The Elegies of Maximianus

Maximianus, A. M. Juster, A. M. Juster

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780812294644
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Colecciones literarias antiguas y clásicas

Not much can be known about the life of Maximianus, who has been called "the last of the Roman poets, " beyond what can be inferred from his poetry. He was most likely a native of Tuscany, probably lived until the middle of the sixth century, and, at an advanced age, went as a diplomat to the emperor's court at Constantinople.A. M. Juster has translated the complete elegies of Maximianus faithfully but not literally, resulting in texts that work beautifully as poetry in English. Replicating the feel of the original Latin verse, he alternates iambic hexameter and pentameter in couplets and imitates Maximianus's pronounced internal rhyme, alliteration, and assonance. The first elegy is the longest and establishes the voice of the speaker: a querulous old man, full of the indignities of aging, which he contrasts with the vigor and prestige he enjoyed in his youth. The second elegy similarly focuses on the contrast between past happiness and present misery but, this time, for the specific experience of a long-term relationship. The third through fifth elegies depict episodes from the poet's amatory career at different stages of his life, from inexperienced youth to impotent old man. The last poem concludes with a desire for the release of death and, together with the first, form a coherent frame for the collection.This comprehensive volume includes an introduction by renowned classicist Michael Roberts, a translation of the elegies with the Latin text on facing pages, the first English translation of an additional six poems attributed to Maximianus, an appendix of Latin and Middle English imitative verse that illustrates Maximianus's long reception in the Middle Ages, several related texts, and the first commentary in English on the poems since 1900. The imminence of death and the sadness of growing old that form the principal themes of the elegies signal not only the end of pagan culture and its joy in living but also the turn from a classical to a medieval sensibility in Late Antiquity.

Commentary

Title: Most references to this text call them Elegiae, a default title in the absence of evidence of the original title. Disputable manuscript evidence suggests that Maximianus called these poems Nugae. See Ellis (1884a) at 8–9; Gagliardi (1988) at 28; but see Butrica (2005) at 563.

Around 1200 the French grammarian Alexander de Villa Dei criticized what he called nugis of Maximianus in lines 3–4 and 25 of his popular grammar book, Doctrinale puerorum. See Copeland and Sluiter at 576–577; see also Ellis (1884a) at 8; d’Andeli (1914) at 28–29.

Iamque legent pueri pro nugis Maximiani

Quae veteres sociis nolebant pandere caris (3–4)

Proderit ista tamen plus nugis Maximiani (25)

This title, embraced by Schneider (2003) (albeit with parentheses signaling tentativeness), suggests that Maximianus placed himself in the tradition of non-epic and sexually explicit poets, such as Martial and Catullus, who popularized nugae as part of the Roman literary vocabulary. Horace’s Art of Poetry and the Satires of both Juvenal and Persius included nugae as a description of that kind of poetry, although scholars have disagreed sharply about the best way to translate the term.

Without attempting to settle all the issues surrounding translation of nugae, I caution readers against interpreting it as a frothy word, which it became in the nineteenth century when it became associated with the word “bagatelle.” To import that interpretation into classical usage is a mistake. For Martial and Catullus, the slangy nugae was a broad and supple term that indicated that their poems did not aspire to the heights of epic poetry. See Copley, “Catullus, c. I” at 29–31 in Gaisser (2007); Galán Vioque (2002) at 104. The label of nugae for a collection of poems did not necessarily mean that it included frivolities; it also could have described poems that dealt with issues of everyday life—seriously or humorously. “Details” would be one apt translation.

Later manuscripts also carry the titles De senectute and Proverbia Maximiani, see Ellis (1884a) at 8–9, but there is no reason to believe that these titles reflect anything more than a scribe’s sincere longing for a title. In the absence of evidence of the author’s intention, I retain the conventional “Elegies,” although these poems are as much satires in the tradition of Horace as they are love elegies in the tradition of Ovid, Propertius, and Tibullus.

Structure: I retain the division of the text into six elegies despite doubt about Maximianus’ intent; the manuscripts usually have no divisions. See Wasyl (2011) at 113–120; Schneider (2001) at 445–464; Goldlust (2011) at 157–158; Spaltenstein (1977) at 81–101; Fo (1986) at 9–21; Cupaiuolo (1997) at 388–389; Franzoi (2011) at 160–162. Some recent editors present the text without divisions; Prada (1919) presents elegy 1 as the first book and the rest of the text as a second book.

Date of the author and the text: The term senectus (“old age”) had a different sense in an era when people typically lived a hard and short life. See generally Parkin (2003) at 15–35. In Consolatio philosophiae 1.1.8 Boethius refers to himself as a senis (“old man”) even though he was probably in his mid-forties when he wrote the line. Maximianus refers to his own serior aetas (“older age”) at 4.55; the common assumption that Maximianus was in his sixties or seventies when he wrote these elegies is probably wrong. My best guess, based primarily on internal evidence of the manuscripts, is that he was in his mid-to-late fifties when he completed these elegies around 539 AD, a period shortly after Cassiodorus Variae and Boethius Consolatio philosophiae became available—and just before Belisarius reclaimed Ravenna and the remnants of the Roman Empire for Justinian in May 540.

My dating of this text assumes the following: (a) Elegy 3 is accurate in indicating Maximianus was younger, by perhaps three to five years, than Boethius, who was born in 480 AD, cf. Arcaz Pozo (2011) at 16, but see Bertini (1981) at 273–283 (arguing for a birth date around 495); (b) Maximianus probably did not complete these elegies until after he read Cassiodorus Variae, which did not circulate until around 538 but which might have been available to a select few earlier, cf. Bjornlie (2009) at 149; (c) Maximianus probably did not complete these elegies after 540 AD because he refers to the Ravenna/Constantinople division of power in elegy 5 without noting Justinian’s final conquest in 540; (d) Maximianus is the likely author of the Panegyric to Theodahad and other poems associated with Theodahad in the Appendix Maximiani, thus the diplomatic service mentioned in the Elegies most likely occurred during Theodohad’s brief reign from 534 to 536 AD; (e) Maximianus was probably the addressee of Cassiodorus’ letter to Maximianus in the Variae regarding the restoration of historic buildings in Rome, which means that Maximianus must have achieved a certain professional stature between the time that Cassiodorus started government service in 507 and the death of Theoderic in 526 (see note to 2.45–50 discussing Spaltenstein’s point that Maximianus echoes Cassiodorus’ letter to Maximianus, an observation that bolsters the argument that Maximianus was a real individual, not a pseudonym or a fiction), but see Boano (1949) at 208; and (f) the elegies had to be completed no later than 548 or 549 (and realistically at least several years earlier) in order to influence Corippus Iohannis. See Mastandrea (2003–2004) at 327; Boano (1949) at 200–204; Anastasi (1951) at 47–66.

My best guess is that Maximianus completed these elegies around 539 AD just as the last Ostrogoth holdouts in Italy were being defeated by Justinian. The Plague of Justinian brought Yersinia pestis to Ravenna and Rome around 543 AD and wiped out about one-third of their populations; it is the most likely date of Maximianus’ death, though it is highly speculative. That speculation is strengthened by the fact that nothing in the elegies (or the Appendix Maximiani) mentions an event after 540 AD. Moreover, the text does not seem to include vocabulary or phrasing that emerged after 540 AD.

Two recent analyses are unduly confident that Maximianus remained in Constantinople after finishing his diplomatic assignment of elegy 5. See Vitiello (2014) at 92–93; Mastandrea in “Linee per una biografia ipoetica di Massimiano” in Franzoi and Spinazzè at 28. In their defense, though, Justinian did send one of his key functionaries, Athanasius, to meet with Theodahad in 535 to negotiate an end to hostilities. It is likely that Athanasius met Maximianus during these negotiations if Maximianus was indeed close to Theodahad, as the Appendix Maximiani and elegy 5 suggest. Corippus, the first poet to incorporate phrases of Maximianus into his own poetry, was a subordinate of Athanasius in North Africa who subsequently moved to Constantinople. A plausible explanation for the improbable survival of Maximianus’ poetry (given that it is not a Christian work and no mention of it survives from his lifetime) is that Corippus encountered Maximianus or an intimate of Maximianus through Athanasius (or otherwise) in Constantinople, and through that encounter obtained a copy of the elegies. If that hypothesis explains transmission, it increases the probability that Maximianus lived comparatively peacefully in Constantinople during Justinian’s conquest of Italy.

Elegy 1

1.1 Webster (1900) argues at 59–60 that aemula (“Jealous”) has “a tinge of the late Latin meaning, invida” and thus cessas is oxymoronic with aemula as well as properare.” The term aemula, in fact, suggests a softer, less angry characterization than invida. Cf. Prudentius Cathemerinon 10.101–102 (iam nulla deinde senectus / frontis decus invida carpet). Spaltenstein (1983) at 80 has only one citation, Virgil Aeneid 5.415–416, that arguably supports his claim that aemula used with senectus was formulaic.

The phrase finem properare (“hastening the end”) appears to be original with Maximianus, although mortem properare appears in the poetry of Virgil, Tibullus, and other Roman poets. Tyson (1996) at 50, Öberg (1999) at 184, Franzoi (2011) at 163, and Goldlust at 126 note the parallel of properata . . . senectus in Boethius Consolatio philosophiae 1.1.1.5.

1.2 Webster correctly notes at 60 that tarda (“slowly”—the adjective is used here as adverb) is a standard epithet for senectus (“old age”). Cf. Horace Sermones 2.2.88, Ovid Tristia 4.7.23, Tibullus 2.2.19; Navarro Antolín (1996) at 438 (“tardus alludes to the slow, laborious walk of the elderly”). Tyson at 50 notes tarda in senectute appears as far back as Ennius. For variants of tarda, see Franzoi and Spinazzè at 127.

The phrase fesso corpore (“weary body”) is common and perhaps an echo of Virgil Aeneid 4.522–523 (fessa . . . corpora). Öberg at 184 notes the similar effeto corpore in Boethius Consolatio philosophiae 1.1.1.10. Augustine in In Ioannis evangelium 7.19.26 uses this phrase in a line (in corpore fessi et incurve senis mortuae sunt vires) that also includes the uncommon term incurva used by Maximianus later in this elegy. Cf. note to 1.261.

1.3 The phrase tali de carcere (“from such a prison”) could foreshadow Maximianus’ conversation with Boethius in elegy 3, both for evoking the setting of Consolatio philosophiae and for its Neoplatonic image of the soul imprisoned by the body. Cf. Goldlust at 126 (who overreaches by claiming that this image is Neoplatonic “sans doute”); cf. Agozzino (1970) at 121. The prison of the body is also a favorite image of other Christian authors. See, e.g., Ambrose Expositio evangelii secundam Lucam 2.59 (corp...