Thanks to the loss of all of Livy's later books, we can form little idea of his treatment of the rise of Augustus to supremacy; but nothing suggests that he expressed hostility to the new settlement. Velleius Paterculus, to be discussed below, is too deeply devoted to Tiberius to reveal any reservations, and Curtius Rufus, writing his history of Alexander the Great apparently under Claudius, steers well clear of all but the most conventional reference to the contemporary world. Of the other main writers who recorded the reigns of the various Julio-Claudians within a few years of their deaths, Aufidius Bassus, Cluvius Rufus, Fabius Rusticus and the elder Pliny, we can infer little except that they provided a steady annalistic record of events and a great deal of highly hostile anecdotage to be used by Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio. There is no trace of any sort of republican sentiment, except in Cremutius Cordus, of whom we know at least that his remarks about the republican heroes, Brutus and Cassius, offended Tiberius enough to lead to prosecution and the ineffectual destruction of his works, which survived to gain a reputation for freedom of expression, and the surprising approval of Caligula (Tac. Ann. iv.34—5; Suet. Calig. 16.1). Titus Labienus, an outspoken orator and historian, shared the same fortune, without apparently expressing any positive republican views (Sen. Controv. x pr. 5—8).
In practice, the 'Stoic opposition', while confined to a small group of interrelated families, appears to have been sentimental and ineffectual, with Stoic language often playing no more significant a part than much of the traditional Christian language does in the literature of recent centuries in Britain. But Stoicism is still prominent in Latin literature of the Silver Age which follows Augustus. The Stoic concepts which feature in Manilius' astronomical poem are a feeble attempt to match the glowing Epicureanism of Lucretius, without any sort of credibility or cogency. More importance can be attached to expressions of hostility to Nero, as dominus rather than rex, found in Seneca and his nephew Lucan. Seneca produced a manifesto in favour of the just ruler in the De
15 The word 'Stoic', like the ancient literary terms 'lyric', 'tragic' and 'satiric', must be recognized as possessing a very precise sense in antiquity, deriving from the philosophical school of Zeno (335265 b.c.) in the Stoa Poikile (painted portico) in Athens, with its rigid doctrines of absolute virtue and duty, of acceptance of divine destiny combined with involvement in public life. In particular, the Roman Stoics expressed opposition to tyranny and admired Caesar's opponents, Cato and M. Brutus.
Clementia, which he wrote for his pupil Nero early in his reign; and the same ideas appear scattered through his other works, particularly in the tragedies, where tyrants from Greek myth are employed presumably to cast light upon the contemporary situation, as some imitator of Seneca did more overtly in the play Octavia, written not long after Nero's death, with Nero as the stock tyrant and Seneca as the sage counselling restraint and justice. The whole tradition about Seneca has been bedevilled from the first by the paradox of the declared Stoic preacher, albeit of the new liberal type, who advocated the simple life but possessed immense wealth, which he was alleged to have increased by highly questionable financial practices, and who acted as tutor and then as minister to the unteachable and irresponsible Nero.
Seneca was driven to his death in a.d. 65 for his supposed complicity in the 'Pisonian conspiracy', if not its leadership. This plot certainly aimed at the assassination of the emperor (in the best tradition of the Athenian and republican tyrannicides) and at his replacement either by the unimpressive aristocrat Piso or by the elderly and ailing Seneca himself. So little was achieved that its true details cannot be discovered, if the conspirators indeed shared any common aim beyond that of murder.16 To judge from Seneca's literary utterances, tyranny was abominable enough to warrant such an action, although he never actually recommends it. The link between philosophical theory and effective political action remains tenuous.
More certainly prominent in the same conspiracy was Lucan, described by his biographer as virtually the standard-bearer of the affair. His motive appears to have been that Stoic opposition to tyranny which features with increasing force in the books of his Bellum Civile, after the gross flattery of Nero with which the epic opens, closely matched by the panegyrics of contemporary poets and by Seneca himself in his Apocolo- cyntosis a few years earlier. Despite the claim in 1.3 3-45 that the civil war was justified as leading to the eventual accession of Caesar's descendant Nero, and despite the evident fascination of Caesar as the natural hero in comparison with the ineffectual Pompey, the poem turns into a clear indictment of Caesajrism, with such phrases as 'Caesareae domus series' (iv.823) among the holders of bloody power pointing unmistakably at the latest of the line. But despite this ideological motive, there is reason to suppose that Lucan was primarily inspired by personal rancour from his loss of favour with Nero after he had been so rash as to surpass his patron in poetic skill. In the light of what follows, the flattery in the first book is a prime candidate to be considered from its very excess to be ironical in intention, even before the open break with Nero had taken place.
16 Griffin 1984 (c 352), esp. 166-70.
It is difficult to know how much consistency we should look for in such a poet, or whether he was capable of any degree of subtlety. To judge by the evidence of Tacitus (Ann. xv.56-7), supported by Suetonius, Lucan's Stoicism did not establish his fortitude; for he turned state's evidence at the first threat and incriminated his own mother and several others, before recovering his philosophical principles and committing suicide in the tradition of the republican martyrs and his uncle Seneca. The biography by Vacca ignores all this story of cowardice; while Stadus, in his commemorative poem {Silv. 11.7), contrives to say nothing at all about the circumstances of Lucan's condemnation and death. There is incidentally no reference to his relationship to Stoics in any of these sources. The ancient biography of Persius, on the other hand, makes much of his training in Stoicism and his links with prominent exponents under Nero: he was much more deeply imbued with Stoic ideas and language than Lucan. But neither these ideological opponents of the establishment nor those most inclined to support the imperial system appear to have been able to exploit their convictions to the major advantage of their works, in prose or in verse. Only the two greatest of the Augustan poets found valid inspiration in some of the emperor's ideas and made a significant contribution to the new political order; but their reservations were always striking enough, as we have noted at the start of this section, to ensure that their independence never degenerated into subservience.
III. RHETORIC AND ESCAPISM
In a world where political comment was perilous and profitless and speech-making had no real political function, the development of rhetoric was at once natural and paradoxical. Cicero had not only provided a model for oratory; he had produced a series of treatises which could be the basis of training in all the necessary techniques. The establishment of rhetorical schools for young men of means is more or less contemporary with the rise of the Augustan age, as professionals took over where Cicero had left off in his coaching of aspirant politicians. Much of our knowledge of this training is contained in the Controversiae and Suasoriae, collections published by the elder Seneca during the reign of Tiberius of the rhetorical exercises performed by teachers and their pupils and preserved as examples of the craft. Stock themes were provided, whether of hypothetical legal problems or of situations from myth or history, which the student was required to develop in his own way, so as to catch and hold the attention of the listening audience and give them something to remember. Originality of expression was all- important, no matter how trite the material; and great value was attached to the sententia as the pithy and memorable phrase, often containing paradox and seldom concerned with real life or with the actual problems to be encountered in the courts or the Senate. Many listeners besides Petronius {Sat. 1—2) and Juvenal (1.15-17, vn.i 50—4) must have suffered from the crambe repetita of the same old material, whether served up by the inept or by the intolerably ingenious. But rhetorical training seems to have been more or less compulsory for any young man who wanted to make his way in public life and for many who had no such ambidon.