One of the most celebrated items of Lucilian satire, the understanding of which I aim to deepen in the following discussion, is the report (on three occasions in Cicero's works, namely, De or. 3.171, Orat. 149–50 and Brut. 274, the last only an indirect paraphrase) of a witticism apparently spoken at a trial during a motion de repetundis brought against Quintus Mucius Scaevola by Albucius in 119 b.c.e.Footnote 1 The passage also appears at Nonius, page 277 Lindsay, its first line is cited by Pliny the Elder (HN 36.185, who writes there arte pauimenti), and it is paraphrased by Quintilian (Inst. 9.113). The fragment belongs to Lucilius Book 2, our only evidence for the trial of Scaevola (which did not hinder his career, as he was consul in 117 b.c.e., an augur and a highly respected jurist in the 90s). In the Lucilian lines, Albucius’ speaking style is being criticized (84–5 Warmington = 84–5 Marx):Footnote 2
how charmingly are ses phrases put together—artfully like all the little stones in a paved floor and in a wriggly inlay!
As for the paraphrases, that in the Brutus seems at first glance to be relatively positive, as Lucilius’ words are adapted to observe that in M. Calidius’ speech nullum nisi loco positum et tamquam in uermiculato emblemate, ut ait Lucilius, structum uerbum uideres (‘you would see no word out of place, as they are arranged as if in a wriggly mosaic, as Lucilius says’, Brut. 274), and it is only a little later that Cicero criticizes Calidius’ oratory as lacking energy. Quintilian's, in contrast, runs as follows, in the context of a warning against pedantic focussing on trivialities in oratory such as ‘measuring out feet’ (meaning metrical concerns, as in poetry!): the pedant will have no time for more important things, as relicto rerum pondere ac nitore contempto ‘tesserulas’, ut ait Lucilius, struet et uermiculate inter se lexis commitet (‘he will be forgetting the weightiness of his subject, despising elegance, and, as Lucilius says, making a mosaic, and fitting his words together “in vermiculate work”’, Inst. 9.113). The contexts of Cicero's Orator and De oratore Book 3 have a similar focus on collocation.
My concern in this discussion is simple: why worms? Most obviously, because mosaics are not always rectilinear.Footnote 3 uermiculatus refers to stone patterns in the opening to Pliny's HN Book 35 (uermiculatisque ad effegies rerum et animalium crustis ‘and with mosaic covering to represent things and animals’, 35.2: a neat juxtaposition of two animal words) and in the aforementioned quotation of Lucil. 85 Warmington = 85 Marx at Plin. HN 36.185, where mosaics are the subject.Footnote 4 Albucius’ rhetoric is thus denigrated as fussy, obtuse and Greek-laden (hence the use of two Greek terms in imitative mockery, λέξις and ἔμβλημα).Footnote 5 The couching of the comparison in the last of these criticisms—namely Greekness—may owe something to the earliest history of the figure of ecphrasis in Roman literature as a response to the appropriation via conquest of Greek artwork.Footnote 6 Moreover, Albucius’ intricate and finicky speaking style, the opposite of Scaevola's,Footnote 7 could alternatively be described as the result of excessive attention to prose rhythm, which could make him a representative of an Asianist rhetoric that matches his apparent Epicurean leanings (as opposed to Scaevola's Stoicism).Footnote 8 In turn, Horace, writing satire in the wake of Lucilius, will censure him by assigning him traits which suggest that he was an Asianist (in the same terms which Cicero had applied to his rival Hortensius, a prominent Asianist, in the Brutus).Footnote 9 We might be alert to a similar move when the ‘foodie’ Catius is made by Horace, to whose voice he is often assimilated,Footnote 10 to mention mosaics in Sat. 2.4, in the line ten lapides uarios lutulenta radere palma (‘To think of your scratching at the multicoloured mosaics with a grimy palm-leaf broom’, Sat. 2.4.83). That phrase employs the same word lutulentus with which Horace had previously castigated Lucilius’ wordy poetry (Sat. 1.4.11, 1.10.50). Thus here we can read the figure of the broom dirtying the Lucilian mosaics as a reprimand of the older satirist who incompetently sullies his own legacy.Footnote 11 Horace's (or Catius’) description of the Lucilian palm as ‘scratching’ (radere) may recall his earlier vision of his predecessor transported to Horace's own day, where ‘he would scratch his head and bite his nails to the quick’ (in uersu faciendo | saepe caput scaberet uiuos et roderet unguis, Sat. 1.10.70–1).Footnote 12
The Lucilian phrase, emblemate uermiculato, has Quintus Mucius Scaevola comparing the speech of his opponent Albucius to both a static and a living thing. The animation inherent in uermiculato serves as an embodiment, which is also mapped by Horace onto his figure in Sat. 2.4, as the broom is both made out of a palm frond and nearly human, if palma = ‘palm of the hand’. Another analogue is the technical term colon, the metrical representation of a limb (κῶλον), as a means of describing speech (in this case, a ‘clause’ in a ‘period’) in bodily terms.Footnote 13 The effect of such comparisons is grotesque and enlivening: Albucius’ ‘wriggly’ speech means that he cannot be trusted.Footnote 14 Most pertinently perhaps, the figure of a snake could represent the end of a text or a paragraph, as it has the form of a coronis, the symbol which for ancient readers marked a conclusion.Footnote 15 It is, therefore, possible, though of course unprovable, that the witty comparison of Albucius’ speech to worms (which can, earthworms at least, look like snakes) represents a concluding flourish to Lucilius’ record of Quintus Mucius’ speech.Footnote 16
Given that the meaning of uermiculatus moves so easily from ‘in the form of worms’ to ‘wriggling’, though, we must ask what kinds of worms are meant. Donald Russell, in his Loeb edition of Quintilian, reports the suggestion per litteras of Wesley Trimpi that uermiculatus reflects a Greek pun: καμπή (‘bending/twisting’) ~ κάμπη (‘caterpillar/silkworm’).Footnote 17 While the word uermis can denote a ‘maggot, or other small creature of sim. appearance’ (as the OLD entry states), the diminutive, attested in Varro (Rust. 3.16.17, of the worms that must be cleaned out of beehives) and numerous times in Pliny's Natural History and in Columella, is likely technical or informal, properly used for insect larvae but commonly of the insects themselves.Footnote 18 In this case, both uermes and uermiculi would be larval, and therefore the worms are the individual tessellated tiles, which is to say the distinct words which Albucius uses.Footnote 19 But Varro, in De lingua Latina, reports the observation of a not-well-attested comic playwright about the word scrup<i>peda: Iuuentius comicus dicebat a uermiculo piloso qui solet esse in fronde cum multis pedibus (‘Iuventius the comic poet said that it comes from a hairy uermiculus which is accustomed to be in the leaves with its many legs’, Ling. 7.65). In this case, the uermiculus must be a caterpillar, and there are multiple jokes lurking: on pes (both ‘foot’ and ‘metrical foot’) and frons (‘leafy branch’ and ‘stage’).Footnote 20 None the less, a later Lucilian fragment (from Book 7, according to Nonius Marcellus who preserves it), seldom adduced in this context, links worms to the obstruction of hearing: ne auriculum obsidat caries, ne uermiculi qui in Lachmann's reading (‘lest a gathering, lest little worms block up your little ear’, 298 Warmington = 266 Marx); these uermiculi must fit, even if metaphorically, inside the ear.Footnote 21 Applying the later fragment to the earlier, it is plausible that an additional charge from the trial is that Albucius’ worm-like oratory obstructs the listener's hearing and impedes their comprehension (despite the style's ostensible mosaic-like charms).
This conclusion depends on a slippage from sight (of a mosaic) to sound (of speaking).Footnote 22 The former, in physical form, is ostensibly more permanent than the latter—a theme implicit in the recording of the events of the trial.Footnote 23 Such an assertion of the satirist's role in shaping the record of events reflects the possibility that small wriggly insects (lice, now, as well as worms) have something to do with Lucilius’ poetic individuality. There are statements elsewhere in the Lucilian fragments which portray the satiric ‘I’ in a proud position, owning up to lice: mihi quidem non persuadetur, pulices mutem meos (‘indeed, I am not persuaded to (ex)change my lice’, 647 Warmington = 675 Marx).Footnote 24 Similar are lines 904–5 Warmington = 882–3 Marx: hic ubi me uidet | subblanditur, <sub>palpatur, caput scabit, pedes legit (‘when this fellow sees me, he caresses me gently, pats me lightly, scratches my head, gathers the lice’): caput scabit in this fragment is perhaps picked up by Horace in his caput scaberet of the modern-day Lucilius (Sat. 1.10.71, quoted above).Footnote 25 But alongside this possible function that these insects could serve as a marker of poetic independence, it is pertinent, in light of the fact that Lucilius’ satire provides a more permanent record of the trial that would not decay, that uermiculi could also be markers of decay.Footnote 26 This was a staple of ancient thought, despite the absence of a germ theory of disease,Footnote 27 even in Roman Republican times, as can be seen from the identification of phthiriasis, the disease whose victims are consumed by worms, as a feature of the ignominious death of Sulla.Footnote 28 That event is most strikingly reported by Plutarch, who goes on to write about other historical casualties of worms (Sull. 36.3):Footnote 29
But it was of no use; for the change gained upon him [sc. Sulla] rapidly, and the swarm of vermin defied all purification. We are told that in very ancient times Acastus the son of Pelias was thus eaten of worms and died, and in later times Alcman the lyric poet, Pherecydes the theologian, Callisthenes of Olynthus, who was kept closely imprisoned, as also Mucius the jurist (Μούκιον τὸν νομικόν).
Who is ‘Mucius the jurist’? He is ‘generally assumed’ to be Publius Mucius Scaevola,Footnote 30 consul in 133 and pontifex maximus from 130, who was cousin to Quintus Mucius Scaevola Augur defending in the Lucilian case where the latter (presumably) utters the ‘worm-like emblem’ lines. All we know about Publius’ death is that his son, also a jurist later on (who cannot be the Mucius in mind because he was assassinated), was co-opted as pontifex as a successor to his father in about 115; as this must have occurred shortly after the father's death, 115 is the likely date of that event.Footnote 31 One other fact that may lead to an identification of Publius as the victim of phthiriasis is that he is particularly associated (admittedly, later on by Cicero) with the strictures of the ‘pontifical law’ (ius pontificale) on how to deal with unusual situations relating to burial ritual. We learn from Cicero that Publius had declared that in the case of death at sea the family of the deceased was undefiled, and had prescribed the sacrifice of a sow and a three-day holiday if the death took place on a ship rather than in the water (Leg. 2.57); Cicero has just been describing how the ius pontificale prescribed earth to be thrown onto the bones.Footnote 32 Publius’ laying down of the law on religious norms did not avail him any when he died, consumed by worms.
We do not know when Lucilius wrote the satire (apart from, obviously, after the trial of 119 b.c.e.), so it is possible that it post-dates Publius’ death also. If that is the case, Lucilius may anachronistically be putting words into Quintus’ mouth which have extra resonance in the light of his relative's death. That is to say: when Lucilius’ satire has Quintus talking about worms, the satire's audience recalls Publius’ more recent demise owing to worms and contrasts Quintus’ escape from Albucius’ worms. It is noteworthy that the other line which Lucius Licinius Crassus, the son-in-law of Quintus and the reporter of proceedings in the account of Cicero's De oratore, ascribes to his father-in-law in the trial features another family relation, in this case Crassus himself: Crassum habeo generum, ne rhetoricoterus tu sis (‘I've Crassus for a son-in-law, lest you be too much l'orateur’, 86 Warmington = 86 Marx, transl. Warmington).Footnote 33 In this line as in the worm fragment, I suggest, Quintus is made to claim expertise in an awkward situation (oratorical over-exuberance, worm-like structure) via a family member.Footnote 34
So, does the line about worms serve to undercut the gravity of a formal occasion, a trial on a serious charge, with a literally earthy image?Footnote 35 And is Lucilius advertising his impartiality, in that neither side in the case is favoured by the questionably appropriate and indeed anachronistic witticism?Footnote 36 I would make two claims. My first claim, building on my earlier argument about Lucilius’ provision of a more permanent record of the trial, is that the satirist's intervention serves to point out his agency in the moulding of our memories of the Scaevola-Albucius trial, in that Lucilius records the worm witticism for posterity, and it gains additional force from events subsequent to the trial. And my second, more prosaic claim is that Lucilius had a good reason to take a sideswipe at Publius Mucius Scaevola. Another famous Lucilian testimonium is offered by the anonymous author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (Rhet. Her. 2.19):
C. Caelius iudex absoluit iniuriarum eum, qui Lucilium poetam in scaena nominatim laeserat: P. Mucius eum, qui L. Accium poetam nominauerat, condemnauit.
Gaius Caelius, as judge, acquitted of the charge of injury the man who had by name attacked the poet Lucilius on the stage, while Publius Mucius condemned the man who had specifically named the poet Lucius Accius.
If both of these episodes happened before Lucilius wrote Book 2, which is likely in the Accius case, dated to 135 or 134,Footnote 37 and if we believe that Caelius could have been L. Caelius Antipater (who died in 120),Footnote 38 then it is possible that Publius Mucius could be referred to via the worm image in Lucilius’ account of the trial of Publius’ cousin.Footnote 39 On this interpretation, even one celebrated detail of Lucilius’ record of the trial of Quintus provides a last point-scoring opportunity on an oblique adversary (in so far as Publius was not the judge in Lucilius’ case) who is now dead.Footnote 40
There are, of course, lots of ‘ifs’ here. None the less, I hope at least to have shown that Lucilius’ captivating and memorable worms can, despite being slippery, be pinned down to an extent as proof of satiric sophistication, since we seem to observe some trace of the satirist's hand in massaging the record of Scaevola's worm witticism. We have also more precisely delineated the nature and meaning of these more-than-mosaic worms.
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