Virgil Recomposed:
The Mythological and
Secular Centos in Antiquity
Scott McGill
AMERICAN CLASSICAL STUDIES
VOLUME 48
Series Editor
DONALDJ. MASTRONARDE
Studies in Classical History and Society
MEYERREINHOLD
Sextus Empiricus
The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism
LUCIANOFLORIDI
Greek Mythology in the Roman World
ALANCAMERON
The Augustan Succession
An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio’s ‘‘Roman History’’ Books 55–56 (9B.C.–A.D. 14)
PETERMICHAEL SWAN
Virgil Recomposed
The Mythological and Secular Centos in Antiquity
Virgil Recomposed
The Mythological and Secular
Centos in Antiquity
Scott McGill
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McGill, Scott, 1968–
Virgil recomposed: the mythological and secular centos in antiquity / Scott McGill. p. cm.—(American classical studies; no. 48)
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13 978-0-19-517564-6
ISBN 0-19-517564-6
1. Virgil—Adaptations—History and criticism. 2. Virgil—Parodies, imitations, etc.—History and criticism. 3. Epic poetry, Latin—Adaptations—History and criticism. 4. Centos—History and criticism. 5. Mythology, Roman, in literature. 6. Virgil—Appreciation—Rome. I. Title. II. Series. PA6825.M395 2005
871'.01—dc22 2004022887
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Acknowledgments
This book began when I decided to take Ausonius outside with me on a lazy summer day and read theMoselle. Opening Green’s edition at random, I instead encountered theCento Nuptialis, and a dissertation topic was born.Desidiosum iuvat Fortuna.
Several years have passed since then. I completed and many times revised the dissertation; finishing (or better, abandoning) it now as a monograph, I feel somewhat wistful, since the project is so closely associated with a remarkable time in my life, and with many remarkable people. I learned much as a graduate student from my professors, particularly Michael Anderson, Bob Babcock, Susanna Braund, and Gordon Williams, who were all models of mentoring, prodding me patiently and amiably to think harder and with more clarity. As an advisorsine tituloand a reader of the dissertation, Michael Roberts helped me to realize this project in more ways than I can recount. Finally, John Matthews and Ellen Oliensis were as generous, supportive, and rigorous advisors as I could have hoped to have.
Since arriving at Rice University, I have benefited from the healthy and nur-turing environment that the university and the Classical Studies Department create for its junior faculty. In more concrete terms, I appreciate the editorial work of Cyndy Brown, which certainly sped my progress. My colleagues, Coulter George, Christopher Kelty, Michael Maas, Hilary Mackie, Don Morrison, Car-oline Quenemoen, and Harvey Yunis also facilitated the preparation of my manuscript. Conversation with them, teaching alongside them, and having them as editors have been truly enjoyable and productive experiences.
When this book needed a final round of scrubbing, Donald Mastronarde and the anonymous readers at the APA provided me with both general and specific assis-tance. Their criticism allowed me to avoid many errors and escape many pitfalls— though fallibility is stubborn, and I am sure that mistakes and infelicities remain, for which of course I am alone responsible. I must also thank Eve Bachrach, Jessica Ryan, and Gwen Colvin at Oxford University Press for their guidance.
the Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library from Ausonius: Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library vol. 96, translated by H. G. Evelyn-White (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1919). The Loeb Classical Library1is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. TheDe Alea was reprinted by permission of Loffredo Editore Napoli SpA. Finally, the Epitha-lamium Fridi andMedea were reprinted by permission of K.G. Saur Verlag.
Throughout the entire process of writing this book, my family has been an anchor. I particularly want to thank my brother Sean and my parents, who taught me by example how to be disciplined and to stick to a task until it is done. In different ways, I am indebted to old friends in the Northeast (though the academic diaspora has taken us to far-flung locations) and new ones in Houston, and especially to Joseph Luzzi. Finally, Sarah Ellenzweig makes everything worthwhile and better than I deserve.
At the risk of being precious, let me end by saying what a pleasure it has been these past years to read and think about not only some of the wildest texts in antiquity but also Virgil, who as a poet has no superior and just a few equals.
non, mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum (A.6.625), caelicolae magni (A. 10.6) possim superare labores (A.3.368)
Contents
Abbreviations xi
Text Editions Used xiii
Introduction xv
1. Playing with Poetry: Writing and Reading the Virgilian Centos 1
2. Tragic Virgil: TheMedea 31
3. Virgil and the Everyday: TheDe PanificioandDe Alea 53
4. Omnia Iam Vulgata? Approaches to the Mythological Centos 71
5. Weddings, Sex, and ‘‘Virgil the Maiden’’: TheCento Nuptialis
and theEpithalamium Fridi 92
Conclusion 115
Appendix: Texts of the Mythological and Secular Centos 119
Notes 153
Bibliography 217
Abbreviations
BOOKS
ALR Anthologia Latina, Alexander Riese, ed. Leipzig: Teubner, 1894.
ALSB Anthologia Latina, D. R. Shackleton Bailey, ed. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1982.
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der ro¨mischen Welt. Berlin and New York: DeGruyter, 1972–.
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1863–.
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Vienna: F. Tempsky et al., 1866–.
EV Enciclopedia Virgiliana. Ed. Francesco Della Corte. Rome: Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1996.
Keil Heinrich Keil,Grammatici Latini, 7 vols; Heinrich Keil, ed. Leipzig: Teubner, 1855–80.
OCD Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary. P.G.W. Glare, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
PLRE Jones, A.H.M., J.R. Martindale, and J. Morris. Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971– 1992.
RE Paulys Real-Encyclopa¨die der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stutt-gart: A. Druckenmu¨ller, 1893–1972.
ThLL Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Leipzig: Teubner, 1900–.
VSD Vita Suetonii/Donati, Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, ed. Georgius Brugnoli and Fabius Stock. Rome: Typis Officinae Polygraphicae, 1997.
JOURNALS
AJAH American Journal of Ancient History
BMCR Bryn Mawr Classical Review
CJ Classical Journal
CP Classical Philology
CQ Classical Quarterly
CSCA California Studies in Classical Antiquity
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
MD Material e Discussioni
MP Medieval Philology
PVS Proceedings of the Vergil Society
RLM Rheinisches Museum fu¨r Philologie
RLAC Reallexikon fu¨r Antike und Christentum
SIFC Studi italiani di filologia classica
TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association
YCGL Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature
Text Editions Used
VIRGIL
P. Vergili Maronis Opera, ed. R.A.B. Mynors. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
CENTOS
Alcesta, De Panificio, Europa, Hercules et Antaeus, Iudicium Paridis, Hippodamia, Nar-cissus,andProgne et Philomela,inAnthologia Latina I.1, ed. Alexander Riese. Leipzig: Teubner, 1894.
Cento Nuptialis,inThe Works of Ausonius, ed. R.P.H. Green. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
De Alea,inIl centone De Alea,Studi Latini 44, ed. Gabriella Carbone. Naples: Loffredo, 2002.
Epithalamium Fridi,inLuxurius, ed. Heinz Happ. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1986. Medea,inHosidius Geta: Medea Cento Vergilianus, ed. Rosa Lamacchia. Leipzig: Teubner, 1981.
OTHER FREQUENTLY CITED EDITIONS
ANTHOLOGIA LATINA:Anthologia Latina I.1, ed. D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1982.
CATULLUS:Catullus, ed. C. J. Fordyce. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961.
CLAUDIAN:Claudii Claudiani Carmina, ed. John Barrie Hall. Leipzig: Teubner, 1985. DRACONTIUS:Oeuvres, ed. E´tienne Wolff. Vol. 4. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996. MENANDER RHETOR:Menander Rhetor, ed. D. A. Russell and N. G. Wilson. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981.
OVID:Heroides XII, ed. Theodor Heinze. Leiden: Brill, 1997.Metamorphoses, ed. W. S. Anderson. Leipzig: Teubner, 1977.
QUINTILIAN:Institutionis Oratoriae Libri Duodecim, ed. Michael Winterbottom. Ox-ford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
SENECA:Tragoediae, ed. Otto Zwierlein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. SERVIUS:Servii Grammatici Qui Feruntur in Vergilii Carmina Commentarii, ed. Georg
Thilo and Herman Hagen. 3 vols. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961.
SIDONIUS:Sidoine Apollinaire, ed. Andre´ Loyen. 3 vols. Paris: Socie´te´ d’E´dition ‘‘Les Belles Lettres,’’ 1960–70.
STATIUS:Silvae, ed. E. Courtney. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS:Venance Fortunat Poe`mes, ed. Marc Reydellet. Vol. 1. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1994.
A note on my method of citing lines and passages in the centos. I have chosen to include in parentheses the Virgilian provenance (with E. standing for the
Introduction
The Virgilian centos are some of the more striking texts to survive from Latin antiquity. A cento—a word that in literature has the meaning ‘‘patchwork text’’1—is comprised of unconnected verse units taken from the Eclogues,
Georgics, andAeneid and pieced together to create narratives that differ from Virgil’s own.2These units may consist of a segment of a hexameter line; an entire
line; a line and some section of the following line; and rarely two or three entire lines.3Sixteen Virgilian centos remain from antiquity, ranging in date from ca. 200 to ca. 534.4Twelve are on mythological or secular subjects: Hosidius Geta’s
Medea; Ausonius’sCento Nuptialis; Luxurius’sEpithalamium Fridi;5Mavortius’s
Iudicium Paridis; and eight anonymous works, theDe Panificio,De Alea, Nar-cissus,Hippodamia, Hercules et Antaeus,Progne et Philomela,Europa, and Al-cesta. The remaining four contain Christian material: the Cento Probae of Faltonia Betitia Proba; Pomponius’sVersus ad Gratiam Domini; the anonymous
and at the same time allow us to revisit pertinent responses to Virgil that oc-curred earlier in antiquity and to explore relevant moments in the interpretation of Virgil since that period, up to today. So too, the centos provide insights into several formal and thematic elements in Virgil’s poetry itself.9
Aspects of the mythological and secular centos bear upon a wide range of other subjects of general interest in Latin poetry, which are in turn important in literary studies as a whole. These include questions related to reception theory (a topic vitally connected but not limited in this book to Virgil’sNachleben) and genre theory.10An issue of vital importance in the study of the centos, more-over, is how those radically intertextual works engage with their Virgilian sources allusively and speak to ideas and problems in allusion studies. The broad hermeneutic reach and value of the centos are yet another reason why the works are worthy of exclusive attention.11
The origin of the Virgilian cento lies in the Homeric cento, of which mytho-logical, secular, and Christian examples survive.12Such a binary view does not take into account all ancient centos. It excludes evidence for Greek examples that reuse Pindar and Anacreon,13as well as a Latin cento composed from a poet other than Virgil, Ovid’s workin malos poetascomprised of the verses of Macer, a lost piece to which Quintilian refers.14Even so, the contention that the Virgilian cento arose as a counterpart to the Homeric cento is a sound one, based as it is on the irrefutable fact that Homer and Virgil are the principal sources for such texts in antiquity.15This cannot be coincidental. Associating Virgil with Homer serves as one of the dominant gestures in Latin literary culture from Propertius (2.34.65–66) to Macrobius (Sat. 5) and beyond.16 Amid this literary landscape, it would have been natural to take a poetic form linked to Homer and apply it to Virgil, the poet of equal stature in the Roman world. Centonists are drawn to such canonical authors. To present a cento is always on one level to trade in cultural capital and to affirm one’s highbrow credentials. Moreover, the loftier the rank of the poet being rewritten, the greater the effect of a cento. Readers will be more likely to be familiar with source poetry that resides at or near the top of the canon, and so will be more likely to feel more strongly thefrissonthat centos, as the reconstituted poetry of an eminent author, are designed to elicit.
the source material.18Jerome was also troubled by the alteration of Virgil so that his verses related the story of the Bible, which caused some to posit Virgil as a Christiansine Christo; but for Jerome the act of altering Virgil itself was not at issue. Tertullian and Jerome’s reactions are thus tailored to their specific con-cerns and interpretive and cultural climates. While they taint the cento through association with the misinterpretation of scripture, and while Jerome is un-comfortable with the Christianizing of Virgil’s poetry and of Virgil himself, their critiques, filtered through a Christian lens, do not function as general literary criticism and should not be taken as authoritative denunciations of the form’s poetic and aesthetic traits.19 In the prefatory epistle attached to his Cento Nuptialis, meanwhile, Ausonius disparages cento composition as part of his strategy of modest self-presentation, and so for rhetorical ends. (More on Au-sonius’s stance in chapters 1 and 5.) Like the comments of Tertullian and Jerome, Ausonius’s are not definitive statements on the lack of merit of the cento per se.20
In the modern age, several scholars have also been appalled by the cento and, pursuing slash-and-burn literary criticism, have sharply condemned the form.21The majority of these negative reviews can be attributed to a classicizing prejudice that considers High Literature and the Great Author sacrosanct and scorns odd and secondary works that encroach on those monuments.22Such reactions are a reminder that appropriative works of all kinds are prone to elicit aesthetic disapproval and even moral outrage from some quarters. Though none to my knowledge does so explicitly, perhaps in their minds the disapproving critics also conflate centos and plagiarism, or view cento composition as a type of theft. That would be a mistake, since the kind of open, reconstitutive ap-propriation that occurs in the centos is far from plagiarism’sfurta.23
In this study, I wish to provide a counterweight to the often harsh responses to the cento, responses that are inadequate in their proprietary and closed vision of texts (and not unimportantly, canonical texts), if sometimes entertaining in their Housmanian vitriol. The reflexive condemnation of the patchwork texts for being curiosities rather than high literary art, and still worse, for turning high literary art into a curiosity, misses the point of the works. Centonists themselves would no doubt agree that their works are strange and parasitic, and that the texts fail to measure up to the aesthetic standards of great literature. Indeed, by their very nature the centos are and do very different things from what con-ventional high poetry is and does. Critics should bear this in mind and approach the works on their own terms. I fully recognize that, even when this injunction is followed, the patchwork technique and texts will not be to everyone’s tastes. Yet this book aims to demonstrate that the twelve mythological and secular centos can provide audiences with one of the more intricate and exciting reading experiences of any poetry in antiquity.24
material that could be reworked to yield fresh texts.25 Most of the pursuits through which certain members of Virgil’s ancient audience at certain points recast his poetry and made it anew have parallels in the ways Greek audiences treated Homer, and indeed result from the application of the formula ‘‘As Homer, so Virgil.’’ My area of focus, however, is strictly the Roman context and how the writing of mythological and secular centos relates to practices that arose around Virgil. In this arena, we find a wide range of works showing that Virgil’s poetry was not only canonical and monumental but also a rich source for derivative or secondary composition.
Conventional imitation offers one example of how ancient authors recast Vir-gil.26Yet there were also practices involving a more direct and insistent reworking of Virgilian material. The schools were an important setting for these pursuits. Virgil’s poetry, and especially theAeneid, held a central position in the schools of grammar and an important one in the schools of rhetoric from the time Caecilius Epirota made him a school text in or around 26 BC through late antiquity wherever traditional secular education survived.27One of the things that students at both levels were sometimes called on to do was to rewrite passages of his poetry.
Ethopoeiae, or exercises in which students composed a speech for a literary or mythological character,28serve as one example of how Virgilian poetry lay open to
young authorial hands. A notable reference to an impersonation of a Virgilian character comes from Augustine. The Church Father relates that as a student in a school of grammar, he wrote a prose passage in which the Juno of Aeneid 1 expresses her anger at being unable to keep the Trojans from reaching Italy. For this exercise Augustine received a prize, the recollection of which brought him no satisfaction later in life (Conf. 1.17). Another Virgilianethopoeiacomes from En-nodius (473/4–521), who taught rhetoric before becoming bishop of Rome ca. 513. Ennodius’s life as a teacher is reflected in his collectedDictiones, among which are pieces that served as Ennodius’s models of school exercises. One of theDictionesis a work that modern editors have entitledVerba Didonis Cum Abeuntem Videret Aeneam. This piece, which demonstrates that Virgil has a place in the rhetorical schools, takesA. 4.365 (nec tibi diva parens generis) as its starting point and recasts Dido’s speech that follows (A.4.365–387;Dict. 28 [CSEL6, 505–506]).
Still more evidence for school exercises that take their cue from Virgil ap-pears in Servius.29In his note ad Aen. 10.18, Servius mentions that Titianus and Calvus devised themata, which would appear to mean situations derived from specific passages in Virgil’s poetry, that students might utilize ad dicendi usum.30In the same entry, Servius mentionscontroversiae written in conjunc-tion withA. 10.18–95. Later in his commentary, Servius links Virgil further to the schools of rhetoric by calling attention to one qui in Vergilium scripsit declamationes(ad A. 10.532).31Presumably, these various exercises appeared in prose, the usual medium for such material.
occurred in the grammatical schools, it may have involved recasting Virgil’s poetry, given his importance in the curriculum. Whether this also could have happened in the Latin rhetorical schools is a bit more questionable. While verse exercises arose in the rhetorical schools of Egypt,33 the Western curriculum focused more on the practice of declamation.34 Even so, it is possible that
students at that upper level also composed Virgilianethopoeiaeand paraphrases in verse, or even hexameter declamations derived from theAeneid.35
Examples of poems deriving from Virgilian school exercises appear in the codex Salmasianus, a manuscript dating anywhere from the seventh to the early ninth century.36The Salmasianus preserves a collection of poems put together in Africa circa 534,37whose compiler is unknown.38This collection, which forms an important part of theAnthologia Latina,39includes many of the mythological and secular centos. The first of the Virgilian poems with links to school exercises is the Locus Vergilianus (AL214 SB) written by the late fifth- to early sixth-century poet Coronatus, who may have been identical to the author, called
Coronatus scholasticus, of a grammatical treatise on final syllables.40( Scholas-ticus could mean that Coronatus was a grammarian or that he simply was learned.)41Whether or notCoronatus scholasticuswas our Coronatus, the author of theLocus, being able to write a poem on a Virgilian theme, was in all likeli-hood a highly educated adult (for there is no reason to think that theLocusis the work of Coronatus as a schoolboy). The title of theLocusas given in the Sal-masianus derives from A. 3.315, where Aeneas encounters Andromache and asks what she has suffered since the fall of Troy. Yet it seems that whoever gave the poem its title was in error, since Coronatus’s work appears to derive from the section inAeneid5 where the Trojan women have set fire to Aeneas’s fleet.42In this reading, the termLocus Vergilianusdenotes simply a passage with a Virgilian pedigree; but the work is in fact a versifiedethopoeiapresenting Aeneas’s emo-tional reaction to the arson. The other two Virgilian pieces in the Salmasianus are the anonymous Themata Vergiliana (AL 237, 249 SB), which recast
A.12.653–658 and 4.385–387 respectively. Asthemata, the poems would seem to be versified versions of the exercise that Servius mentions ad Aen. 10.18. While we cannot know if the anonymous authors were students or adults, it is more plausible that they, like Coronatus, were adults writing poems stemming from pursuits they had known in the schools.
Other examples of bravura compression are two anonymous works, one that summarizes the entire Virgilian corpus in eleven lines (AL717R) and the other in seventeen lines (AL 720a R). The dates of AL672a 717, and 720a R are uncertain; but it is quite possible that they belong to late antiquity. In a less virtuoso performance, an anonymous author writes four-line argumenta that Shackleton Bailey presents alongside accounts (also tetrastich) of theEclogues
andGeorgics(AL2 and 2a SB).44
Still another set of argumenta appears under the name of Sulpicius Car-thaginiensis, who produces six-line summaries of theAeneid(AL653 R). This figure is probably not the same Sulpicius who composed an epigram cited in
VSD38 on how Varius and Tucca thwarted Virgil’s dying wish and preserved the Aeneid from immolation.45 Of that poem, the epitomizer offers a feeble imitation in a preface to his summaries,46perhaps in order to try to pass himself off as the Sulpicius Carthaginiensis of Virgil’s biography. These two groups of text probably date again to late antiquity. Finally, twelve five-line summaries of each book of theAeneidsurvive from the so-called Twelve Wise Men (AL591– 602 R); but it has been convincingly argued that the group is actually Lac-tantius, writing under twelve assumed names.47One of the Twelve Wise Men, ‘‘Basilius,’’ also writes a twelve-line synopsis of the entireAeneid, with each line devoted to a book of the epic (AL634 R).48
The hexameter argumenta in all likelihood derive from the schools of grammar, where teachers probably gave students verbal summaries of sections and books of theAeneidbefore embarking on deeper analyses of grammar and content.49Summaries in written form are also quite feasible; these would have been in prose, though the possibility that grammarians sometimes composed them in verse cannot be ruled out. It may also be the case that students would have been called on to recite spontaneously synopses of passages or books of the
Aeneid, as well as to write them, and then in prose, and just maybe in verse. The authors of the hexameterargumentawere probably adults who had been formally educated in the schools; some may have also beengrammatici. Should Lactantius lie behind the Twelve Wise Men, moreover, one of the summarizers would have been a teacher of rhetoric, assuming Lactantius wrote under the guise of that coterie while a teacher and before his conversion to Christianity ca. 303. These figures may have considered the Virgilian summaries they en-countered in the schools to be the pursuits upon which they were elaborating as they developed various approaches to versifying synopses of Virgil’s epic, as well as occasionally of his other works. Such poetic efforts have the markings of pastimes undertaken during the authors’ otium and as light entertainment, rather than of pieces intended for practical use in the schools.
was a child-centonist. In addition, some of the centonists besides Ausonius, the professor of Bordeaux, may have been teachers, and so may have constantly brushed up their Virgil in their professional lives.51
Links to the schools may also explain why the centonists were acculturated to recasting Virgil. Like the authors of Virgilian scholastic poetry, the patchwork poets would have learned in the school setting that they could do things with Virgil’s poetry, which stood as a body of material open to recasting.52 Having come to understand in the schools that there was no barrier between them-selves and Virgil’s poetry, the centonists may have viewed patchwork compo-sition, being an act of secondary authorship, as an extension of the principle that they had encountered in the curriculum.53
Of course, cento composition is a very different pursuit from creating Virgilian school texts and from writing versified Virgilian ethopoeiae,themata, and sum-maries. In fact, the processes of recasting Virgil in the mythological and secular centos have more in common with another method of rewriting his poetry in antiquity. This practice stems from Virgil’s vast popularity in the West, a si-tuation that owed much, but not everything, to his place in the scholastic curriculum. Virgil’s verses were something of alingua francain Roman society, though of course individuals had varying levels of command of that poetic language. One of the results of the renown of Virgil’s poetry was the direct quotation of that material in a wide array of settings. This could involve using Virgil’s verses proverbially, as a sort of footnote supporting a particular state-ment or argustate-ment (and the belief that Virgil was a master in every branch of learning contributed to this phenomenon),54or citing it as material to be re-futed.55More relevant to the cento is the practice of quoting Virgil’sverbaonly
to transform his content or res by adapting his tags to fit new situations and subjects.56 While such activity was not exclusive to Virgil, audiences trans-formed his verses in this manner most frequently of all poetry in the Latin tradition. (Greek authors, especially Homer, were also reused in this way by Latin writers.) The productive quotation of Virgil could have comic ends, with his language applied to low material, and so deflated humorously, or could occur in serious contexts.
Directly quoting Virgil’s lines and adapting their meaning in new contexts oc-curs in graffiti, and in the process shows that people of all stripes knew some Virgil.57Citing a line from theEclogues,Georgics, orAeneid also happened in everyday conversations, though records of such ephemeral quotations naturally appear in written sources. The literary evidence, which consists of prose works containing the transformed line or lines of Virgilian hexameter, also demonstrates that writers themselves often quoted and adapted the content of Virgilian lines in their texts.
a declamation about Alexander the Great when he could have cited more aptly A. 2.553, capulo tenus abdidit ensem, for ornamental purposes. In the sameSuasoria (4.4), Seneca shows that Fuscus himself quotedA.4.379–380, applying Dido’s sarcastic (and, as it turns out, wrong) assessment of the gods’ interest in Aeneas’s affairs in a speech refuting claims that the gods care about childbirth (Suas. 4.4). Seneca adds that Fuscus quoted the line summis cla-moribus, to very boisterous approval.58
Petronius provides further glimpses into the practice of transforming Virgi-lian verses.59 In the Cena Trimalchionis, Petronius has Trimalchio quote
A. 2.44,sic notus Ulixes? to refer to his own heroic gourmandizing (Sat. 39). Later, when describing the lady of Ephesus, Petronius has her nurse, playing the role of Anna, quoteA.4.34 and 4.38 (Sat. 111, 112). Here parody ofAeneid
4 specifically is a goal, with the story of Dido recalled but comically adapted and lowered in the account of the bereaved lady of Ephesus who, despite her sorrow, succumbs to the advances of another man.
Much of the rest of the non-Christian literary evidence for the transforma-tive quotation of Virgil—and the examples I give are meant to be representatransforma-tive, not exhaustive—is connected to emperors. (Far from a sign that the practice was largely an imperial phenomenon, the cluster of material simply shows that a good amount of the extant Latin prose literature after Virgil was concerned with imperial politics and those in power.) Seneca the Younger provides an example of how one could change Virgil for comic purposes with his biting statement that Livius Geminius will claim to have seen Claudius walkingnon passibus aequis—a phrase taken fromA.2.724, describing Ascanius, and applied to the lame em-peror (Apocol. 1.1). Later in the work, Seneca has Mercury cite G. 4.90,dede neci, melior vacua sine regnet in aula, in reference to Claudius (Apocol. 3.2).
Suetonius notes other instances of such citations of Virgil by or in relation to the emperors. Upon encountering men in dark cloaks rather than traditional Roman dress at a contio, Augustus cries: Romanos, rerum dominos gentemque togatam (A.1.282) (Suet. Div. Aug. 40). In doing so, Augustus gives the Vir-gilian line not only a different referent but also a sardonic tone, since he disapproves of the men’s clothing and is compelling them to remember and adopt the traditional Roman ways of dressing. A freedman of Nero, meanwhile, reuses the Virgilian usque adeone mori miserum est?(A.12.646) when he sees the emperor trying to flee from the perils that surround him (see Suet.Ner. 47). The freedman, emboldened by what he rightly sees as Nero’s imminent demise, delivers the line in disgust, and he wishes to draw a contrast between the emperor’s cowardice and the behavior of Turnus, exhorted to battle by Juturna disguised as the charioteer Metiscus.
at the poor progress of the siege of Hatra in 199 by quotingA.11.371 (scilicet ut Turno contingat regia coniunx). The point is that Severus’s soldiers, like Turnus’s in the Aeneid, are suffering in a war waged for no real reason. The emperor seems not to have appreciated the clever way that this criticism was offered, as he had Crispus killed.60
Further evidence for such alterations of Virgil appears in the Historia Au-gusta. While the historical accuracy of this material may be questioned, it at least shows that the author of theHistoria Augusta, or the sources that he may be following, is familiar with the act of modifying Virgilian lines. Thus Hadrian is reported to have quotedA.6.869–872, which refer to Marcellus, and to have applied the lines to his presumptive heir Verus (seeHA Ael. Spart.,Ael. 4.1-3).61Another example appears in conjunction with Diocletian, who is said to have citedAeneae magni dextra cadis(A.10.830) at an assembly when he killed Aper, himself the assassin of the emperor Numerian. Vopiscus, the nominal author of the entry in the Historia Augustain which the anecdote appears, is surprised that a soldier should have such command of Virgil, but adds that many are accustomed to quoting passages from comedians and other poets (HAFlav. Vop.,Num. 13.3–5). Vopiscus’s wonder seems misplaced, since Virgil could have been known in army barracks as well as in imperial palaces.62
Transforming the meaning of quoted Virgilian material also occurred outside of imperial contexts and continued well into late antiquity, as is clear from the epistles of the fifth-century bishop, man of letters, and court figure Sidonius Apollinaris. Writing to the otherwise unknown Turnus inEp. 4.24.1, Sidonius cites a line in theAeneidcontaining a reference to Virgil’s own Turnus (A. 9.6–7). Immediately before doing so, Sidonius says explicitly that he is adapting Virgilian material appropriate to his addressee’s situation:bene nomini, bene negotio tuo congruit Mantuani illud: ‘‘Turne, optime optanti divum promittere nemo/auderet, volvenda dies en attulit ultro.’’ In Ep. 5.17.7, moreover, Sidonius describes to Eriphius a game of ball in which an enthusiastic Philomathius participated by citingA.5.499:hic vir inlustris Philomathius, ut est illud Mantuani poetae, ‘‘ausus et ipse manu iuvenum temptare laborem’’sphaeristarum se turmalibus constanter im-miscuit. At still another point in his collection of epistles, Sidonius alters the referent of a quoted line from theEclogues, as he opens a letter to Constantius by applyingE.8.11 to him (a te principium, tibi desinet) (Ep. 7.18.1).
Epitaphs constitute another significant body of material in which Virgilian lines are quoted and their meanings modified.63 In the inscriptions, Virgilian material often appears as clausulae; yet there are also instances when whole lines of Virgil are reused.64Notable in this regard is an epitaph found inB. 1786 (CIL 6.9685), from Rome and inscribed under an image of a butcher’s wife selling a goose, which goes so far as to reproduce three entire lines of Virgil (A. 1.607–609): dum montibus umbrae/lustrabunt, [c]onvexa polus dum sidera pascet/ semper honos nomenq. tuum laudesque manebunt.65
together to create new, coherent narratives—a more difficult enterprise, to be sure. Literary and epigraphical examples appear as steps along the way from citing and adapting isolated Virgilian lines to writing full-fledged centos. In those examples, we find what might be called inchoate centos, or very short passages made up of Virgil’s verses. A comic manifestation of this practice, and one that provides the earliest evidence for any type of Virgilian cento, appears in Petronius (Sat. 132.11). There Encolpius addresses his unresponsivementula
through Virgilian lines strung together to create a brief cento:
illa solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat
nec magis incepto vultum sermone movetur (A.6.469–470) quam lentae salices (E.5.16) lassove papavera collo. (A.9.436)
A very different example appears in Capitolinus’s account in theHistoria Au-gusta of Macrinus. According to Capitolinus, Macrinus, a praetorian prefect who assassinated Caracalla and became emperor, had bloodthirsty ways that included reviving the punishment inflicted by Mezentius of tying a living person to a corpse and forcing him to die a slow and smelly death (seeA. 8.485–488). Capitolinus says that someone composed a salute to Diadumenus, a rival of Macrinus, by linking two lines of Virgil (but with no regard for meter):egregius forma iuvenis (A. 6.861 or 12.275, which read egregium forma iuvenem) cui pater haud Mezentius esset(A.7.654) (HAJul. Cap.,Opil. Macr. 12.9).67Finally,
certain inscriptions also consist of Virgilian verse units recomposed in cento form. Examples are the epitaphs readingconcordes animae(A.6.827)quondam, cum vita maneret(A.5.724, with slight alterations: theAeneid readsdum vita manebat) (L. 1969, 1), andhic pietatis honos: (A.1.253)veteris stat gratia facti
(A.4.539) (B. 817).68
Petronius’s obscene passage, the political slogan, and the epitaphs are less virtuoso literary performances than are the twelve longer mythological and secular centos. Even so, their authors have moved from the semantic alteration of a single Virgilian verse unit to reassembling discrete units in order to create a new nar-rative. This shows that there were instances when Virgil was recomposed in a way that mirrored in miniature the practices of the Virgilian centonists.69The short patchwork texts thus stand at a conceptual and formal midpoint between the quotation of individual Virgilian verses in new narrative settings and the creation of longer literary texts completely comprised of reconnected Virgilian lines.
1
Playing with Poetry
Writing and Reading the Virgilian Centos
An examination of the mythological and secular Virgilian centos requires an initial overview of the cento form itself. A thorough sketch of how authors compose patchwork poems and how audiences can interpret them will begin to demonstrate that the centos, while eccentric, are complex and rich texts. Moreover, we will begin to see that the centos serve as valuable witnesses to Virgil’s reception in antiquity and beyond, and that they bear upon larger issues in Latin literature and in literary studies as a whole, particularly those related to intertextuality and allusion.
To pursue this inquiry, I turn to Decimus Magnus Ausonius, the prolific poet and important political figure of the later fourth century.1A centonist himself, Ausonius is the only author in antiquity to discuss in detail his own patchwork poem and the Virgilian cento as a whole. These reflections appear in a prefatory epistle written in prose to the rhetor Axius Paulus,2which Ausonius attaches to hisCento Nuptialis:3
perlege hoc etiam, si operae est, frivolum et nullius pretii opusculum, quod nec labor excudit nec cura limavit, sine ingenii acumine et morae maturitate. cen-tonem vocant qui primi hac concinnatione luserunt. solae memoriae negotium sparsa colligere et integrare lacerata, quod ridere magis quam laudare possis. pro quo, si per Sigillaria in auctione veniret, neque Afranius naucum daret neque ciccum suum Plautus offerret. piget equidem Vergiliani carminis dignitatem tam ioculari dehonestasse materia. sed quid facerem? iussum erat, quodque est po-tentissimum imperandi genus, rogabat qui iubere poterat. imperator Valentinia-nus, vir meo iudicio eruditus, nuptias quondam eiusmodi ludo descripserat, aptis equidem versibus et compositione festiva. experiri deinde volens quantum nostra contentione praecelleret, simile nos de eodem concinnare praecepit. quam scru-pulosum hoc mihi fuerit intellege. neque anteferri volebam neque posthaberi, cum aliorum quoque iudicio detegenda esset adulatio inepta, si cederem, insolentia, si ut aemulus eminerem. suscepi igitur similis recusanti feliciterque et obnoxius gratiam tenui nec victor offendi. hoc tum die uno et addita lucubratione prop-eratum modo inter liturarios meos cum repperissem, tanta mihi candoris tui et amoris fiducia est ut severitati tuae nec ridenda subtraherem. accipe igitur opus-culum de inconexis continuum de diversis unum, de seriis ludicrum, de alieno
5
10
nostrum, ne in sacris et fabulis aut Thyonianum mireris aut Virbium, illum de Dionyso, hunc de Hippolyto reformatum.
et si pateris ut doceam docendus ipse, cento quid sit absolvam. variis de locis sensibusque diversis quaedam carminis structura solidatur, in unum versum ut coeant aut caesi duo aut unus <et unus> sequenti cum medio. nam duos iunctim locare ineptum est et tres una serie merae nugae. diffinduntur autem per caesuras omnes, quas recipit versus heroicus, convenire ut possit aut penthemimeres cum reliquo anapaestico aut trochaice cum posteriore segmento aut septem semipedes cum anapaestico chorico aut * * post dactylum atque semipedem quicquid restat hexametro, simile ut dicas ludicro, quod Graecistomaawi onvocavere. ossicula ea sunt: ad summam quattuordecim figuras geometricas habent. sunt enim quad-rilatera vel triquetra extentis lineis aut <eiusdem> frontis, <vel aequicruria vel ae-quilatera, vel rectis> angulis vel obliquis: isoscele ipsi vel isopleura vocant, orthogonia quoque et scalena. harum verticularum variis coagmentis simulantur species mille formarum: elephantus belua aut aper bestia, anser volans et mirmillo in armis, subsidens venator et latrans canis, quin et turris et cantharus et alia eiusmodi innumerabilium figurarum, quae alius alio scientius variegant. sed peritorum con-cinnatio miraculum est, imperitorum iunctura ridiculum. quo praedicto scies quod ego posteriorem imitatus sum. hoc ergo centonis opusculum ut ille ludus tractatur, pari modo sensus diversi ut congruant, adoptiva quae sunt ut cognata videantur, aliena ne interluceant, arcessita ne vim redarguant, densa ne supra modum pro-tuberent, hiulca ne pateant. quae si omnia ita tibi videbuntur ut praeceptum est, dices me composuisse centonem et, quia sub imperatore tum merui, procedere mihi inter frequentes stipendium iubebis; sin aliter, aere dirutum facies, ut cumulo carminis in fiscum suum redacto redeant versus unde venerunt. vale.
Read through this also, if it is worthwhile—a trifling and worthless little book, which no pains have shaped nor care polished, without a spark of wit and that ripeness which deliberation gives.
They who first trifled with this form of compilation call it a ‘‘cento.’’ ’Tis a task for the memory only, which has to gather up scattered tags and fit these mangled scraps together into a whole, and so is more likely to provoke your laughter than your praise. If it were put up for auction at a fair, Afranius would not give his straw, nor Plautus bid his husk. For it is vexing to have Virgil’s majestic verse degraded with such a comic theme. But what was I to do? It was written by command, and at the request (which is the most pressing kind of order!) of one who was able to command—the Emperor Valentinian, a man, in my opinion, of deep learning. He had once described a wedding in ajeu d’esprit of this kind, wherein the verses were to the point and their connections amusing. Then, wishing to show by means of a competition with me the great superiority of his production, he bade me compile a similar poem on the same subject. Just picture how delicate a task this was for me! I did not wish to leave him nowhere, nor yet to be left behind myself; since my foolish flattery was bound to be patent to the eyes of other critics as well, if I gave way, or my presumption, if I rivaled and surpassed him. I undertook the task, therefore, with an air of reluctance and with happy results, and, as obedient, kept in favor and, as successful, gave no offense.
20
25
30
35
This book, then hurriedly composed in a single day with some lamp-lit hours thrown in, I lately found among my rough drafts; and so great is my confidence in your sincerity and affection, that for all your gravity I could not withhold even a ludicrous production. So take a little work, continuous, though made of disjointed tags; one, though of various scraps; absurd, though of grave materials; mine, though the elements are another’s; lest you should wonder at the accounts given by priests or poets of the Son of Thyone or of Virbius—the first reshaped out of Dionysus, the second out of Hippolytus.
And if you will suffer me, who need instruction myself, to instruct you, I will expound what a cento is. It is a poem compactly built out of a variety of passages and different meanings, in such a way that either two half-lines are joined together to form one, or one line and one accompanied by the following half-line. For to place two (whole) lines side by side is weak, and three in succession is mere trifling. But the lines are divided at any of the caesurae which heroic verse admits, so that either a penthemimeris can be linked with an anapaestic continuation, or a third-foot trochaic break with a complementary section, or at the seventh half-foot with a choric anapaest, or [. . .] after a dactyl and a half-foot is placed whatever is needed to complete the hexameter: so that you may say it is like the puzzle which the Greeks have calledstomachion. There you have little pieces of bone, fourteen in number and representing geometrical figures. For they are quadrilateral or triangular, some with sides of various lengths, some symmetrical, either of equal legs or equilateral, with either right or oblique angles: the same people call them isosceles or equal-sided triangles, and also right-angled and scalene. By fitting these pieces together in various ways, pictures of countless objects are produced: a monstrous elephant, a brutal boar, a goose in flight, and a gladiator in armor, a huntsman crouching down, and a dog barking—even a tower and a tankard and numberless other things of this sort, whose variety depends on the skill of the player. But while the harmonious arrangement of the skillful player is marvelous, the jumble made by the unskilled is grotesque. This prefaced, you will know that I am like the second kind of player.
And so this little work, theCento, is handled in the same way as the game described, so as to harmonize different meanings, to make pieces arbitrarily connected seem naturally related, to let foreign elements show no chink of light between, to prevent the far-fetched from proclaiming the force which united them, the closely packed from bulging unduly, the loosely knit from gaping. If you find all these conditions duly fulfilled according to rule, you will say that I have compiled a cento. And because I served at the time under my commanding officer, you will direct ‘‘that pay be issued to me as for regular service’’; but if otherwise, you will sentence me ‘‘to forfeit pay,’’ so that this ‘‘lump sum’’ of verse may be ‘‘returned to its proper pay-chest,’’ and the verses go back to the source from which they came. Farewell.4
be equipped to read the cento knowledgeably. In concerning himself with his text’s reception, Ausonius’s interests no doubt were more than pedagogical. By describing the origin and character of his own patchwork text and relating what a cento is, Ausonius would have enabled his different readers to appreciate better his accomplishment in composing his work.5At the end of the epistle, the poet
demonstrates his desire to have Paulus, and by extension the tacit larger audi-ence, judge theCento Nuptialis(40–43). Despite some patently insincere self-deprecation in the letter (more on this hereafter), Ausonius certainly would have wanted his work received favorably.
Ausonius’s efforts to secure the sort of readership he wants for the Cento Nuptialis lead him to articulate a cento poetics.6 The account that Ausonius offers will serve as a point of departure for much of the discussion in this chapter. This will involve not only analyzing Ausonius’s poetics closely but also relating it to the twelve extant mythological and secular centos, especially by scrutinizing how all the centonists put into practice the ideas and methods that Ausonius discusses. In addition, I will investigate aspects of cento composition that Ausonius overlooks.7Such a survey will explain thoroughly what a cento is, and along the way will connect the Virgilian centos to topics of wider concern, including the nature of literary ludism, ancient mnemotechnics, and the roles of the author and the reader in allusion.
Readers of Ausonius’s prefatory epistle to the Cento Nuptialis would have to agree with Erasmus that its author was one who, regarding the cento, legem etiam eius carminis tradit (‘‘Adagia,’’ Opera Omnia 2.542D). This assessment stems from lines 21–28 of the letter to Paulus,8in which Ausonius presents the technical rules of cento composition. The poet says that citations were to consist either of two half-lines or of one line and the following half attached to another half (praef. 22). Although Ausonius himself sometimes connects longer units,9he remarks that generally the gesture is cheap child’s play (praef. 22–23). Ausonius proceeds to delineate the different metrical sections that the cen-tonist could conjoin. The segments result from cuts at the strong caesurae in the second, third, or fourth feet, or after a weak caesura in the third foot (praef. 24–28).10(In practice, centonists sometimes make other cuts, including
occasionally at diereses.)11 For many, this information constitutes what is of value and interest in the prefatory epistle. Ausonius’s codifications are often seen as his primary, if not his sole contribution to our understanding of the cento form.
Ausonius’s narrative sketch provides deeper insights into the cento than his technical (and somewhat corrupt) summary in lines 21–28.12
The initial Ausonian terms that I will discuss areludusandludere. Ausonius uses the word ‘‘play’’ as a verb in line 3 (centonem vocant qui primi hac con-cinnatione luserunt) and as a noun in lines 9 ([Valentinianus. . .nuptias quon-dam eiusdem] ludo descripserat) and 37 (hoc ergo centonis opusculum ut ille ludus tractatur). These comments provide early examples of an important term in cento criticism, where the patchwork poems have been described as a sort of game, sometimes pejoratively, sometimes incompletely.13 My aim is to use Ausonius’s epistle as a starting point for defining more precisely what makes cento composition a form of literary play.
Ludereandludus/lususare regular, and almost technical, terms for different kinds of verse in the Latin tradition.14They can denote poems of different kinds produced in leisure hours;15 youthful works;16 light poetry as distinguished from serious;17texts belonging to minor genres;18and poems in which authors treat the verbal surface as game pieces that they fit into patterns—that is,
carmina figurata, reciprocal verses, and the like.19The words can also be an in-sult or a means of self-deprecation.20To complicate matters, these different categories can sometimes overlap.
In his prefatory epistle to Paulus, Ausonius defines theCento Nuptialisand the cento form as literary play in accordance with several of these measuring sticks. One is the classification of poetic ludism as a product ofotium, or leisure.21 While there was some persistent suspicion attached to it in Roman culture,22 leisure for the majority of Latin authors and the general public was usually an interval in, and a preparation for, work (labor), business dealings (negotium), the performance of duties (officia), or political, administrative, or military service.23
Among the economic, political, and social elite and those of lower status who possessed some cultural capital—for example, grammarians and rhetors—one of the ways to pass one’s relaxation was to write poetry (whether alone or with others). Though some resisted and criticized this activity, the sources who discuss it tend to represent it as a productive use ofotium, or a means of refreshing one’s intellectual and creative faculties, or as a benignly frivolous passing of time.24 Often writers mention the kind of work being produced in leisure hours, with epic and tragedy considered worthwhile and edifying. Epigram, satire, and other light genres, meanwhile, were deemed inconsequential and flighty,25though still ac-ceptable as cultured play. An example of someone who wrote poems belonging to this second class of works, Pliny, describes his penchant for writing light verses as harmless fun (Ep. 5.3). This attitude was no doubt common from the late republic through late antiquity, though it must be added that Pliny had to defend his writing and reciting versiculos severos parum (Ep. 5.3.2). In cultural centers throughout antiquity, recitation halls and dinner parties would have been im-portant loci for sharing ludic pieces.26
Especially notable isEp. 9.13, where Sidonius says that he is sending Tonantius a lyric poem to be recited inter bibendum (9.13.2), and where he describes bygone convivial parties in which he and others chose meters by lots and wrote poems on the same subject matter in playful competition (9.13.4–5). Critics have argued that there was in Sidonius’s Gaul a decline in the number of lite-rati who partook of such ludic activities.27Even so, a vivid picture emerges in Sidonius’s letters of how the learned could approach poetry as entertainment in fifth-century Gaul, and so of how guilt-free leisured literary ludism was alive and well in circles that valued and wanted to preserve their ties to Roman classical culture. In the codex Salmasianus, moreover, which (as noted in the introduction to this book) contains a sixth-century collection of poems put to-gether in Africa and probably represents to a large degree the poetry of African writers,28many works have the appearance of dilettantish products of leisure. In one, which modern editors have entitled theEpistula Didonis ad Aeneam(AL
71 SB), an anonymous author explicitly links his poem tootium(quid carminis otia ludant,/cerne bonus mentisque fidem probus indue iudex[2–3]).29
Ausonius offers further evidence for such leisurely composition in the preface to theGriphus(14–27), where he relates that he began composing the riddling poem while drinking with others during the Alamannic campaign of 368–369.30It
may be, however, that Ausonius only got the idea for his poem at that point. A more secure connection to leisure, and more significant for my purposes, marks theCento Nuptialis,which arose in theotiumat Valentinian’s court. In his letter to Paulus, Ausonius reports that his patchwork poem began as a potentially incen-diary diversion, after Valentinian, having himself written such aludus, challenged him to a literary contest (praef. 8–11).31This placed the centonist on the razor’s edge. While he did not want to appear to have thrown the contest, he also could not beat the emperor too handily, lest he be charged with insolence (11–14). Fortunately, Ausonius devised a happy solution. Taking up the task with seeming reluctance, he both stayed in favor by being obedient and, as an unwilling winner, avoided offending Valentinian (14–15). Despite the rhetorical nature of Auso-nius’s description of Valentinian’s order and the author’s dilemma, there is no reason to doubt that this competition occurred. Notable in Ausonius’s account of it is the language of conflict (contentione praecelleret[11],anteferri/posthaberi[12],
aemulus eminerem[14], and victor[15]). These terms point to the place of the competitive impulse that is a main spur to play in the exchange of dueling cen-tos.32References to victory also indicate that playing at the cento could confer status on the successful competitor. This ‘‘battle,’’ however, occurred in the de-marcated zone ofotium, a parareality in which events took place that, while they could have consequences in the larger world, were set off from that world.
for refined entertainment, and perhaps even for ludic literary competitions at a banquet, or as diversions in their own spare time. Whatever their initial per-formance contexts, the centos, like other Virgilian poems in the Salmasianus, Coronatus’s Locus Vergilianus(AL214 SB) and the two anonymous Themata Vergiliana(AL237 SB, 249 SB), have more than a whiff of cultured play, which would have occurred during leisure hours.33
Of the other mythological and secular centos, there is some evidence linking Hosidius Geta’sMedea tootium. This comes from Tertullian, who mentions a centoMedeain theDe Praescriptione Haereticorum39.3–4. Based on parallels in name, form, and subject matter, it is extremely probable that this text is the veryMedeathat survives in the codex Salmasianus. After alluding to theMedea
(denique Hosidius Geta Medeam tragoediam ex Virgilio plenissime exsuxit), Tertullian proceeds to refer immediately to a neighbor or relative who used Virgilian verses to offer a new version of Cebes’s Pinax. This text emerged among other compositions written during the author’s leisure hours: meus quidam propinquus ex eodem poeta inter cetera stili sui otia Pinacem Cebetis explicuit(39.4). While Tertullian fails to link theMedeaexplicitly to leisure, it may be that the tragic cento arose in a setting similar to the centonizedPinaxof Cebes—that is, in the time that cultured adults devoted tootium.
The final cento to consider is Luxurius’sEpithalamium Fridi. The centonist probably did not perform this work at the wedding that occasioned it. Instead, Fridus and his bride were in all likelihood meant to enjoy the poem during their relaxation. Luxurius, moreover, may have composed the Epithalamium Fridi
during hisotiumas a gift for the bride and groom. At the same time, the couple may have solicited the work, which means that it would have been a patronized commission rather than a pastime. Thus there is some question as to whether theEpithalamium Fridiwas the product of Luxurius’sotium; or something he wrote more by necessity. (I will return to these matters in chapter 5.)
A second common way to define poetic ludism that I noted earlier is to dis-tinguish literary play from serious poetry, broadly defined.34 Throughout his epistle to Paulus, Ausonius does precisely this in describing theCento Nuptialis. Admittedly, Ausonius pursues such an approach largely as part of a captatio benevolentiae, which was recommended for theexordiaof speeches and was found in the prefaces of literary works. Designed to secure the sympathy of an audience, acaptatio usually contained self-effacing assertions of the inadequacies of an author and his text.35Ausonius includes such affected modesty in programmatic passages preceding several pieces,36although not always to the desired effect; for the poet’s protestations of humility have elicited critical wrath.37
Many statements in the epistle to Paulus contribute to thecaptatio. When Ausonius calls his cento afrivolum et nullius pretii opusculum(praef. 1), claims that it is the type of workquod ridere magis quam laudare possis(4), and admits
piget equidem Vergiliani carminis dignitatem tam ioculari dehonestasse materia
There is a moment, however, when Ausonius distinguishes his cento from serious literary composition in a way that moves beyond the narrow purposes of a
captatio: accipe igitur opusculum de inconexis continuum, de diversis unum, de seriis ludicrum, de alieno nostrum (praef. 17–19). While the word opusculum
owes much to the modesty topos, as it does in line 1 of the epistle,39the passage
is not just a self-deprecating moment as the foregoing examples are, but contains an accurate appraisal of the Cento Nuptialis and of the patchwork form as a whole. The important clause here isde seriis ludicrum. Ausonius says that cento composition is something an author does to serious poetry in order to produce a playful piece—ludicrum, a word obviously connected toludus/ludere, which here does more than convey modesty and in fact describes the cento accurately.40 Because the cento exists as a product of Virgilian poetry, it necessarily stands at a distance from the canonical, and soseria,Eclogues,Georgics, andAeneid.41The act of reconstituting source material, which Ausonius emphasizes when he uses the verb ‘‘play’’ earlier in the epistle (centonem vocant, qui primi hac concin-natione luserunt, 2–3), comes between the Virgilian centos and their canonical source texts. This gives the patchwork poems a different status from those grand works, as they become examples of light, ludic poetry derivedde seriis.
That a cento is fundamentally a playful reworking of Virgilian poetry also means that a patchwork text cannot belong in any simple way to a high genre.42 Here the relevant work is Hosidius Geta’s Medea. This cento is presented as a tragedy, a genre that stands alongside epic atop the generic hierarchy. In a cento, however, the intercession of Virgil causes the patchwork text to be something other than merely a representative of that particular genre. While an individual patchwork poem may take the form of a tragedy, it is first a cento, a text derived from the manipulation of another author’s poetry. Hence Geta’sMedeais what Ausonius describes theCento Nuptialisto be: anopusculum ludicrum de seriis. No matter how lofty the genre it replicates, a cento is always at bottom a cento, or a text adapting Virgil to a particular generic setting, and so standing at a remove from that genre.
Another category of ludic poetry that I noted earlier consists of texts in which authors isolate and reify the verbal surface, treating words as game pieces whose physical existence they can manipulate.43Ausonius aligns the cento form with
such ludism when he compares patchwork composition to the stomaawi on
(praef. 28–37). Within that passage, Ausonius uses the termsludicrum (simile ut dicas ludicro, quod Graecistomaawionvocavere[28]) and, for the final time in the epistle, ludus (hoc ergo centonis opusculum ut ille ludus [thestomaawi on]
tractatur[37]).
The trifle or game to which Ausonius likens the cento is first attested in a largely lost work of Archimedes and in antiquity acquired the name loculus Archimedius. Some have explained the wordstomaawi onas meaningNeckspiel, or brain teaser,44while others read ;
figures,46which Ausonius labelsossicula(praef. 28). The object of the game as Ausonius presents it is to fit those geometric shapes together in different ways in order to make countless objects:harum verticularum variis coagmentiis simulantur species mille formarum(32–33).47
The basic purpose of Ausonius’s comparing the cento to the stomaawi onis to show how cento composition admits of various configurations of Virgil’s verse units, which serve as verbal and metricalossiculae, and how centonists use those units to create new literary objects.48Extrapolating from this, it can be said that each patchwork text exists because an author has imposed ‘‘play conditions’’ on Virgil’s verbal surface,49abstracting its constituent verse units and treating them as though they were manipulable game pieces.
Handling Virgil in this way compels writers to accept and abide by a set of stringent ad hoc laws. In similar ludic literature such as palindromic poetry, acrostics, or leipograms, these establish the particular boundaries within which an author can pursue his game. In the case of the cento, the rule that Virgil’s poetry must constitute a patchwork text, as well as the strictures governing the metrical incisions that the poet can make, set the limits for how a centonist can manipulate or play with Virgil’s reified language. Of course, poetry generally imposes rules on a writer, from metrical and other formal constraints to generic customs and expectations.50 What distinguishes the cento from conventional verse composition—and this point holds for other works whose authors treat verbal surfaces similarly—is how extremely circumscribed the space of material is within which the centonist works, and how extremely tight the laws are governing his methods of composition. The centonist severely delimits the lin-guistic possibilities available to him—that is, he confines the verbal area of his poetry and the ways that he can handle that area much more than nonludic authors do. The centonist thus creates a ‘‘closed field’’51out of Virgil’s verbal surface, which he rearranges according to the specific and conventional rules controlling his play.
Ausonius’s use of ludere and ludus, then, aligns the Cento Nuptialis and cento composition generally with a wide range of criteria defining literary ludism in antiquity, and so shows that the cento is a form of play. The next step toward ascertainingcento quid sitis to examine the specific ways that centonists pursue their Virgilian games. To uncover how patchwork poets ‘‘investigate works from the past in order to find possibilities that often exceed those their authors had anticipated,’’55I return to Ausonius’s prefatory epistle and other aspects of the figurative poetics he offers.
Early in the letter to Paulus, Ausonius uses a metaphor that vividly portrays what centonists do to Virgil’s poetry:solae memoriae negotium sparsa colligere et integrare lacerata(praef. 3–4). Ausonius here draws on a ‘‘conventional literary vocabulary that . . . figures texts and parts of texts as their authors’ bodies and limbs’’56to describe the task of collecting and fitting together Virgil’s ‘‘mangled and strewn’’ verse units or membra, a word whose multivalence the centonist exploits.57For Ausonius, cento composition is a violent enterprise; yet instead of only rending Virgil’s ‘‘limbs,’’ centonists put them back together. While the centonist tears Virgil’s original verbal surface apart, Ausonius relates, his pur-poses are ultimately creative, not destructive.
Whether or not it was his intention, Ausonius’s figurative language in lines 3–4 of his epistle to Paulus also adumbrates a connection between his and all centonists’negotium memoriaeand the techniques prescribed in handbooks on memory. Specifically, the reference to Virgil’ssparsa et lacerata [membra] sug-gests that a centonist applies to his literary performance a version ofdivisio, or the act of memorizing a long text in parts. According to writers on mnemo-technics, this piecemeal approach was a necessary first step to committing a lengthy work to memory.58Such division would have helped readers throughout antiquity to remember Virgil, the poet who most occupied the memories of the educated from early childhood onward, as I noted in the introduction.59 Through their constant exposure to Virgil, educated Romans came to have Virgil hard-wired within themselves.60This would lead to the memorization of large swaths of Virgil, if not the entire corpus of his canonical works, just as Greek readers knew large sections of Homer’sIliadandOdysseyor the entire poems by heart.61
The centonists develop a new version of the practice of divisio. Having no doubt memorized most or all the Eclogues, Georgics, andAeneid by learning those texts line-by-line and even dactylic segment-by-dactylic segment, the centonists divide the units of Virgilian poetry anew. Cento composition is a memory act requiring that authors be able to scan Virgil in their minds, isolating his verse units in order to find an appropriatemembrum.62
similar to a passage in Hosidius Geta’s cento Medea, so much so that they suggest a deliberate act of imitation of Geta.65If he was indeed responding to theMedea, theDe Ecclesiapoet would demonstrate that he has committed to memory Virgil and a section of the reconstructed Virgil of an earlier cento, and that he can reproduce both of them on the spot.66
The only other centonist who provides any information about his method of centonizing is Ausonius. Once again in the strains of thecaptatio benevolentiae, Ausonius claims that he dashed off his work in a day and revised it slightly (hoc, tum die uno et addita lucubratione properatum [praef. 15–16).67However long Ausonius in fact took to compose and polish hisCento Nuptialis, it is easy to imagine the poet consulting a written text of Virgil when he made some re-visions to his cento. Yet there remains no reason to doubt Ausonius’s comment that cento composition is fundamentally a negotium memoriae, with him and every centonist having the fragmentedmembraof Virgil’s poetry in their heads. A written text of Virgil could be a reference tool for a centonist; but relying entirely on a roll or a codex would not allow centonists to operate with the efficiency that the cento form demands.68
Along withdivisio, a second important aspect of ancient memory instruction was compositio, or the recomposition of the elements of a long text in their correct order. Quintilian confirms this point, insisting that limits be placed on the subdivision of a text so that one can connect words in their proper relation— a task of great difficulty—and unite the various sections.69Late antique writers, Fortunatianus and Martianus Capella, restate Quintilian’s injunction.70 The principle of segmented recollection would be central to memorizing either prose or poetry, on the latter of which Quintilian (Inst. Orat. 1.1.36 and 11.2.41) and Fortunatianus (Ars Rhet. 3.13) claim students ought first to train their memo-ries. Poetry was also the material on which the author of the Rhetorica ad Herenniumsuggests children and adults should practicememoria verborum, or word-for-word memorization (ad Her. 3.19.34). Hence memorizing Virgil would have naturally involved dividing his verse units into workable segments and then reconnecting them in their proper order.
Such recollection of texts does not obtain in the Virgilian centos. Rather than trying to reproduce theEclogues,Georgics, andAeneidas they were written, the centonists disarticulate Virgil’s poetry. Yet in doing so, they of course do not misremember their source material or avoid the very difficult gesture of re-connecting the memorized parts into a unity. Having already memorized an original order of verses, the centonists instead rearrange that material to create a new textual coherence. Dismembering and reconstructing Virgil through memory becomes a means of remaking rather than restoring that model. What remains of Virgil in a cento are his individual verse units, themembrathat come to constitute a new poetic harmony.
a line taken from a passage in Virgil that resembles the scene being described in the cento. Thus when Luxurius citesA.1.707,nec non et Tyrii per limina laeta frequentes, to describe the guests at the wedding feast of Fridus and his bride (EF22), the original context of theAeneid, the feast at Dido’s palace, seems to guide the centonist to the Virgilian line. Such episodic memory, or recollection based on similarities in the type of scene being presented and the action and objects found in those scenes,73can also help determine why centonists con-nect the Virgilian units they do. Line 23 of Ausonius’sCento Nuptialis, which like EF 22 describes a wedding feast, offers an example: crateras magnos statuunt (A. 1.724) Bacchumque ministrant (A. 8.181). Ausonius moves be-tween these separated segments in the Aeneid because both units describe banquets (the first involving Dido and the second Evander), or scenes akin to thecenain Ausonius’s cento.
At times, a centonist recalls a Virgilian line belonging to an episode not at all similar to that of the cento, but containing an object that appears in the disparate narrative context of the patchwork poem. So when the anonymous author of the
HippodamiacitesA. 4.135,stat sonipes ac frena ferox spumantia mandit, the horse remains a horse, but rather than being a mount prepared for the hunt with Dido and Aeneas becomes part of a team pulling a chariot. The centonist’s reuse ofA. 4.135 appears to be due to his memory that a horse appears in the Virgilian line. More striking is Ausonius’scapreae sequaces(G. 2.374) /. . . oves haedique petulci
(G. 4.10) /et genus aequoreum,(G. 3.243),dammae cervique fugaces(G. 3.539), which describe the menu at Gratian’s cena nuptialis (CN 18–20). While the referents are quite different—Ausonius’s animals are prepared food, not crea-tures in nature—Ausonius probably cited the Virgilian units because he re-membered that they provided relevant objects for his account.
Characters can also provide parallels that appear to guide the centonists’ memories, with the poets recalling Virgilian lines containing a character that appears again in their centos. This occurs with gods (e.g.,sic contra est ingressa Venus [A. 4.107] [Iud. Par. 32]) and with heroes (e.g., non tulit Alcides [A.
8.256] [Herc. et Ant. 8]). Of course, because a Virgilian cento never relates the same narrative as Virgil, the mythological figures engage in different activities in the patchwork poems from what they do in Virgil, and so acquire different functions and different attributes from what they have in the Virgilian context. Good examples are the phrasessuperi regnator Olympi (A.2.779) in line 7 of theEuropaand [stetit]ante Iovem: (G. 1.125)nam te voluit rex magnus Olympi
(A.5.533) in line 13. The units refer to Jupiter in both Virgil and the cento. Yet the god appears in a different guise from what he was in the Virgilian passages, since in the Europa he has exercised his divine prerogative and become a bull.
