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Allusion to the Circulator by Persius and Horace?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Alan D. Booth
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Extract

Street-reciters were a feature of the ancient city (cf. Dio Chrys. Orat. 20.9 f.). Suetonius may include them (or their performances) under ‘triviales ex circo ludios’ (MS ludos), but they were certainly called circulatores (schol. on Pers. 1.134, quoted below; Jerome, Epist. 53.7; Augustine, contra Iul. op. imp. 5.15). This term may describe any huckster who attracts a street-crowd (circulus), and some hawkers of wares may have recited versicles as part of their routines to attract customers (cf. Satyricon 68.6 f.). In any case, as applied to a street-reciter, circulator aptly evokes the lowly circumstances and quality of his performances. And it was understandably galling to associate a poet or his works with such a figure. The slur of Vergil's Menalcas springs readily to mind (Eel. 3.26 f.): ‘non tu in triviis, indocte, solebas/stridenti miserum stipula disperdere carmen?’ Other references to the street-reciter, however, seem less well recognized.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , October 1980 , pp. 166 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1980

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References

Notes

1. Cf. Wille, G., Musica Rotnana (Amsterdam, 1967), pp. 124 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Calpurnius (Ecl. 1.28—32) and Juvenal (7.53—5) oppose trivial productions to those of the vates divinus and egregius.

3. Best, E. E., CJ 64 (1969), 208–12Google Scholar, thinks that Martial wrote for the lowly as well as the lettered. But there is a difference between writing about folk in lowly professions and writing for them. Mention of centurions and Britons (11.3) clearly exaggerates the scope of his readership. When he mentions exposure to the populace, he is quick to specify knights and senators (12.3; cf. 11.24). On writing for street-crowds cf. Luxorius, Epig. 30 (= 316 Riese): ‘de eo qui se poetam dicebat quod in triviis cantaret et a pueris laudaretur.’

4. Cf. Post, E., Selected Epigrams of Martial (Boston, 1908)Google Scholar, ad loc.

5. Chrys, Dio. (Orat. 32.9)Google Scholar shows the cynic as a street-corner entertainer.

6. Cf. Bo, D., A. Persi Flacci saturarum liber (Turin, 1969)Google Scholar ad loc.; Bramble, J. C., Persius and the Programmatic Satire (Cambridge, 1974), p. 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. See further Saglio, E., Dar.-Sag. 4.610 f.Google Scholar; Schneider, K., RE 22.1 (1953), col. 1193 ff.Google Scholar; Jones, A. H. M., JRS 39 (1949), 38–42Google Scholar; Hinard, F., Latomus 35 (1976), 730–46Google Scholar. Apropos of the possible combination of functions mooted in the text, remark the inscription of Cornelius Surus, ‘praeco ab aerario ex tribus decureis, magister scribarum poetarum’, republished by Jory, E. J., BICS 15 (1968), 125 f.Google Scholar; cf. Hermes 98 (1970), 234 f.Google Scholar; Horsfall, N., BICS 23 (1976), 88–90Google Scholar.

8. AJPh 93 (1972), 509–28Google Scholar; cf. Education in Ancient Rome (London, 1977), pp. 116 f.Google Scholar

9. Cf. too Reitzenstein, R., Epigramm und Skolion (Giessen, 1893), p. 171Google Scholar, on Anth. Pal. 11.437. From the present interpretation emerges an attractive development of the thought of Epistle 1.19. There Horace rejects respectable recitatio and will not have his work used in schools of grammatice, that is, in liberal study. Here he envisages street-recitation and its use in a ludus litterarius, an institution outside the pale of liberal learning which catered for plebs and slaves; cf. Florilegium 1 (1979), 1–14Google Scholar; TAPA 109 (1979), 11–19Google Scholar.

10. With the present interpretation it seems preferable to refer ‘extremis in vicis’ to distant villages rather than to the ends of streets, as Bonner interprets (art. cit., 516 ff.). He objects that Horace would have welcomed use of his work in far-off parts, and that village-schools were not widespread before the third century of our era. However, outlying villages in Africa and Spain would be on the traditional edge of the civilized world; Horace would get even less satisfaction from the memorization of his work by a small and uncultivated clientele there than from its confinement to oblivion in places like Lebedus, Gabii, or Fidenae (Epist. 1.11.6 ff.). Nor can it be shown that villageschools were uncommon; but even were they, for dramatic purposes Horace could surely conjure institutions lowlier than Flavius' (Sat. 1.6.72) at the world's end.

11. Bonner, , art. cit., 518–23Google Scholar, shows how sol tepidus, from the Renaissance to the present day, has gone right around the clock, from sunrise to sunset.

12. If in lines 123 ff. Persius pictures his work for sale, his few readers contrast with Martial's at 11.1.