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6ο Roland G. Mayer
Persona<[> Problems.
T
The Literary Persona in Antiquity Revis is.
Jc at a»i autre.
Artiir Rimbaud. La Utvrc Λκ rcydnt
r. Introductory
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}
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
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 -
pt rsonae arc more or less transparent, and that behind them lies
Plato's o w n thinking.
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}
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 -
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.
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}
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}
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}
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
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
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:
38. See Porfyrio on Scrm. ι.*.?»-». 3-126. 9-5*; n 39. 40, 43, 45. and the scholiast on Per
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}
Bibliography