Living among Wolves, Acting Like a Wolf: Lucilius’ Attacks on Lupus

Abstract

What we know as Book One of the thirty books of poetry of Gaius Lucilius (148 BCE-103 BCE), 1 the inventor of Roman verse satire, contained, or perhaps entirely consisted of, a trial of a Roman, named Lupus. 2 The trial seems to have taken place in front of the gods arranged as if they were the Senate, making this episode a Concilium deorum. 3 The Lupus on trial was probably Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Lupus, consul in 156 BCE, censor in 147, and maybe 1 See Herbert-Brown 1999 for these dates. Scholars agree that chronologically Lucilius' Books Twenty-six to Thirty (in mixed metres) appeared before Books One to Twenty (in hexameters), but Book Thirty seems to contain only hexameters: this difficulty is insoluble.Michelfeit 1965, 128 concludes his discussion of the date of the Concilium deorum by positing that Book Thirty appeared as a single book.2 See for instance Servius on Aen. 10.104: ACCIPITE ERGO ANIMIS totus hic locus de primo Lucilii translatus est libro, ubi indicuntur dii habere concilium et agere primo de interitu Lupi cuiusdam [ducis in republica], postea sententias dicere ('THEREFORE TAKE TO HEART This entire section is transferred from the first book of Lucilius, where the gods are shown holding a council and first discussing the death of a certain Lupus, afterwards stating their verdicts'). I accept the arguments of Murgia 1970 for the excision of ducis in republica.3 Lactantius, in his introduction to Inst. 4.3.12, treats Concilium deorum as Book One's title.Recently Freudenburg 2015, 100-1 has read the Concilium as made up of speeches mimicking the pro-Hellenist Appius Claudius Pulcher and the severe Cato the Elder on opposite sides of the debate, presumably over Lupus, who might (as a senator) be thought to have been depicted in his element: see next note.2 princeps senatus in 131. 4 An analysis of what happened at the Concilium deorum is critical for the study of Roman satire because Lupus is typically regarded as Lucilius' most prominent target, one of the two who immediately come to mind when Horace and Persius consider their satirical predecessor (cf. Hor. Sat. 2.1.68; This tradition, of Lupus as Lucilius' main and most memorable target, comes about because of the intricacies of Lucilius' multivalent procedure in attacking him. We can uncover individual associations, in the specific words of Lucilius' account of the Concilium, that combine to produce a much sharper picture of the original which lay behind our sadly fragmentary material. Such identification helps to navigate and overcome in part the problem that Lucilius' poetry has mostly been preserved as individual lines quoted by later sources, such as grammarians and the dictionary of Republican vocabulary compiled by Nonius Marcellus. The upshot will be that we can better situate Lucilius' poetry in its historical and cultural context. 6 The primary aspects with which this article is concerned are philosophy and, to an even greater extent, satire's relationship with the law. The former, philosophy, is plausibly an issue in the Concili...