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Going to the dogs / Grattius <&> the Augustan subject*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2013
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1. It's no use. There is no hope, not a dog's chance. Whatever I write in this essay, who will go root out Grattius' poem The World of Hunting to Hounds? No course-teacher will track him down, whether as Augustan writer or as didactic poet. Big books about Latin Literature have to be perfectly inclusive works of reference if they are to spare him a sop, and even then he'll barely get a sniff (of précis) in the paragraph he is allotted. Ancient writers leave him without a trace: only the exceptional circumstances of exile had whining Ovid lump him – in 28th place – into his exhaustively comprehensive catalogue of contemporary writers, meant to figure collectively that non-event ‘The Action at Rome minus Naso’, in the last of his Letters from Pontus (4.16.34: our sole testimonium). So he has never been needed for writing about any other author.
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References
1 Cixous, H., Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing (Columbia, 1993) 131–2Google Scholar: ‘We have an easy relation with dogs. Are we dogs? … But what dog, what kind of dog are we? … ‘(exploring Nietzsche's ‘I have given a name to my pain and call it “dog”’, cf. Ronell, A., Finitude's Score. Essays for the end of the millennium (Nebraska, 1994) 51, 67Google Scholar: The Gay Science). ‘Dog’ was first the name of a particular English variety …
2 Even Pohlmann, R., ‘Charakteristika des römischen Lehrgedichts’, ANRW 1.3 (1973) 813–90, at 858f.Google Scholar, has just one grudging nullity of a paragraph. Effe, B., ‘Dichtung und Lehre. Untersuchungen zur Typologie des antiken Lehrgedichts’ (Munich, 1977Google Scholar = Zetemata 69) 154–65 is the most generous (and useful) allotment. Collections such as A. Cox, ‘Didactic poetry’, in Higginbotham, J. (ed.), Greek and Latin Literature. A comparative study (London, 1969) 124–61Google Scholar pass Grattius by, no question, in the tracks of e.g. J. Conington, revised by Nettleship, H. (ed.), P. Vergili Maronis Opera (London, 1881 4) 1.416–18Google Scholar, ‘Of the Cynegetica of Gratius a much shorter notice will suffice’ (sc. than of Manilius). P. Toohey, Epic Lessons. An introduction to ancient didactic poetry (London, 1996) devotes pp. 196–9 to ‘Gentlemen's Pursuits: Grattian [sic, passim] on Hunting’, enthusing briefly on ‘his curious equation of hunting and empire’ (198). Except for their blindness to politics, Enk, P. J., Gratti Cynegeticon quae supersunt. Cum prolegomenis, notis criticis, commentario exegetico (Zutphen, 1918Google Scholar) and Formicola, C., Il Cynegeticon di Grattio. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione e commento (Bologna, 1988Google Scholar) are about as good as commentaries get.
3 Buecheler, F., ‘Coniectanea’. RhM 35 (1880) 407Google Scholar, himself punning Grattius/gratius, re-doubles the case for spelling -tt-. (But not for thinking it: the poem puns repeatedly on the forbidden name, cf. Formicola (n. 2) 154, on v. 216.)
4 One mention in the text of Hull, D. B., Hounds and Hunting in Ancient Greece (Chicago, 1964) 34Google Scholar: ‘And what were Grattius' “Metagontes”?’. None at all in Toynbee, J. M. C., Animals in Roman Art and Life (London, 1973) 102–24Google Scholar, ‘Dogs’ (102–6, ‘Hunting Dogs’, 330f., on treatment of sick dogs). Anderson, J. K., Hunting in the Ancient World (California, 1985) 93–5Google Scholar whips through Grattius' Cyneg., patting him for knowledge, but lamenting his ‘after-dinner audiences’ literariness.
5 Grattius is so marginal, so minor, that the scholarship on him is sporadic, extraordinarily tralaticious, and either casually ob iter or else tirocinium commissioned by a series, for completeness' sake. There is nothing conceivably like a critical debate. Only dogmatic Housman, , in fine fettle: ‘Notes on Grattius’, CQ 28 (1934) 127–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Grattius doesn't lecture on his attitude to animals, but with it. For the standard traits of Graeco-Roman stoicising anthropocentrism, see Dierauer, U., Tier und Mensch im Denken der Antike (Amsterdam, 1977), esp. 238–45Google Scholar.
7 Cf. esp. Green, C. M. C., ‘Terms of venery: Ars Amatoria I’, TAPA 126 (1996) 221–63Google Scholar, Kennedy, D. F., ‘Bluff your way in didactic: Ovid's Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris’, Arethusa 33 (2000) 159–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Carlo Ginzburg's narratological notion of a ‘paradigme cynégétique’, where narrative mimes the primeval hermeneutics of running down material clues, points hypothetical readers of Grattius (and me) toward retrieving a distinctive model of knowledge-formation from his specific management of diegesis (see Prendergast, C., The Order of Mimesis. Balzac, Stendhal, Nerval, Flaubert (Cambridge, 1986) 220–3Google Scholar). So, if I am not much mistaken, does Cyneg. 1–23.
8 Curcio, G., ‘Grazio poeta didattico’, RFIC 26 (1898) 55–69, at 67–9Google Scholar, sums up: ‘nessuna relazione esiste fra i due trattati, perchè probabilmente Grazio non conosceva l'opera dello storico greco’: cf. Gray, V. J., ‘Xenophon's “Cynegeticus”’, Hermes 113 (1985) 156–72Google Scholar for Xenophon's happy hunting-ground, proud of his Spartan pack. Herter, H., ‘Grattianum’, RhM 78 (1929) 361–8Google Scholar probes Posidonius' influence and posits that stand-by, the unknown Hellenistic source. (Did Nemesianus know Grattius? See Formicola (n. 2) 168–70, on vv. 298f.)
9 On the ticklish problem of the actual/notional/ideological valency of hunting at Rome: Green, C. M. C., ‘Did the Romans hunt?’, CA 15 (1996) 222–60Google Scholar. Villa facilities featured provision of game reserves for seigneurial shoots: Green (n. 7).
10 As still trotted out by the ‘authentically and onomastically’ dubbed Horsfall, N., ‘An edition of Grattius’, CR 39 (1989) 213–14, at 213Google Scholar, ‘It is notably hard to define just how bad a poet G. is …’. A jolly thumbs down from Pierleoni, G., ‘Fu poeta Grattius?’. RFIC 34 (1906) 580–97Google Scholar: ‘io ritengo che, se Grattius fu dai Romani dimenticato, la colpa non fu tutta di chi lo dimenticò’.
11 See esp. Ingold, T., ‘From trust to domination: an alternative history of human-animal relations’, in Manning, A. and Serpell, J. (eds.) Animals and Human Society (London, 1994) 1–22, esp. 1Google Scholar, ‘The story we tell in the West about the human exploitation and eventual domestication of animals is part of a more encompassing story about how humans have risen above, and sought to bring under control, a world of nature that includes their own animality.’ Work such as Lorenz, K., Man Meets Dog (London, 1954Google Scholar), Leach, M., God Had a Dog (Princeton, 1961)Google Scholar, and essays in Nitechi, M. H. and Nitechi, D. V. (eds.) The Evolution of Human Hunting (London, 1986Google Scholar) might make us sit up and beg. If–
12 See esp. Brown, S., ‘Death as decoration: scenes from the arena on Roman domestic mosaics’, in Richlin, A. (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 1992) 180–211, at 194–202Google Scholar, ‘Animals against Men: Stronger vs. Weaker’, ‘Animals against Men: Equally Matched Opponents’.
13 See esp. Aymard, J., ‘A propos de Grattius’, RPh 12 (1938) 325–9, at 326f.Google Scholar, with Dehon, P.-J., ‘Horace et la chasse’, Latomus 47 (1988) 830–3Google Scholar.
14 S. R. Kellert, ‘Attitudes, knowledge and behaviour toward wildlife among the industrial superpowers: The United States, Japan and Germany’, in Manning and Serpell (n. 11) 166–87, at 167. What a mess this diagnostic makes of our do-good postures.
15 Grattius' horses (cf. Hyland, A., Equus: the horse in the Roman world (London, 1990) 150–4, 212Google Scholar, etc.) recap his lesson on, or with, dogs: gathering unto Rome the subjected world's stock of breeds, he curtly ‘restricts his interest in them to hunting purposes’ (restat equos finire notis, quod arma Dianae ∣ admittant, vv. 497f.), where Virgil's horses double amateurishly between warhorse and chariot-team (Liebeschuetz, W., ‘Beast and man in in the third book of Virgil's Georgics’, G&R 12 (1965) 64–77, at 65fGoogle Scholar. Ross, D. O. Jr., Virgil's Elements. Physics and Poetry in the Georgics (Princeton, 1987), esp. 150f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, however, exposes the symbolic schema that links arma to armenta in Virgil, binding the binary war and peace). Indeed, before going out with a whimper, just as he gets to the Italian turf. Grattius may even rub this in: non omne meas genus audet in artes … (v. 498).
16 Cf. Herter (n. 8) 368: Hor, . Epp. 2.1.225Google Scholar, tenui deducta poemata filo.
17 Grattius knows the ropes better than most of us ever will, cf. Capponi, F., ‘Il cassis ed i suoi poeti’, Latomus 17 (1958) 669–86Google Scholar, Richmond, J. A., ‘Ancient rope – Grattius 24–7’. CQ 62 (1968) 380–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Cf. Loupiac, A., ‘Le labor chez Virgile: essai d'interprétation’, REL 70 (1993) 92–106Google Scholar.
19 This is an absurdist twist to the prooemial recusatio of Gigantomachy, for which you should cf. P. R. Hardie, Virgil's Aeneid, : Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986) 87 and nn. 6–7Google Scholar.
20 Hercules' ‘conquest’ of the beasts is thoroughly satirised by Lucretius (5.22–36).
21 See esp. Effe (n. 2) 154f. I have not seen De Vivo, A., ‘Il proemio del Cynegeticon liber di Grattio’, in Santini, C. and Scivoletto, N. (eds.), Prefazioni, prologhi, proemi di opere tecnico-scientifiche latine II (Rome, 1992) 749–65Google Scholar.
22 I am indebted to the anon. reader for drawing attention to this point; this writing does what it says.
23 Aymard, J., Essai sur les chasses romaines des origines à la fin du siècle des Antonins (Cynegetica), BEFAR 171 (Paris, 1951) 238fGoogle Scholar. and Merlen, R. H. A., De Canibus, . Dog and Hound in Antiquity (London, 1971) 48Google Scholar count twenty-two, just one from Italy – but there is a catch. Phillips, A. A. and Willcock, M. M. (eds.) Xenophon and Arrian, On Hunting with Hounds (Warminster, 1999) 23Google Scholar count ‘some 16 “breeds” of dogs’; their table – ‘drafted under the same headings as those of a modern “breed standard”’ – ‘is an attempt to compare the descriptions of all those classical authors who wrote an On Hunting’ (17; ib. 15: ‘Only four types are mentioned by more than two authors.’).
24 Cf. Cazzanigga, I.. ‘Grattio (Cyneg. 68) ed Ovidio (M. VIII 397)”, PP 82 (1962) 296–9Google Scholar.
25 See Kromer, G., ‘The didactic tradition in Vergil's Georgics’, in Boyle, A. J. (ed.), Virgil's Ascraean Song. Ramus essays on the Georgics (Victoria, 1979) 7–21. at 11Google Scholar.
26 Cf. Lonsdale, S. H., ‘Attitudes towards animals in ancient Greece’, G&R 26 (1979) 146–59, at 153fGoogle Scholar.
27 Cf. Ingold (n. 11) 1–4.
28 Armstrong, D. F., Stokoe, W. C., Wilcox, S. E., Gesture and the Nature of Language (Cambridge, 1995) esp. 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the cultural malleability of man's best friend, cf. e.g. Ojoade, J. Olowo, ‘Nigerian cultural attitudes to the dog’, in Willis, R. (ed.), Signifying Animals. Human meaning in the natural world (London, 1990) 215–22, esp. 218f.Google Scholar, ‘Dog on the menu’. Lonsdale (n. 26) 149–52.
29 Cf. P. Connor, ‘The Georgics as description: aspects and qualifications’, in Boyle (n. 25) 34–58. at 50f. Grattius thus anticipates Columella's supplement of the book on flowers Virgil left to be written (Res Rust. 10. praef. 3, after Georg. 4.147f.): though he comes across, perhaps, more like a didactic equivalent of Calpurnius Siculus’ emulous bucolic.
30 Cf. Putnam, M. C. J., Virgil's Poem of the Earth. Studies in the Georgics (Princeton, 1979) 211, 213Google Scholar.
31 For the seamless montage of these topics, cf. Putnam (n. 30) 174f.
32 For Grattius' (otherwise unattested) metagon as a function, not a specific breed, cf. Shackleton-Bailey, D. R.. ‘Notes on minor Latin poetry’, Phoenix 32 (1978) 311–15, at 314Google Scholar (with Aymard (n. 23) 257–61).
33 Cf. Schiesaro, A., ‘Il destinatario discreto. Funzioni didascalische e progetto culturale nelle Georgiche’, in Schiesaro, A., Mitsis, Ph., Clay, J. Strauss (eds.), Mega Nepios. Il destinatario nell' opus didascalico. The addressee in didactic epic (Pisa, 1994) 129–47, at 142fGoogle Scholar.
34 Chew on Merlen (n. 23) Plate 14 and pp. 70f.: the mute tongue speaks millennia of animal abuse. Declaim with your animi interpres Lucretius 6. 1149f.; r-r-r-recite Virg. Georg. 3. 508; but yelp with Cyneg. 386–98.
35 On dog mange, cf. Merlen (n. 23) 67f.; on amurca, cf. Verdière, R., ‘Notes de lecture 339’, Latomus 46 (1987) 851Google Scholar.
36 Cf. Aymard (n. 23) 276.
37 On ars/ratio in Grattius: Toohey (n. 2) 198; cf. Manil., from 1.3 onwards, caelestis rationis opus. Lucretius' frequent buzzword ratio never occurs in the Georgics.
38 Harrison, E. L., ‘The Noric plague in Vergil's Third Georgic’, PLLS 2 (1979) 1–65, at 12Google Scholar, West, D., ‘Two plagues: Virgil, Georgics 3.478–566 and Lucretius 6.1090–1286’, in West, D. and Woodman, T. (eds.) Creative Imitation in Latin Literature (Cambridge, 1979) 71–88, at 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 Cf. esp. Bright, D. F., ‘The plague and the structure of the De rerum natura’, Latomus 30 (1971) 619Google Scholar; Stover, T. J., ‘Placata posse omnia mente tueri: “Demythologizing” the plague in Lucretius’, Latomus 58 (1999) 69–76Google Scholar invites readers to find satisfaction in the pleasure of the text, if they can.
40 Gale, M. R., ‘Man and beast in Lucretius and the Georgics’, CQ 41 (1991) 414–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 414. Farrell, J., Vergil's Georgics and the Traditions of Ancient Epic. The art of allusion in literary history (Oxford, 1991) 190, 204Google Scholar suggestively outlines diptychal fit between Lucr. V–Vl and Georg. II–III.
41 Cf. G. B. Miles, Virgil's Georgics, . A new interpretation (California, 1980) 195, 205Google Scholar.
42 Cf. Stehle, E. M., ‘Virgil's Georgics: the threat of sloth’, TAPA 104 (1974) 347–69, at 358f.Google Scholar, Putnam (n. 30) 218–20.
43 See Davisson, M. H. T., ‘The treatment of festering sores in Vergil’, CW 86 (1993) 487–92Google Scholar and Thomas, R. F., ‘Virgil's Georgics and the art of reference’, HS 90 (1986) 171–98, at 176Google Scholar on this festering sore for pedagogy: the vicious aporia that Virgil learned from Lucretius’ teaching.
44 Cf. Harrison (n. 38) 16 and Miles (n. 41) 216 on 3.511–14, worsening Lucr. 6.1226–9, nec ratio remedi …
45 Cf. Segal, C., Poetry and Philosophy in De Rerum Natura (Princeton, 1990) 235Google Scholar.
46 Cf. esp. Gale (n. 40) 418. One carnivore's beefburger is another carnivore's dogfood in today's contaminated foodchain.
47 Miles (n. 41) 223 argues that ‘for Virgil, as for Lucretius and Thucydides, disease and plague, however disruptive they may be, are not anomalous intrusions into the workings of the universe but are a part of them. As a consequence they offer a vivid warning of man's limited ability to impose his own order on nature.’ Has A.I.D.S. given such rationalisation a thrashing? The band plays on.
48 Bolt down Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Pliny the Elder and man's unnatural history’, G&R 37 (1990) 80–96, esp. 85–90Google Scholar, for the normative function of luxury in the imperial discourse on proper ordering of behaviour – and thought.
49 Cf. Henderson, J.. Figuring out Roman Nobility: Juvenal's Eighth Satire (Exeter, 1997Google Scholar). Lucretius' Athens risen ad summum … cacumen ∣ (5.1457) yields to Virgil's rerum facta … pulcherrima Roma (Georg. 2.534), and is thrashed by Cyneg. 324f., orbi Romam caput …, ad caelum … summosque … honores. ∣.
50 Liban, . Orat. 5.16Google Scholar: a pertinacious dogma, cf. Müller, B. A., ‘Zu Grattius’. WS 30 (1908) 165–7Google Scholar.
51 Cf. Schrijvers, P. H., “Intertextualité et polémique dans le De Natura Deorum (V.925–1010)’, Philologus 138 (1994) 288–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 Saylor, C. F., ‘Man, animal, and the bestial in Lucretius’, CJ 67 (1971–1972) 306–16, at 313Google Scholar, with Segal (n. 45) 189–95. Shelton, J.-A.. ‘Lucretius on the use and abuse of animals (5,1297–1349)’, Eranos 94 (1996) 48–64Google Scholar; cf. Schiesaro, A., Simulacrum et Imago. Gli argomenti analogici nel De rerum natura (Pisa. 1990) 122–33Google Scholar.
53 The next section already whelped Henderson, J., ‘Fighting for Augustus’, Omnibus 37 (1999) 21–2Google Scholar.
54 Cf. Henderson, J., ‘Persius' didactic satire: the pupil as teacher’. Ramus 20 (1991) 123–48. at 129CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
55 Cf. Ross (n. 15) passim, and esp. 177–83.
56 Green (n. 7) 240–5 fully explores the easy assumption that Grattius' Huntress Diana is to be located at Aricia.
57 M. Midgley, ‘Bridge-buildin g at last’, in Manning and Serpell (n. 11) 188–94, at 190.
58 R. Jonsson, Mitt liv somm Hund, dir. L. Hallstrom, Swedish Film Institute (1985): first words, from the child/voice of innocence.