Utopia Antiqua: Readings of the Golden Age and Decline at Rome

241 Pages·2007·1.334 MB·English

by  Rhiannon Evans

UTOPIA ANTIQUA
Utopia Antiqua is a fresh look at conceptions of utopia and dystopia in an-
cient Rome through narratives of the Golden Age and decline in literature
of the late Republic and imperial period (100 BCE – 150 CE).
Through the lens of utopian theory, Rhiannon Evans looks at the ways
that Roman authors, such as Virgil, Ovid and Tacitus, use and reinvent
Greek myths of the ages, considering them in their historical and artistic
context.
With the infamous ‘Golden Age’ behind them, writers in ancient Rome
became highly concerned about their culture’s moral and cultural decline.
This book explores the meanings of the ‘Iron Age’ and dystopia for Roman
authors, as well as the reasons they give for this decline, and the possibilities
for a renewed Age of Gold. As well as considering a wide range of literary
genres, this highly readable study also considers Roman art, architecture,
numismatics and landscapes.
Using case studies, such as the notoriously decadent ex-general, Lucullus,
Evans considers the cultural effects of importing luxury goods and the way
that it gives rise to a rhetoric of Roman decline. She also looks at the ideali-
sation of farmers, soldiers and even primitive barbarians as parallels to the
Golden Race and role models for Romans who had become ashamed of
their own extravagance and corruption.
Rhiannon Evans is Lecturer at the Centre for Classics and Archaeology at
the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include Roman geogra-
phy and ethnography, and Roman imperial literature and culture.

UTOPIA ANTIQUA
Readings of the Golden Age
and Decline at Rome
Rhiannon Evans
First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2008 Rhiannon Evans
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Evans, Rhiannon.
Utopia antiqua : readings of the golden age and decline at Rome /
Rhiannon Evans.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Utopias in literature. 2. Utopias—Rome. I. Title.
HX806.E94 2008
335’.020937—dc22
2007022560
ISBN 0-203-93740-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–27127–4 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–93740–6 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–27127–1 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–93740–2 (ebk)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction: Finding Utopia 1
1 Utopia: Landscape and Symbol 8
2 Myths of the Ages and Decline 31
3 Lucullan Marble and the Morality of Building 93
4 Rust: Enemy of the State 130
Notes 189
Bibliography 213
Index 231
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book was written in many different parts of the world, over several
journeys to the UK and USA, and at every stage, I have been fortunate to
find welcoming friends and family who have made my progress a little more
utopian by providing both house-space and good company. In particular, I
want to thank Marilyn Ashe-Jones, Tricia Gilson, Peter Huxley, Amy Richlin
and Anne Vasey for their generosity and congeniality. The idea for this book
came about in my last few months at the University of Southern California,
and there Tony Boyle and Amy Richlin were ever candid advisors, and in-
strumental in guiding my ideas. At the Universities of Tasmania and
Melbourne, where this book was largely written, my thoughts on Roman
literature and culture have been informed by conversations with my col-
leagues, Peter Davis and Parshia Lee-Stecum, while Frank Sear helped to
clarify some of the issues of marble and architecture. I would like to thank
participants at the Pacific Rim Latin Literature Seminar held at the State
University of New York, at Buffalo in 2001, for comments on an early ver-
sion of Chapter 1, and those at the Ancient World Seminar at the University
of Melbourne for similar help with Chapter 3. This book was begun and
completed during study leaves granted to me by the University of Tasmania
and the University of Melbourne and I gratefully acknowledge their sup-
port. The Department of Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles
gave me a pleasant home for the final stages of my research.
I would like to extend my deepest thanks to Sarah Hyslop, Siân McGirvan
and Amy Richlin, who generously read extracts of this book and gave me
timely and helpful feedback. My research assistant Estelle Strazdins was
tireless and meticulous in her efforts. Anne Vasey, with her typical good
humour, has been talking utopia with me for many years. My thanks also
go to those at Routledge who have been accommodating throughout: to
Richard Stoneman for his encouragement at the beginning of this project,
and to Amy Laurens for her help in seeing it through to the end. Parts of
Chapter 1 of this book have already been published in the journal Arethusa,
and I would like to thank the editor of Arethusa, Martha Malamud, and
Routledge for organizing permission for republication.
vi
INTRODUCTION: FINDING
UTOPIA
Utopia is that which is in contradiction with reality.
Albert Camus, Between Hell and Reason
Utopianism and the Golden Age
Utopia is a fraught term: it is often interpreted as a naïve and outmoded
concept in modern political theory, especially when it is broadly associated
with communism or totalitarianism (Bobbio, 1989: passim; Kloppenberg,
1996: 124–6), and, as a single vision, utopia fits uneasily alongside post-
modern pluralism. The term was invented in the early modern period with
Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), yet is rooted in ancient Greek philosophical
writings.1 Even the definition of the term is contentious, although usually
critics seek to separate ancient Greco-Roman works, particularly those con-
nected with the past, or ‘Golden Age’ nostalgia, from representations of
structured revolutionary social orders. One defining characteristic of utopia
is its topicality, for, as was the case with More’s work, most utopian authors
set out to critique their own society and throw it into relief by describing a
world in which specific institutions, inequalities or vices do not exist. And it
is this specificity which marks the utopian out, whereas Golden Age narra-
tives tend to depict a more generalized state of simplicity, usually in the re-
mote past. While More’s Utopia and those written in this tradition have
often been viewed as texts which offer a critical perspective on the society
which produced them,2 it is easy to see narratives of the Golden Age and
faraway paradise as tales which simply reproduce a nostalgic desire for easy
primitivism.3 Moses Finley made the distinction between utopia, which is
not attainable, but does exist as a goal, and is specific in its proposals, as
opposed to the ‘various primitivistic images’ of what he calls the ‘Garden of
Eden’ types (1967: 6). So, for Finley, utopias have a political and social
agenda, whereas Golden Age narratives seem to exist outside of, or before,
contemporary society. Both, however, depend upon the erasure of conflict,
as Finley acknowledges:
There is a sense in which a Garden of Eden shares a quality of criti-
cism with Utopia, specifically in the idea, explicit or implicit, that a
1
UTOPIA ANTIQUA
world without evil is not even conceivable, let alone possible, so
long as the two chief roots of evil are present, namely, strife over
wealth and property and strife arising from sexual drives.
1967: 6–7
This points to one of the important shared qualities of utopian and Golden
Age narratives: neither is imaginable unless the binary opposite of discord
and vice has already been identified. The question of why society produces
so much criminality and immorality lies at the foundation of the oldest ac-
count we have of the Golden Age, in Hesiod’s Works and Days, which be-
gins by speculating on the nature of ÒEri~ (‘Strife’, WD 11–26), and proceeds
to describe the arrival of conflict in the wake of the Golden Race (WD
121–201).4
The distinction is firmly maintained by one of the most significant writers
on utopias in recent years, Krishan Kumar, who sees utopia as a product of
the revolution in thought brought about by the Renaissance and Reformation
(1991: 33, 51), and dismisses the ancient utopian texts discussed by John
Ferguson in his 1975 Utopias of the Classical World as ‘more like Baron
Munchausen stories than the realistic fiction of the utopia’ (Kumar, 1991:
38; and 1987: 2–9).5 On the other hand utopia has also been interpreted as
an essential facet of humanity, stemming from the human ‘perception of
possibilities’, a recognition that the future is modifiable (Quarta, 1996:
158). Quarta is attempting to save utopia from irrelevance by claiming that
its meaning is far wider than communism, and reclassifying homo sapiens as
homo utopicus; but this universalizes the utopian impulse (basically reduc-
ing it to ‘hope’) to the point where it is a generalized trope and lacks cultural
specificity.6 Ruth Levitas refocuses this debate, concentrating upon ‘desire’
as the central element in the utopian impulse: the desire for a different life,
although it commonly covers areas such as a lack of violence or heavy la-
bour, will be formulated in such a way that it reveals particular tensions and
concerns. As Levitas claims, ‘we learn a lot about the experience of living
under any set of conditions by reflecting upon the desires which those condi-
tions generate and yet leave unfulfilled. For that is the space which utopia
occupies’ (1990: 8). This definition encourages us to see all narratives of
idealization in their historical context, and it is within this framework that
Golden Age descriptions of the past, as well as fictional and geographical
fantasy worlds, can encompass the utopian as much as prescriptive and rad-
ically alternative systems of existence. So although Roman narratives of the
ideal state of existence may not be utopias in the strictest terms, as they do
not lay out a systematic model of society, it is also a mistake to see them
merely as cross-cultural remnants of primitive yearning, near-identical to all
other Golden Age/Garden of Eden tales. In contrast, looking at the utopian
as ‘the repository of desire’ (Levitas, 1990: 199) allows for the investigation
of Golden Age narratives as they are specifically mobilized, rather than
2
INTRODUCTION: FINDING UTOPIA
seeing them as repetitive examples of a universal trope.7 Their function is
historically determined, and the evocation of Golden Age mythology is par-
ticularly important in harnessing the political and cultural potential of the
utopian. The Golden Age in Roman texts transforms Hesiodic and Hellenistic
models in ways which are telling in their particular context, and texts which
deal with the return of the age or its decline to the present are especially re-
vealing: this is dealt with primarily in Chapter 2. In Chapter 1, the textual
and visual infiltration of Golden Age, millennial and faraway landscapes
into Rome is investigated, along with the historical implications of such
phenomena.
The words ‘utopian’ and ‘dystopian’ are therefore used in this book not
to indicate the post-Morean genre at the centre of Utopian Studies, but in
the broader sense of the ideal, liveable community, and its hellish opposite.
I am, however, conscious that this may be perceived as a misuse of the terms
by many cultural theorists, and I do think that there are distinctions to be
made between texts which deal with the Golden Age (or paradisal) and uto-
pia. Yet the expressions of desire and discontent which pervade Roman
texts make use of aspects of both forms. The Golden Age and the ‘fall’ is
particularly pertinent in Chapter 1, in which the idea of paradise is dis-
cussed with particular regard to landscape, and Chapter 2, which deals with
the myth of the ages in Roman literature. In Chapters 3 and 4, utopia (or
more prevalently dystopia) informs Roman narratives concerning society’s
moral and cultural collapse, which is mirrored by writers’ anxieties about
their physical environment. Utopia is relevant to depictions and projections
of idealized communities, particularly those which involve the city, the urbs,
which for Romans could only mean one city, that of Rome itself.
The city as utopia
Despite the exclusion of the pre-modern from utopia proper, antiquity is in-
voked as the origin of the idea that utopia is a fundamentally urban phe-
nomenon: Lewis Mumford, who believed that there had been a utopian
origin to the formation of the city in Greece and the Near East, claimed that
‘the city itself was transmogrified into an ideal form – a glimpse of eternal
order, a visible heaven on earth, a seat of the life abundant – in other words,
utopia’ (Mumford, 1966: 13). Mumford’s connection of the city and the
utopian is one which resonates with the history of town planning. Although
their own city had grown in an apparently haphazard way over centuries,
Romans built many of their colonies to a much-repeated grid plan,8 which
suggests that, for them, it formed the ideal, in terms of practicality and lay-
out. It created a version of Rome, complete with forum and Capitol, comi-
tium and basilica, which lacked the seemingly random nature of the original
city, creating a kind of utopia, or at least a unified vision of a town. In these
colonies, the economic, religious and entertainment zones had their set
3