THE FALL OF MAECENAS*

The 'fall' of Maecenas, it should be observed, was a loss of power and influence, not of formal office. The great statesman and de facto minister of Augustus remained in the equestrian order while much lesser men became senators and consuls, which is doubtless the reason why poets like Horace and Propertius laid such emphasis on his lower status in addressing him.

His nearest approach to a magistracy or imperium of any kind was his appointment as guardian (praefectus) of the city during Augustus's absences from Rome-an office not recognized in the Republic and refused by Messalla Corvinus as unconstitutional (incivilis).

For more than twenty years after Augustus's entry upon political life Maecenas was in closest association with him. During the latter half of this period he stood next in importance (with the possible exception of Agrippa) to the Emperor and ruler of the world. He was supreme in his counsels; constantly acted as his vicegerent; had a duplicate of his seal, and revised and altered his dispatches at discretion.1

He had, therefore, a position to lose; a height such as few men have attained from which to fall; and when he had fallen, he tried hard to be raised again to his former place, but, to the great distress of his mind, without success. In this respect his career presents an unusual feature. Whenever misfortune has overtaken those who have played prominent parts in history, that is the circumstance that first occurs to the mind of posterity upon mention of their names: e. g., Wolsey, Bacon, Strafford, Galileo, Joan of Arc, etc. The fact that upon the principal author of Augustan imperialism, and the chief statesman and administrator of this critical age, an overwhelming calamity

*This essay is based upon an address made in 1908 to the Philological Society of Oxford, supplemented by the results of further consideration. The references T. and E., Ep., and S. E., refer respectively to my Translation and Exposition of the Odes of Horace, Epilegomena on Horace, and Student's Edition of Books I-III, The Monumentum Aere Perennius.

1 Dio Cassius, 51. 3.

descended and gave a tragic ending to his life is not commonly remembered, although it had some consequences of peculiar interest.

Tacitus, with his relish of epigram, says a striking thing about Maecenas in his Annals. The words are: "G. Maecenati (sc. Augustus) urbe in ipsa velut peregrinum otium permisit."? He puts them into the mouth of Seneca, when in the act of surrendering his wealth to Nero, as a plea for being allowed to go into retirement instead of effacing himself (as desired) by immediate suicide. There is a note of irony, however, in the adjective peregrinum that renders its actual use by the miserable philosopher on that occasion rather unlikely, and the word is probably due to the historian. Nevertheless, no more felicitous phrase could have been coined to represent the plight of Maecenas during the last fourteen years of his life. The full sense of peregrinum otium cannot be conveyed in English by two words. The former connotes estrangement and exile, the latter (in view of the context) the idea of being 'shelved' as well as that of mere inactivity. This is shown by Tacitus in the Annals, where he states that Sallustius. Crispus had stepped into Maecenas's place as chief counsellor and confidential agent of Augustus; for he adds that each of these men had possessed the appearance (speciem) rather than the reality (vim) of the Emperor's friendship, at the end of his life.

From Suetonius we know the cause of the breach between Maecenas and the Emperor; and from Dio and several other authorities we can fix the date when it occurred. It was early in B.C. 22. Maecenas lost the confidence of Augustus because he "betrayed to his wife Terentia the secret of the discovery of the conspiracy of Murena."6

What was this conspiracy? As officially documented it was a plot in conjunction with one Fannius Caepio (a Senatorian re

4

Aug. 66

5

2 Annals 14. 53. 33.30. Dio 54. 3. "Professor Rolfe's translation, Loeb Series: The Latin is Secretum de comperta Murenae coniuratione uxori Terentiae prodidisset; from which it will be seen that the "secret" may not have lain in the fact of discovery, but in the nature of the plot. Verrall in Studies in Horace has shown, as I think conclusively, that the subject is alluded to by Horace in Ode III. 2. 25.-See notes ad loc. in my S. E. and also $30 of Introd. T. and E.

calcitrant) to remove Augustus by assassination. And who was Murena? In full his name was Lucius Licinius Varro Murena, and he was (only!) the brother of Maecenas's wife Terentia, and of Proculeius, the intimate friend of Augustus, to whom the latter a few months before these events had designed to marry his daughter Julia.7

The complication was, therefore, remarkable; and it might have been thought that Maecenas had a good excuse for speaking to his wife. Besides this, the fact that Murena was a conspirator of some sort was at once made public, and he was indicted (in his absence, for he had absconded), condemned (of complicity, with Fannius, "though as some thought unjustly"), captured and put to death. But a review of all the extant data concerning this tragic business forces us to the conclusion that the full extent of Murena's malevolent purpose was not divulged at the trial, and was laid under a ban of secrecy by Augustus. Tiberius, the Emperor's young son-in-law, figured as the formal prosecutor, and Castricius, the informer, was uniquely protected by Augustus himself. That this was because it touched the honor of Cæsar's family and that Murena's design was not only to remove and supplant Augustus, but was in some way concerned with the disposal of Julia's hand has been inferred by Dr. Verrall on independent grounds, and from these and other considerations I conclude that Murena's plot falls into the category of those described by Livia 10 as being too shameful in their audacity and insolence to be explained in detail.

This member of the Licinian gens, which prided itself on its Greek descent, into whose hands Dr. Verrall traces the wealth of the celebrated M. Terentius Varro, was an advocate who, after having been well disposed towards imperialism," suddenly changed, seized an opportunity in Court to insult Augustus to his face by questioning his constitutional status, and immediately afterwards planned his assassination.18 He was certainly a troublesome brother-in-law to the statesman whom we remem

Tacitus: Annals 4. 40. 10 Seneca: de Clem. 1.9. 13 Dio 54. 3. B.C. 22.

Dio, 54. 3.
11 Varro, De Re Rus.

9 Suetonius: Aug. 56.

12 Vell. Pat. 88. 3.

ber almost exclusively on account of his patronage of literature, and there is reason to believe that he played the part of an ingrate towards his own brother Proculeius.14 As will be found subsequently in connection with Maecenas, it is not irrelevant to record the fact that Lucius Murena was a hunchback or "gibber". But our present point is that his insane and disastrous plot fixes the date of the estrangement between Augustus and Maecenas, and of the relegation of the latter to that exile, as it were, within the very walls of the city of which Tacitus speaks.

15

They relate most

Among his contemporaries of the Augustan and his successors of the Silver Age, it was not upon the ground mentioned above that the fame of Maecenas rested. References to him by the historians and annalists are frequent. often to his political activities, seldom to his literary interests. The 52nd book of Dio Cassius is the best testimony that for at least two hundred years after his death constructive statesmanship was his title to renown. We are apt to reverse the order of importance. Maecenas's concern was for the State. In its interest he cultivated the genius of poets. That their response was in terms of deathless art instead of ephemeral journalism is merely an accident of history. The nobility of their classic idiom has sometimes been so self-sufficing as to stifle inquiry regarding the immediate subject that inspired it—a tribute to the power of words, but not always an accurate guide to the author's mind.

Seneca constantly invokes Maecenas as an example to illustrate another subject which has even less to do with the encouragement of literature, but is quite relevant to our present theme. To put it shortly, it was the inferiority of Epicurean to Stoic philosophy in the formation of character, and its inability to sustain or fortify the dignity of a man in the face of misfortune.

14 In commentaries on Horace he has often been confused with Aulus Terentius Varro, Consul Suffect., in B. C. 23, who died in the year preceding the conspiracy. See Verrall: Studies in Horace, sub tit.

15 Suet.: De Gram. 9, and cf. S. E. Odes II. 2 and II. 3.

There is no record to show how G. Cilnius Maecenas first became associated with Augustus in state business, but we do know that the connection began very early in the latter's political career. Between their families there was probably an anterior friendship. For the contemporary historian Nicolaus Damascenus 16 records that a Lucius Maecenas was with Augustus at Apollonia, where the news of his 'father's' murder was brought to him, and whence he proceeded to Rome to claim his heritage and avenge the wrong. It is certain that Maecenas was an older and more experienced man than either the future Emperor or Agrippa, who at that date were aged nineteen and twenty respectively. The three were soon in close coöperation, and after Mutina, Philippi and Perusia we find Maecenas negotiating the marriage with Scribonia and acting with Cocceius Nerva as Augustus's diplomatic envoy to Antonius at Brundisium in B.C. 40 and at Tarentum in B.C. 38.17

Appian's references to Maecenas illustrate the remark of Velleius Paterculus that although luxurious in relaxation he was energetic in action, and demonstrate the reliance placed on him by Augustus. His successor Sallustius Crispus affected the same habit. 18 Although Agrippa was a good soldier, it was Maecenas who had the gift of diplomacy and the statesman's brain to divine what was feasible and to make that the basis of policy. He knew that a strong personal rule was at this time the sole hope for Rome, and that the heir of the Julii was the only possible wielder of it-the one man (Xpnoτós is Dio's word) for whom a superior status and authority had any chance of recognition by both the democratic and the aristocratic parties. He advocated and he compassed the elevation of Augustus, but the practical cast of his mind is shown in his blunt declaration

16 Vit. Caes. 31.

17 Horace's Sat. 1. 5 cannot refer to the former occasion, because he did not join the circle of Maecenas till B.C. 39. This Satire is notable as the place where Murena is first mentioned by the poet in the identical words (Murena praebente domum) that are used in Ode III, 19, relating to a banquet given by the conspirator shortly before and in connection with the plot against the Emperor. See notes and comments in my T. and E., Ep., and S. E., ad loc. 18 Tac. 3. 30, and see S. E. Introd. ¿17.