r o m his work, even when he used the first per-
son singular. But that ancient conccpt, before Clay, w a s never fully
expounded or analysed. 1 w a n t in this paper to supplement Clay's
evidence for what the ancients themselves, as readers, thought
about the literary persona. W e shall indeed, like Clay, find that their
v i e w is radically different from the modern, and this throws up the
problem ί have j u s t enunciated: the m o d e m concept of the use of
the authorial persona w a s demonstrably unavailable to the ancient
reader or writer-as-render, w h o had his o w n very different notion
about the use made by the personal poet of masks. N o w since per-
sona-criticism is an approach to reading texts rather than a theoreti-
cal system of literary analysis (like structuralism or deconstruction),
and since it is agreed by all that the persona is a consciously created
element in a p o e m (so Clay 1998, 39), it may be urged that so far as
classical poetry is concerned the m o d e m reading is misapplied. That
at any rate is the conclusion I am driven to.
Let us begin our investigation of the ancient view of the authorial
persona with Greek personal poetry.

3. The Greeks' Use of the Literary Persona

Archilochus must be our starting place, for he is credited with die

development of personal lyric into a literary form. N o w this con
cept of «literary form» will be fundamental to an understanding of
h o w later Greeks at any rate came to interpret his poetry, a w a y per-
haps quite at odds with the intention of the poet and the perceptions
of his first audience at a symposium. T h e classic exposition of
problem in reception is Sir Kenneth D o v e r ' s 1964 essay, 'Hie Poetry cj
Archilochus (overlooked by Clay 1998, π η. 4 ). In that pioneering
study, D o v e r argued that Archilochus' lyrics remained true to their
origin in song, and he observed that songs in many preliterate cul-
tures clo not necessarily express the personality and emotions of the
composer, w h o may adopt the character and standpoint of another
person, possibly fictional, in w h a t m a y be an imaginary situation
(1964, 202). In s o m e such traditions, the singer might not be refer-
ring to himself w h e n he used the w o r d «1».
D o v e r then w e n t on to speculate about h o w Archilochus might
have used a persona in his o w n lyric songs (1964. 206-210). H e made
out a good case that Archilochus' practice may well have been very
close to that of other preliterate singers, and that the persona
adopted may have had nothing at all to do with the y o u n g m e m b e r
of a distinguished family on the island of Paros w h o composed the
 I
i
5» Roland G. Mayer

lyrics. It Is worth bearing in mind too that the context for the perfor-
mance ο these songs, the symposium, will h a v e precluded confu-
sion and ambiguity. If a male singer k n o w n to his audience adopted
for the purpose of his song the persona of a love-lorn maiden, his
companions k n e w what was going on. Only after the song b e c a m e
text and w a s freed f r o m the conventions of its musical performance
might d i f i c u k i e s arise, a point stressed later by Clay too (1998, 30-
32). In the course of his speculation - and it must be reiterated that
D o v e r wris speculating - he made a point which has a fundamental
bearing dn the issue of reception: the conditions which shaped
those earliest G r e e k lyric poems in an Aegean island c o m m u n i t y of
the seventh century «ceased to appear natural by the age of Pericles»
(1964, 208]. O v e r time Archilochus came to be understood as talking
about hi η self w h e n e v e r he used the unqualified first person singu-
lar. This is clear f r o m the f a m o u s j u d g m e n t of Critias, w h o «blamed
Archilochus f o r being very critical o f himself» 1 . Critias plainly as-
sumed that Archilochus in speaking of his birth f r o m a slave
w o m a n , h s adultery, lechery, and cowardice w a s referring to him-
self. This cssumption w a s fostered once his lyrics had b e c o m e liter-
ary documents, and w e r e read as personal testaments. This is cru-
cial, just because Archilochus w a s so admired and imitated in antiq-
uity. D o v e r m a y well be right that his later readers in the w i d e r
G r e e k world lacked the clue to a correct understanding of his po-
etry. But that possibly f l a w e d reading nonetheless became the dom-
inant modei of identifying the poet's character f r o m the text. For the
rest of antiquity Archilochus was read as a personal poet, describing
his o w n experiences. T h a t belief shaped the understanding and pro-
duction of personal poetry thereafter. Particular emphasis must be
laid upon ttyiie later reading of his p o e m s as personal documents, be-
cause (on Ipover's hypothesis) the Greeks themselves lost f o r e v e r
the key to a recognition
1 of the assumed persona,
A very at le discussion of the difficulty is offered by W o l f g a n g
Rosier, whe also provides a helpful s u m m a r y of the anglophone
aesthetic of I the persona loquens as a thing distinct f r o m the write r
(1985, 134-138 with a critique of D o v e r ' s position at 1985, 136). Rosier
makes the : alutary point that the function of early Greek s o n g
within socie y was not primarily autobiographical. (But nonetheless
he believes tlhat «prassi di vita e creazione poetica costituiscono [...]
un unita», in short that there is a secure link between the real and
the poetic «1 ). He agrees with D o v e r that by the time of Critias the
man Archilo :hus was identified with the content o f his poetry, and
he adds that Pindar too shared Critias* predisposition to regard the

1. See. Aclian, Vn Hist. x.t3 — Critias 8H Β w Dicls - Krans = fr. 295W.

 7}
The Literary Persona in Antiquity -

incidents related as biographical (cf. Pyth. 2.5.-1-56). This point of

Rosler's must he stressed, because Critias and Pindar thus assume a
fresh importance as o u r first examples of 'writers-as-readers', poets
themselves w h o might as such have been expected to have an insid-
er's special understanding of h o w to discount superficially 'person-
al' statements. But in fact their v i e w of what Archilochus says of
himself is exactly the same as that of the everyday reader: the poets
turn out to be c o m mlonplace readers in their belief that Archilochus
had turned s o m e of his o w n experiences into the subject matter of
his lyrics.
Another example o f a writer-as-reader w h o , by modern accounts
at any race, «misiinqerstood» the circumstances of archaic poetic
composition, is Hcrcldotus. As A n d r e w Ford says (2002, 147), «he
tends to regard lyric monodies as records "in song" of the poet's
life». So, f o r instances in Histories 5.95, he relates that the poet Al-
caeus «in a battle w o n by the Athenians [...] took to flight, and saved
himself, but lost his urns [...] he made a poem describing his acci-
dent for his friend f /leianippus, and sent it to him at Mytilcne».
Herodotus clearly is m a w a r e of a persona here, and he regards the
incident as fact, rath ^r than a literary topos o r an invention. N o r
does he acknowledge the probability that this p o e m w a s designed to
be sung at a symposi urn2. His interpretation of song as a documen-
tary text m a y , as Ford goes on to suggest (2002,147), o w e something
to fifth-century lives jf the poets, but presumably the use to which
he put the song woul not have struck his o w n audience as inappro-
priate or mistaken, [e is thus an important witness, like Critias, of
the established tende ncy to regard poems as documentary records,
Alcaeus' p o e m was a rldressed to his friend, so Herodotus takes it to
have been a sort of letter. It is just that tendency which arguably
helped to foster the treatment of p o e m s as documents giving re!i-
able information aboi lt their writers.
Let us n o w turn back to Archilochus to look at the lyrics in which
he overtly assumed a character, or persona, e.g., that of Charon the
carpenter (Fr. 22D. : 19W.), or that of a father speaking about his
daughter (Fr. 74D. — 122W.). Aristotle recognized this device
(Rhetoric 3.Γ418Β 23 ff. , and it is from him that w e learn how a Greek,
well-acquainted with the literature of his people, accounted for this
assumption of the η lask. He believed that an author donned the
mask w h e n it w o u l d be an error o f taste to speak in propria persona.
yet he reckoned nonetheless that the assumed personality generally

χ. S e e the discussion of ι lis passage by G a u t h i c r L i b e r m a n iu his B u d e edition o f

A l r a e u s (Paris 1999), vol. I, Dp. xxvii ff. and then p. 11. A m o n g his testimonia he refers to
l rt
Synesius,
•^»"- De htsomniis 10,t J1 iOJ,
- - IHJl'iillilJ :6a, y.
p. 100
188 TI eΓΊ/,.ΙΙ-ΠΙ,
r z a g h i , fIl«.UIl
r o m wWlll<-Ix
h i c h it
Jl is
IS clear
i.11 .11 iIhJaU
tl' S y n c s i n s t o o
regarded rhe persona) p o e t r y o l ' A r r h i J o c h u s and Alcaeus ns d o c u m e n t a r y .
 6ο Roland G. Mayer

spoke the author's o w n w m d (something expected of the m e m b e r s

of a symposium) 3 . This is a valuable testimony of the ancient atti-
tude to the use of a persona: the mask served to express the speak-
er's o w n opinion, only by a tactful indirection 4 .
Solon next deserves a m o m e n t ' s notice, for he ingeniously had re-
course to not one, but t w o personae in a p o e m o f advice. T h e Athe-
nians had long and indecisively disputed with M e g a r a the posses-
sion of Salamis; defeat prompted in Athens a prohibition on speak-
ing or writing - those w o r d s must be stressed - about a renewal of
the campaign (according to Plutarch, Solon 8.1). Solon hid a w a y in
his h o m e and gave out that his wits had wandered. H e then reap-
peared suddenly and, wearing a felt cap, πιλίδιον (the sign of mad-
ness), recited in public an elegy (that is to say, he w a s neither speak-
ing nor writing), in which he encouraged a renewal of conflict with
Megara. H e claimed in the first words of the song to be a herald
f r o m lovely Salamis (Fr. i W . - Aristotle, Aih. Pol. §12). S o there
w e r e two personae at w o r k here, both assumed to elude the Athe-
nian injunction. Solon got away with it both as a m a d m a n and as an
inviolable herald. T h e advice was nonetheless his o w n , and the per-
sonae w o u l d have afforded him no lasting protection. If the Atheni-
ans had failed in their fresh attack upon Salamis, do w e suppose that
they w o u l d have pardoned Solon, because it w a s really the persona
of a deranged herald which had prompted their foray? T h e r e are
other poems too that give every appearance of being about Solon
himself, f o r they refer to his social and economic measures (Frs. 5,
36W.), and they w e r e used by Aristotle in his account of the Athe-
lian constitution (Aih. Pol §12) as documents w h i c h corroborated
other historical accounts. T h e r e w a s no doubt in Aristotle's mind
hat Solon was referring to his actual arrangements. T h e r e was no
:>lace for a persona - in the modern sense - in poetry of political ad-
;ice, and attention has been drawn to this feature, of Solon's verse
>y Bernard Knox 5 .
Pindar is the last Greek singer w h o needs brief mention. W e h a v e
11 encountered the running debate about the identity of the εγώ in
tis songs. Is it the chorus, or the singer, or even the victor? If the

l : or the biographical inferences Aristotle was prepared to draw from the. poetry oi
Dion or Theodorus of Colophon see Pol. 1296a and fr. 515 Rose = Athr.n. Dr.ψ. 14.618 ί
•licvc that fYangoise Frontisi Ducroix, Du masque an visage. Aspects iis Vidcntitc cn Greet
icienne, Paris 1995. docs not recognize this 'rhetorical' account of the 'prosopon' in her
herwise impressive survey and analysis.
Another motive for the use of a mask, or an assumed name, rniglu have been poliri-
l; I have in mind Xenophon's assumption of the 1101 ndc-flume Thccniscogcncs of Syra-
se (see Plut., Gbr. Aih. 345 c )·
See Ρ.Π. Eastcrling - B.M.W. Kno.x (eds). The Cambridge Ihstoiy of Classical Liter -: •
Stcck Literature, Cambridge 1981. Ρ
 7}
The Literary Persona in Antiquity -

singer, is the. singer to be identified with the writer? T o what degree

are apparertly personal statements to be regarded as telling us
something cbout the poet? S o m e think that the whole of a Pindaric
epinikion is a purely rhetorical structure with no personal clement.
T h i s reductive v i e w is gradually being overturned, and G. D'Alessio
has carefully scrutinized the arguments and offers his o w n assess-
ment of the «communicative strategy involved in the construction
of the persona Joquens» (1994, 12.1). H e concludes that in this period
«the construction of the poet's literary persona [...] cannot be di-
vorced f r o m the construction of his social persona» (t994, 138). Me
points out tjhat Pindar was, for instance, believed in the late fifth
century to ! ave had a particularly close relationship with the gods,
6
because tha was w h a t he claimed in many of his odes . Once again
w e are facet with the audience's assumption that w h a t the poet said
of himself ν as rooted in reality (even though here again the point
made earliei b y Rosier could be borne in mind, that Pindar is not in-
dulging in se lf-revclation for its o w n sake; the personal derail always
serves a purpose within the strategy of praise).
Discussioij o f the literary persona is almost exclusively confined
to poetry. This is to neglect the important area of the persona in
prose, specifically in the philosophical dialogue. T o put it crudely,
whilst Plato! never expressed in writing a philosophical opinion that
is attributable to himself, since all of his philosophical discourse is
conducted by personae, that h o w e v e r did not deter subsequent
thinkers anc writers from identifying a specifically Platonic contri-
bution to philosophical thought. Aristotle, for example, recognized
Plato behind the mask of the Athenian stranger in the Laws (EN
2.3.1104b Γ2), and behind Socrates in the Phil elms (EN io.2.ri72t>2.8).
This is not ζ loose w a y of talking, but is surely the more significant
because Ari;totle was Plato's pupil: his induction ought to have
been founded 011 knowledge rather than on guesswork. In the Ro-
man world, w e find Quintilian saying of the Gorgias: quae [...] sunt
[...] dicta [... a Socrate, cuius persona uidetur Plato significare quid sen-
tiat (Inst. 215.26); the opinions are felt to be Plato's, speaking
through Socrates, in the next sentence Quintilian begins by refer-
ring to the v i e w Socrates held of contemporary rhetoric, but quickly
corrects himself: Socrates autem sen Plato. There are undeniably nu-
ances in the degree to which readers attributed doctrine to Socrates
or to Plato (pnd Aristotle himself attributes notions to Socrates that
he has found in Phto or in Xenophon), but it is sufficient for my pre-
sent purpose to stress that all of the later Greek systematic accounts
of Platonic doctrine are based entirely u p o n the assumption that the

6. D'Alessio reft is to L. L.ehnus, L'ituto a Pan tli Pitularo, Milan 1979.

 62
Roland G. Mayer

pt rsonae arc more or less transparent, and that behind them lies
Plato's o w n thinking.

The Roman Persona

L u us n o w turn to the Romans, and begin with their v i e w of G r e e k

personal poets. W e would not expect to find a fundamental change
of interpretation, for the R o m a n s read the G r e e k poets in accor-
dance with established doctrine exactly as the Greeks did, since their
tc us w e r e expounded to them by γραμματικοί. Let m e o f f e r t w o ex-
amples. In the Tusculans, 4.71, Cicero, talking about love poetry, says
this: quid denique homines doctissimi el summi poetae dc se ipsis et
ca minibus edunl el cantibus. de se ipsis: their p o e m s and songs are
about themselves; he betrays n o sense o f a persona. He goes on to
re:'er to the amatory verse o f Alcaeus and of Anacreon, and con-
cludes widi Ibycus: maxume uero omnium flagrassc amore Reginum Iby-
cum apparct cx scriptis. apparel ex scriptis: his writings betray his dis-
position. Persona! poetry gives an insight into the character and
feelings of the writer.
\ manifest example of Greek instruction filtering d o w n into the
R o m a n tradition occurs in a scholium by P o r f y r i o on a passage in
Horace's satires to which I shall want to return. Horace states in
Sem. 2.1.30 that LuciLius entrusted s o m e account of himself to his
sa ires. Porfyrio remarks: Aristoxeni senteniia est. lllc enitn in suis
scriptis ostendit Saphphoncm et Alcacum uolumina sua loco sodalinm
habuisse. T h a t is to say, a v i e w was current that their p o e m s were
w h a t w e should n o w call confessional.
Even 11011 personal poetry w a s reckoned to reveal the writer's
character: laudibus arguitur uini uinosus Moments, says H o r a c e (Ep.
1.19.6), using a sort of induction universally f a v o u r e d in antiquity
even by poets-as-readers 7 . But the R o m a n s w e r e of course also
aware of the assumption of a personality or role, and to describe it
us i d their w o r d for mask, persona. Let us n o w see h o w they used
th s important w o r d .
There is-a brief psychological analysis of the classical usage by H.
Rheinfelder 8 , and the Oxford Latin Dictionary provides a handy

7 3 R Stuart Authors' Lives as Revealed in Their Works: a Critical Resume, in G.P. 1 lad/,-
sits (cd.), Classical Studies in Honor of J. C. Rolf:·, Philadelphia ip 3 r. p p . 301-304.provides a
c r o p discussion and rightly stresses that this practice was endorsed b y the philosophers
loq it was nor merely the trifling of biographers. It is relevant to my overall project
h e r e that S l u a r t n o t e s t h a i antiquity's a p p r o a c h to w h a t w e should nowadays rcpudi
as i biographical fallacy was pretty uniform; j u s t a n o t h e r instance of h o w d i f f e r e n t tlieir
approach was from ours.
8, brtJ Won 'Persona': Gcschichtc seiner Bcdeutungcn mil bcsondeicr Beriickskhligunz Acs
 The Literary Persona in Antiquity - 7}

o v e r v i e w until the Thesaurus reaches our word. Niall Rudd (1976,

177) makes it clcar from passages like Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
3.58 eripitur persona, manei res and Sen. Pp. 24.13 non hominibus tantum
sed rebus persona demenda est et reddendafades sua that the mask could
be a device with which to conceal the truth o f things (cf. OLD 2d) 9 .
But that usage is far less c o m m o n than the one w h e r e b y persona
refers to one's particular role in life, which circumstances may alter.
T h e phrases personam suscipere/imponere uel sim. suggest that one's
character is typical but yet adaptable to circumstance 1 0 . Another us-
age referred to those essential qualities as human beings which w e
'project' to the world. Hence the jurists' use of the w o r d to mean a
legal person, and the sense w c find in the phrase in propria persona.
N o w it is this usage which is important in literary discussions in
Rome.
Cicero, for instance, recognized the use of an assumed personality
in verse satire. At De Oratore 3.171 Crass us refers to Lucilius' use of
Scaevola, his father-in-law, as a persona: in quo lepide soceri met per
sona lusit is qui elegantissime id fame, potuit Lucilius (there follows a
verse quotation). Crassus regards the mask as one through which
Lucilius himself w a s speaking: in me quidem lusit ille, ut solet·, illc
refers to Lucilius, not the persona of Scaevola.
Cicero's use of masks in his dialogues was of course recognized,
and up to a point discounted, by his readers. Here are s o m e exam-
ples. Crassus, just referred to in the De Oratore, w a s seen to be a
mouthpiece for Cicero's opinions: that is h o w Quintilian read the
text (first. 10.3.1): nec inmerito M. Tidliits hnnc [stihnn] «optimum efjec-
torem ac magistmm rficendi» uocat, mi sentenliae personam L. Crassi [...]
adsignando indicium suum cum illius auctoritate coniunxit. Later in the
same b o o k Quintilian hints at h o w he «unmasked» Cicero: at De
Orat. 1.155 Crassus had r e c o m m e n d e d translation f r o m Greek into
Latin, and, as Quintilian says (Inst. 10.5.2): id Cicero sua ipse persona
frequetitissime praecipiCl. Ergo, Crassus - Cicero, with the additional
weight of his o w n authority, an interesting sidelight upon another
motive for deploying the persona. Quintilian, agreeing implicitly
with Aristotle about the tactful use of a mask, assumed too that Ci

franzosischen uml itnlicmschcn Miitclalters, Halle 1928 (Reihefte zur Zeitschrifc fur roma-
nische Philologie, 77), ΡΡ· ^ 7 ·
9. Rudd returns co the issue of the persona in Citsucal Humanism and its Critics, «P.chos
du Monde Classiquc/ Classical Views» n.s. 40. 15.
10 So Reid on Cic. Pro Sulla 3.8; Ramsay on Pro Clu. z9.78, both cited by Wilkins on De
Orat r 169. Cicero's view is also set our in De Off i.ioy, 115, and 3.43. Μor*·. developed is
Seneca, Ep. izo.za: multiform» sumtu. moAo fivgi ribi unldnmur ct pants, m0Λ0 prcxhgt et
utini· mictamns subinrlc personam et contmrinm ei sunnmus qnam cxuimus.
u. We. lack the passages referred to. but it is a plausible guess that they were in private
letters.
 6ο Roland G. Mayer

ccro in liis dialogues employed others to tell the truth about his own
eloquence (J/ist. ii.i.2i) 1 1 .
Qiiintilian's penetration of the Ciceronian persona is also shared
by Lactantius (Iitst. Dzv. 6.2.15), who says of an opinion put into the
mouth of Catulus in the dialogue Horlensius: quae scnlcnlia non utique
Catuli, qui foitasse illud non dixit, sed Ciceronis est putanda, qui scripsit.
So far as he was concerned, Cicero is manifest behind his persona.
But Quintilian is not prepared to read all voices as authorial; he
observed that what Antonius says at De Oral. 2.232 about natural
rhetoric is not set down so that we will accept it as true, but as being
congruent with the man's character 13 . Here there is a further twist
however. Whilst Antonius' views on rhetoric as an art did not rep-
resent Cicero's, Cicero himself endorsed «Antonius'» views on wit:
quae sunt a me in secundo libro de Oratore per Anioni personam dispuiata
de lidiculis (Farn. 7.32.z)14. There could however be no ground for
confusion, since Cicero in introducing the second book made it
clear that here the views of Crassus and Antonius would provide
complete coverage for the reader (De Orat. 2.11), and there was
no tiling for them to disagree about.
A final light upon how a Roman reader might regard an obvious
persona is provided by the scholiast Porfyrio's analysis of Horace's
notorious second Epodc; on lines 67-68 he says: urbnnissime posircnw
finxit haec non dc sua persona dicta esse, sed feneratorts; per quod unit in-
tellegi item incut nescire quid iucundi talis habcat uita rustica, nec tamen
queinquam ab ca in qua consucuerit. posse, discederc. The assumed per-
sonality is a refinement - urbanissime - which enables the poet to lull
two birds with one stone; he praises the countryside and yet shows
how hard it is to depart from our habits. Porfyrio does not regard
the poem as at odds with the poet's own views, since everyone
agrees about the charms of the countryside. It need hardly be
pointed out however that in his recent commentary (Cambridge,

12. For this tactful form of self-praise we might compare the way in which the olive in
Callimachus' Iambus 4.G4-S7 employs the conversation of the birds in her branches to
rout the laurel.
13. quod 11 on ideo Ut ucro accifiamus est position, sed ui Anioni persona sauctur, qui dissi-
mulator atiisfuic (Inst. 2-.17.5-6); he has in faci misremembered, lor the speaker there was
Crassus, w h o offered a paraphrase of Antonius' remarks at the beginning of the second
book, § 12. Quintilian's view overall is of a piccc with his account of prosopopoieia in
Inst, n ; dramatists, historians and advocaics .ill need to acquire the skill o f putting the
appropriate words into the mouths of heir speakers, and maintaining consistency of
presentation (see esp. Insl. ii.i-39). This is an important doctrine, which has a bearing
on the construction of the persona bqueus, but Quintilian is not here talking about how
we present ourselves.
14 W e can hardly blame Quintilian for the lapse of memory noted above, for Ciceri
himself has here slipped; the discussion of wit at Dc Orat. 2.7.17*90 is put into the 1 .ouih
of C. Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus!
 7}
The Literary Persona in Antiquity -

1-995, P- 63) David Manldn takes a thoroughly different, modern v i e w

of the persona of Alfius' 5 .
T o close this section, let us look at a remarkable 'reading' of a con-
troversial use of the persona, Apuleius and his apparent identifica-
tion with the 'hero' of his novel, Metamoiyhoses. Lucius, the narrator
of the tale, becomes an ass; pure fantasy, w e should say, and w e thus
try up to a point to keep author and narrator separate. But in antiq-
uity it w a s not so clear-cut an issue. In De Ciuitate Dei 18.18 Augus-
tine says that the c o m m o n belief that men can be turned into beasts
is nonsense (though C o d of course can do that); still, he himself had
heard in Italy of wicked landladies w h o could turn men into beasts
of burden, which retained their human mind; this happened· to
Apuleius, w h o m Augustine clearly identifies wirh the narrator of
the novel:

si enim dixerimus ea non esse credenda, non desunt etiam nunc qui eius
mudi quacdarn ucl cenissima audisse uel etiam expertos se esse adseuer-
ent. nam et nos cum essemus in Italia audiebamus talia de quadam regions
illarum partium, ubi stabularias niulieres inbutas his malis artibus in caseo
dare solere dicebant quibus uelienr seu possent uiatoribus, uncle in iu-
menta ilico uerterentar et necessaria quacque portarent postque perfuncta
opera iterum ad se redirent; nec tamcn in eis mentem fieri bestialem, sed
rationalem humanamque seruari, sicuc Apuleius in libris, quos asini aurei
rirulo inscripsit, sibi ipsi aeddisse, ut accepto ueneno humano animo per-
manentc asinus iieret, aut indicauit aut finxit.

Augustine presumably favours fiction (finxit), but he cannot cate-

gorically deny the belief in the author's o w n 'evidence' (indicauit).
In other words, there w e r e people w h o credited the tale as a docu-
mentary account of a true event, and Augustine is not prepared to
rule this out categorically.
Let me recapitulate then to this point: in literary contexts persona
is used by Romans to refer both to the person' w h o is imagined as
speaking (say, Alfius) and to die writer (say, Horace). H o w e v e r
parate the characters of writer and speaker, nonetheless the Ro-
mans tended to believe that they could see through the mask: to
parody theological terms, they detected only a distinction of person,
not a distinction of being. Porfyrio therefore was sure that the mon-
eylender Alfius in ι he second Epode. w a s really voicing Horace's o w n
opinion: quod uuU intellegi neminem [n.b.] nescire quid iucunditatis
habeat uita nistica. Similarly, a speaker like Crassus in the De Oratore
was felt to be the mouthpiece of Cicero himself. For Cicero the per-

Literature (Mnemosyne SnppL, 130), Leiden 1994, pp. 240-213.

 66 Roland G. Ma*

sona of Crassus added authority to his argument, whilst for Ho

the persona of Alfius provided an amusing twist to the conventi
praises of the countryside. R o m a n readers seem generally reluc
to distinguish sharply between the writer's o w n character and
of his personae (rhetorical ethopoeia forms the sole exception).

5. Latin Texts of a Contrary Tendency

There are, h o w e v e r , a number of Latin texts which, provided 1

are divorced f r o m their contexts, suggest that some R o m a n ρ
tried to distinguish between themselves as men and what 1
might say about themselves in their poems. These passages nee
be looked at in some detail, and above all read in their contexts. <
feature is c o m m o n to all the contexts: the disclaimers are all sti
gies of defence, and the writers had special reasons to dissoc
themselves more or less from a literal reading of their prima j
personal writings. T h e y clearly felt that a good number of t
readers w o u l d take the poems to be true statements about t
o w n lives, and in R o m e that could prove dangerous. Let me i!
trate the danger with one example (others will follow later).
T h e life-style of L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, the consul ο
B.C., w a s apparently described in the poems of his friend Philc
mus' 6 Cicero made great play in a published invective with the
ems' accounts of parties and love-affairs, and he knew they w c
help to blacken Piso's character: the poems mirrored his life, so
cero claimed (istius tamquam in speculo uitam intueri: In Pisonem
71). As the poems had been written by someone else, Piso mi
have argued that they w e r e distortions, exaggerations, or even c
right fictions; but Cicero knew h o w they would be taken by the
erage reader 17 . Much harder to explain away were the poems <
wrote about oneself, as Apuleius and Ovid both found. Bui: this i:
anticipate: let us begin with Catullus.
Catullus 16 is a difficult poem 1 8 , and so the following observati·
upon its putpose are offered with some hesitation

16. F o r The alleged persona o f Philodemus see n o w David Sider, Tin: P.pigraim of Ρ
demos. O x f o r d 1997, pp. 32-39; his position is the polar opposite o f Marcello Gigante'.·
epigrammi di Filodemo quali testimonianze autobiografichc, in Fdodemo in Italia, Fior*
1990 (Bibliotechina del Saggiatore, 49).
17. Ill an essay in D. O b b i n k (ed.). Philodemus and Poetry: Poetic Theory and Practice in
cretins, Philodemus, and Horace, N e w York, O x f o r d 1995, Diskin Clay speaks o f Cice
«forensic w a y * (p. m) o f reading the poet - a neat phrase, but it is not clear that the
called forensic v/ay wus any different f r o m the c o m m o n w a y . On Clay's o w n s h o v
in the nMD» article of 1998 there w a s n o alternative in fact, and Cicero k n e w his
die nee w o u l d take the p o e m s the w a y he did.
18. See D. Fehling. «Rhein. Mus.» 117, 1974, 103 li. 1; C . W . MacLeod, «Class. Quart.»
 The Literary Persona in Antiquity-7}

make a distinction between die poet as a m a n and his self-presenta-

tion in his poems: nam castum esse decct pium poetam I ipsum, uersicu-
los nihil necesse est. T h e lines w e r e often used out of context e v e n in
antiquity, and have been taken in our o w n day, f o r e x a m p l e b y
Robert Elliott, to demonstrate that «classical literary doctrine as-
sumed no necessary connection between the most intense personal
poems arid the lives or personalities of their authors» 1 9 . B u t Catullus
is not here enunciating a generally held «classical literary doctrine»
about all personal poetry. If w e restore the lines to their context he
will be found to have quite a different, and still highly personal, aim
in view that does not necessarily disconnect his life f r o m his art-
T w o men, Furius and Aurelius, have read (Icgislis, 13) a b o u t thou-
sands of kisses, and drawn their o w n conclusion f r o m w h a t they
clearly regard as a document: the poet is e f f e m i n a t e ^(inale [...] ^
marem, 13). N o w the poems they read w e r e probably 5 aηΆ 6 (nyot, as
some assume, the later ones asking f o r kisses f r o m Juventrus)* 0 . In
them, all Catullus claimed to w a n t w a s to kiss Lesbia. In R o m a n
eyes this was namby-pamby, a real m a n w a n t e d the nouem continuas
fututiones which Catullus himself asked f r o m Ipsitilla, 32.8. P o e m 16
was designed to correct their misreading, based on a false induction
from the poet's desire for kisses. Catullus assured t h e m that
nonetheless lie was man enough to dominate them sexually (paccli-
cabo ego uos et imtmabo, 1). But I believe that Catullus is trying as
well, and not for the last time, to redefine the relationship outside
marriage between lovers. In 16.5 he speaks o f the puis poela. D o e s
that nor chime with his later sense of his pietas in the love-affair, ex-
pressed at 76.2 (pium), and 26? A pius amor, such as Virgil g i v e s N i s u s
for EuryaJus (Aen. 5.296), is not f o u n d e d primarily u p o n the satisfac-
tion of lust; it is an affectionate c o m m i t m e n t to another person.
That is something Furius and Aurelius cannot understand; f o r t h e m
mere kissing is so much waste of time, a s y m p t o m o f mollitia". F o r
Catullus, however, it proves that his feelings are chaste (castum,
16.5), like those of the girl w h o lets her betrothed's apple slip f r o m
her lap (cf. 65.20). Kissing for Catullus is symbolic o f an unusual
erotic emotion, which he k n o w s he must explain to his m a d .
ers, as he would try to explain it again in 72-3-4, w h e r e the feeling

iy73. 300-301; V. Buchheir, «Hermes» 104, 19/6, 331 if. and J. Griffin, «Journ. R o m . Stud.»
66, 1976, 97·
19. See Robert C. Elliott, The Literary Persona, Chicago 19&X, 43
2cv So G. Williams in «Journ. Rom. Stud.» 52, 1962, 39-40. w h o tried 10 relieve. Catullus
of the Stigma of homosexuality by claiming that the «autobiographical form in R o m a n
poeuy is a poctic convention». Was that h o w Roman readers like Furius and Aurelius
took it?
21 For the Roman attitudes to and notions of molliria see C. Hdwards, Vic Politics of
Immorality in Ancicnt Rome, Cambridge 1993, ch. 2..
 6ο Roland G. Mayer

likened to a father's love for his sons and sons-in-law, definitely not
that of the herd for their girlfriends. S o p o e m 16 is not an attempt to
divorce the poet f r o m his presumed experience, but to clarify it for
the conventionally-minded. After all he n o w h e r e in this p o e m de-
nies the relationship or its special character; he says that he wants to
describe it in an arousing w a y , but that his readers must not misun-
derstand the essential quality of the emotion. A disjunction between
his experience and its representation in poetry is not to be f o u n d
here 2 1 .
Ovid, h o w e v e r , provides our most suggestive case of the denial of
a connection between his life and his poetry. It is highly significant
that the denials are only to be found in his poetry written in exile:
Iristia 2 . 3 5 3 - 5 4 6 and 3.2.5-6 13 . N o w once again in these passages w e
are dealing with an individual's self-defence in a particular situation.
Ovid suffered because a significant reader, Augustus, failed to dis-
connect the writer's life f r o m his poetry. A n d w h o can blame that
reader, or any other, when in Amores 2.1.2- Ovid had announced him-
self as ηequiliac [...] poeta meae? Or similarly, in Amores 3.1.17-22,
where Tragoedia is trying to w i n him a w a y f r o m Elegia she remarks
that everyone is talking about his nequitia, and people even point at
the bard in the street as someone singed by cruel love? Ovid must
try to establish a discontinuity, which did not already exist in the
general mind of the R o m a n reader. His procedure is all the more in-
teresting in that he himself shows the same bias as the c o m m o n
reader in dealing with the erotic poems of his predecessors. He lists
those w h o did not pay a penalty for their love songs in Tr. 2.363-466,
and in a number of cases he uses language which plainly imputes to
them the activities they describe. So of Callimachus (367-368): deli-
cias uersu fassus es ipse tuns, o f some female writers: quae concubitus
non tacuere suos, of Catullus ( 4 2 9 - 4 3 0 ) : multos uulgauit amores / in
quibus ipse suum fassus adulterium est2"*, of Calvus ( 4 3 2 ) : detexit uanis
qui sua furta modis, of Varro of Atax (440): non potuit Veneris furta
tacere suae. Each line contains a reflexive possessive pronoun. Ovid,
like everyone else, took the poems to reflect the poets' lives* 5 , even

22. lTor a modern appraisal of Catullus' persona see NikJas Holzberg, Catull. Der Dichtcr
xinA .5«ria trrotisches Werk, Munich 2002.
o-j I acccpl Ovid's description of his relegation to T o m i s as* fact, though aware that
some do not. Their agnosticism is invincible, because they can say that any later Roman
w h o refers to Ovid's sojourn 011 the Black Sea, for instance the tilder Pliny (N. H.
31.152.), has bttcn taken in by the poet. But for my purposes here such u s \
would only go to prove that the Roman reader accepted the poetic per-ona a; -n A.
That Ovid shows first-hand knowledge of the B h c k S e a is argued by R.H. Batty On Getic
and Sannatian Shores: Ovid's Account of the Danube Lands, «Historia» <13. 1994. 88-II1; Batty
notes that Ovid's account is frequently far from conventional.
24. Adulterium here means «love-affair» rather than 'adultery'.
25. Exactly the same sort of induction is employed when Quintilian censured the plays
 The Literary Persona in Antiquity - 7}

though such a reading is prejudicial to and inconsistent with another

of his lines of argument. For he had stressed at the outset that the
love-afiair described in his poetry w a s imaginary: falso [...] amore
(340), magnaque pars mendax opt!rum est ct ficla meormn (355), and that
his actual w a y o f life bore no relation to what was described in the
Amores (353-354). This claim too is part of his defence strategy. But it
was not the personal love poetry of the Amoves for which Ovid paid
the price of exile. It was the A r j Amntoria, as he reiterates (345). S o in
his list of his predecessors a m o n g love poets he uses tendentious j
language to suggest that they w e r e teachers also (364, 365, 449, 456,
461 and 465), and that they got a w a y with their instruction (366, 414,
415, 417, 443, 463, 466). N o w it is significant that Ovid never tries to
suggest that his role of teacher in the Ars w a s a pose, or a persona
that naturally imposed itself along with the didactic genre. H e might
perhaps have done this, though he had s o m e w h a t spoiled his chance
by twice saying in the Ars (2.744, 3 812) Naso magistcr crat, a phrase he
picks up at 347 me magistro (and cf. Pont. 3.3.47-48). Such a line of de-
fence, h o w e v e r , w o u l d have broken with the tradition of didactic
poetry, which derived its authority f r o m the writer's claims to have
personal k n o w l e d g e of w h a t he was talking about; as Rudd (1976, )
174-175) points out, Ovid had indeed claimed that experience,J
prompted his w o r k at AA 1.29. in fact Ovid's chief defence of the Ars
in Tiistia B o o k 2 is that its doctrine w a s not intended to corrupt -
clearly a controvertible point, though earlier he had urged that his
o w n w a y of life w a s very different (cf. Tr. 1.9.59-60 nita tamen tibi
nota men est. scis ailibus illis / auetoris mores abstimiisse sui).
On balance then w e must see the often-cited lines of Ovid as part
of his personal apologia. W h e n he says that his mores are not refl-
ected in his poetry, he is trying out a line of defence (and he w a s
trained in rhetoric with a view to acting as an advocate, cf. Tr.
4.10.14), not reiterating a c o m m o n l y held v i e w of the relationship
between poetry and the life of the poet. So far as w e know he never
returned to R o m e . His defence failed, and people, including poc.i-
went on reading personal poetry as documentary.
Λ very similar defence to Ovid's has been universally overlooked,
and I w a n t to draw it out of the shadows n o w . In his Controucrsiae
6.8 the Elder Seneca recalls the 'case' (imaginary, of course) of the
Vestal Virgin accused of unchastity on the grounds of her sell-in-
criminating erotic verses. Like Ovid she tries to urge as one line of
defence that a personal p o e m is not a document: quid, tu putas poetas
quae sentiunt seriberrf. T h e obvious reply w a s unfortunately, yes,

of Afranius; by inducting in his farces paederasty QuintUian says that he gives himself
away: mores suos fassus (Inst. 10.1.100).
 6ο
Roland G. Mayer
most people do think just that. T h e poor Vestal ought to have pre-
pared herself for burial alive!
Martial too felt that lie must defend his salacious verses at μ and
11.15; readers are w a r n e d not to take them as documents of his o w n
w a y of life. Again the wider context is crucial to an understanding of
these disclaimers. T h e first of them, 1.4, is programmatic in some'Ve-
spects, but more important is the p o e m ' s dedication to Domitian,
w h o liked the poetry o f Martial but had b e c o m e censor in the y e a r
of the book's publication, 85, a fact alluded to in line 7. T h e dis-
claimer of line 8 lasciua est nobis pagina, uita proba is arguably a ploy
to exonerate the imperial censor f r o m possible"' charges of
favouritism and hypocrisy (and he was a hypocrite). T h e second
poem, 11.15, is also programmatic, and introduces an altogether
saucier collection o f p o e m s to celebrate the Saturnalia. But as Kay
points out in his commentary on line 13 the disclaimer is m o r e than
a literary convention, since one could get into trouble at R o m e for
advertizing one's bad habits, as w e k n o w . Readers w o u l d take the
poems to be confessional, and perhaps criticize the writer for igno-
minious behaviour. Martial tries to forestall this natural reading; but
he has a reason to do so, he is not enunciating a c o m m o n l y held no-
tion of the separation o f l i f e and art 70 .
Let m e close this section with the case of Apuleius - and this time
w e are dealing literally with a trial. One of the charges laid against
him by Sicinius Aemilianus was the composition of erotic verse.
This trial again demonstrates the dangers that an apparently confes-
sional writer might actually encounter. Apuleius* p o e m s were, used
as evidence of his character to his disadvantage. So he has to turn
the attack. Mis argument is interesting just because it is as inconsis-
tent as Ovid's had been, as RudcL (1976, 175 n. 79), noted, W h e n he
starts enumerating those w h o have written erotic poetry he treats
their poems as personal documents. It is only after he has named
the love poets that he takes, in Apologia ii, a different tack, saying
that it is crude to see in playful verses a specimen momm. H e then
quotes Catullus 16.5-6. But he does not urge that the p o e m s have no
necessary connection with the writer's life. Indeed his interpreta-
tion of Plato's erotic verse which follows indicates that he t o o k it to
be documentary. H e urges that in such matters it is better to be
frank and open. Concealment is a sign of bad conscience, admission
is playfulness (profited el promulgare ludentis est). T h i s language is de-
signedly ambiguous; it is not an outright denial of the reality o f the

26. For modern appraises of the literary persona in Martial see now Svt n Lorcnz. Ba-
tik t l H J Pmiegyrik: Martinis eyigrammatische Kaiser, Tilbingen 2001 (Classica Monncensia,
23), and Niklas 1 iolzberg, Martial und das iiiilike Epigram, Darmstadt 2002.
 The Literary Persona in Antiquity -
7}

situation described in the verse. Such composition is fun, but not

necessarily or obviously fictitious.
These passages do not substantially alter what we know about the
normal mode of reading personal poetry in Rome. The writers dis-
cussed above are all for some reason or other on the defensive, and
tiy out a line of argument which is clearly at: odds with the common
perception of their readers, a perception they themselves all too
readily share. Their claim that one's poems do not reflect one's w a y
of life served a restricted, local need; it was not a general theory of
the use of the persona* 7 .

6. Persona in Satire

Let us finally turn to a particular genre, Roman satire, that has been
for some time now regarded as deploying a generic persona, to sec
to what extent the ancient view of that genre matches the approach
now dominant among anglophone critics28.
T h e contemporary approach to the reading of Roman satire has
its origin in several essays of the early 1960s by W.S. Anderson 29 . He
virtually eliminated the writer from satire by postulating the per-
petual presence of a persona or mask, behind which the writer faded
out. Me was avowedly trying to do for Latin satire what Alvin Ker-
nan in The Cankered Muse (New Haven 1959) had done for the Eng-
lish satirical tradition. Kernan had aimed to reestablish the English
verse satire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a literary
form, and to rescue it from the historical, biographical, and cultural
approaches which had virtually denied English verse satire its artis-
tic status as poetry. Kernan sought a new definition of the «aes-
thetic» of verse satire, and one of his hypotheses was a figure he
called «the satirist», w h o was not to be identified with the writer of

27. For the sake of completeness ir is worth recalling that Ausonius brought a goo
deal of this information to bear in defence of his Ccnio Nuptialis (scr the concluding de-
dicatory letter). Odd, since it could hardly have been taken as an autobiographical
document.
23. Dominant, but not unquestioned: for criticism of the approach as applied most re-
cently to Juvenal s e e J . G . R Powell in «Class. Rev.»» 47. 1997. 3°-1 and F. BeJlandi in «Rev.
Filol. Istr. Class.» 126, 199S, 100102. Other voices have been raised against the over-use
of this reading, e.g., M. Citroni, L'autobiografia nella satira c ndl'epigramma latino, in G.
Arrighetti - F. Montanari (eds.), la componentr. autobiografica nclla poesia yrcca e latitw fin
rcaliA e urtificio lettcrario, Atti del Convcgno. Pisa, 16 17 mnggio 1991, pp. 2.75-w, csp. ?.3i
on Horace; and most recently C. Nappa. Practcxtnti Mores: Juvenal's Second Satire, in
«Hermes» 126,1998, 90-108, csp. p. 90.
29. Ihe Roman Socrates: Horace and his Satires ( = 1982, 13 49. fSp 7Ά if ), Roman Satirists
and Literary Criticism (19H2. Vto) and Anger wJuvenal and Severn (-. 1982. 293-339): see also
the index of 1982, 492, s.v. persona.
 6ο
Roland G. Mayer

the poems, thus freeing them f r o m the sort o f biographical en-

quiries which w e r e undeniably as predominant a m o n g English
scholars as a m o n g their Latinise colleagues, ft must here be recalled,
as Susanna Morton Braund pointed out to me, that Anderson's
adoption of the persona-reading w a s a strong reaction against
Gilbert Highet's autobiographical approach in Juvenal the Satirist
(Oxford 1954). (And it should be added in passing that Highet's auto-
biographical reading was his o w n strategy to secure greater sympa-
thy for Juvenal, w h o for much of the half century before him had
been dismissed as a mere rhetorician, not a true poet).
T o return to Anderson: for him, as f o r Keman, the persona of «the
satirist» was an invention of the poet's; he called the speaker of Ju-
venal's satires «the writer's creation» (1982, 293 and cf. 314 «the poet
has [...] created a complex character»). This is an important part of
the hypothesis: the satirical persona was n o accident, hut as m u c h a
product of artistic craft as the language or subject matter of the
poein. Anderson m o r e o v e r said (1982, 29) that in all (11.b.) personal
poetry the poet assumes a mask. His successors, Susanna Morton
Braund on Juvenal and on satire generally, and Kirk Freudenburg 011
Horace 3 0 , likewise allow n o dropping of the. mask in R o m a n satire.
ft may easily be guessed w h y they all adopt a rigourist approach: if
it is once admitted that the persona m a y occasionally he dispensed
with, by what means can a reader recognize the authentic voice of
the writer? Let Juvenal's sixth satire be o u r text. vSusanna II. Braund
agreed with Anderson that the speaker of that satire w a s J u v e n a l ' s
creation 31 ; she found nothing that connected him with the writer.
On the other hand, in his ro8o commentary on J u v e n a l E. Courtney
had already noticed the unforced admission of personal dislike at
451-456, and he drew particular attention to line 454 ignotosque mihi
tenet antiquaria ucrsus. A run-of-the-mill misogynist ought not to be
troubled personally by a w o m a n ' s knowledge of Palaemon's gram-
mar or of olef Latin poetry, except in so far as all pedantry is a bore.
But the word mihi especially gives the line an apparently personal
reference, which is most naturally taken to refer to J u v e n a l the
writer himself: as a poet he feels inferior w h e n a w o m a n k n o w s
more about early Latin verse than lie docs. So is there a persona or
not in this satire? It is by no means clear (hat the writer has created
an alternative «satirist» w h o delivers a rambling attack upon
women 3 2 .

30. S e e (1988). (1992). (1996a) and (1996b); F r e u d e n b u r g 1993·

3, Juvenal - Misogynist or Misogamist«Jourii. Rom. Stud.» 1992, 7> 30, esp. p. Sz.
32 Λ similar p r o b l e m arises in the m o n o g r a p h by B. F r b c h e i , Shifting ParadiV>is:New
Approaches to Horace's Ars Poetica, Atlanta 1991 (Amcricnn Classical Stud,es 2 7 ^ he ne-
v e r m a k e s it clear h o w a r e a d e r w o u l d detect the presence in the p o e m o f a persona.
 The Literary Persona in Antiquity - 7}

The premise has to be emphasized that the persona must always

be in place. Anderson, however, though insisting that it was the
writer's creation, offered no evidence that poets or readers in antiq-
uity actually noticed its existence. And we might reasonably have
expected that so important an aspect of the satirical writer's strategy
would have been noticed and openly commented upon, perhaps
above all in those defences of satire which w e encounter in Horace
(Sermones 1.4 and 2.1) and Juvenal (his first satire). Recently Susanna
Mortori Braund has shown an awareness of this gap in Anderson's
argument, which she closes with the claim that the «view of the
voices of Roman satire as a series of peisonae would not have been
alien or difficult for the original Roman audiences» (i996, 2); she
reckons that this role-playing was most visible in the rhetorical edu-
cation of the Roman elite (1996, 3). T o be sure an orator might find
himself'acting a part' in defence of his client, but it is worth remem-
bering what Antonius was made to say in Cicero's Dc Oratore 2.194:
neque actor essem alienae personae, sed auctor meae, «1 am not perform-
ing someone else's role, but sustaining my own». But whatever the
case with the rhetoric of the forum, the case has not been made out
for satire specifically, or indeed for any literary kind which is prima
facie personal. It can, on the other hand, be shown that leaders, and
particularly poets-as-readers of satire, did not detect writers of satire
creating masks. That is evident from the remarks of the satirists -
however wre understand that term ~ about their predecessors. Let
us look first at Horace.
After having criticized Lucilius in Serm. 1.4 for inartistic writing, he
revised his opinion more favourably at the beginning of the second
book, when he said that Lucilius gave satire its characteristic point
of view, namely the personal voice. Satire thus became in Lucilius'
hands a form of s e l f presentation in verse:

ille 11 elut fidis arcana sodalibus dim

credebat libris neque. si male ccsserat, usquam
decurrens alio neque, si bene; quo fit ut omnis
uotiua patent ueluti descripta tabella
uita senis. „ .
(Senn. 2.1.30-34)

Horace - whether we take him here to be the writer or in Ander-

son's sense «the satirist» - plainly did not distinguish between Lucil-
ius as writer and his satirical persona. The simile in line 33 uotiua J . - J
ueluti descripta tabella is of particular importance, since a votive
tablet d e p i c t e d an actual event in the dedicator's life, and was proba-

and be ignores lines 55-56. where the speaker assoc.ate* himself w i t h Virgil a n d Vnrius -
see my review in «Class. Rev.» 4 1 , 1 9 9 * . Ρ
 6ο Roland G. Mayer

bly painted by himself, without any artistic pretensions (so H o r a c e

may be having another sly dig at Lucilius' clumsiness). F o r H o r a c e
then the life depicted in the poems reflected reality. But A n d e r s o n ,
commenting on this passage (1982., 30), asserted that H o r a c e deliber-
ately confused the two functions. A n d yet he offered no evidence
that Horace WAS aware of the existence of the sort of persona he w a s
postulating 33 ; he assumed that Horace could have differentiated L u - '
cilius the man f r o m his generic persona as «satirist». It might rather
be urged that Horace, in fact, never 'confused' the t w o roles, just
because he never made the modern distinction; like all R o m a n read-
ers he read satire as the expression of a personal point of v i e w ( w e
have already seen above that that was h o w Cicero read Lucilius' use
of an obvious persona). Horace regarded w h a t he read in Lucilius'
books as the experiences of an historical person 1 4 . Indeed, faced
with this line in Lucilius: ego ubi quem ex praccordiis / ecfero uersitm
(670-071W. = 590-591 ML), what conclusion was he to d r a w but that
the expressions in the poems were heartfelt? (This line comes f r o m
Lucilius' first p o e m in his first book, 26, and ii is taken b y M a r x to be
a sort of programme poem, in which the satirist marks out his terri-
tory). Given this Lucilian tradition, w h e n Horace b e c a m e a writer
of verse satire he too ought to have spoken f r o m the heart and oi his
o w n experiences, especially w h e n he made this claim in Serm. 2.T.34:
sequor hunc, which means literally, «I f o l l o w him», w h e r e «follow»
implies 'take as m y literary model' (thus resuming the point made at
line 29, that he wrote satire Lueili rifu)35. it therefore b e c o m e s hard
to agree with Braund when she says that the autobiographical ap-
proach to reading satire is post Romantic (1996, 1); there is rather
every reason to suppose that that is just h o w the R o m a n s them-
selves read it.

33. Cynthia S. Dessen claimed that there was abundant evidence in Latin poetry to
prove that the poets, including the satirists, adopted the persona, but she failed to cite a
single instance: 7hc Sntires of t'asius. luncllim Lit ίίύί US Λ θ 1 . 2nd edll.. Bristol 1 9 9 ρ 7 ·»
ίο. The study by W.T. VVehrle, The Sdtiric Voice, Hildesheim 109?., ch. 2 Personae in /Yr-
sius and Juvenal, pp. 39-70, assumes that the persona is always in place.
34. It weakens fatally in my view the persona based reading of Horace's satires by
Prcudenbnrg (1993) that he makes an itnprosperous start by failing to discuss at any
length this passage, which is merely noted on p. 6 and in n. to. Clay too (199S, 1 - 33) is in
difficulty with this passage: "Bur there is another manner of reading Lucilius' satires,
and this is 1 loratian. noi in what Horace explicitly says about Lucilius in his satires, but
in the practice of the personam Horace adopts in his o w n satires». W h y did Horace
explicitly say one thing and adopt another, but undemonstrated, practice? Similarly un-
satisfactory is J.G.U. Zeizel, Horace's Liber Sermonum: cite Structure of Ambiguity, «Are-
thusa» 13, 1980, p. 74 n. 9: he says that we do not have to take Horace's opinion about
the use Lucilius made of his satires literally, but w h y e v e r not? On p. 61 he speaks of the
'necessary' persona of the satirist.
35. Juvenal never claims so close an affinity to Lucilius (cf. 2.2.0), or indeed to Horace
either (cf. i.51); not surprisingly therefore his satire strikes a far less personal note, as
has often been observed.
 The Literary Persona in Antiquity - 7}

One of the reasons that the ancient reader of satire might have
«confused» (Anderson's word) the satirist with the writer is just this:
the satirist claims so often to be himself a writer of verse satire 16 .
N o w this was an unnecessaty and indeed 'confusing' detail in the
persona of «the satirist»; «the satirist» need not have been presented
himself as a writer at all. Horace, for instance, did not present him-
self as a 'writer' in his lyrics, w h e r e he is always a «singer», and in his
Epistles he no longer presents himself as a writer of verse at all. T h e
creation of a «satirist» w h o w r o t e his satires in verse was bound to
fuse the poet with the alleged persona.
It seems that I Iorace too, like Lucilius, succeeded in giving the im-
pression to his readers that he w a s personally involved in his satires.
This is indicated by what his successor Persius had to say about him.
In his first satire, Persius set out the tradition in which he meant to
write (again, if this is only «the satirist» speaking, it is confusing that
he too is a writer). He referred to the ruthless tone of Lucilius
(1.114), secuit Lucilius Vrbem, whilst Horace, on the othe.·» ha:id, he
found more ingratiating:

omne uafei uitium ridenti Flaccus amico

taagit, et admissus circum praccordia ludit.
(1.TT6-117)

Again, there is here no suggestion that Persius thought that he w a s

reading not about Horace himself, but about some generic mask
created for satirical presentation 37 . T h e juxtaposed words «Flaccus
amico» seem to forge an intimate relationship between poet and
reader, without the interposition of a persona, «the satirist».
From these passages it should be clear that the R o m a n s had a w a y
of reading satire, a fundamental element of which Anderson failed
to recognize, namely, that satire, as personal poetry, expressed the
poet's o w n views and might use his o w n experience as subject mat-
U
7 o what the poets said as readers of satire w e may add what the
scholiasts said about them in their verse satire
to the persona of the poet, by which they mean
tinct from any other character w h o may speak in a poem. It is tor in-

liMfo 2 1 and vl 4 7MT in Peisius lhc

36 li e., in H o r a c e 1.4.138-139. ' ' ' ' L
P r o l o g u e and 1.120 liMIe: in J u v e n a l 1.17-18. 30 difficile est saturam non senior, γ υ. τ ν*.
33*1-31*·
3v It is interesting 10 sec that in tier recent p a m p h l e t on the p e r s o n a m s a m e Susanna
M . braund i w k c quotes these lines; on rhrir first a p p e a r a n c e she says that Persius; ,s re-
ferrinn to «Horace» (1996b. 29}, and o n the second to H o r a c e (1096b 55)· W h y are rht
quotes d r o p p e d the s e c o n d rime, and w h y w e r e n ' t they p u t round Pers.us n a m e at
all?
 6ο Roland G. Mayer

stance a useful means wherewith to distinguish speakers in the dra-

matic satires, in which the writer appears in conversation with
someone else 38 . But its usage n o w h e r e suggests a reading similar to
the modern one. W h e n a scholiast says «persona Horati» or «per-
sona poetae» he conformed to Latin usage, sketched above, and
meant by it the person of the writer, as distinct f r o m any other per-
son, real or imagined. Porfyrio, clearly in the tradition of Aristot le's
views on the use of a persona to make criticisms, observes on Hor.
Scrm. 2.2.1: in hac ccloga sub persona Ofclli luxuriosos carpit. T h e criti-
cism is no less Horace's for being delivered by Ofellus, whose char-
acter gives it a special authority (in that he had always held that
v i e w , not just w h e n he was in reduced circumstances himself). T h e
scholia k n o w n as Probus Valia on Juvenal 3.1 observe: urbis Romac
consucludincm detestatur sub persona Umbrici amici suiThe criticism
was felt to be Juvenal's, and Umbricius is a lay figure, but his in-
tended departure from the city underscores the seriousness of his
indictment.
T h e satires just referred to present criticism through a persona,
but the ancient reader did not apparently distinguish, as the m o d e r n
tries to do, the writer f r o m his personae. W e had a glimpse of this
reading f r o m the passage in Cicero's Dc Orat. 3.171, discussed above,
in which Lucilius used the persona of Scaevola to m o c k others.
T h e r e is another, but bizarre, demonstration of this habit of reading
in Pliny the Elder; he noted that Horace endorsed the v i e w that ob-
long eggs w e r e superior in ilavour (Ν. H. 10.145: quae obionga sint oua
gra lions saporis putat Homtius Flaeeus). H e w a s referring to Scrm.
2.4.12-13, w h e r e it was not Horace speaking, but the persona, Catius,
and e v e n he w a s only reporting his recollection of a gastronomical
lecture by somebody else" 0 . S o difficult was it for the R o m a n reader
to disentangle the poet f r o m even his obvious masks.
T h a t the readers of satire could not easily distinguish b e t w e e n
writer and satirist is s h o w n by the defence of his satire which Ho-
race offers in Scrm. 1.478, w h e r e his critics blame him: laederc gaudes,
and 2.1.1, where he says: in satura uidcar nimis acer. N o w it those sec-
ond and first person singulars referred not to Horace the writer but
to his persona, «the satirist», w h y did not Horace m a k e this clear,

38. See Porfyrio on Scrm. ι.*.?»-». 3-126. 9-5*; n 39. 40, 43, 45. and the scholiast on Per

40. Partly w h a t lies behind his use of 1

tire. Now in general Pliny treats didact
siod and Virgil for agricultural matters (see the index of the Mayhoff Jalm edition). See
Mynors on V»rg. G. 1.2.16.
 The Literary Persona in Antiquity -
7}
and defend himself as writer on the ground that it w a s not him, but
the generic persona speaking? Or, to look at the matter f r o m the
point of v i e w of the audience, w h y did people get upset with a mere
lay-figure in the first place? T h e answer is plain: even if the speaker
w a s a fiction, the writer had put the w o u n d i n g words into his
mouth, and, as w e have seen, the c o m m o n v i e w was that the per-
sona expressed the opinion of the writer.
in this context it is worth returning to the issue with which the
previous section opened, namely the dangers run by those w h o
w e r e deemed to describe their o w n bad behaviour. What happened
to those w h o w e r e d e e m e d to be criticizing others in their o w n per-
sons, f o r instance, the composers of lampoons in the early princi-
pate? C. Cominius, an cques, was condemned for a l a m p o o n against
Tiberius; his brother, a senator, managed to get him off (Tac. Ann.
431.1). Sextus Vestilius committed suicide after losing Tiberius'
f a v o u r f o r an attack upon Gaius as a pervert (Tac. Ann. 6.9.2). Sex
tius Paconianus, a praetor and henchman of Sejanus, w a s in prison
for . plotting; against Gaius; there he composed carmina against
Tiberius, and f o r that he was strangled (Tac. Ann. 6.39.1). A n o t h e r
praetor, Antistius, composed probrosa carmina against Nero, and re-
cited them at a dinner party; he was arraigned for maiestas, and the
debate about the penalty is described by Tacitus at some length in
Ann. 14.48-49. Fabricius Veiento got: into trouble for his attacks (they
may not have been in verse) 011 the Senate and priesthood (Tac.
Ann. 14.50). It is noteworthy that in none of these trials is it said that
a pica w a s entered on behalf of the writer that he had used a generic
persona (that of invective n o w , similar to the one Horace is sup-
posed to have used in his Epodcs, not satire). Clearly that plea, even
if available, w o u l d have cut no ice with the offended princeps oi the
day. Suppose a persona w a s used, it would still have been the case
that the writer created it and put the abusive language into its
mouth. It is for this reason that the literary (as opposed to political)
satirists w e r e so careful. T h e persona really offered no protec-
tiori 11 .
This predisposition of readers of satire persisted into late
uity, as w e learn f r o m Sidonius Apollinaris in a fascinating letter (Pp.

41. It m i g h t be w o r t h m e n t i o n i n g in passing in this respect that C.ialileo, despite using

the d i a l o g u e f o r m , and keeping hiinscli our o f the conversation, was nevertheless
c h a r g e d w i t h establishing the C o p e r n i c a n s y s t e m in his Dialog of 163?.. T h e use of a per-
sona did not s a v e h i m f r o m condemnation. T h e p r o b l e m is still v/irh us. «The D a i l y 1 e-
Irgraph» f o r M a y i, t999. P- 20. reported that the w h i t e A m e r i c a n rappci Gnunem. rela-
ted in o n e of his hit songs «1 just f o u n d out m y m o m d o e s m o r e dope than 1 do». She
threatened to s u e him! O n e w o u l d h a v e thought the generic persona of the rapper to be
one of the m o r e o b v i o u s l y fictional:/.cd, but w h e r e m o n e y and reputation arc at stake
artistic strategies o f f e r 110 d e f e n c e .
 78 Roland G. Mayer

j ι . π ) about the dangers he ran w h e n an a n o n y m o u s satire in which

• prominent people were attacked by n a m e w a s attributed to him.
, T h e worthies of fifth century Aries w e r e not to be fobbed o f f with a
satirical persona, they wanted Sidonius' blood. T h e y cursed or
dreaded him ut satirographum (Ep. i.xi.8). His defence was that no
, one had proved he was the writer, not that, as writer, he had created
a generic persona. One thing is clear f r o m these final considerations:
1
the persona of the satirist or iambist w o u l d at best have been an nn-
1
economical ploy, since very little advantage could be w o n by its e m ·
t ployment. T h e writer of satires or invectives was bound to be con-
fused with his persona, and so might expect to p a y any penalty that
, attached to calumniators 4 2 .

7. Conclusions and Implications

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

1
L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

• T h e chief stumbling-block to the application o f modern persona-

criticism to G r e e k and Latin texts is that, unlike other interprcta-
tional strategics, deconstruction f o r instance, it has a precedent in
antiquity. Greek and Roman writers and readers themselves recog-
nized the masking o f the author, and they had their o w n w a y s of
dealing with it. W h e r e they w e r e faced with a persona, an assumed
character w h o was plainly not the writer, their inclination fwas to
take the character's w o r d s as representing the writer's v i e w ; unless
it w a s otherwise clear that the writer was indulging in cthupoeia. As
Clay demonstrated, and as I hope the evidence of this essay has con-
firmed, there is little or nothing to suggest that an ancient reader
w a s in a position to recognize the sort of generic persona a m o d e r n
critic postulates as a matter o f course (for example, the elegiac lover
• or mistress, the didactic writer, the satirist). This fact ought to open
readings that deploy our modern notion of the persona to a charge
' of irrelevance. Let m e try to justify this disturbing opinion by briefly
pointing to t w o other cultural constructs, which antiquity under-
' stood very differently f r o m us, dreams and sexuality.
On J u l y 24 1895, whilst walking along the HimmelstraRe outside
1
Vienna, Dr. Sigmund Freud had a revelation about the real nature
and true interpretation of dreams, and he subsequently convinced a
good n u m b e r of people that his theory was true. But, as any classical

42. See Paul Lejay's discussion in his edition of Horace's Sermon es, Pmis 1 9 0 , pp. 285-
287 with reference to Senn. 2.1.82-83 si main condidcrit in quem quis carmina, ins est !
indiciumquc.
 The Literary Persona in Antiquity -
7}

or biblical scholar w o u l d readily point out, dreams w e r e felt by the

peoples o f antiquity to play a very different role in their lives. So far
as Julius Caesar or the w i f e of Pontius Pilate w e r e concerned,
dreams w e r e sent to them by superhuman p o w e r s to warn, advise,
or predict. There is no evidence that anyone in antiquity thought a
dream revealed something significant about the dreamer's past. -
Plato's Socrates, 10 be sure, maintained that dreams reveal the de-
sires of the «beastly and savage» part of the soul, but that is rather a
different matter (Rcsp. 9 . 5 7 1 ^ ) . T o interpret ancient dreams in a
Freudian w a y might be interesting, but it would tell us nothing
about the sensibilities of Greeks and R o m a n s and of their eoniectores,
since a modern psychological 'reading' w a s entirely unavailable to
them, o w i n g to their lack of the concept of the subconscious.
Secondly, sexuality, a hot topic in the academy nowadays. W e
have recently b e c o m e much m o r e cautious about mapping modern
concepts like homosexuality upon the terrain of gender in antiquity.
W e appreciate that, though that condition almost certainly existed,
it was quite simply not recognized. And that fact has at last
.prompted careful scholars to refrain f r o m imposing our o w n termi-
nology and the thinking that goes with it upon the sexual experience
of antiquity. It is appreciate ! that w e simply distort the picture by
doing that, and obstruct our o w n chance of understanding a differ-
ent past.
It m a y therefore be urged that w e look upon modern persona crit-
icism with scepticism. It undeniably fits m u c h of the experimental
literature of the previous century (e.g., Pound and Pessoa), but its
applicability to the literature of antiquity is questionable, given the
manifest ignorance of its operation not only a m o n g readers, but,
more significantly, a m o n g writcrs-as readers. If the persona (as
n o w a d a y s understood) w e r e , as Clay, a m o n g others, believes (199«.
39), a deliberate construct of the writer, it is very odd that poets like
Horace and Ovid persisted in treating the w o r k s of their pred<
sors as documentary. Their o w n alleged practice of assuming
sona o u g h t ' s u r e l y to have immunized them against such a gross
misreading And vet consistently they are at one with non-poetic
readers (for example, Herodotus and Quintilian) in their assump-
tion that, to use Horace's words of Lucilius, the life of the m a n is to
be found 111 .his writings. On this matter w e ought, I suggest, as with
dreams and sexuality, to do antiquity the f a v o u r of respecting its
own views.

King's College. London

 8ο Rolnnd G. Mayer

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