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Tour de Florus: the Schoolmaster is Abroad (Vergilius orator an poeta 2–3)

Jared Hudson

Résumé

Like its companion piece in Dictynna 20, this article reads Florus’ fragmentary Vergilius orator an poeta as a novel form of intertextual autofiction: a self-portrait of the artist as a young narrator recounting his exilic lifestory through and as a web of literary texts of both poetry and prose. The piece examines how, in these last extant sections of the dialogue, ‘Florus’ treats his inquiring and obliging Baetican interlocutor to an autobiographical tale of Virgilian (etc.) wandering, and a studied, setpiece panegyric of his seemingly final resting place in seaside Tarraco. The article then demonstrates how the unparalleled praise heaped upon the vocation of teacher by our speaker is itself built out of a tissue of texts this poet-grammaticus could well have known, and taught. As the analysis shows, it all makes for a strikingly artful portrait of literate self-sufficiency — and so, perhaps, one directed straight at the imperial center, and even angling for support from a new, more beneficent princeps.

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Texte intégral

  • 1 [’So take heart, Florus, and cheer up; this is how you can win even the long race.] AP [Pollianus](...)

τοιγὰρ θάρσει, Φλῶρε, καὶ εὔθυμος πάλι γίνου·
οὕτω νικῆσαι καὶ δόλιχον δύνασαι.1

Introduction

  • 2 I thank Jacqueline Fabre-Serris and Florence Klein for editorial guidance with a challenging piece (...)

1The article continues the close analysis of the intertextual autofiction of dialogue fragment Vergilius orator an poeta, attributed to Florus, begun in its companion piece (‘Florus orator an poeta? or, To Compare Small Things with Great’, Dictynna 20, 2023)2. It first (§1) traces Florus’ far-flung Virgilian, and ethno-geographically informed, wanderings by sea and land (§1.1) and worn-out drifting to his sleepy sanctuary of Tarraco, a provincial outpost which Florus promptly lavishes with declamatory praise (§1.2). It demonstrates, through careful dissecting of the literary texture of Florus’ nutshell travel narrative, how his fictionalized autobiography, itself pieced together out of Roman literature’s highlights of (especially) poetic exile and displacement, achieves a pose new to prose dialogue, one which might loosely be described as ‘mock epic’—Florus ostensibly parodying his own latter-day plight by such far-fetched comparison—but which at the same time subtly presses the reader not to underestimate its humble speaker and his playful self-deprecation. His potted panegyric of Tarraco, while likewise a studied blend of Latin poetic and prose loci on the ideal locale, also aims to showcase Florus’ own special capacity to perform epideixis, and to profess literature. The article concludes (§2) by examining the rhetoric, and intertextuality, of Florus’ show-speech defense of settling on employment as a local grammaticus (§2.1, 2.2). His fluent account of the value of elementary teaching, largely unprecedented in ancient Greek and Latin literature, also puts forward, however playfully, a vision of small-scale, independent cultural authority that deserves its own place within the empire. Is this, here in provincial Spain, the poet-scholar’s true and noble calling, as Florus so eloquently claims, or is it part of our author’s elaborate bid for service to imperial letters (post-Domitian)—even back in Rome? This study traces recurring hints that point to the latter, but, tantalizingly, our glib speaker is cut off in full spate as the fragment breaks off.

1. The Floriad of Florus

  • 3 [‘I don’t want to be Caesar, to stroll around among the Britons, <to skulk about among…>, to endure the Scythian frosts.’]</to> (...)

2Ego nolo Caesar esse,
ambulare per Britannos,
<latitare per…>
Scythicas pati <p>ruinas.
3

  • 4 Woody Guthrie, ‘The Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done’.

I’m just a lonesome traveler, The Great Historical Bum.
Highly educated from history I have come.
4

1.1. Florus Periegetes

  • 5 [‘How can new lands avail you? What good is visiting cities and sites? All your running about ends (...)

3quid terrarum iuuare nouitas potest? quid cognitio urbium aut locorum? in inritum cedit ista iactatio.5

  • 6 Once again, I follow here the Latin text of Rocchi (2020a), with some minor changes, taking into ac (...)

2.1 ‘Si ita indulges otio, plane quam breuiter exponam nec inuitus priorum recordabor. primum Siciliam nobilem uidi, domesticam Cereris. fecundam deinde Creten, patriam Tonantis, et a latere uicinas Cycladas salutaui. 2 inde me Rhodos et ab regressu Aegyptium pelagus, ut ora Nili uiderem et populum semper in templis otiosum peregrinae deae sistra pulsantem. 3 inde rursus Italiam redii, et taedio maris cum mediterraneum concupissem, secutus Gallicas Alpes [et] lustro populos aquilone pallentes. inde sol occidens placuit: flecto cursum. sed statim par horrore, par uertice, par ille niuibus Alpinis, Pyrenaeus excepit. 4 uides, hospes, quae spatia caeli peragrauerim, quae maris quaeue terrarum. non aliter mehercules, si conferre paruis magna licet, sacer ille iuuenis terras peruolitauit, cui Terra mater capaces onerauerat frugibus amictus, et cum alite serpente currum ipsa iunxisset, nisi toto orbe peragrato uetuit suas redire serpentes.6

’If that’s how you want to spend your free time, I’ll lay it out clearly, as brief as I can. I’ll be happy to recall the past. First I saw renowned Sicily, Ceres’ backyard. Then I hailed fertile Crete, homeland of the Fulminator, and the nearby Cyclades on the way. Next Rhodes received me and, on the way back, the Egyptian sea, so I might see the mouths of the Nile and a people always laid back in temples [cough cough], thrumming the tambourine of the migrant goddess. Thereon I returned once again to Italy, and, sick of the sea, yearning for inland realms, I traced the Gallic Alps and surveyed peoples blanched by the north. Thence the setting sun caught my fancy: I tacked. But right away the Pyrenees met me, the Alps’ match in ruggedness, in loftiness, in snows. See, guest, what climes, what seas, what lands I have traversed. By Hercules, no differently—to compare great things with small [wink]—did that famous youngster fly worldwide, when his mother Earth loaded his deep cloak with grain, and, when she had personally harnessed the winged serpent to the chariot, forbade her snakes to return until they had roved the whole world o’er.

  • 7 The inquiry seems like casual small talk, but note the mannered pleonasm, quae tamen loca quasue re (...)
  • 8 priorum recordabor ~ quid nunc antiqua recordor | damna mei generis? timor hic meminisse priorum | (...)
  • 9 Cf. Hudson (2023) n. 6 on the dialogue’s first words and the supplement otium (Damsté; capienti wit (...)
  • 10 Orator: with breuiter exponam Cicero famously will (not) condense Verres’ villainy (Ver. 1.1.16, 2. (...)
  • 11 Esp., Lucr. 3.1053–74, Hor. Ep. 1.11, Sen. Ep. 28, Dial 9 (De tranq. anim.).2.13–14; cf. Dial. 8 (D (...)
  • 12 [‘they change their climate, not their mind, who rush across the sea’].
  • 13 Aeneas commanding a change of course in the face of foul weather (flecte uiam uelis A. 5.28) perhap (...)

Florus takes his cue from his counterpart’s seemingly innocent question, now primed to milk that gesture of polite conversationalism for all it’s worth.7 He sure got over that sensitivity about painful memories and reopened wounds rather quickly (quare desine, me in memoriam priorem reducendo, uulnus dolorum meorum rescindere 1.8 ~ nec inuitus priorum recordabor 2.1).8 The work now shifts markedly, from a more overt form of autofiction which commenced with our narrator’s private, personal ‘break’ (Capienti mihi … <otium> 1.1) to the more generically recognizable, and formal, ‘leisure’ of shared dialogue (si ita indulges otio 2.1).9 Knowing his (~captive) audience, Florus says he will graciously cut a long story short—but we’ve all heard that before.10 Fire up the slide projector. His wide-ranging, apparently aimless tour is just long and repetitive enough to convey the restless ennui that he has clearly soaked up from the standard reading list on the philosophical futility of travel.11 There’s a lesson in the strenua inertia (Hor. Ep. 1.11.28) that drove him, too, as he shapes his (mostly) centrifugal divagations into a virtual nostos: all this to-ing and fro-ing took him to a new home on the periphery, where, he claims, he has found a kind of peace. The familiar thesis of these central texts (i.e., caelum, non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt 1.11.27) tags along for this tiny travel memoire as an obvious subtext.12 The sequential listing (with a tautness reminiscent of historiographical breuitas ~ breuiter 2.1) suggests constant impatience, dissatisfaction, or changes of mind (primum … deinde … inde … inde rursus … inde … sed statim). Even the journey narrative itself hardly settles in anywhere. The sight-seeing (and the reasons behind them) is kept pointedly vague, almost abstract (Siciliam … uidi; Creten… Cycladas … salutaui; Rhodos… Aegyptium pelagus; secutus Gallicas Alpes … lustro populos … sol occidens placuit … Pyrenaeus excepit). Florus’ eventual mal de mer, an obvious nod to Horace, marks the turning point between sea legs and land (taedio maris, cum mediterraneum concupissem 2.3 ~ odio maris atque uiarum Ep. 1.11.6), but also thereby quietly presages Florus’ ensuing terrestrial fatigue: after a foray hugging the Alps to take in ‘Northerners’, he abruptly (/asyndetically) feels the call to go west, so re-routes (again marked with an intertextual ‘milestone’: flecto cursum ~ ‘iam flectamus cursum …’ Sen. Dial. 9.2.13, as if (re-)mouthing the philosopher’s sneering caricature), but the monstrous Pyrenees stop him dead in his tracks.13 The stage-by-stage recap breaks off here, and Florus’ da capo echo (and studied expansion/correction) of the Baetican’s question (quae tamen loca quasue regiones peragrasti? 1.9 ~ uides, hospes, quae spatia caeli peragrauerim, quae maris quaeue terrarum 2.3) obscures the final transfer from forbidding mountains to current seaside retreat.

  • 14 His island-hopping (2.1–2) resembles, if anything, Mela’s ‘appendix’ on Mediterranean isles (2.97–1 (...)
  • 15 E.g., no simple road trip such as: Via Aurelia Via Iulia Augusta Via Agrippa towards Lugdunum, th (...)
  • 16 faciam quod solent qui terrarum situs pingunt: in breui quasi tabella totam eius imaginem amplectar (...)
  • 17 Henderson (1997) 158, ‘No traveller ever reads the same atlas or guidebook, for maps are always ter (...)
  • 18 Also poeticizing: for populos aquilone pallentes, cf. fundat ab extremo flauos Aquilone Suebos | Al (...)
  • 19 [‘we fly past … the Cyclades strewn across the sea’]. Cycladas salutaui ~ Italiam … salutant A. 3.5 (...)
  • 20 The zoomed-in focus on the (Isiac) sistrum evokes Virgil’s single use of the word: regina in mediis (...)
  • 21 [Thrace] > Delos > Crete > [Strophades > Actium > Buthrotum] > Italy (Castrum Minervae) > Sicily { (...)

4 That home-stretch elision emblematizes Florus’ entire approach to autofictional, poeticizing geography (2.1–4). This is an inventive hybrid of 1) autobiographical periplus-periodos and 2) an ultra-concentrated Aeneid 3. First, while displaying some of the conventions of Latin geographical writing, it is ultimately a kind of parodic, colloquial version of it. The passage is strikingly unspecific and elliptical, and Florus pointedly neither hugs the coast nor offers any reliable itinerary of uiae.14 The travel-narrative style here is a far cry from Horace’s iter Brundisium, but, like the satirist, Florus teasingly frustrates the reader’s attempts to trace the precise route of his iter Tarraconem.15 His (ironically) accommodating ‘preface’, which promises a handy bird’s eye view of what turn out to be vast spaces and far-flung trajectories, resembles the opening conceit of his own Epitome, comparing the work’s historiographical ‘synopsis’ to a map (of some kind).16 Florus is shaping conventions of Latin written geography to his texts’ needs, in each case boiling down the Roman macrocosm with particular authorial purposes.17 Even his stylized, miniature ethnographical ‘digressions’ (the balanced ut ora Nili uiderem et populum semper in templis otiosum peregrinae deae sistra pulsantem 2.2 and lustro populos aquilone pallentes 2.3) read like parodies of the genre.18 Secondly, we are left with a vague sense of Florus performing a pererrant Aeneid 3 in reverse, desperately forsaking Latium on a roughly eastern bearing via evocative stops at Sicily (Siciliam nobilem ~ notissima fama insula A. 2.21), Crete (Creten, patriam Tonantis ~ Creta Iouis magni … insula A. 3.104), and the Cyclades (fleetingly, a latere uicinas Cycladas salutaui ~ uolamus | … sparsasque per aequor | Cycladas A. 3.124–7; and of course Delos A. 3.69–123), but then veering southeast to Egypt, mirroring Aeneas’ original flight from the northeast.19 Yet this (so far) uncharacteristically specific visit to the Nile Delta and jamming out devotees turns out to be a cul de sac: Florus backtracks to Hesperia.20 Then, after a wandering, northward detour that again mirrors Aeneas’s southward veer to Carthage, he assumes the Trojan hero’s divine directive and once more heads west, farther west.21

  • 22 Again, the Brutus portrait of the orator as a young man reveals its influence. After a sojourn in (...)
  • 23 E.g., Fam. 2.17.1 (Cicero considering stopping there for the boys’ sake), Fam. 7.3.5 (Cicero to M. (...)
  • 24 Plato ‘wandering through’ Egypt (Aegyptum peragrauit Cic. Fin. 5.87, V. Max. 8.7. ext. 3) may also (...)
  • 25 Rocchi (2020a) 90 notes that before Florus the parallel appears only in Lucan (cf. Apul. Mun. 7). C (...)
  • 26 Eussner (1888) 79–80 already heard Io uaga (Hor. Ars. 124; cf. peregrinae deae 2.2) and uagus Hercu (...)
  • 27 Tonantis might nod at the crashing Curetes: qualis Berecyntia mater, | dum paruum circa iubet exult (...)
  • 28 ~ sola fuit Crete fecundo fertilis anno [‘Crete alone was fruitful with abundant produce’] Ov. Am. (...)
  • 29 And, again, the implicit skip in the travel narrative to Florus’ retirement in Tarraco suggests tha (...)

5 Florus’ ‘non-Vergilian’ stopovers are more muted, but still evocative, as other hints of various forms of roving exile join this Roman literary mind meld. He is not simply logging stops (however real they may have been), but stitching together a tour of locales suggestive of displacement. For instance, no details of his visit to Rhodes are forthcoming, but we could see the young Florus gesturing, with self-irony, at Cicero’s oratorical ‘gap years’.22 Elsewhere for Cicero, and in fact for many Romans, the cultural and philosophical hub of Rhodes was a place for voluntary exile or refuge.23 For his Egyptian diversion, Florus likely headed straight for Alexandria, but rather than specifically Hellenistic-literary evocations, he seems to summon up a generally Augustan and Neronian Nilomania, and a rather stereotyped postcard of locals in the throes of Isis-worship.24 But zoom in closer and you can just make him out doing some very particular literary sightseeing: ut ora Nili uiderem shows him visiting ‘Lucan’s’ delta in person (~ Nili… ora 8.825, Nili | ora 10.213–4), that is, ‘to get a chance to see “Nile’s apertures”’.25 The Isiac scene is harder to pin down, but amidst the conventional Egyptian othering, the imitative alliteration (populum semper in templis otiosum peregrinae deae sistra pulsantem) may convey a xenophobic sneer—which then promptly sounds like ironic self-deprecation from someone who first introduced himself ‘taking his sweet time in a temple’ (Capienti mihi in templo <otium> 1.1). More significantly, the mention of the peregrina dea picks up the keynote that runs through much of this self-conscious periegesis. With remarkable economy, Florus has managed to pack his (narratively) quick itinerary with hints and gestures of many displaced, homeless, or otherwise wandering figures from his and Roman literary memory. The peregrina dea is Isis, the wandering Io.26 Florus’ choice of appositional noun phrase for Sicily, ‘Ceres’ household’ (domesticam Cereris 2.1), not only affirms her cult’s well-known ancient connections with the island (esp. Henna), but also evokes Proserpina’s abduction by Pluto there and her mother’s resulting far-flung search. Likewise, the specific tag for Crete, patriam Tonantis, calls to mind the displaced baby Jupiter hidden in ‘exile’ on Mt. Ida.27 The epithet fecundam with Creten points at a very specific exception to the famine imposed by Ceres on the world, as mischievously narrated by Ovid (Am. 3.10), when, as a result with her Cretan liaison with Iasion, a tiny patch of the island temporarily became earth’s sole fertile spot.28 Florus’ coda to his travels, his self-comparison to Triptolemus (2.4), rounds off this concentrated catalogue of wanderings, a rhetorical conclusion that is set up by the last straw represented by the Pyrenees, the imposing horror of which, at this point in Florus’ telling, ultimately consists in its ability to obstruct his errant mobility.29

  • 30 Cf. Hudson (2023) n.1 and passim.

6 Indeed, the primary purpose of this vertiginous globe-trot is rhetorical: the structure is a rough kind of priamel, a foil that sets up the actual subject of Florus’ show speech, which proves to be a decked-out panegyric of Tarraco (2.6–9). The entire set-piece narrative is designed to leave Florus, worn-out and frustrated, having exhausted the known world’s ‘limits’ (roughly, east, south, north, west), rhetorically with nowhere else to turn. Note his busy transition. The seam between the forbidding Pyrenees and Tarraco is notably elided by his sententious conclusion (uides, hospes …), his over-the-top comparison to, and quasi-ecphrasis of, ultimate ‘land-surveyor’/bird’s-eye-viewer Triptolemus (studded with an unmissable tag about comparisons30), and finally his versatile showcasing of various versions (jussive, contrafactual/a fortiori, rhetorical-interrogative, gnomic) of ‘End of the line!’ (2.5).

  • 31 Vide Hudson (2023) 19 (/p.11) and n.107.
  • 32 [‘All this that you see, stranger, where greatest Rome stands’].
  • 33 Florus is perhaps stealing a page from Horace, who invokes it mock-epically in his lead-in to the m (...)

7With his performative uides, hospes (2.4) Florus marks the shift in his declamatio, from hodological exordium to local encomium, the glowing climax of which will be trumpeted with similar signposting (populum uides, o hospes et amice 2.7). This illocutionary phrasing at the same time harkens back to his opening sphragis (Florum uides 1.3), reminding his Baetican, and his readers, of just how far he has come since that initial setback.31 Such tour-guide-speak has pointed literary connotations (~ Hoc quodcumque uides, hospes, qua maxima Romast Prop. 4.1.1, i.e., roughly, ‘[Rome] started from the bottom, now [she’s] here’), and Florus’ concerted tricolon crescendo, (mock-) bombastically encapsulates all three primordial realms of the universe (quae spatia caeli peragrauerim, quae maris quaeue terrarum, answering the Baetican, 1.9).32 His spatia caeli is also humorously chosen: while here it must refer rather concretely to changes in weather (coming just after Alpine and Pyrenean snows), it implicitly likens his movements to those of the Epicurean atmosphere (spatium caeli is a Lucretian tag, 2.1110, 4.202, 6.452, 820).33 As peragrauerim also likely recalls Lucretius’ Epicurus programmatically ‘ranging through the immeasurable all’ (omne immensum peragrauit 1.74) for the salvation of humankind, Florus is evoking, once again with self-mocking irony, his trek’s cosmic scope.

  • 34 See above, n.29.
  • 35 mehercules is in Cic. (who prefers mehercule in the letters), Petronius, Phaedrus, Quint., all over (...)
  • 36 [‘just so, if one may compare small things with great’].
  • 37 [‘thus I used to compare great things with small’]. Florus may be aware of the suggestive identific (...)
  • 38 [‘if one may use grand examples in a humble case’]. Cf. Ovid’s hyperbolic ‘quid propero? Scythia es (...)

8 That’s quite a comparison. It leads straight into another, a more developed simile, which, by its obvious hyperbole and overt repurposing of Virgilian (and Ovidian) formulae for strained likenesses, invites no (overreaching) comparison between these looming literary authorities and your humble poet speaker (non aliter, mehercules, si conferre paruis magna licet, sacer ille iuuenis terras peruolitauit 2.4), and his and their respective place: he would never think of doing so (of course he would).34 Once again, this is artful pastiche, and here it is programmatic: a prosy ‘mild oath’ (mehercules) is abruptly tossed into the formula, as if to send up the entire conceit (and its mise en abyme).35 But, winking coyness aside, I take it he really means it. Before we even get to the culture-bringer portrait itself, Florus floors us with a thick comparison that will need unpacking. His use of well-known literary moments of ‘likening small to big’ for his self-comparison to Triptolemus is not simply a knee-jerk recycling of special phrasing. It is a means of representing his own internalization, and enaction, of the very simple ‘poetic’ premise which posits that the tiny, and the humble, can, in their way, stand next to, and up to, the big and the great, against common sense, and against all odds. This is the core of the aesthetics, and the ethics, of his autofiction, and goes a long way towards accounting for his constant, winking self-mockery. Next to Triptolemus the Long-hauler, Florus’ toilsome wayfaring is Cyclopean forge-labor’s teensy bee-work (~ non aliter, si parua licet componere magnis G. 4.176)—teensy, and yet tireless and profound.36 Or, less rosily, compared to ‘that youth’ (ille iuuenis 2.4 [¡ ~ illum … iuuenem Ecl. 1.42!]), he is majestic Rome’s backwater hamlet (~ sic paruis componere magna solebam Ecl. 1.23)—but that market village is an evocative piece of the nostalgic utopia of both Meliboeus and Tityrus.37 In other words, to take these willful comparisons more literally, and more seriously, for Florus’ story: sleepy Tarraco, in its way, can measure up to Rome … no way it can; and/or Florus has no business sneaking into Roman literature … doesn’t he? Even closer to home, thematically, is Ovid mock-but-not-mock-heroically likening his exile departure to the fall of Troy (~ si licet exemplis in paruo grandibus uti Ov. Tr. 1.3.25).38 What a (nother) preposterous comparison for Florus to make: how fitting.

  • 39 [‘Now I would long to board the chariot of Triptolemus, who cast the crude seed on unfamiliar groun (...)
  • 40 Peruolitauit: the verb is Lucretian (2.145, 2.346, 6.952); also Verg. A. 8.24, Man. 2.66, 5.65, 87; (...)
  • 41 [‘as if he could set down his burden’]. For Triptolemus as culture-bringer cf. also Verg. G. 1.19 p (...)

9 Similar is Florus’ strained likeness to Triptolemus itself, which appears to tweak Ovid’s exiled desire to climb aboard the kid’s flying car—and soar back to Rome (Nunc ego Triptolemi cuperem consistere curru | misit in ignotam qui rude semen humum Tr. 3.8.1–2).39 Florus, by contrast, will not (explicitly) voice a desire to return to the city, but instead paints his aimless hitchhiking as some kind of mythical cosmic quest, and a valuable one. Once again, the comparison is over the top, but, inversely, has the result of mock-epicizing his displacement (cf. his enlistment of Ceres, Proserpina, Jupiter, Io/Isis, and Europa as sympathetic exilic precedents).40 A phrasal nod to Horace (serpente fugit alite Epod. 3.14 ~ alite serpente 2.4) clinches the ironically hyperbolic self-comparison, a mock-epic flight of fancy that is similar in spirit (Maecenas’ infernal garlic treat is the poison of Medea, mother of winged dragons). Florus’ tongue is firmly in his cheek, and he won’t let us forget the earlier subtext on mobility’s futility (capaces onerauerat frugibus amictus 2.4 ~ quasi onus deponere possit Lucr. 3.1059), but some notion of spreading letters as Florus’ civilizing mission drives his silliness.41

  • 42 uetuit suas redire serpentes ~ si quid [condicionum] displiceat, legatos redire ad se uetuit [‘if a (...)
  • 43 E.g., at ego huc declinabam nec inuitus Cic. Leg. 1.57 (Atticus politely acceding to the course of (...)

10 After all, Florus’ particular emphasis on Ceres’ cold command (nisi toto orbe peragrato uetuit suas redire serpentes 2.4) jars somewhat within the terms of his comparison, especially given how much he had earlier underlined his own self-exile.42 Even if we choose to view him as seeing Domitian’s disqualification as equivalent to banishment, it is a revealing detail in that it raises the very possibility of a return (seemingly foresworn at 2.8–9, and then apparently out of the picture in what follows). Yes, there is a faint suggestion that the ideal locale of Tarraco, whose praises he will soon sing at length (2.6–9), need not be Florus’ final resting place. That, and the way in which he transforms the ‘periplus’ proper (2.1–4) into a complex and lively declamation that simply protests too much, suggests that he is playing a tricky game, proclaiming and celebrating his hard-won independence and adaptability, while still holding out Rome as a possible future option. There were already other hints. Nec inuitus (2.1) is loaded: the litotes usually suggests well-mannered agreeableness and is negligible—Florus is anyway positively bursting to tell his story—but can mark real tension in, e.g., Cicero’s usage.43 Not unwillingly will Florus show, with artful skill and literary poise, how he roamed and suffered, but that he’s a survivor, one who made it against all odds, and, by extension, not at all unwillingly will he go on to tell you that Tarraco is the most beautiful place in the world that no person in their right mind would ever possibly consider leaving. Certainly not him.

1.2. Staycation

  • 44 [‘ … (as a result of his failure in the campaign against the Astures and Cantabri, Augustus) was co (...)

11ἐν ἀπόρῳ παντάπασιν ἐγένετο. καὶ μὲν ἔκ τε τοῦ καμάτου καὶ ἐκ τῶν φροντίδων νοσήσας ἐς Ταρράκωνα ἀνεχώρησε καὶ ἐκεῖ ᾐρρωστει.44

  • 45 Sun Ra, ‘Springtime Again’ (Sleeping Beauty, 1979).

It’s spring
It’s spring
Springtime again
45

5 liceat ergo tandem fatigato hic aliquando subcumbere. si Scythes essem, iam plaustra soluissem; si uagus gubernator, iam dicata pelagi deae prora penderet. quousque uagabimur? an semper hospites erimus? ferae cubile prospiciunt et aues senescunt in nido. 6 si fata Romam negant patriam, saltim hic manere contingat. quid, quod consuetudo res fortis est? et ecce iam familiaritate continua ciuitas nobis ipsa blanditur, quae, si quid credis mihi qui multa cognoui, omnium rerum quae ad quietem eliguntur gratissima est. 7 populum uides, o hospes et amice, probum, frugi, quietum, tarde[m] quidem, sed iudicio hospitalem. caelum peculiariter temperatum miscet uices, et notam ueris totus annus imitatur. 8 terra fertilis campis et magis collibus—nam Italiae uites affectat et comparat areas—serotino non erubescit autumno. si quid ad rem pertinet, ciuitas ipsa generosissimis auspiciis instituta: nam praeter Caesaris uexilla, quae portat, triumphos, unde nomen accepit, adest etiam peregrina nobilitas. 9 quippe si uetera templa respicias, hic ille colitur corniger praedo, qui Tyriam uirginem portans, dum per tota maria lasciuit, hic amisit et substitit, et eius quam ferebat oblitus subito nostrum litus adamauit.’

Therefore let me, so long worn out, take a load off here at last. Were I a Scythian, I’d have already parked my wagon; a roving helmsman, already would my prow hang dedicated to the sea goddess. How long shall we roam? Shall we be strangers forever? Wild beasts are after a den and birds grow old in their nest. If the fates deny me Rome as homeland, here at least could I remain. What about how powerful a thing is habit? Look how already, as a result of my continual presence here, the city itself has won me over. It’s one that, if you take my word for it as someone who has seen many a thing, is the most pleasing of all which could be chosen for rest. You see, stranger and friend, a people that is honest, upstanding, serene, slow, perhaps, in extending hospitality, but doing so with discernment. A uniquely mixed climate tempers the seasons, and the entire year takes on the appearance of spring. The land, fertile in fields and even more so in hills—you see, it aims at Italy’s vines and rivals her farmyards—does not blush with a late autumn. If it is apropos, the city itself has been set up under the noblest auspices: for aside from Caesar’s standards, which it bears, and the triumphs, whence it received its name, there is here a foreign nobility. If in fact you examine the ancient temples, here the famous horned burglar is worshipped; bearing the Tyrian maid after he had cavorted his way across the seas, here he let her go and stopped; and, having forgotten whom he was bearing suddenly fell in love with our shore.’

  • 46 liceat ergo tandem fatigato hic aliquando subcumbere 2.5 ~ non uaco somno sed succumbo, et oculos u (...)
  • 47 Horace: uagus gubernator ~ mercator … uagus Ars 117; iam dicata pelagi deae prora penderet ~ me tab (...)
  • 48 quousque uagabimur? 2.5 ~ aside from the obvious quousque tandem abutere…? Cic. Catil. 1.1, ‘quousq (...)
  • 49 an semper hospites erimus? 2.5 ~ an semper haec agitatio permanebit? Dial. 5 (De Ira 3).27.4 (other (...)
  • 50 ferae cubile prospiciunt 2.5 ~ aues… et quietum [~ omnium quae ad quietem eliguntur gratissima est (...)

Give Florus a break at last, once and for all. All that ecumenical traipsing was running him ragged, he stresses, as he (still) prepares to shift into the panegyric proper. Until then, he won’t let you forget that he (has) had it tough.46 More lifetime miles than a caravanning Scyth, than an intercontinental pilot: they would have retired by now—as his own hard-won literary stylings themselves underline.47 It has gone too far; he’s not going to take it any more (this rootlessness).48 When will it be his turn?49 These abrupt changes of voice and rhetoric contain revealing fudges and compressions. Liceat (‘let it be permitted’, with stylized elision of mihi [fatigato]) quietly clashes with Florus’ self-imposed exile: who’s stopping him? Of course, he is (supposedly) still defending himself against his adversarius’ Romano-/Baeticocentrism (potestne … prouincialem latebram pati? 1.7), but his phrasing really does take us back to that hypothetical moment when he finally set down his bags (priorum recordabor 2.1). And yet, as we soon learn, Florus has been staying in Tarraco for five (5) long years (diu laboraui; toto … quod egimus quinquennio isto 3.3). ‘If I were Scythian, I’d have already parked my camper.’ ‘Were I a roving helmsman, I’d have already docked my craft.’ Iam … iam: yes, but, according to his tale, he ‘already’ has—and not very recently. While this is likely written as a kind of vivid reenactment of his (rhetoricized) sentiments at the end of his road, it certainly sounds as if Florus’ migration is still in process. His over-the-top rhetorical questions (quousque uagabimur? an semper hospites erimus?), and his adage about the birds and the beasts, however irrefutable (/self-evident), feel fresh and unresolved.50 If we once again press his peculiar emphasis on Ceres’ firm ‘condition’ (nisi toto orbe peragrato uetuit suas redire serpentes 2.4), it begins to seem impossible that Florus’ wandering could ever truly cease until he can make his return—to the metropolis.

  • 51 Damsté (1912) 146: ‘auctor fragmenti nusquam Romam tamquam patriam suam significare solet, sed dise (...)
  • 52 [‘or if the fates deny return’; ‘but if the fates deny this permission to my wife, I have resolved (...)
  • 53 ~ hoc mihi contingat Tib. 1.1.49; at mihi contingat patrios celebrare Penates 1.3.33 (vs. the forei (...)
  • 54 ~ calamitatum mollimentum consuetudinem inuenit [sc. natura], cito in familiaritatem [~ familiarita (...)
  • 55 [‘so great is habit in the tender stages’]. Eussner (1888) 81 also remembered (t)his Virgil. Thomas (...)
  • 56 I’m straining here (studiously), but I can’t help but catch Quintilian’s quasi-‘continuous’ refrain (...)

12 His next leap (si fata Romam negant patriam 2.6), lays bare the longing in desperate, elevated terms, letting slip his (divinely frustrated) goal of Rome as his ‘home’, and then a put-on sigh of ‘oh well’ (saltim hic manere contingat).51 The tone gestures at histrionic elegy, pleading for the lover’s return (~ aut si fata negant reditum [Tib.] 3.3.35; Lygdamus to Neaera: the alternative is … death, 37–8), or Orpheus begging for Eurydice’s (even temporary) return (quodsi fata negant ueniam pro congiuge, certum est | nolle redire mihi: leto gaudete duorum Met. 10.38–9; a similar all-or-nothing conditional).52 Saltim hic manere contingat might even faintly evoke the Tibullan simple life at home—with irony, as saltim and the context suggest.53 Florus, who wants to do better, mock-humbly reminds his listener(s) that he could do worse. Then an abrupt shift to defensiveness, masked by the orator’s challenging ‘think you can answer this point?’ (quid, quod …? lit., ‘what [shall I say about this], the fact that…?’): ~ ‘aren’t we all creatures of habit?’ (quid, quod consuetudo res fortis est?). He has grown inured to this hideout: don’t blame him. (Note now the tacit acknowledgment that his arrival was by no means recent.) The associations of this universalizing sententia are somewhat softened by its use as smokescreen here (part of the barrage of ad hoc arguments purportedly defending his lurking), but the closest Latin literature gets to the slogan elsewhere is about getting used to what is harsh (even catastrophe).54 We can just make out Florus magister in action (consuetudo res fortis est ~ adeo in teneris consuescere multum est Verg. G. 2.272—on transplanting—already deployed as a tag by Quintilian (1.3.13), to be redeployed by boys as a self-improving mantra).55 His (tough ~ 3.3) acculturation as, at first delicate, ‘visiting’ lecturer is ultimately inseparable from the rigorous ethic of learning letters.56 His story is what he has been taught (to teach), a local lesson, but one that is universally transferable, from center to periphery—and periphery to center?

  • 57 C. Caesar eloquentia et spiritu, ecce iam et consulatu adleuebatur [‘Caesar was distinguished by hi (...)
  • 58 meretrix tantisper blanditur, dum illud quod rapiat uidet Plaut. Men. 193 (Peniculus on Erotium’s i (...)
  • 59 si quid credis mihi 2.6 ~ o, si quid credis mihi, carior | omnibus Trist. 5.4.23–4 (Ovid’s letter i (...)
  • 60 [‘I heard many reports, when I was consul, about the extreme dangers to the state, I made many inqu (...)
  • 61 quae ad quietem eliguntur gratissima est, cf. Cicero emphasizing the value of his portrait of lette (...)

13 But, will you look at that (ecce iam ~ Epit. 2.13), if he’s honest (he pretends), the city has actually won him over with her charms.57 The (last last) lead-in to Florus in full panegyric flight is suitably arch. Coaxing is all over the declamatory discourse, and this ’suader’s boldly personified Tarraco (ciuitas … ipsa blanditur) is nearly made into a stock character, with an agenda that is inevitable hard to pin down, as Plautus would have told him: beware the treacherous dangers of blandishing strangers.58 Yes, that hint of the risks of getting too comfortable can’t go away, even as Florus glibly sings the praises of this one-of-a-kind spot for secessus. Think back to the tricky ethics of <otium> in his opening lounge (1.1). But he wants you to know he’s opening up to his conversation partner, heart to heart.59 Well anyway, he would know (qui multa cognoui), with a quietly chest-thumping affirmation that sounds simultaneously Ciceronian (multa, cum essem consul, de summis rei publicae periculis audiui, multa quaesiui, multa cognoui Sull. 14, tossing his weight around to stress that nothing Catilinarian could have got past him) and Odyssean (~ πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα).60 All that aside, this must be a place that can, at least, furnish dignified retreat (Florus-style), as he will be at pains to demonstrate—to the shock of his Baetican—in his surprise encomium of teaching (3.3–8).61

  • 62 Esp. Dion. Hal. Rhet. 1. 3, 5.5–6, Quint. Inst. 3.7.26–7, and (the later) Men. Rhet. 346–65; cf. Ro (...)
  • 63 [‘citizens are an honor to their cities as children are to parents; there are also encomia of place (...)
  • 64 Cf. Vell. Pat. 2.119.4 on Varus’ lieutenant Numonius Vala who fundamentally breaks with his past up (...)
  • 65 Verweij (2015) 86 draws attention to G. 2.136–76 (on which see Thomas (1988) ad loc.); Var. R. 1.2. (...)
  • 66 Florus’ curious phraseology (notam ueris totus annus imitatur) seems even to wink at his adaptation (...)
  • 67 Indeed, it is a feature of the aurea aetas of Met. 1.89–112. In the bluntly concrete terms of Servi (...)
  • 68 Interleaved chiasmus accentuates the point: campis … collibus ~ uites … areas; uites adfectat ~ com (...)
  • 69 As it happens, Tarraconese wines holding their own against Italian ones is almost a topos. Jal (196 (...)
  • 70 See above on nec inuitus 2.1. Also compare his own (mock-) modest acknowledgment of the Baetican’s (...)

14 Full-on panegyric mode (2.7–9) sees Florus showcasing not only the town’s finest cultural assets, but his own well-versed mastery of this specialized art, fully according to current epideictic best practices.62 He manages to squeeze in all the salient points any knowing audience would expect: commendable locals (populum uides … ~ ciues illis [sc. urbibus] ut hominibus liberi sunt decori Quint. Inst. 3.7.26); temperate, salubrious climate (caelum particulariter temperatum …) and remarkable local fertility (terra fertilis campis et magis collibus …) (~ est et [sc. laudationes] locorum, qualis Siciliae apud Ciceronem, in quibus similiter speciem et utilitatem intuemur, speciem maritimis planis amoenis, utilitatem salubribus fertilibus 27; also illa propria quae ex loci positione … sunt 26); noble foundation(s) (ciuitas ipsa generosissimis auspiciis instituta … adest etiam peregrina nobilitas ~ pro parente est conditor, et multum auctoritatis adfert uetustas 26); even the noteworthy monument(s) (quippe si uetera templa respicias … ~ est laus et operum, in quibus honor utilitas pulchritudo auctor spectari solet: honor ut in templis… 27).63 These Tarragonans are almost like Romans from another age (probum, frugi ~ Plaut. Cas. 283, Most. 133, Trin. 320–1).64 The structure of his speech (again via a kind of priamel) has set up two atmospheric foils (Egypt, implicitly 2.2; the ‘paling’ northerners 2.3) for this tempered climate that (again, implicitly) has decent locals as one regional form of ‘produce’: the discourse is so deeply ingrained that Florus can artfully vary the terms with no stated connection (populus; caelum) and achieve the familiar effect. The picture-perfect climate itself evokes the idealized (dream)land portrayed in Virgil’s laudes Italiae (and already in Varro’s dialogue intro to RR, which we saw underlying Florus’ opening scene-setting).65 The particular notion of a perpetual spring (notam ueris totus annus imitatur 2.7 ~ hic uer adsiduum atque alienis mensibus aestas G. 2.149) has its own deep literary history, which no doubt would found its way onto Florus’ syllabus.66 It of course often verges on a seasonless golden age: that is to say, a beautiful fantasy.67 Florus’ artful expression of the ‘total’ fertility of Tarraco (terra fertilis campis et magis collibus—nam Italia<e> uites adfectat et comparat areas 2.7) displays that this regional heartland’s precious yield (in both Ceres and Bacchus) is not to be scorned: its acting spokesman can stage a laudes Tarraconis that is almost the real deal.68 Florus comes out and shows the dynamic of what the provinces can offer, and what his special backwater perspective and talent can offer the center (beyond merely challenging it in vines and grain).69 The cinching pun (terra … serotino non erubescit autumno, ‘the land does not “turn red” at its tardy autumn’, i.e., is proud of its late, mild fall) underlines the point: this humble outpost has no reason to blush. Florus reaches again for litotes (one of his characteristic figures) to show how he can make the most modest proud.70

  • 71 In this recommendation letter to Brutus, he gets to the bottom line: fortem uirum, Brute, tibi comm (...)
  • 72 Ritschl (1832) 310 first made the identification, positing that in attested abbreviations for Tarra (...)
  • 73 I.e., the primary sense of peregrina nobilitas is ‘nobility having come here from abroad’, but ‘nob (...)
  • 74 It’s all here in this city panegyric, look: uides… uides… hic… saltim hic… et ecce iam… adest… quip (...)
  • 75 For the work itself as a ‘temple dialogue’, a genre first attested by Var. R., see Hirzel (1895) 66 (...)
  • 76 quippe si uetera templa respicias ~ quippe si duces eius [sc. belli] inspicias … si exercitus … si (...)
  • 77 Eussner (1888) 81 catches the first play and the second parallel, but skirts the latter joke (‘[A. (...)

15 In order to move right along, to Tarraco’s unexpectedly noble (majestic-mythic) heights, and thereby rest his panegyric case, Florus employs a similar tactic of augmentation via polite diminution. Si quid ad rem pertinet (2.8, ‘If it’s at all relevant…’, ‘It may be of interest to learn…’) replays Cicero in a gracious tone, but cutting to the chase.71 This is no one-horse town you’ve (we’ve) stumbled into but one with grandest beginnings, arguably no less ‘Roman’ than plenty of other centers the whole world over. This very city (ciuitas ipsa 2.8 ~ ciuitas … ipsa 2.7; not that one: illa ciuitas 1.8, illa ciuitate 1.9; cf. urbem illam 1.6) possesses the standard(s) of Julius Caesar; has a ‘triumphal’ name (Colonia Iulia Vrbs Triumphalis Tarraco).72 Florus, according to his remit, reaches to trumpet the town’s coat of arms and official designation: genuine Roman stuff here, surprisingly enough. But that’s not all (another mini-priamel). This place has what you might call a ‘foreign’ nobility. Another cutesy sort-of pun: Florus is introducing local claims on the Europa story (which he presumably hasn’t just created out of whole cloth—no other attestations!), but also points out that provincial places like these can hold their own, have their own special something, too.73 He brings back the ‘wandering’ motif we saw in his tour of errant deities previously (Isis in particular, peregrina nobilitas ~ peregrinae deae 2.2), and lets yet another implicit mock-epic likeness of these mythic tales to his own sink in. His status as ‘resident alien’ (here, and at Rome) can be said to claim its own kind of noble lineage. To clinch the spiel, Florus deploys his (relentlessly spirited) deixis for the final stroke, his laudatio’s pièce de résistance.74 He points at the ancient temple(s) to let the spirit of the place do the talking.75In fact’, says Florus—using one of his favorite idio-lexemes (truly ubiquitous in the Epitome)—if you pay close attention to—or even, ‘look back at’—the ancient temples (quippe si uetera templa respicias 2.9), the horned robber is worshipped here, the one who toted the Tyrian girl across the seven seas all a-frolic (hic ille corniger praedo, qui Tyriam uirginem portans, dum per tota maria lasciuit);76 first left her and stopped here (that is to say: first stopped and then left her in a rather poeticizing hyperbaton); and, having forgotten her, suddenly was smitten by our coast instead (hic amisit et substitit et, eius quam ferebat oblitus, subito nostrum litus adamauit). Like Florus, Jupiter was overwhelmed by amnesia (eius quam ferebat oblitus ~ patriae… meae oblitus <et> parentum carissimorum 2.9) and was won over by this pleasant playa (nostrum litus admauit ~ ciuitas nobis ipsa blanditur 2.6, even if Florus took some time to settle in). This coastal encounter, like that of Florus and the Baetican, who immediately bond, is granted a ‘sudden’ inevitability (subito 2.9 ~ obuiam subito quidam fuere 1.1, subito ad me conuenit 1.2). Two more (awful/awesome) puns seal the deal, a signature flourish. Here on this soothing strand, one can ‘littorally’ forget oneself (oblitus … litus): so great was the enticing power of this Catalonian club med that even Great Jove fell for it. And, for all those Virgilian fanboys out there, Jupiter literally ‘hugged the coast’! (~ litus ama A. 5.163)77

  • 78 Richardson (2000) 445–6 is onto this.

16 In fact, as intricate and stylish as Florus’ performance is, in its over-the-top-ness, and in its excessive adherence to the conventional ingredients of ‘how to praise a city’, this declamation is part put-on. Florus deliberately goes too far, and manages to harness this particular panegyric mode’s ever-present propensity to shade into grotesque parody to his own advantage. Yet again, Florus’ ‘double-vision’ is at play. Clued in to an urbane Roman readership’s likely skepticism about such over-the-top claims for this provincial backwater, he demonstrates that he is well up to the Roman rhetorician’s task (of putting lipstick on a pig).78 Or, for the more moralizing, nostalgic, and/or naïve reader (not to mention those Vrbs-snobs who will perhaps never really accept him anyway), he is spinning a familiar and comforting yarn about quiet, small-town virtues that can show Rome up: he is perfectly happy here, thank you, Sin City be damned—along with its arbitrary, cutthroat literary scene. Embodying these two stances at once is how Florus declaims his special worth.

2. Building Classes in Spain

  • 79 [‘but you (parents) lay down severe laws, that the teacher be flawless in his grammar, that he read (...)

17                sed uos saeuas imponite leges,
ut praeceptori uerborum regula constet,
ut legat historias, auctores nouerit omnes
tamquam ungues digitosque suos …
exigite ut mores teneros ceu pollice ducat,
ut si quis cera uoltum facit;
79

  • 80 [‘Send your pupils home: will you take, you windbag, as much for shutting up as you get paid for sh (...)

discipulos dimitte tuos. uis, garrule, quantum
    accipis ut clames, accipere ut taceas?
80

2.1. Economic Relief

  • 81 [‘Tarraco is the wealthiest of the coastal cities on these shores’] Mela 2.90.

18Tarraco urbs est in his oris maritimarum opulentissima.81

3.1 hic cum ego respirassem, statim Baeticus ‘o’ inquit ‘beatam ciuitatem, quae in te fatigatum incidit! quem ad modum tamen te prosequitur et quid hic agitur? unde subuenit reditus? an pater ab Africa subministrat?’ 2 ‘inde nequaquam, cum hac ipsa peregrinatione offenderim. in reditu est mihi possessio litterarum.’ ‘o rem indignissimam! et quam aequo fers istud animo, sedere in scholis et pueris praecipere?’

When I took a breath, right away the Baetican said: “O, lucky town, which happened upon you so worn out! But how is it plying you and how are things here? How are you making a living? Is your father supporting you from Africa?’ ‘From there nothing doing, since I offended him with this very sojourning. I earn my keep from my knowledge of literature.’ ‘For undeserving shame! And how can you grin and bear it, sitting in schools and teaching kids?’

  • 82 statiminquit 3.1 ~ statim Trimalchio ‘hoc [the declamation Agamemnon recounts having delivered](...)
  • 83 hic cum ego respirassem, statim Baeticus also nicely captures the deus ex machina feel of the Baeti (...)
  • 84 in te … incidit ~ used in spirited rhetoric, e.g., Cic. Ver. 2.2.139 (alas, the fifth-year census m (...)

After reaching the finale of his (first) declamatory display, Florus pauses to take a breath (hic cum ego respirassem), a narrative detail which thereby (gently) mocks the excesses of his own panegyric, while also implying that the Baetican has hardly been able to get a word in edgewise. The latter’s straw-man status is especially glaring in this transitional breather (3.1–2), even if Florus’ narrative faintly resembles other ‘realist’ attempts at portraying dialogue dynamics: coming just after Florus’ gasp, statim implies that the Baetican has been patiently waiting for a chance to chime in during that potted life story, but also adds of touch of characterization (or mere amplification) of his ensuing outburst.82 Nevertheless, this is still tactical ventriloquism, with plenty of self-irony. The Baetican tidily parrots back the language and tone of Florus declamator (quae in te fatigatum incidit 3.1 ~ fatigato hic aliquando subcumbere 2.5), and provides deeper corroboration to both speaker and narrator: Tarraco’s ‘run-in’ with Florus (rather than Florus’ with it), in the Baetican’s words, is yet another fortuitous-but-significant encounter (cf. the Baeticans’ with him 1.1, and Jupiter’s with this coast 2.9; also, saltim hic manere contingat 2.5, summing up a tale of roving geography leading him exactly here).83 These seemingly random occurrences have an agenda: all work concertedly to make Florus the star of this show, as if by accident, and his contingent locale a new kind of thematic center.84 But, asks the Baetican, incredulously, how ever can Florus live here? The question is another lob.

  • 85 beatam ciuitatem ~ Epit. 1.34 (Numantia); neque enim ciuitas in seditione beata esse potest Cic. Fi (...)
  • 86 Weirdly, quem ad modum tamen turns up in… Maecianus Assis distributio 64, a technical account of we (...)
  • 87 hac ipsa peregrinatione ~ habet etiam multum iucunditatis soli caelique mutatio, ipsaque illa pereg (...)
  • 88 in reditu est mihi ~ tota, ut ita dicam, in reditu est Sen. Dial. 10 (De brev. vit.).11.2; solum mi (...)
  • 89 For Cicero in reditu typically means ‘on [his physical] return’, e.g., Att. 6.2.6, Fam. 4.14.3, 15. (...)
  • 90 o rem indignissimam ~ o rem indignam! Att. 13.35+36.1; the exclamation (o rem …!) is above all a Ci (...)
  • 91 quam aequo fers istud animo ~ quis aequo animo fert in principe gentium populo bella seruorum? Epit (...)
  • 92 ~ sedere namque in scholis auditioni operatos gratius erat quam ire per solitudines et quaerere her (...)

19 A harshly financial reality check underlies this intermediate exchange. The adjective used by the Baetican (beatam), aside from being a markedly rare epithet with ciuitatem (with distantly republican-nostalgic undertones), may jestingly hint at the local affluence of which Florus will soon be revealed to be taking advantage: the place must have an elite rich enough to bankroll the education of its youth.85 A general question, of another understatedly artful ‘archaic-colloquial’ type (‘But how’s it treating you and how’s it going here?’), quickly gives way to a pragmatic concern with the bottom line, which must reflect Florus’ own: how will he make ends meet?86 ‘Who’s paying the bills’ (unde subuenit reditus?), and the next, rather suspiciously specific question (an pater ab Africa subministrat?), seem ultimately designed to advertise Florus’ lack of means or benefactor, a situation which he promptly confirms. The vagabondage—whether self-inflicted or no, but still at root caused by dastardly Domitian—even ended up estranging him from his father (cum hac ipsa peregrinatione offenderim, a slight update and elaboration of patriae quoque meae oblitus <et> parentum carissimorum 1.9), as if restaging some Roman comic argumentum through which Florus would have taken his class. His broaching of the brutally economic aftereffects of ‘that very wandering’ of his gives the lie to popular notions about the benefits of travel once more—this time a more concrete version than those philosophical ideals of transcending place: Pliny’s claims for the intrinsically pleasant value of commuting about—to his various estates—now seem absurdly irrelevant.87 Florus’ only means of earning a living, now his sole ‘property’, is by teaching. This technique of concretizing his years-long learning into a thing—and cashing in on it—chimes with his pressing of the cold, hard meaning of the rare phrase in reditu (‘as income’): contemporary posh usage instead metaphorizes it, as Seneca, asserting that a life lived in philosophical otium ‘is profitable’, or Pliny, insisting that only his Laurentine villa ‘yields revenue’—as his writer’s retreat.88 Perversely confounding this hierarchy, Florus will have it both ways: literary practice will actually be his wages. But for how long? The repetition of reditus … in reditu, though stressing ‘income’, cannot silence a hint of Florus’ physical ‘return’.89 His response exposing these banausic realities prompts another outburst from the Baetican, this time of outrage: quelle horreur!90 There is perhaps here even a hint of ‘filthy lucre’ (o rem indignissimam!). His framing language suggests holding up in the face of gravest ills, and draws on a rich backstory of dishonorable teaching. ‘Enduring with equanimity’ (aequo animo ferre) of course cuts straight across Latin literature from its earliest beginnings, taking shape as a special ideal for anyone suffering on behalf of Roman culture.91 Yet some things cannot—should not—be endured, although, Florus will claim, he has managed to bear up. And ‘sitting in the lecture hall’ (sedere in scholis), more often used of variously effete and loafing audiences rather than here, by implication, of a grammaticus in his cathedra, is scornful and dismissive.92 As his pointed correction will show (sedere in scholis et pueris praecipere 3.2 ~ sedere a suggestu praecipientem 3.8), Florus has risen above this abasement—which, he claims, is in fact no abasement—and (yet) he deserves better. This brief pause for a bit of accounting works in support of the balancing act Florus enacts. Decrying the shame of being forced to teach letters to survive, he appeals to those who might, with patronizing pity, lend a hand (a response modelled for his readers by his own Baetican). At the same time, he mounts an iconoclastic defense of an ignoble profession, once more leveraging both his skills and his straits to showcase his one-of-a-kind, eccentric value.

2.2. Every Day Is a School Day

  • 93 [‘he was allowed to transfer to Sicily, where he is now teaching and getting his revenge on fortune (...)

20translatus est in Siciliam, ubi nunc profitetur seque de fortuna praefationibus uindicat.93

  • 94 [‘For he had read certain old books with a grammar-teacher, when the memory of the ancient writers (...)

legerat <enim> in prouincia quosdam ueteres libellos apud grammatistam, durante adhuc ibi antiquorum memoria necdum omnino abolita sicut Romae94

3 ad quam illius interrogationem in hunc modum respondi: ‘non miror <te> eius nunc esse persuasionis, qua et ipse quoque aliquando diu laboraui. toto enim quod egimus quinquennio isto [isto] mihi pertaesum erat huius professionis, ut nusquam uiuere putarem hominem miseriorem. 4 sed subinde retractanti sortemque meam cum fortunis et ceteris uitae laboribus conferenti tandem aliquando pulchritudo suscepti operis apparuit. 5 scire te ergo nunc oportet nullum manus pretium, nullam procurationem, nullum honorem decerni quantus hic sit nostrae professionis. nempe si mihi maximus imperator uitem, id est centum homines regendos tradidisset, non mediocris honor habitus mihi uideretur; cedo si praefecturam, si tribunatum: nempe idem honos, nisi quod merces amplior. 6 si ergo non Caesar, sed Fortuna hoc genus stationis iniunxit, uti pueris ingenuis atque honestis praesiderem, nonne tibi pulchrum <sum> atque magnificum consecutus officium? 7 quaeso enim, propius intuere, utrum praeclarius sit sagulatis an praetextatis imperare, barbaris efferatisque pectoribus an mitibus et innoxiis. 8 bone Iuppiter, quam imperatorium, quam regium est sedere a suggestu praecipientem bonos mores et sacrarum studia litterarum, iam carmina praelegentem, quibus ora mentesque formantur, iam sententiis uariis sensus excitantem, iam exemplis ro. . .

To this questioning of his such was my response: ‘I’m not surprised that you are now of that opinion under which I myself too once long suffered. After all, during my whole five-year stint I had grown sick of this profession, so much so that I thought nowhere lived a more miserable human. But then, reconsidering, and comparing my fate with the other lots and labors of life, in the end the beauty of my undertaken work grew clear. So I’ll have you know that no salary, no office, no honor is decreed that is worth as much as our profession. Indeed, if our greatest emperor granted me the vine (in plain Latin: the command of 100 men), I’d think I had received no mean honor. Take a prefecture, or a tribunate: in fact, the honor would be the same, except the wages would be more substantial. If therefore not Caesar, but Fortune has charged me with this type of profession, to educate upstanding and honorable children, have I not, in your view, obtained a beautiful and magnificent position? Consider more carefully, if you please, whether it is more respectable to instruct men in cloaks or boys in togae praetextae, wild and untamed minds, or meek and obedient ones? Good lord, how like a general, like a king it is to sit on one’s podium imparting good morals and the study of sacred literature, now expounding poetry, by which mouths and minds are formed, now rousing their imagination with various propositions, now with exempla from Ro-<man…>

  • 95 Leg. 1.5. Florus gestures at turning his speechmaking into an autofictional ‘history’ (rather than (...)
  • 96 in hunc modum: apparently used by Sallust to flag a speech Hist. 1.76 (in hunc modum disseruit); in (...)
  • 97 Non miror: Sen. Con. 2.6.3, 7.2.11, 7.5.3; [Quint.] Min. 263.3 (never starting a sentence in Cicero (...)
  • 98 <te> esse nunc esse persuasionis 3.3 ~ ne quis me tamen laborare putet miserae persuasionis errore (...)
  • 99 Perhaps the exemplarity of Nepos’ Atticus became an inspiration: numquam suscepti negotii eum perta (...)

Florus rises to his (declamatory) challenge. He will proceed to outdo his previous show speech (2.1–9) with, on the face of it, an even more daring premise. Tarraco could measure up to Rome, he contended (pretending to try to keep a straight face). Being a local ludi magister is as good as, well, most things. But: as good as it gets? First Florus narrator flashes some historiographical speechwriting cues, reminding scholars not to gloss over the anxiety-provoking closeness of ancient historians and declaimers, even if he is here (roughly) turning Cicero’s Atticus’ characterization of historia as opus oratorium maxime on its head.95 Dignifying the Baetican’s set-up question with a careful response, he answers ‘to this effect’, in hunc modum unavoidably invoking historiography tagging an inset oration.96 This is what, plausibly, Florus could have said, on the day, given his circumstantial premises. His speech immediately gets (and sounds) declamatory: he’s ‘not surprised’ that his fictive adversarius would hold precisely the conventional opinion he will proceed to play devil’s advocate in challenging.97 How convenient. The idiomatic use of persuasio (‘opinion’) is especially at home in declamation, which, fittingly, makes ‘persuasion’ into a ‘position’.98 That ‘he himself too’ (et ipse quoque) long suffered under such a view is both an ironic gesture at the constructedness of his Baetican alter ego and a hint that perhaps his claim to have changed his mind—rather suddenly, after five, long years—is not entirely sincere. ‘Being disgusted’ (mihi pertaesum erat) seems a tad too punctual a sensation to experience for an entire (rather grandly dubbed) quinquennium. Getting sick of a situation brings us back to Lucretius’ erratic commuter (~ esse domi quem pertaesumst Lucr. 3.1061) or could recall the Trojans who will rove no further, but emphatically call it a nostos in Sicily, with Acestes (quos | pertaesum magni incepti rerumque tuarum est A. 5.713–4).99 Has Florus really given up the vanlife to find his true calling in the ludus, or is this just one more place for him to get tired of. Once again, our changeable speaker seems (at least) unsettled.

  • 100 The closest we get to diu laboraui (‘I have long suffered’) is mihi non arbitror diu laborandum ut (...)
  • 101 ut nusquam uiuere putarem hominem miseriorem ~ qui me Thebis alter uiuit miserior? Plaut. Amph. 104 (...)
  • 102 e.g., praeceptum est Suburano, ut uacaret finitam causam retractanti, si quid noui adferret Plin. E (...)
  • 103 Note that Florus has now reverted to the standard Ciceronian pattern of an idea occurring to one en (...)
  • 104 fortunis et ceteris uitae laboribus ~ sic tu sapiens finire memento | tristitiam uitaeque labores | (...)
  • 105 matutine pater, seu Iane libentius audis, | unde homines operum primos uitaeque labores | instituun (...)
  • 106 Compare Florus’ own verses on the true rarity of patrons (and poets): consules fiunt quotannis et n (...)
  • 107 pulchritudo suscepti operis ~ ego illud unum affirmo, et utilitatem operis et pulchritudinem saecul (...)
  • 108 tandem aliquando pulchritudo suscepti operis apparuit ~ sero tandem documentis apparuit ostentum il (...)
  • 109 sortemque meam … cum fortunis et ceteris uitae laboribus conferenti ~ sortem bellorum in Asia gesto (...)

21 Yes, this is Florus continuing to show off his learned, far-fetched case-making in a lecture that cannot help but survey literary history (as he has taught and lived it). His ‘long suffering’ (diu laboraui) would have exposed him and his pupils to plenty of personae bemoaning their ‘most wretched human’ status (ut nusquam uiuere putarem hominem miseriorem 3.3).100 Beyond miming any number of moments of Roman comic kvetching, he shows how seamlessly that emotive stance could be taken up by prose speakers, too.101 The deep backstory behind Florus’ (hysterical) pose makes his take sound almost meta-referential: the likes of his (‘real-life’) woes can be found in no other textual locus. But Cicero’s? That’s quite a comparison. Yet the latter’s artfully expressed—real—misery is a also model for Florus’ autofiction to play at likening itself to. The (over-) stylized claim builds to his change of heart, the provocative subject of his harangue. He at first invokes almost juridical language (sed subinde retractanti), reminding us yet again that his ‘case’ deserves another look.102 We have come full circle to a second pair of (Ciceronian) dative participles (retractant <i> [sc. mihi] … -que… conferenti), as if to mark this crucial pivot in the dialogue, and loop back to the opening image of Florus at leisure.103 The transitional sentence (3.4), in which Florus claims to have thought things over, put it all in perspective, blends a clear strand of literary ‘life challenges’ with frames of setting different lines of work side by side. His phrasing meshes famous moments from a poet and an orator on ‘life’s labors’: Horace reminding Plancus to put a lid on suffering (with wine), and Cicero defending literary pursuits as a respite from busy toils in politics and the courts.104 These passages, together with a third, Horace’s mock-epic invocation to Janus (as bright-and-early patron of ‘city business’, addressed from an idealized Sabine refuge), already suggest that Florus is going to lay out a defense of his idiosyncratic solution to these problems, a pointed paradox of ‘otiose’ work, as grammaticus.105 It is a striking ‘neo-realist’ adaptation, and update, from a poet for whom these so very Roman activities—not to mention a godsend patron like Maecenas (or a forensic or political career)—now must seem otherworldly.106 Florus is moreover updating Horace’s programmatic discourse(s) of self-contentedness with one’s lot, presented via extended comparison with other walks of life (esp. the opening of Sermones 1.1, but also the priamel of Odes 1.1). Florus is here enacting a live-chat (declamatory) version of these stunning poetic premises in unexpectedly concrete, quotidian terms. The result, he notes (self-reflexively), is a rather striking thing of beauty, articulated in language otherwise used for actual, physical creations.107 There is a feel of destiny at last made manifest, a feature which should help us not forget that this picture is, in part, a pitch.108 Florus is humbly magnifying his miniature contributions, adapting and banalizing a very Roman tendency to big oneself (and/or one’s culture) up through hypothetical comparison to the greatest hits of the past.109 But, yet again, his version is self-deprecating, carrying out the comparison via a kind of implicit litotes (his lot, in the final analysis, not so bad as others’, ergo good), in order to defend the arguable honor of his current role.

  • 110 ergo nunc (‘now therefore’) is already colloquial in Plautus (Most. 1119 and Terence (Haut. 993); c (...)
  • 111 nullum manus pretium, nullam procurationem, nullum honorem 3.5 ~ cum audiat nullum facinus, nullam (...)
  • 112 si mihi maximus imp<erator> u<i>tem, id est centum homines regendos, tradidisset 3.5 ~ dux bonus hu (...)
  • 113 maximus imperator ~ postquam ergo maximus imperator uictoria Daciam proxime reserauit [‘therefore a (...)
  • 114 non mediocris honor habitus mihi uidetur 3.5 ~ non mediocris adhibenda mihi est cura ut Cic. Fam. 1 (...)

22 ‘Now then’ (ergo nunc): Florus comes to his lesson’s point.110 He elaborates his (for us) punchline with extended comparison. A (probably preposterous) likeness of lowly magister to … salaried post, imperial clerkship, (generic) office, centurionate, prefecture, tribunate, officership. Florus trots out an impressive catalogue of every possible (pie-in-the-sky) position that could be lavished on him from on high in order to show that none of them, not one, could ever really significantly challenge his simple, autonomous schoolmastery. This is provocative epideixis. The rhetorical amplification comes thick and fast: a string of nullums pointedly bouncing back, and purporting to refuse, the Baetican’s elevated row of nihils 1.7 (itemization of Rome’s draws); a rather lavish build-up of conditionals (nempe si… cedo si… si… si ergo), with last apodosis as rhetorical question, a polite imperative (disguised as a virtual rhetorical question), an oath introducing an extended exclamatory phrase (that cuts off in full flow… ).111 Florus has clearly been musing long and hard on these scenarios: if … only? The centurionate gets special expanded treatment, marked with an Ovidian tag, and a hint of mythology recast as imperial administrative procedure.112 If the godlike commander/culture-bringer had stepped in to make Florus’ life easier … or were to? While maximus imperator tactfully bows to ‘the emperor’ (Domitian Trajan), Florus’ lessons would have allowed him to observe the development of this term, from quasi-literal phrase to (conveniently) recyclable honorific, a hint that he’s not completely averse to jumping on this self-styled renovative regime’s bandwagon.113 Then the military post’s value is expressed in terms of Florus’ go-to litotes, gesturing at a formal politeness which carries the subtext that such beneficent grants would of course not be entirely unwelcome [bats eyelashes].114 After all, the extensive lingering on all possible scenarios, offers, grants, and stipends the regime could, in theory, dole out does seem glaring. Especially striking is his implausible pooh-poohing of concerns economical (nisi quod merces amplior—as if that would make no real difference). Florus’ indirect strategy is to declaim the unique, transcendental value of his (un-) chosen line of work in order ultimately to sound out the possibility of other means of support.

  • 115 docentur praestigias inhonestas, cum cinaedulis et sambuca psalterioque eunt in ludum histrionum, d (...)
  • 116 ingenui pueri cum meritoriis Cic. Phil 2.105 (in Varro’s commandeered house!), pueri ingenui abripi (...)
  • 117 Apparently already in Cato orat. 92 (quis homo … pulchrius purgat <aut magnificius?> [‘who … purifi (...)
  • 118 barbaris efferatisque pectoribus 3.7 ~ linguam tantum Graecorum habent sicut speciem hominum: morib (...)
  • 119 pectoribus … mitibus 3.7 ~ mitioris natura pectoris sum Sen. Con. 7.1.12; mihi mite pectus [Quint.] (...)
  • 120 quam regium est sedere a suggestu praecipientem bonos mores et sacrarum studium litterarum… 3.8 ~ q (...)

23 Note how he has adapted major discursive strands on the morality of Roman youth and the inhumanity of non-Roman ‘barbarians’, so as to showcase his exemplary application of them in today’s new world—even, or perhaps especially, the ‘provincial’ one. Florus is presenting himself bringing back the old morality, the prevalence of which was once evident only and above all by its rare transgression (the story went). His pueris ingenuis atque honestis cannot fail to recall an account of the earliest mention of such ‘well-born boys’, and what must be the earliest reported teaching observation by an authoritative Roman speaker, Scipio Aemilianus, who is shocked, he says, shocked by his discovery of upstanding boys and girls being taught music and dancing.115 Or Cicero luridly lingering on Antony’s youth-corrupting ways.116 Florus well-heeled heirs (his pupils) are properly looked after, and edified. Once more, this allegedly lowly role is now recast and elevated as a kind of universal ideal, articulated via an open-ended (and ubiquitous) couplet, one which, Florus may have known, goes all the way back to Cato himself (pulchrum atque magnificum … officium).117 Florus’ second, interwoven conceit is to adapt the Roman discourse of ‘wild’ barbarians to buttress his eyebrow-raising case for the superior station of the grammaticus to that of centurion. His ‘Roman’ soldiers now become barbarized: elsewhere, the heightened phraseology is reserved for those ‘beyond the pale’.118 By contrast, Florus’ students are soft and gentle at heart—and preemptively exhibit one sympathetic stance for future rhetors to adopt.119 Even Florus’ costume play (utrum praeclarius sit sagulatis an praetextatis imperare 3.7) reads as a modernized version—and an oblique defense—of Cicero’s much-lambasted jingle (cedant arma togae): in his Spanish hideaway, ‘military fatigues yield to the school uniform’ (or the like). Florus’ portrait even evokes Ciceronian oratorical (in particular, forensic) ideals in his panegyric of the grammar school.120

  • 121 bone iuppiter, quam imperatorium, quam regium est ~ bone iuppiter, quam auide, quam fortiter uincla (...)
  • 122 With a backward-looking tinge, as in, e.g., Sal. Cat. 9.1 (igitur domi militiaeque boni mores coleb (...)
  • 123 ~ tenerae nimis | mentes asperioribus | formandae studiis [‘minds which are too tender must be shap (...)
  • 124 Norden (1966) 567n.3, on the uniqueness of an ancient ‘Schulmeister’ describing his occupation so a (...)

24 And yet, Florus is simultaneously trading on those deep-rooted connections between Roman education and Roman imperialism (or simply, militarism) for his last declamatory conceit.121 Of course, he is stressing the deep nexus between good morals (boni mores) and the study of literature (sacrarum studia litterarum).122 And he is recasting Horace’s, and Quintilian’s, vivid articulations of ‘shaping’ minds and mouths (carmina quibus ora mentesque formantur 3.8) through poetry.123 His other participial phrases do directly map on to specific aspects of grammatical practice (carmina praelegentem, the praelectio; sententiis uariis sensus excitantem, pedagogical use of sententiae; exemplis ro…, historiographical, or oratorical (?), exemplarity). But here the epideictic joke is that Commandant Florus, the Grammaticus-in-Chief, has no need for an endowed centurionate (however lucrative), for he is already in charge of his ranks of schoolchildren (imperare; cf. quam imperatorium). Our final glimpse sees Florus raised on his podium ‘decreeing’ good morals and a cult (?) of letters (quam imperatorium, quam regium est sedere a suggestu praecipientem bonos mores et sacrarum studia litterarum).124 His standard cathedra must lurk behind a suggestu, but this ‘raised platform’ is unspecific enough to suggest the dais of a statesman, general, or likely the emperor himself. Is there a playful hint of official ‘judgments’ lurking behind rhetorical sententiae? Yet again (and here, for all time), Florus compares himself, and his humility, to the big shots of Roman life—and manages to present himself (with a wink), as coming out just fine. In this tragically cut-off autofictional portrait we see Florus using his highly literary autobiography, in essence, to play hard to get. If the survival of his Epitome, a smattering of poetic fragments, and his attested epistolographic banter with the emperor Hadrian are any indication, it seems his artful pleading worked like a charm.

Conclusion

  • 125 Hardie (2003) 145.
  • 126 Cf. SHA Hadr. 16.3, quoted above.

25In this study of Florus’ undeservedly neglected dialogue fragment, we have analyzed the author’s autofictional account of his extended reply to the Baetican’s queries regarding his fate following rejection by Domitian, in its main components, before the text breaks off: a brief tale of wandering that is itself a miniature prose geographic epic of sorts, reworking and tweaking intertextual fragments and evocations of literary exile; a smooth encomium of his new (-ish) home at quiet Tarraco that showcases this rhetor’s declamatory chops and command of literature, and an eloquent defense for the particular, and even imperial, value of the humble yet independent grammaticus, whose teaching of texts, Florus professes, he is specially equipped. We can see in this precious scrap not only a mistreated literary underdog’s deferred reply to the princeps’ crushing put-down (no ‘sore loser’125), but also, we have seen, a self-conscious advertisement of one poet-scholar who is perhaps not so averse to a return to the metropolis as his claims of contentedness suggest. The time of writing, tantalizingly, defies pinning down, but we might instead posit a backward-looking, playful self-portrait of the author’s bumpy youth by one who has long since made it into Hadrian’s good graces.126 In any case, we are fortunate to glimpse this novel survivor of Latin literature.

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Notes

1 [’So take heart, Florus, and cheer up; this is how you can win even the long race.] AP [Pollianus] 11.128.5–6; on this ironic epigram as addressed to our Florus—his poetic career derailed by an arbitrary princeps who denied him victory in the Capitoline games of 90 CE (Flor. Verg. 1.3–4)—see Morelli (1916) 103–5.

2 I thank Jacqueline Fabre-Serris and Florence Klein for editorial guidance with a challenging piece and Dictynna’s two anonymous referees for detailed, valuable comments and suggestions. I am grateful to John Henderson for feedback on an earlier version and for his generous encouragement.

3 [‘I don’t want to be Caesar, to stroll around among the Britons, <to skulk about among…>, to endure the Scythian frosts.’] Flor. Carm. 1 = SHA Hadr. 16.3 (Germanos Roesinger, Achiuos Costa; Floro poetae scribenti ad se: Ego nolo Caesar … rescripsit: Ego nolo Florus esse | ambulare per tabernas, | latitare per popinas | culices pati rotundos [‘To the poet Florus writing to him, “I don’t want to be Caesar…”, he wrote back, “I don’t want to be Florus, to stroll around among the taverns, to skulk about among the cook shops, to endure great round gnats.”’] Usually dated to after 122 CE, when Hadrian travelled to Britain; cf. Benario (1980) ad loc., Baldwin (1988) 138, and Bessone (1990) 105. With ambulare per Britannos compare Florus’ own lustro populos aquilone pallentes 2.2. The emperor’s culices, beyond merely ribbing Florus’ ‘flea-bit’ lifestyle, could also nod to the pseudo-Virgilian Culex, and so wink at amateur poetic productions or performances (however ‘polished’, rotundos): we might see Florus the critic doing the rounds of the recitatio circuit, or even hearing student recitals of juvenilia. The assumption here, as in my previous article, is that this poet Florus is also author of Vergilius orator an poeta and of the Epitome; cf. Hudson (2023) n.4; also, in brief, Courtney (1993) 381–2.

4 Woody Guthrie, ‘The Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done’.

5 [‘How can new lands avail you? What good is visiting cities and sites? All your running about ends up pointless.’] Sen. Ep. 28.2.

6 Once again, I follow here the Latin text of Rocchi (2020a), with some minor changes, taking into account Jal (1967), Malcovati (1972), Havas (1997), and Verweij (2015).

7 The inquiry seems like casual small talk, but note the mannered pleonasm, quae tamen loca quasue regiones peragrasti?, wryly advertising Florus’ own embellished travelog (which he caps with his own echoing flourish, uides, hospes, quae spatia caeli peragrauerim, quae maris quaeue terrarum 2.4, on which more below; cf. Florus’ gently self-deflating narrative transition immediately after he concludes his declamatory trip (hic cum ego respirassem, statim Baeticus, ‘o’ inquit… 3.l). See Hudson (2023) for the immediately previous section of dialogue.

8 priorum recordabor ~ quid nunc antiqua recordor | damna mei generis? timor hic meminisse priorum | non sinit [‘Why do I now recall my people’s ancient losses? This fear does not permit me to remember former ills’] Ov. Met. 15.774–6 (Venus looking back with difficulty to Aeneas’ plight as she bemoans Caesar’s impending death). On the wound of exile in Ovid, and Florus, see Di Giovine (2020) 49.

9 Cf. Hudson (2023) n. 6 on the dialogue’s first words and the supplement otium (Damsté; capienti without object in Malcovati (1972)).

10 Orator: with breuiter exponam Cicero famously will (not) condense Verres’ villainy (Ver. 1.1.16, 2.2.134), retail his shocking ‘findings’ to the people (Catil. 3.3), and painstakingly account for his departure and return (Phil. 1.1, 1.7), etc.; poeta: sed si tantus amor [~ si ita indulges otio 2.1] casus cognoscere nostros | et breuiter [= A. 2–3!] Troiae supremum audire laborem [‘but if such is your desire to learn of our ruin and in brief to hear of Troy’s final suffering’] (A. 2.10–11). His (rare) initial phrasing hints at over-indulgence, as Seneca warns (doctor’s advice for the ailing): ne indulgeas otio, ad quod uergit iners ualetudo [‘that you not indulge in idleness, to which inactive ill-health inclines’] (Ep. 78.5). The pattern plane quam breuiter is strange and unattested; perhaps perquam breuiter (Cic. De Orat. 2.201)? Yet plane is a recurring stylistic tic in the Epitome.

11 Esp., Lucr. 3.1053–74, Hor. Ep. 1.11, Sen. Ep. 28, Dial 9 (De tranq. anim.).2.13–14; cf. Dial. 8 (De otio).1.2. See, e.g., on Epistle 1.11, La Penna (1956) 196–201, and Montiglio (2006), on travel in Seneca.

12 [‘they change their climate, not their mind, who rush across the sea’].

13 Aeneas commanding a change of course in the face of foul weather (flecte uiam uelis A. 5.28) perhaps also lurks behind Florus’ phrase (and Seneca?). Elsewhere cursum flectere is used of motion by sea: circumflectere cursus Verg. A. 3.430 (rounding Pachynus to avoid Scylla), 5.131 (the turning point for the ship racecourse); in Eoum mare cursus inflectitur [‘the route bends to the Eastern Sea’] Mela 3.59, in Eoum cursus inflectitur Plin. Nat. 6.53. On taedio maris cf. also Servius citing Heraclides (ad Aen. 1.273): Heraclides ait Romen, nobilem captiuam Troianam huc appulisse et taedio maris suasisse sedem, ex cuius nomine urbem uocatam [‘Heraclides says that Rhome, a captive Trojan noblewoman landed here and out of weariness with sea-voyaging urged dwelling there; the city was called after her name’]. Florus is perhaps inserting this lesser-known Roman foundation story into his own mock-mythic ‘settlement’ in Tarraco. With par ille niuibus Alpinis Pyrenaeus Florus (procul a patria) gazes at a westward ‘update’ to Virgil’s Alpinas, a! dura niues et frigora Rheni | … uides [‘you, ah! harsh one, look on Alpine snows and the Rhine’s rime’] Ecl. 10.47–8 (Gallus to migrant Lycoris). By contrast, the Punic War’s storm (in Hannibal form) rushes right over high Alpine snows at Epit. 1.22.9 (medias perfregit Alpes et in Italiam ab illis fabulosae altitudinis niuibus uelut caelo missa descendit [‘it broke through the midst of the Alps and descended onto Italy from those snows of famed loftiness as if cast from heaven’]); cf. 1.38.11. Perhaps a joke on Horace’s an Lebedum laudas odio maris … [‘or do you praise Lebedus because of aversion to the sea …?’]: Tarraco has become Florus’ stopgap (his ‘Lebedus’).

14 His island-hopping (2.1–2) resembles, if anything, Mela’s ‘appendix’ on Mediterranean isles (2.97–126; cf. 3.46–58), slotted in as an excursus from the work’s periplus, and temporarily abandoning the conceit of a narrative journey (but moving roughly from east to west).

15 E.g., no simple road trip such as: Via Aurelia > Via Iulia Augusta > Via Agrippa towards Lugdunum, then back to Via Domitia > Via Augusta.

16 faciam quod solent qui terrarum situs pingunt: in breui quasi tabella totam eius imaginem amplectar [‘I shall do as those who depict the layout of the earth: I’ll encompass its entire likeness in a slender map, so to speak’]. It is no coincidence that Florus’ own rhetoric in the preface appears to rework that of an actual geographer: qua re, cum, si quid aliud, hoc quoque operae pretium sit cognoscere, tamen, quia ipsa sibi obstat magnitudo rerumque diuersitas aciem intentionis abrumpit [‘therefore, although if anything else, this too is worth the effort to comprehend, nevertheless, since its very magnitude is an obstruction and the diversity of the contents interrupts the keenness of the attention’] ~ Orbis situm dicere aggredior, impeditum opus et facundiae minime capax—constat enim fere gentium locorumque nominibus et eorum perplexo satis ordine—uerum aspici tamen cognoscique dignissimum, et quod non ope ingenii orantis, at ipsa sui contemplatione pretium operae attendentium absoluat [‘I am setting out to describe the layout of the world, a difficult task and one hardly accommodating eloquence—for it consists almost entirely of peoples’ and places’ names and their rather intricate sequence—but nevertheless most worthy to be examined and understood, and one which repays the effort of those attending, if not by the resources of the speaker’s skill, yet by the very act of contemplation’] Mela 1.1; cf. Baldwin (1988) 139; also Hudson (2019) on the Florus’ synoptic poetics, and Renda (2020) 29–42 on the Epitome and cartography.

17 Henderson (1997) 158, ‘No traveller ever reads the same atlas or guidebook, for maps are always territory, we all territorialise even bare lists of names with our own experience and projections, and indeed the associations concretised and fixated around such toponyms both diagram cultural encyclopedias, and space people along the idiosyncratic coordinates they bring to these.’

18 Also poeticizing: for populos aquilone pallentes, cf. fundat ab extremo flauos Aquilone Suebos | Albis et indomitum Rheni caput [‘let the Elbe and the unconquered source of the Rhine pour forth blond Suebi from the farthest north’] Luc. 2.51–3, or even the exaggeration in Horace’s paraklausithyron Carm. 3.9.1–4 Extremum Tanain si biberes, Lyce | saeuo nupta uiro, me tamen asperas | porrectum ante foris obicere incolis | plorares Aquilonibus [‘If you drank from the far-off Tanais, Lyce, wed to a fierce husband, still you would lament exposing me, sprawled out before your harsh doors, to the native north winds’]; lustro: a Vergilian hexameter-end (2.564, Aeneas scanning to see who’s left [i.e., no one], and 754, groping his way back through the dark; Ecl. 2.12, Corydon desperately tracking Alexis); perhaps even et deus humana lustro sub imagine terras [‘a god in human form I traverse the earth’] Ov. Met. 1.213 (Jupiter reconning human impiety and Lycaon). Florus’ phrasing is unparalleled (and, as Rocchi (2020a) 94 notes, this the earliest use of pallens with populus), but he is clearly adapting a (pejorative) commonplace of ancient ‘airs-waters-places’ theory: given the common meaning of palleo, there is perhaps a derisive joke on peoples ‘turning pale with fright’ at the north wind’. Jal (1967) 119 is dismissive (‘La remarque semble normale, on l’a plusieurs fois noté, sous la plume d’un Africain.’). Florus elsewhere likens the Insubrian Gauls’ (short-lived) bodily courage to their Alpine climate (Alpina corpora umenti caelo educata habent quiddam simile niuibus suis [‘Alpine bodies brought up in a moist climate have a certain resemblance to their own snows’] Epit. 1.20.2; i.e., they melt away). See Facchini Tosi (2005) on ‘geodeterminism’ in the Epitome.

19 [‘we fly past … the Cyclades strewn across the sea’]. Cycladas salutaui ~ Italiam … salutant A. 3.524 with Horsfall (2006) (‘not a conventional reaction in Virgilian narrative’); cf. prima salutauit Capreas Stat. Silv. 3.2.23 (Maecius Celer’s ship; see Laguna (1992) on this propempticon). Siciliam nobilem: nobilis and nobilitas are notably frequent in Florus’ Epitome of places and people.

20 The zoomed-in focus on the (Isiac) sistrum evokes Virgil’s single use of the word: regina in mediis patrio uocat agmina sistro [‘the queen in the midst calls her troops with their native sistrum’] (A. 8.696, mortal Cleopatra on A’s shield) and this Egyptian vision quest ultimately set him on the right track (ut ora Nili uiderem 2.2 ~ coram agnoscere … praesentia … ora uidebar [‘openly I seemed to recognize … their faces before me’] A. 3.173–4 (Penates appear to Aeneas in his dream). With Italiam redii (no preposition ~ Baeticam reuertentes 1.1), we cannot fail to hear the Virgilian mantra Italiam petere (A. 1.554, 3.253, 3.364, 10.32, 67); Eussner (1888) 79 even suggests petii for redii, but return seems key both to Florus’ discontent and his literary belatedness; cf. his usage in the Epitome, in each case a kind of homeward return: redisse rursus 1.1(1.3).9 (Alba not destroyed but ‘reincorporated’), redit… rursus 1.5.14 (Cincinnatus, back to his cows). inde rursus is rare, perhaps from Livy (1.33.3, 5.41.5, 22.44.5; cf. inde se rursus Mela 1.6).

21 [Thrace] > Delos > Crete > [Strophades > Actium > Buthrotum] > Italy (Castrum Minervae) > Sicily > {Carthage > Italy} ~ {Africa > Rome >} Sicily > Crete > Cyclades > Rhodes > Egypt > Italy > Alps > Pyrenees > Tarraco.

22 Again, the Brutus portrait of the orator as a young man reveals its influence. After a sojourn in Athens and travels all through Asia (a me Asia tota peragrata est 315 ~ peragrasti 1.9, peragrauerim 2.4, toto orbe peragrato 2.4), Cicero, still ‘searching’, came to Rhodes: quibus [sc. rhetoribus in Asia] non contentus Rhodum ueni meque ad eundum quem Romae audiueram Molonem adplicaui [‘not content with them I went to Rhodes and attached myself to Molon, whom I had heard in Rome’] 316; cf. Plut. Cic. 4.5–7, whose explanation for Cicero’s trip abroad as a kind of defensive self-exile after displeasing Sulla with the Roscius defense is suggestive for Florus’ flight. See now van den Berg (2021) 20–43 on this miniature autobiography of Cicero. For inde me Rhodos, cf. Cic. Planc. 84 where Cicero snobbily mocks his opponent Laterensis for taking issue with his (apparently well-known?) Rhodian stay, and the rhetorical style associated with it (‘Rhodi enim,’ inquit [sc. Laterensis], ‘ego non fui’—me uolt fuisse—‘sed fui,’ inquit putabam in Vaccaeis [in Hispania Tarraconensis] dicturum—‘bis in Bithynia.’ [‘“For I’ve never been to Rhodes,” he says, meaning that I had. “But,” he says, “I have been”—I thought he was going to say “in Vaccaei country”—“in Bithynia twice.”’). Despite Cicero’s scoff, note the special prestige held by Spanish rhetoricians by the 1st century CE; aside from the obvious Seneca (Corduba, in Baetica) and Quintilian (Calagurris, in Tarraconensis), cf. Sen. Cont. 10.pr.14 on Augustus listening to Gavius Silo in the colonia Tarraconensis and Richardson (2000) esp. 443–5.

23 E.g., Fam. 2.17.1 (Cicero considering stopping there for the boys’ sake), Fam. 7.3.5 (Cicero to M. Marius in April 46: if the state is truly lost, then he is an exile in no less comfortable a place than if he had transplanted to Rhodes or Mytilene); otherwise, most prominently, Metellus Numidicus (specially known to Florus through his role in the Jugurtha?) and Tiberius.

24 Plato ‘wandering through’ Egypt (Aegyptum peragrauit Cic. Fin. 5.87, V. Max. 8.7. ext. 3) may also be in the background.

25 Rocchi (2020a) 90 notes that before Florus the parallel appears only in Lucan (cf. Apul. Mun. 7). Cf. the apparently specific reference to the last words of Book 8: Creten, patriam Tonantis 2.1 ~ atque erit Aegyptus populis fortasse nepotum | tam mendax Magni tumulo quam Creta Tonantis [‘and in the eyes of our descendants Egypt will perhaps be as false about Magnus’ tomb as Crete about the Thunderer’s’] Luc. 8.871–2. (Pompey’s grim death in Egypt representing yet another glimpse of one driven far from home).

26 Eussner (1888) 79–80 already heard Io uaga (Hor. Ars. 124; cf. peregrinae deae 2.2) and uagus Hercules (Carm. 3.3.9) in uagarer per diuersa terrarum. But there is also mercator … uagus Ars 117 ~ uagus gubernator 2.5.

27 Tonantis might nod at the crashing Curetes: qualis Berecyntia mater, | dum paruum circa iubet exultare Tonantem | Curetas trepidos [‘like the Berecynthian mother, as she commands the agitated Curetes to dance around the wee Thunderer’] Stat. Theb. 4.789–91; fleat Alciden caerula Crete, | magno tellus cara Tonanti: | centum populi bracchia pulsent. | nunc Curetes, nunc Corybantes | arma Idaea quassate manu [‘let sea-blue Crete weep for Alcides, land dear to the great Thunderer: let its hundred peoples beat their arms. Now, Curetes, now, Corybantes, shake weapons in Idaean hands’] Sen. Her. O. 1874–8.

28 ~ sola fuit Crete fecundo fertilis anno [‘Crete alone was fruitful with abundant produce’] Ov. Am. 3.10.37 (cf. Crete nutrito terra superba Ioue [‘Crete is a land proud of nourishing Jupiter’] 20 and ff. on baby Jupiter). Tonantis therefore also reads as a pointed reference to versions featuring Jupiter’s brutal punishment of Iasion by a thunderbolt (e.g., Hom. Od. 5.125, Apollod. Bibl. 3.12.1; Iasion grows old with her at Ov. Met. 9.421). Fecundam is a Rossbach’s emendation for secundam, based on Avienus’ Periegesis 667–9 (nutrix hic Creta Tonantis, | multa latus, glaebamque ferax et opima uirentum | erigitur pelago [‘here Crete, nurse of the Thunderer, rises from the sea, many-sided, abundant in soil and rich in vegetation’] and Prisc. Periheg. 526–7, followed by most editors (except, now, Verweij 2015 and Rocchi 2020; see the latter’s valuable digest, 86); Rossbach took issue with the pleonasm secundam deinde, though this pattern turns up in historiography and technical prose; but the epithet fecundam would balance nobilem in chiasmus.

29 And, again, the implicit skip in the travel narrative to Florus’ retirement in Tarraco suggests that this mountainous blockade was in fact successful in forcing him to make a permanent pit stop. The mountain range was said to owe its name to the grim tale of king Bebryx’s daughter Pyrene, raped, lamented, and commemorated by the westward-roving Hercules (Sil. Ital. 3.415–46). The heightened style and anaphora (par horrore, par uertice, par ille niuibus Alpinis Pyrenaeus excepit 2.3) recall the chorus of Trojan women on the uncanny boldness of one who defies death (and the solace it provides): par ille regi, par superis erit [‘this man will be a match for a king, for gods’] Sen. Ag. 609.

30 Cf. Hudson (2023) n.1 and passim.

31 Vide Hudson (2023) 19 (/p.11) and n.107.

32 [‘All this that you see, stranger, where greatest Rome stands’].

33 Florus is perhaps stealing a page from Horace, who invokes it mock-epically in his lead-in to the mice’s nocturnal journey (S. 2.6.101), a ‘ridiculously grand scene-setting’ (Gowers (2012) 190, likening another lofty nightfall in Horace’s own iter to it); cf. Verg. Ecl. 3.105 (Damoetas’ riddle). Cf. planeque, quod nemo dubitet, orbem terrarum peragrauit [‘and clearly, as no one could doubt, he wandered the world’] Plin. Nat. 30.3.11 (the sage Osthanes).

34 See above, n.29.

35 mehercules is in Cic. (who prefers mehercule in the letters), Petronius, Phaedrus, Quint., all over [Quint.] and the Senecas.

36 [‘just so, if one may compare small things with great’].

37 [‘thus I used to compare great things with small’]. Florus may be aware of the suggestive identification of Octavian, and of subsequent emperors, with Triptolemus; see further Rocchi (2020b) 243.

38 [‘if one may use grand examples in a humble case’]. Cf. Ovid’s hyperbolic ‘quid propero? Scythia est, quo mittimur’, inquam [‘“Why do I hasten? It’s Scythia where I’m headed to,” I said’] 1.3.61 (~ si Scythes essem, iam plaustra soluissem 2.5); on the meaning of Ovid’s gloss here of ‘Scythia’ for Tomis, see Williams (1994) 8–12. One more self-comparison may be in the picture: quodsi componere magnis | parua mihi fas est [‘But if it is right for me to compare small things with great’] Met. 5.416–7 (Cyane attempting to prevent Pluto from abducting Proserpina, adducing her own genteel courtship by Anapis).

39 [‘Now I would long to board the chariot of Triptolemus, who cast the crude seed on unfamiliar ground’]. Jal (1967) 119 compares Stat. Silv. 4.2.35–6 (aetherii felix sic orbita fluxit | Triptolemi [‘thus flowed the fruitful course of stratospheric Triptolemus’]); Rocchi (2020a) 96 notes the Tristia passage (more plausibly). Florus reveals familiarity with Ovid’s treatment of the story at Met. 5.642–61, in which the youth’s transcontinental flightpath (iam super Europen sublimis et Asida terram | uectus erat iuuenis [‘now soaring over Europe and the land of Asia the youth had fared’] 648–9 ~ iuuenis terras peruolitauit 2.4) takes him to king Lyncus in Scythia (Scythicas aduertitur oras [‘he steers toward Scythian regions’] 649 ~ si Scythes essem… 2.5), to whom he (rather goofily) announces his aviation (ueni nec puppe per undas, | nec pede per terras: patuit mihi peruius aether [‘I came neither by ship on waves nor on foot by land: the air lay open for me to pass through’] 653–5 ~ quae spatia caeli peragrauerim, quae maris quaeue terrarum 2.4; cf. medium caeli terraeque per aera uecta est [sc. dea] [‘midway between heaven and earth she rode through the air’] 644); after a failed assassination and attempted theft that sees the king turned into a lynx, Ceres sends Triptolemus back on his way (rursusque per aera iussit | Mopsopium iuuenem sacros agitare iugales [‘and back through the air she commanded the Athenian youth to drive her sacred team’] 660–1 ~ sacer ille iuuenis 2.4). The Latin of Florus’ snake-yoking (cum alite serpente currum ipsa iunxisset 2.4) is odd: perhaps modelled on Ovid with pointed adjustments (geminos dea fertilis angues | curribus admouit [‘the fertile goddess yoked the twin serpents to her chariot’] 642–3), but the more typical construction, with beast specified, is acc. + ad currum (e.g., primus … [sc. leones] Romae ad currum iunxit M. Antonius [‘Mark Antony was the first at Rome to yoke [lions] to a chariot’] Plin. Nat. 8.55). Eussner (1888) 81 also compares frenatos curribus angues | admouit [‘she yoked the bridled serpents to her chariot’] Fast. 4.497.

40 Peruolitauit: the verb is Lucretian (2.145, 2.346, 6.952); also Verg. A. 8.24, Man. 2.66, 5.65, 87; prefix-less uolitare flies all over the Epitome (noted by Thomé (1881) 3).

41 [‘as if he could set down his burden’]. For Triptolemus as culture-bringer cf. also Verg. G. 1.19 puer monstrator aratri (~ sacer ille iuuenis 2.4).

42 uetuit suas redire serpentes ~ si quid [condicionum] displiceat, legatos redire ad se uetuit [‘if any of the terms met with disapproval, he forbade the envoys to come back to him’] Liv. 9.4.5 (Samnite Pontius giving the Romans an ‘offer’ they couldn’t refuse after the Caudine Forks).

43 E.g., at ego huc declinabam nec inuitus Cic. Leg. 1.57 (Atticus politely acceding to the course of the discussion), itaque feci non inuitus Amic. 4 (Cicero has gladly obliged Atticus’ request that he write on friendship); vs. Cicero’s account of his fraught letting go of tutor Dionysius at the outbreak of civil war (me nihil ab eo ipso inuito contendere … dimisi a me, ut magistrum Ciceronum non libenter, ut hominem ingratum non inuitus [‘that I would not insist on anything from him against his will… I dismissed him from my service, as a teacher for the boys with regret, but as an ungrateful person gladly] Att. 8.10), or his convoluted overtures of attempted kindness to Appius Claudius (non inuita Minerua Fam. 3.1.1). Aeneas’ famous use of the adjective must not be in the background here as well (inuitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi [‘unwillingly, queen, did I withdraw from your shore’] A. 6.460). We mustn’t forget that it was a ‘grudging’ Domitian (inuito… Caesare 1.3) who had stripped Florus of his crown; cf. Hudson (2023) 20 (/p.12) and n.58.

44 [‘ … (as a result of his failure in the campaign against the Astures and Cantabri, Augustus) was completely at a loss. And, falling ill because of fatigue and worry, he withdrew to Tarraco and remained there in poor health’] Dio 53.25.7.

45 Sun Ra, ‘Springtime Again’ (Sleeping Beauty, 1979).

46 liceat ergo tandem fatigato hic aliquando subcumbere 2.5 ~ non uaco somno sed succumbo, et oculos uigilia fatigatos cadentesque in opere detineo [‘I don’t have time for sleep, but I give in to it, and when my eyes are worn out with staying awake and drooping, I keep them at their work’] Sen. Ep. 8.1 (no day of Seneca’s ending with otium); igitur diu multumque fatigati tandem in castellum perueniunt Sal. Jug. 94.3 (Marius’ men at long last, by the luck of the intrepid Ligurian, sneaking into the besieged fortress); and, interestingly, Servius on Io: cui Iuno inmisit oestrum, quo toto orbe [~ nisi toto orbe peragrato 2.4] fatigata tandem aliquando uenit ad Aegyptum, et illic in Isim conuersa est [‘Juno set a gadfly on her; plagued by it the world over, she at last came to Egypt and there transformed into Isis’] ad G. 3.152.

47 Horace: uagus gubernator ~ mercator … uagus Ars 117; iam dicata pelagi deae prora penderet ~ me tabula sacer | uotiua paries indicat uuida | suspendisse potenti | uestimenta maris deo [‘the sacred wall with its votive offering declares that I have dedicated my dripping clothes to the mighty god of the sea’] Carm. 1.5.13–16; Virgil: prora pependit A. 5.206, sacris in postibus arma pendent 7.183 (these latter two listed by Eussner (1888) 80). Once again, Florus’ ‘vehiculation’ is odd: plaustrum soluere is otherwise unattested. See Hudson (2021) 68–126 on Roman literary plaustra.

48 quousque uagabimur? 2.5 ~ aside from the obvious quousque tandem abutere…? Cic. Catil. 1.1, ‘quousque eadem?’ Sen. Dial 9 (De tranq. anim.).2.15, concluding the section on the restless relocation (see above).

49 an semper hospites erimus? 2.5 ~ an semper haec agitatio permanebit? Dial. 5 (De Ira 3).27.4 (otherwise an extremely rare beginning of a non-disjunctive question); I cannot not hear Semper ego auditor tantum? Juv. 1.1. For the question type, cf. the Baetican’s an pater ab Africa subministrat? 3.1.

50 ferae cubile prospiciunt 2.5 ~ aues… et quietum [~ omnium quae ad quietem eliguntur gratissima est 2.6] requirunt ad pariendum locum et cubilia sibi nidosque construunt [‘birds … both seek out a quiet place to lay eggs and build beds and nests for themselves’] Cic. Nat. 2.129. A coincidence of language at Luc. 4.603 ad somnos non terga ferae praebere cubile | adsuerunt [‘For sleep no beast-skins would make a bed’] (Antaeus sleeping on the ground); aues senescunt in nido 2.5 ~ tu nidum seruas Hor. Ep. 1.10.6 (Fuscus the city-lover)?

51 Damsté (1912) 146: ‘auctor fragmenti nusquam Romam tamquam patriam suam significare solet, sed disertis verbis utramque distinguit’ and proposes conjectures to split Romam and patriam; but this is intrinsic to Florus’ version of himself speaking with many aims at once.

52 [‘or if the fates deny return’; ‘but if the fates deny this permission to my wife, I have resolved not to return: rejoice in the death of two’]. Also liceat mihi paupere cultu | securo cara coniuge posse frui [Tib.] 3.3.31–2 (~ liceat ergo tandem fatigato hic aliquando subcumbere 2.5). Cf. sed si fata negent, quam foedum ac triste reuerti! Stat. Ach. 1.549 (Ulysses vowing to seek out and bring back Achilles—if he fails, Calchas is no true seer).

53 ~ hoc mihi contingat Tib. 1.1.49; at mihi contingat patrios celebrare Penates 1.3.33 (vs. the foreign cult of Isis). For an elucidating note on the spelling saltim (vs. saltem), see Rocchi (2020a) 105.

54 ~ calamitatum mollimentum consuetudinem inuenit [sc. natura], cito in familiaritatem [~ familiaritate continua 2.6] grauissima adducens Sen. Dial. (de tranq. an.) 9.10.2 (adduced by Rossbach (1909) 2767–8); as Rocchi (2020a) 105 notes, Florus’ style is close to consuetudinis magna uis est Cic. Tusc. 2.40.

55 [‘so great is habit in the tender stages’]. Eussner (1888) 81 also remembered (t)his Virgil. Thomas (1988) ad loc. notes the ‘epigrammatic effect’ of the words of 272. Florus could almost be lecturing on the importance of grammatical ‘usage’ as in Quint. Inst. 1.6.16.

56 I’m straining here (studiously), but I can’t help but catch Quintilian’s quasi-‘continuous’ refrain of continuity in familiaritate continua 2.6 (e.g., continua exercitatione 1. pr.27, continuum laborem 1.3.6, continua exercitatio 2.17.12, continua … meditatio 11.2.28, continua lectio 11.2.34—and the ideal tool of oratio continua [passim] is just one concrete result).

57 C. Caesar eloquentia et spiritu, ecce iam et consulatu adleuebatur [‘Caesar was distinguished by his eloquence and energy, and soon, lo and behold, by his consulship’]. Also typical of [Quint.]; a twofer in Petronius; five times in Senecan tragedies.

58 meretrix tantisper blanditur, dum illud quod rapiat uidet Plaut. Men. 193 (Peniculus on Erotium’s interim coaxing—until she can make out what to lift; cf. 626); blandiri is a favorite of [Quint.]’s declamatory world (i.e., even the declaimer’s portrayed figures declaim).

59 si quid credis mihi 2.6 ~ o, si quid credis mihi, carior | omnibus Trist. 5.4.23–4 (Ovid’s letter itself addresses his most faithful friend back in Rome (cf. the concluding plea, fac modo, constanter profugum tueare: quod ille [sc. Naso] | qui bene te nouit, non rogat, ipsa rogo [‘only see that you constantly protect the exile: what he who knows you well doesn’t ask, I ask’] 49–50; rather like Florus’); si quid credis mihi, intimos adfectus meos tibi cum maxime detego Sen. Ep. 96.2 (Seneca is revealing his deepest thoughts about enduring willingly).

60 [‘I heard many reports, when I was consul, about the extreme dangers to the state, I made many inquiries, I learned many details’]. Eussner (1888) 82 adduces the Homeric parallel to propose emending to multas cognoui. Florus, I suspect, is playing at challenging the longstanding Romano-Italian chauvinism exhibited (not without a wink) by, for instance, the opening of Varro’s Res Rusticae (uos, qui multas perambulastis terras, ecquam cultiorem Italia uidistis? [‘you, who have traversed many lands, have you seen any more cultivated than Italy?’] R. 1.2.3 ~ ciuitas… quae, si credis mihi qui multa cognoui, omnium quae ad quietem eliguntur gratissima est 2.6); on which see below.

61 quae ad quietem eliguntur gratissima est, cf. Cicero emphasizing the value of his portrait of lettered leisure at Rep. 1.8 ([the patria did not raise us without expecting some ‘nourishment’ from us in return and such that] tantum modo nostris ipsa commodis seruiens tutum perfugium otio nostro suppeditaret et tranquillum ad quietem locum [‘only serving our convenience it supplied our leisure with a safe refuge and a quiet place for repose’]). Florus’ ‘retreat’ will be a special, updated form of value, in his teaching.

62 Esp. Dion. Hal. Rhet. 1. 3, 5.5–6, Quint. Inst. 3.7.26–7, and (the later) Men. Rhet. 346–65; cf. Rocchi (2020a) 104.

63 [‘citizens are an honor to their cities as children are to parents; there are also encomia of places, such as that of Sicily in Cicero, in which we observe beauty and utility alike: beauty in the coasts, plains, and pleasant locales; utility in healthy and fertile regions; the founder has the role of the parent, and age gives much authority; there is also praise of monuments, the focus of which are grandeur, utility, and beauty: grandeur, for instance, in temples’] [Dion. Hal.] Ars. 1.3 is very close: ἐπιέναι χρὴ τὸν ἔπαινον τῆς πόλεωςπερὶ θέσεως αὐτῆς, περὶ γενέσεως· ἐν τίς κτίστης θεὸς ἥρως, καὶ εἴ τι ἔχεις περὶ αὐτοῦ εἰπεῖν· … ὅσα περὶ κόσμου, οἷον ἱερῶνεἰ δὲ δὴ καὶ μῦθος εἴη λεγόμενός τις περὶ τῆς πόλεως, οὕτω μὲν ἂν καὶ πολλὴν γλυκύτητα ἔχοι λόγος. [‘you should pursue praise of the city … about its location, about its origin, including its founding god or hero, and whatever else you can say about him … anything about its decoration such as temples … lastly if there is any tale told about the city, the speech would thus gain a great deal of charm’] (cf. Florus sweetly rounding off his mini-panegyric with the Europa story, 2.9); but at 5.5–6 he offers some more locally oriented details: [praise of the city, such as] περὶ παιδείας τῶν ἐνοικούντων [~ 3.6–7] … ἔτι οὗπερ ἂν κτίστου, ἀναγκαῖον εἰπεῖν, ἐάν τε θεὸς ἐάν τε ἥρως , εἴτοὖν τῶν ἀρχαίων τις εἴτοὖν τῶν ἔναγχος γεγενημένων βασιλέων [‘emperors’]. οἷον κἂν μύθους τινὰς ἔχωμεν προσόντας τῇ πόλει, μηδὲ τούτους παραλιπεῖν [~ 2.9] … κἂν εἴ τινας τιμὰς ἔχοιμεν παρὰ βασιλέων, μηδὲ ταύτας παραλιπεῖν [~ Caesaris uexilla, quae portat, triumphos, unde nomen accepit 2.8] [‘about the education of its citizens … further you should speak of whoever the founder is, whether god or hero, or one of the ancient or recent emperors. For instance, if we have any tales relating to the city, we shouldn’t pass over those … and if we have any honors granted by the emperors, we shouldn’t leave those out’] … cf. also 6, the size of the speaker’s reputation should be used to his speech’s advantage.

64 Cf. Vell. Pat. 2.119.4 on Varus’ lieutenant Numonius Vala who fundamentally breaks with his past upstanding conduct (cetera quietus ac probus) to set a new precedent for ignominy by deserting his infantry at Teutoburg Forest. For tarde quidem cf. Cic. Att. 11.22.2 and Petr. 9.3.

65 Verweij (2015) 86 draws attention to G. 2.136–76 (on which see Thomas (1988) ad loc.); Var. R. 1.2.3–7, the speeches of Agrius and Fundanius in praise of Italian cultivation, is also in the background (see Spencer (2010) 73 on the subsumption of local diversity in the latter laudes Italiae). Florus’ own similarly over-the-top panegyric of Campania (Epit. 1.11.3–6) shows his portrait’s transportability (and, of course, his own). Particulariter 2.7 is so particularly Plinian, that Florus may be ever so slightly evoking a ‘paradoxographical’ mode.

66 Florus’ curious phraseology (notam ueris totus annus imitatur) seems even to wink at his adaptation of the image. His Campania does not ‘spring’ eternal, but still twice per year: nihil mollius caelo: denique bis floribus uernat [‘nothing is softer than its climate: in short, spring with its flowers comes twice a year’] Epit. 1.11.3. Peirano Garrison (2020) 238 also notes uer ubi longum Hor. Carm. 2.6.17 and uer erat aeternum Ov. Met. 1.107. I take Florace as ironically updating one conceit of the ode, a preference for Italian retreats ahead of older, more prestigious Greek ones: sleepy Tarraco can surely hold its own against much-praised Italy (the poem reveals its influence otherwise: the theme of roving 2.6.1–4 and sit modo lasso maris et uiarum 7 [~ taedio maris 2.3]; unde [sc. Tibure] si Parcae prohibent iniquae [~ si fata Romam negant patriam]; ille terrarum [around Tarentum] mihi praeter omnis | angulus ridet 13–14 [~ ciuitas ipsa nobis blanditur, quae… omnium quae ad quietem eliguntur gratissima est 2.6]).

67 Indeed, it is a feature of the aurea aetas of Met. 1.89–112. In the bluntly concrete terms of Servius (ad G. 2.149), hic ver adsidvvm uerna temperies; nam uer adsiduum esse non potest. We might see Florus’ own indirect articulation (‘the whole year mimics spring’s stamp’) as reflecting this scholastic approach to explicating Virgil.

68 Interleaved chiasmus accentuates the point: campis … collibus ~ uites … areas; uites adfectat ~ comparat areas. campis et … collibus reflects a ubiquitous pairing: already campos collesque Lucil. 1278; a Lucretian pattern, 4.389, 5.784, 1373; Hor. Ep. 1.3.5; but for terra fertilis campis et magis collibus compare Columella (atque etiam significandum est ex omnibus, quae terra progeneret, plura campo magis quam colle… laetari [‘and it must also be made clear that of all the earth produces, more things flourish in plains than in hills’] 2.2.3), as if Florus is pretending to challenge a truism with his portrait of Tarraco’s preternatural fecundity. This is a poetic prose, as the pointed area makes clear (~ Hor. Carm. 1.1.10).

69 As it happens, Tarraconese wines holding their own against Italian ones is almost a topos. Jal (1967) 119 notes Plin. Nat. 14.71 (elegantia uero Tarraconensia [sc. uina] … conferuntur Italiae primis), Sil. 3.369–70 (Tarraco … | uitifera et Latio tantum cessura Lyaeo), 15.177 (hospita Tarraco Baccho), Mart. 13.118 (Tarraco, Campano tantum cessura Lyaeo | haec genuit Tuscis aemula uina cadis); cf. Rocchi (2020a) 110.

70 See above on nec inuitus 2.1. Also compare his own (mock-) modest acknowledgment of the Baetican’s praises (me … uerecunde agnoscentem 1.5).

71 In this recommendation letter to Brutus, he gets to the bottom line: fortem uirum, Brute, tibi commendo, frugi hominem et, si quid ad rem pertinent, etiam locupletem [‘I recommend to you a brave man, Brutus, a person of good character and, if it is at all relevant, of means’] (ad Brut. 16.2).

72 Ritschl (1832) 310 first made the identification, positing that in attested abbreviations for Tarraco, CIVTT, V stood for Victrix (since attested as Vrbs in inscriptions and coinage), and the first T for Triumphalis; cf. Richardson (2000) 430. Florus’ parsing of Tarraco’s credentials verges on the pedantic, or scholastic (unde (et) nomen accepit: Plin. Nat. 2.60, 70, 24.152, 168, 25.69, 36.55; Serv. A. 2.305, 6.824, 12.120).

73 I.e., the primary sense of peregrina nobilitas is ‘nobility having come here from abroad’, but ‘nobility foreign to Rome’, an ‘exotic, non-Roman nobility’, cannot be ruled out. Tarraco is and isn’t ‘abroad’. Florus’ ‘bifocal’ perspective once more.

74 It’s all here in this city panegyric, look: uides… uides… hic… saltim hic… et ecce iam… adest… quippe si ueterea templa respicias, hic… hic… nostrum litus.

75 For the work itself as a ‘temple dialogue’, a genre first attested by Var. R., see Hirzel (1895) 66 and cf. Hudson (2023) 11 (/p.7).

76 quippe si uetera templa respicias ~ quippe si duces eius [sc. belli] inspicias … si exercitus … si auxilia etc. etc. Epit. 2.13.5–6 (the Civil War as a World War); V. Max. 7.6.2; [Quint.] maior. 16.2 (if you consider everything rightly, friendship is what is what binds all these people to you); V. Max. 9.7.1—so perhaps a vaguely ‘declamatory’ pose; but cf. Suet. Jul. 68.4, Tac. Ann. si cetera respicias. lasciuit ~ per te perque tuam, uector lasciue, puellam, | ad cenam Selium, tu, rogo, taure, uoca [‘in your name, frisky mount, and your girl’s, I beg you, bull, invite Selius to dinner’] Mart. 2.14.17–18 (Selius wanders all over the city in search of dinner invitations: may Jupiter (together with Europa) offer him one—i.e., put him out of his misery; the joke is that the first, and last, place in the list of locales Selius visits is the Porticus Europae).

77 Eussner (1888) 81 catches the first play and the second parallel, but skirts the latter joke (‘[A. 5.163], wo litus ama jedoch in anderem Sinne steht’).

78 Richardson (2000) 445–6 is onto this.

79 [‘but you (parents) lay down severe laws, that the teacher be flawless in his grammar, that he read the histories, know all the authors like the back of his hand … require that he mold their tender characters as one shapes a face out of wax with his thumb’] Juv. 7.229–3, 237–8; Braund (1988) 67 on these tall orders.

80 [‘Send your pupils home: will you take, you windbag, as much for shutting up as you get paid for shouting?’] Mart. 9.68.11–12, addressed to the noisy school-teacher (ludi scelerate magister, | inuisum pueris uirginibusque caput 1–2) who keeps Martial and his neighbors awake.

81 [‘Tarraco is the wealthiest of the coastal cities on these shores’] Mela 2.90.

82 statiminquit 3.1 ~ statim Trimalchio ‘hoc [the declamation Agamemnon recounts having delivered]’ inquit ‘si factum est, controuersia non est; si factum non est, nihil est.’ [‘right away Trimalchio said, “if this happened, it’s not a made-up case; if it didn’t, then it’s nothing! ”’] Petr. 48.6 (cf. statim Trimalchio ‘…’ inquit… 68.2; 78.3).

83 hic cum ego respirassem, statim Baeticus also nicely captures the deus ex machina feel of the Baetican’s very appearance (‘After I paused here to collect myself, immediately the Baetican…’).

84 in te … incidit ~ used in spirited rhetoric, e.g., Cic. Ver. 2.2.139 (alas, the fifth-year census meet up with Verres’ praetorship!); o acerbam mihi, iudices, memoriam temporis illius et loci, cum hic in me incidit, cum complexus est conspersitque lacrimis nec loqui prae maerore potuit! Planc. 99 (P. coming to meet the exiled Cicero in Dyrrachium); nisi incidisset in te Plin. Pan. 8.5 (the seditio would have been ruinous—had it not bumped into you, T.).

85 beatam ciuitatem ~ Epit. 1.34 (Numantia); neque enim ciuitas in seditione beata esse potest Cic. Fin. 1.58; teneriore mihi animo uidebare, sicut omnes fere qui uitam ingenuam in beata ciuitate et in libera re publica uiximus Fam. 5.21.3. Cf. Mela’s notice of the provincial center’s affluence, cited above.

86 Weirdly, quem ad modum tamen turns up in… Maecianus Assis distributio 64, a technical account of weights and measures; te prosequitur ~ Hor. Carm. 4.5.33 (local everyman plying Augustus with prayers and libations like a deity; see the subtle reading of Oliensis (1998) 116–8); quid hic agitur? tweaks (especially Plautine-Terentian) quid agitur?

87 hac ipsa peregrinatione ~ habet etiam multum iucunditatis soli caelique mutatio, ipsaque illa peregrinatio inter sua (sc. praedia) Plin. Ep. 3.19.4.

88 in reditu est mihi ~ tota, ut ita dicam, in reditu est Sen. Dial. 10 (De brev. vit.).11.2; solum mihi Laurentinum meum in reditu. nihil quidem ibi possideo praeter tectum et hortum statimque harenas, solum tamen mihi in reditu. ibi enim plurimum scribo… Plin. Ep. 4.6.1–2; see Gibson and Morello (2012) 185 on the villa’s ‘productivity’.

89 For Cicero in reditu typically means ‘on [his physical] return’, e.g., Att. 6.2.6, Fam. 4.14.3, 15.21.2.

90 o rem indignissimam ~ o rem indignam! Att. 13.35+36.1; the exclamation (o rem …!) is above all a Ciceronian thing: Quinct. 80; S. Rosc. 141; Ver. 2.4.146; Caec. 73; Dom. 104, Planc. 99, Phil. 2.63, 13.10; letters passim (esp. o rem miseram!). Cf. Florus’ facinus indignum, Epit. 1.32.1 (sack of Corinth) and 2.9.28 (Sulla in Sulmo), an exclamation with its own history (already, with o, in Plaut. Men. 1004, Ter. Phor. 613, Hec. 376, Ad. 173, 447, 669 and beyond).

91 quam aequo fers istud animo ~ quis aequo animo fert in principe gentium populo bella seruorum? Epit. 2.7. (the ‘outrage’ of the Bellum Servile); aequiore animo utcumque ferrem, si plebei duces aut, si nobiles, mali saltem ducatum sceleri praebuissent 2.9.2 (F. would take the outrage of the Marian civil war more calmly if its leaders were men of low repute); Liv. pr. 7 (such is Rome’s glory in war that subjugated peoples of the world endure the Mars myth with as much equanimity as rule itself), 24.16.13 (those punished for cowardice will bear their penalty with equanimity), 28.29.5; Sen. Ep. 55.10 (we must bear our separation calmly [since we can be apart even together]), 91.11 (we should patiently endure the destruction of cities); V. Max. 3.2.15 (Porcia testing for Brutus how calmly she can bear suicide); 2.5.4 (the senate cannot abide striking tibicines).

92 ~ sedere namque in scholis auditioni operatos gratius erat quam ire per solitudines et quaerere herbas alias aliis diebus anni Plin. Nat. 26.11 (doctors grew to prefer hearing lectures about herbs to sniffing them out in the field); alii pigritiae adrogantioris, qui, subito fronte conficta inmissaque barba, ueluti despexissent oratoria praecepta paulum aliquid sederunt in scholis philosophorum ut deinde in publico tristes, domi dissoluti captarent auctoritatem contemptu ceterorum: philosophia enim simulari potest, eloquentia non potest Quint. 12.3.12 (some affectedly take up philosophy as a way of shirking oratory’s honorable calling—for shame).

93 [‘he was allowed to transfer to Sicily, where he is now teaching and getting his revenge on fortune in his lecture preambles’] Plin. Ep. 4.11.14, from his sensational account (Audistine … ?) of the ex-praetor Valerius Licinianus, banished by Domitian for alleged incest and reduced to work as a rhetor in Sicily (nunc eo decidit, ut exsul de senator, rhetore de oratore fieret [‘now he has fallen so low as to be an exile from a senator and a rhetoric teacher from an orator’] 1). With praefationibus Pliny refers back to Licinianus’ bitter ‘opening statement’ in his defense (2): itaque ipse in praefatione dixit dolenter et grauiter: ‘quos tibi, Fortuna, ludos facis? facis ex senatoribus professores, ex professoribus senatores.’ [‘So in his intro he said sorrowfully and gravely, “What games are you playing, Fortune? You make teachers out of senators, senators out of teachers.”’] Florus’ own profession of his vocation has been reduced, alas, to this ‘praefatio (3.3–8…). Pliny’s letter is noted by Jal (1967) 120 and Rocchi (2020a) 126. Cf. Juv. 7.197–8, on Fortune’s changeable identity: si Fortuna uolet, fies de rhetore consul, | si uolet haec eadem, fiet de consule rhetor [‘if Fortune wishes, you’ll go from teacher to consul; if She wishes, he’ll go from consul to teacher’] (probably Quintilian >< Licinianus), and Man. 4.46 (on Marius).

94 [‘For he had read certain old books with a grammar-teacher, when the memory of the ancient writers was still strong there and had not yet entirely faded as at Rome’] Suet. Gram. 24.1: M. Valerius Probus, of Berytus, who reverted to a career as a grammaticus after an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a centurionate.

95 Leg. 1.5. Florus gestures at turning his speechmaking into an autofictional ‘history’ (rather than studding a chronicle with set-piece speeches).

96 in hunc modum: apparently used by Sallust to flag a speech Hist. 1.76 (in hunc modum disseruit); in hunc modum maxime adhortatus Liv. 34.13.10, is in hunc modum locutus fertur 37.45.11; cum in hunc modum increparentur V. Max. 2.9.1, in hunc modum egit 3.7.1d, in hunc modum interpellare sustinuit 6.2.11; in hunc modum locutus fertur Tac. Ag. 29.4, Hist. 1.15 and passim; ad quam illius interrogationem ~ ad hanc interrogationem tuam et non respondere, uereor, ne superbum sit, et uera respondere ne nimis acerbum audienti tibi uideatur [‘not to reply to this questioning of yours, I fear, would be arrogant and to answer it truthfully would seem too harsh as you listened to it’] Liv. 42.40.2 (Marcius’ truth-talking reply to Perseus) [phrasing otherwise unparalleled].

97 Non miror: Sen. Con. 2.6.3, 7.2.11, 7.5.3; [Quint.] Min. 263.3 (never starting a sentence in Cicero); perhaps with a colloquial flavor (cf. Plaut. Merc. 784, Mart. 1.83.2, 3.64.5, 6.69.1, 9.10.1, 11.54.6; also, Aug. ap. Macr. 2.4.16). Florus again makes a show of extending himself to his interlocutor as he begins (~ mihi quoque ipsi hoc idem mirum uideri solet 1.8 ~ non miror <te> eius nunc esse persuasionis, qua et ipse quoque…).

98 <te> esse nunc esse persuasionis 3.3 ~ ne quis me tamen laborare putet miserae persuasionis errore [Quint.] Mai. 4.1 (a son defending his plan to commit suicide after an astrologer’s prediction that he will commit parricide); pudet persuasionis! 5.1 (speech of a father defending his attempt to raise money to ransom his two captured sons); de arrogantissimae persuasionis hominibus queri totius generis humani nomine uolo 8.9 (mother railing against her husband’s decision to allow doctors to inspect the entrails of one of two ailing twins in order to save the other); siue enim, iudices, malignitas est persuasionis humanae formam uacantem uocare meretricem 15.2 (in defense of a young woman who gave her lover a ‘hate’ potion); me quidem, pater, et infelicis huius persuasionis simplicitatem si quis interroget, nec a te parricidium fieri posse credo nisi meo ueneno 17.7 (son—accused of parricide by father when discovered mixing a drug with which he claims he planned suicide—to his father).

99 Perhaps the exemplarity of Nepos’ Atticus became an inspiration: numquam suscepti negotii eum pertaesum est Att. 15.2 (~ tandem aliquando pulchritudo suscepti operis apparuit 3.4).

100 The closest we get to diu laboraui (‘I have long suffered’) is mihi non arbitror diu laborandum ut ostendam Quint. 2.3.2 (he doesn’t have to belabor the point that good habits of speaking must be worked in at an early age, since vices are a pain to remove, once they have set in); but Florus must have known its etymology (< dies), as visible in the phrase diu noctuque (‘day and night’), used with archaizing effect by Sallust (Jug. 38.3, 44.5), and notably Hist. 4.34: diu noctuque laborare (Serv. G. 1.287).

101 ut nusquam uiuere putarem hominem miseriorem ~ qui me Thebis alter uiuit miserior? Plaut. Amph. 1046, nec me miserior femina est neque ulla uideatur magis Amph. 1060, quis homo est me hominum miserior? Capt. 540, homo me miserior nullust aeque, opinor Merc. 335, miserior mulier me nec fiet, nec fuit Merc. 700, eheu, qui uiuit me mortalis miserior? Rud. 520, quis me est mortalis miserior qui uiuat alter hodie…? 1281, neque me quisquamst miserior Ter. Hau. 224, nemost miserior me 263, nullam pol credo mulierem me miseriorem uiuere Hec. 566; and then, e.g.: quis me miserior umquam fuit? Cic. Att. 11.2.3 (March [?] 48, from Epirus, recounting dowry woes and possibility of house confiscation), ego autem hoc miserior sum quam tu, quae es miserrima Fam. 14.3.1 (to Tullia et al., 58, from Dyrrachium; sc. while they both suffer from his exile, it is his fault); quis porro me uno miserior est? Sen. Con. 7.1.1; cf. [Quint.] Mai. 9.1.

102 e.g., praeceptum est Suburano, ut uacaret finitam causam retractanti, si quid noui adferret Plin. Ep. 7.6.10 (case to be re-heard after an appeal).

103 Note that Florus has now reverted to the standard Ciceronian pattern of an idea occurring to one engaged in extended thought (… tandem aliquando… apparuit). See above, on Capienti mihi … et … recreanti obuiam subito quidam fuere (1.1), and Hudson (2023) 5–6; cf. Griset (1952) 134n.6.

104 fortunis et ceteris uitae laboribus ~ sic tu sapiens finire memento | tristitiam uitaeque labores | molli, Plance, mero [‘so you, Plancus, be wise and remember to put an end to sadness and life’s labors with mellow wine’] Hor. Carm. 1.7.17–19; Cic. Arch. 30: an uero tam parui animi uideamur esse omnes qui in re publica atque in his uitae periculis laboribusque uersamur ut, cum usque ad extremum spatium nullum tranquillum atque otiosum spiritum duxerimus, nobiscum simul moritura omnia arbitremur? [‘or are we to appear so small-minded—we who suffer the dangers and toils of life in politics—as to think that, when for the whole span of our existence we never pause to take a calm and relaxed breath, everything we’ve done will die with us?’].

105 matutine pater, seu Iane libentius audis, | unde homines operum primos uitaeque labores | instituunt—sic dis placitum—, tu carminis esto | principium [‘Morning Father, or if you’d rather, “Janus,” from whom men start the first labors of life and work—such is the gods’ will—be my song’s beginning’] S. 2.6.20–23.

106 Compare Florus’ own verses on the true rarity of patrons (and poets): consules fiunt quotannis et novi proconsules: | solus aut rex aut poeta non quotannis nascitur. (anth. 252R); Hardie (1983) 49.

107 pulchritudo suscepti operis ~ ego illud unum affirmo, et utilitatem operis et pulchritudinem saeculo tuo esse dignissimam Plin. Ep. 10.37.3 (on an aqueduct in Nicomedia; perhaps Florus could be contracted for some Trajanic teaching work?); propter pulchritudinem operis a libidinoso cuiusdam complexu parum tutam [‘on account of the beauty of the work, hardly safe from a lustful embrace’] V. Max. 8.11. ext. 4 (Praxiteles’ Aphrodite on Cnidos!); Gel. 15.31.3 (painting). The usage and these passages noted by Rocchi (2020a) 131.

108 tandem aliquando pulchritudo suscepti operis apparuit ~ sero tandem documentis apparuit ostentum illud Augusti potentiam portendisse Suet. Aug. 94.2 (wall of Velitrae struck by lightning said to portend that a citizen from there would rule the world one day—people of Velitrae long misreading the signs).

109 sortemque meam … cum fortunis et ceteris uitae laboribus conferenti ~ sortem bellorum in Asia gestorum ab hoc ipso iuuene cum sua conferentem Liv. 9.19.11 (part of Livy’s famous hypothetical on Romans vs. Alexander the Great: the latter would have wished he was fighting Persae and Indi (rather than Romans), admitting that his earlier campaigns had been against ‘women’—just as his own uncle, Alexander I of Epirus had quipped, comparing war in Asia (fighting under his nephew) with that against Romans (cf. Gel. 17.21.33); see Oakley (2005) 184–261 on the digression.

110 ergo nunc (‘now therefore’) is already colloquial in Plautus (Most. 1119 and Terence (Haut. 993); cf. Hor. S. 2.5.101; Petr. Sat. 46.7; used in a particular question pattern in the Senecas: quare ergo nunc non moreris? Con. 7.3.10; quid ergo nunc te hortor ut facias? Ep. 110.11 (by contrast nunc ergo almost always begins the sentence); note however the phrase’s frequency in Servius (A. 1.243, 2.32, 3.68, 284, 551, 4.345, 384, 386, 5.85, 7.320, 9.358, 446, 12.259, Ecl. 9.15, G. 2.168), as if Florus is, professorially, delivering his explication. Otherwise, scire te ergo nunc oportet ~ scire itaque oportet Sen. Dial. 5.10.4, sed scire te oportet Ben. 2.24.4; scire igitur oportet Celsus 2.18.2.

111 nullum manus pretium, nullam procurationem, nullum honorem 3.5 ~ cum audiat nullum facinus, nullam audaciam, nullam uim in iudicium uocari Cic. Cael. 1 (no legitimate cause for this case—and for interrupting the jurors’ leisure); nullas sibi inimicitias, nullam uim, nullos impetus, nullum uitae discrimen uitandum umquam putauit [sc. Sestius] Red. Sen. 20 (no obstacle could prevent Sestius from his task of aiding Cicero’s recall). Catul. 8.5, 37.12, 87.1–4? Nempe si is rare: Cic. Quinct 82, Sen. Con. 2.2.4, Sen. Phoen. 523, Tac. Dial. 9.3; the use of cedo si is hardly paralleled: not quite Cato orat. 236 (cedo, si uos in eo loco essetis, quid aliud fecissetis?) or Plaut. Bacch. 1066 (cedo, si necesse est).

112 si mihi maximus imp<erator> u<i>tem, id est centum homines regendos, tradidisset 3.5 ~ dux bonus huic centum commisit uite regendos [‘to this man the skilled general has entrusted one hundred soldiers to be commanded with the (centurion’s) vine staff’] Ov. Ars 3.527 (noted by Rocchi (2020a) 135). Thomé (1881) 3 notes the repeated recurrence of id est in the Epitome. On uitis, cf. uitem posce libello Juv. 14.193 (instead of old-fashioned maxims, today’s dads urge their sons to petition for a centurionate). uitem … tradidisset otherwise of Bacchus’ divine gift to humans: tradidit huic uitem pendentem frondibus ulmi Ov. Fast. 3.411; Liber pater uinum et uitem et uuam tradidisse Hyg. Astr. 2.4.2.

113 maximus imperator ~ postquam ergo maximus imperator uictoria Daciam proxime reserauit [‘therefore after our most excellent emperor seized Dacia victoriously’] Balb. grom. (Expos. et Ratio Omn. Formarum) p. 93La (Domitian? Or Trajan? see Campbell (2000) xxxix); reor equidem aliter quam inuocato numine maximi imperatoris nullum opusculum meum coepisse [‘I do not believe any of my works has begun without the invocation of the divine will of our mighty emperor’] Stat. Silv. 4.pr. (Domitian); literal: omni ope adnisi sunt, ut maximum ea tempestate imperatorem M. Valerium Coruum consulem quartum facerent [‘they made every effort to elect the greatest commander of that time, M. Valerius Corvus, to his fourth consulship’] Liv. 8.16.4; quaerenti Africano quem fuisse maximum imperatorem Hannibal crederet, respondisse Alexandrum Macedonum regem [‘when Africanus asked Hannibal whom he believed was the greatest commander, he answered, Alexander king of Macedon’] 35.14.6; roughly so, non rumperetur [sc. Cordus] supra cineres Cn. Pompei constitui Seianum et in monumentis maximi imperatoris consecrari perfidum militem? [‘would Cordus not have burst at (a statue of) Sejanus being erected over Pompey’s ashes, at a treacherous soldier being dedicated within the memorial of the greatest general?’] Sen. Dial. 6.22.5.

114 non mediocris honor habitus mihi uidetur 3.5 ~ non mediocris adhibenda mihi est cura ut Cic. Fam. 10.11.1 (Plancus to C.); quae res mihi non mediocrem consolationem attulit uolo tibi commemorare Fam. 4.5.4 (Sulpicius Rufus to C.); in me consolando non mediocrem ipse animi dolorem adhibuisti 4.6.1 (Cicero’s polite reply); at mihi cura | non mediocris inest Hor. S. 2.4.94.

115 docentur praestigias inhonestas, cum cinaedulis et sambuca psalterioque eunt in ludum histrionum, discunt cantare, quae maiores nostri ingenuis probro ducier uoluerunt: eunt, inquam, in ludum saltatorium inter cinaedos uirgines puerique ingenui! [‘they are taught disgraceful tricks, they go to acting school with perverts and with harps and zithers, they learn to sing things which our ancestors wished to be considered scandalous: they go to dancing school, I say, freeborn girls and boys, among perverts!’] Scip. Min. orat. 30 (Malcovati).

116 ingenui pueri cum meritoriis Cic. Phil 2.105 (in Varro’s commandeered house!), pueri ingenui abripiuntur 3.31 (on campaign, recklessly); cf. Hor. Carm. 3.24.54.

117 Apparently already in Cato orat. 92 (quis homo … pulchrius purgat <aut magnificius?> [‘who … purifies (or ‘excuses’) more beautifully or more magnificently?’]).

118 barbaris efferatisque pectoribus 3.7 ~ linguam tantum Graecorum habent sicut speciem hominum: moribus ritibusque efferatioribus quam ulli barbari, immo quam immanes beluae uiuunt [‘they have only the tongue of Greeks just as they have only the appearance of men: they live by customs and practices wilder than any barbarians, in fact than any savage beasts’] Liv. 34.24.4 (the Achaean praetor Aristaenus appealing to Titus Quinctius and the Romans, for protection from the uncivilized Aetolians); humanitatis dulcedo etiam in <ef>ferata barbarorum ingenia penetrat [‘the sweetness of humanity makes its way even into the fierce natures of barbarians’] V. Max. 5.1. ext. 6 (Hannibal’s clemency in allowing Roman commanders to be buried is an exception that supports the notion of ‘barbarian’ wildness); tu uidelicet efferatae barbariae immanitate truculentior habenas Romani imperii, quas princeps parensque noster [i.e. Tiberius] salutari dextera continet, capere potuisti? [‘could you, more savage than the brutality of wild barbarism, have taken the reins of the Roman empire which our emperor and father holds with his beneficial hand’] 9.11. ext. 4 (Sejanus, relegated to the ‘foreign’ section of dicta improba aut facta scelerata).

119 pectoribus … mitibus 3.7 ~ mitioris natura pectoris sum Sen. Con. 7.1.12; mihi mite pectus [Quint.] Mai. 9.16.

120 quam regium est sedere a suggestu praecipientem bonos mores et sacrarum studium litterarum… 3.8 ~ quid tam porro regium, tam liberale, tam munificum quam opem ferre supplicibus [‘and what is so regal, so generous, so bountiful as offering aid to those in need’] Cic. de Orat. 1.32 (with parallels adduced by Leeman and Pinkster (1981) ad loc.); Stangl (1906) 313.

121 bone iuppiter, quam imperatorium, quam regium est ~ bone iuppiter, quam auide, quam fortiter uincla nostra tractauit! [‘good lord, how eagerly, how courageously he handled our bonds!’] [Quint.] Mai. 16.9.

122 With a backward-looking tinge, as in, e.g., Sal. Cat. 9.1 (igitur domi militiaeque boni mores colebantur [‘therefore good conduct was cultivated at home and on campaign’]); cf. deinde boni mores et modestiores et ad capienda praecepta molliores <pueros reddunt> [‘then good morals make children more modest and more prone to receiving instruction’] Cic. Hort. 90 (Grilli=Non. p.254m). The notion of ‘sacred’ literature is more recent, and nicely bridges the orator-poeta gulf with Florus (even in this last, broken-off sentence, most likely): exigitur enim iam ab oratore etiam poeticus decor, non Acci aut Pacuui ueterno inquinatus, sed ex Horati et Vergili et Lucani sacrario prolatus [‘for poetic adornment is now called for also in the orator, not one tarnished by the grunginess of Accius and Pacuvius, but brought out from the shrine of Horace, Virgil, and Lucan’] Tac. Dial. 20.5; for the connection of this passage to Quint. 10.1.92 (nos tamen sacra litterarum colentis feres, Caesar [‘but you will put up with me, Caesar, as a devotee of the shrine of literature’, i.e., if I include your epic poetry in this canon]), see Mayer (2001) ad loc.

123 ~ tenerae nimis | mentes asperioribus | formandae studiis [‘minds which are too tender must be shaped by rougher studies’] Hor. Carm. 3.24.52–4 (cf. Rocchi (2020a) 147, who also adduces Hor Ep. 2.1.126–31; also Dahlmann (1965) 20–21); sunt enim multa uitia, de quibus dixi cum in quadam primi libri parte puerorum ora formarem [‘for there are many faults, about which I spoke when I was describing in a section of the first book how to shape the speech of children’] Quint. 11.3.31 (neither passage about poetry specifically); cf. the Juv. 7 passage quoted above.

124 Norden (1966) 567n.3, on the uniqueness of an ancient ‘Schulmeister’ describing his occupation so affectionately (though with the qualification: ‘Aber er ist schon “Oberlehrer”, doziert von seinem “Podium” über Dichter, Redner, Historiker.’)

125 Hardie (2003) 145.

126 Cf. SHA Hadr. 16.3, quoted above.

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Jared Hudson, « Tour de Florus: the Schoolmaster is Abroad (Vergilius orator an poeta 2–3) »Dictynna [En ligne], 22 | 2025, mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2025, consulté le 14 avril 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/dictynna/4045 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15a28

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Jared Hudson

Harvard University

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