Cicero, Horace, and Mutual Friends

Lamiae and Varrones Murenae

Bibliographic Data

ID3937350
AuthorsSusan Treggiari (corresponding author)
Year1973
Volume27
Issue3
Pages245
Publication date1973-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhoenix (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8299 • E-ISSN: 1929-4883
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1088042
OpenAlexW2322912989
LanguageEN
Citations received45

DESPITE REVOLUTION, CIVIL WAR, AND PROSCRIPTION, Roman society maintained continuity from the Republic through the triumvirate and into the early Principate, a continuity which is apparent in the persons of such eminent survivors as Augustus himself, Livia, the ex-wife of Ti. Claudius Nero, and Octavia, widow of the consul of 50 B.C. The poets of the first half of Augustus' principate had grown up in the turmoil of the late Republic and had not initially been Octavian's partisans. The fortunes of the political class, of Plancus, Sestius, or the younger Cicero, are chequered and ironical. Some old-established names are eclipsed, while obscure condottieri make links with the respectable: M. Agrippa takes to wife an heiress to whom a few years earlier Cicero had sent avuncular messages. Italian families like the Aelii Lamiae continue the smooth ascent begun under the old r6gime; others, surviving the triumvirate, are ruined after the restoration of the Republic. Given the accidents of survival of men and books, it is not surprising that editors annotating individuals in Horace so often provide a cross-reference to Cicero, and vice-versa. It is the purpose of this paper to assemble the more important people who had contacts with both authors, and to follow in more detail two families whose connection is of particular interest, the Aelii Lamiae and the Varrones Murenae.1 Between the consular from Arpinum and the ex-slave's son from Venusia there is, despite Cicero's web of personal contacts with all classes, little chance of acquaintance. Horace crossed the path of the younger

Art · Cicero · Environmental ethics · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Philosophy · Psychology

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