Cornell University Press

Chapter Title: THE LITERARY TRADITION AND ITS REFINEMENT

Book Title: The Jeweled Style

Book Subtitle: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity
Book Author(s): MICHAEL ROBERTS
Published by: Cornell University Press. (1989)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv5rf5pk.8

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2 • THE LITERARY TRADITION
AND ITS REFINEMENT

L ate antiquity is a period of continuity and

change, of transition and transmission. Its lit-
erature is the product of a tension between the
prestigious pagan masters, the social condi-
tions and aesthetic presuppositions peculiar to late antique culture,
and, at least in the case of Christian authors, the new conceptual
and ethical world of Christianity. 1 In the next two chapters, I shall
examine the first two of these elements, the literary tradition and
the distinctively late antique. Because the compositional pattern I
have identified is common to both pagan and Christian authors,
the final and specifically Christian element in the synthesis does not
need separate treatment, at least at this stage.
How did a taste for the densely textured play of repetition and
variation develop? The answer must be sought in the scholastic
traditions of grammar (especially the enarratio of the poets) and
rhetoric, which played a crucial role in shaping the literary taste of
late antiquity. The exercise of ecphrasis (descriptio, a word-picture
of a person, event, period, place, or condition2 ) provides a conven-

tThis division is derived from Jacques Fontaine, "Le melange des genres dans Ia
poesie de Prudence," in Forma Futuri: Studi in onore del Cardinale Michele Pellegrino
(Turin, 1975). 758-60 (=Etudes sur Ia poesie latine tardive d'Ausone aPrudence [Paris,
1980], 4-6), and "Unite et diversite du melange des genres et des tons chez quel-
ques ecrivains latins de Ia fm du IV siecle: Ausone, Ambroise, Ammien," in
Christianisme et formes litteraires de l'antiquite tardive en occident, Fondation Hardt,
Entretiens 23 (Vandoeuvres, 1977), 431 (=Etudes, 31).
2So, e.g., Priscian (sixth century, translation of the Progymnasmata attributed to
Hermogenes): "Fiunt autem descriptiones tam personarum quam rerum et tern-
porum et status et locorum et multorum aliorum" (Praeexercitamina 10; 558.25-26
Halm). Descriptions of works of art were a form of ecphrasis particularly popular

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 39

ient point of departure. It was a standard component of the curric-

ulum of preliminary exercises (progymnasmata/ praeexercitamina)
in which every educated Roman was trained. 3 The grammaticus
would introduce his pupils to descriptiones in the classical poets, 4 the
rhetor would set exercises in ecphrastic composition for his students
and instruct them in the characteristic compositional techniques.
The prime quality of the ecphrasis was "vividness" (enargeia, evi-
dentia), defmed in the Rhetorica ad Herennium as "when an event is
so described in words that the business seems to be enacted and the
subject to pass before our eyes, " 5 a definition that became canoni-
cal. In an ecphrasis the writer tried to tum his hearers I readers into
spectators. 6
How was this effect of visual immediacy to be achieved? Quin-

in the East (see Paul Friedlander, Johannes von Gaza, Paulus Silentarius, und Pro-
kopios von Gaza: Kunstbeschreibungenjustinianischer Zeit [Leipzig, 1912; reprint Hil-
desheim, 1969], 85), but the term covers any visually realized description. From
this point of view, G. Downey's article, "Ekphrasis," RAC 4 (1959), 921-44, is
incomplete.
3In the first century A.D., praeexercitamina might be taught by thegrammaticus or
the rhetor. Quintilian (1.9.6 and 2. 1. 1-13) complains about the appropriation of
what was properly the business of the rhetorical schools by grammatici. The
ecphrasis, as one of the more difficult exercises, was more suited to the rhetorical
school. For the progymnasmatic tradition, see Georg Reichel, Quaestiones Progym-
nasmaticae (Leipzig, 1909), and Michael Roberts, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Para-
phrase in Late Antiquity, ARCA, Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Mono-
graphs 16 (Liverpool, 1985), 5-28, 64-67.
4E.g., Servius identifies Virgil, Aen. 10.653-55, as a descriptio and compares
8.416ff.
SRhet. ad Her. 4.55.68, in Caplan's translation (slightly adapted). The Latin is
"demonstratio est cum ita verbis res exprimitur ut geri negotium et res ante oculos
esse videatur." The term evidentia is found in Cicero and in Quintilian. The former
also uses sub oculos subiectio. Enargeia seems to be the preferred technical term in
later authors. For a collection of references, see Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der
literarischen Rhetorik: Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschafi, 2 vols. (Munich,
1960), I:4Q0-401.
6So Nicolaus of Myra (fifth century), Progymnasmata (68. 11-12 Felten): tj [)£ (sc.
bu:pgams) :n:EtQci'tm -ftw'tas 'toils axouovms tgya~w-ftm. There is good reason to
believe that the Greek progymnasmatic treatises of late antiquity are reliable evi-
dence for Western practice. Jacques Fontaine, Isidore de Seville et Ia culture classique
dans l'Espagne Wisigothique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1959), 1:326-28, discussing the section
on progymnasmata in Isidore's Etymologiae, fmds evidence for a common Greco-
Larin tradition that is best represented in Latin by the scattered allusions in the
Institutio Oratoria. Cf. Quintilian 6.2.32, "tvagyEta, ... quae non tam dicere
videtur quam ostendere, et adfectus non aliter quam si rebus ipsis intersimus
sequentur."

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 40 The Jeweled Style

tilian, who discusses the quality of evidentia among figures of

speech (8.3.61-71 and 9.2.40-44), makes the essential point that
the subject is described "not as a whole, but in parts" (nee universa,
sed per partis, 9.2.40). In the Progymnasmata of the fifth-century
rhetorician Nicolaus of Myra, this procedure has become a defin-
ing characteristic of the ecphrasis: the ecphrasis recounts in parts
("ta xata J.LEQO~), the diegesis!narratio (a simpler preliminary ex-
ercise akin to the plot summary) as a whole (ta xa{}6A.ou).7 In his
fullest discussion of enargeia, Quintilian identifies two basic meth-
ods by which the effect is achieved. The first, "in which the whole
picture of the event is somehow represented in words" (8.3.63), 8
depends on the telling visual detail. The example he cites is Virgil's
description of a pair of boxers: constitit in digitos extemplo arrectus
uterque (Aen. 5.426, "each suddenly stood poised on tiptoe"). But it
is the second method, in which "the image we are trying to convey
is produced from a larger number of details" (8.3.66), 9 that shows
greatest affmities to the compositional techniques oflate antiquity.
Quintilian quotes a fragment from a lost speech of Cicero, the Pro
Gallio, a description of an extravagant banquet (convivium lux-
uriosum), to illustrate this method. With the first sentence supplied
by Aquila Romanus, 10 it reads:

Fit clamor, fit convicium mulierum, fit symphoniae cantus. Vid-

ebar videre alios intrantis, alios autem exeuntis, quosdam ex vino va-
cillantis, quosdam hesterna ex potatione oscitantis. Humus erat
inmunda, lutulenta vino, coronis languidulis et spinis cooperta
piscium.

There was shouting, the brawling of women, the music of players. I

seemed to see some men going in and others leaving, some unsteady

on
7 lha<pEQEt 1)£ xal xm:' txECvo tf)~ I>LlJyi)oEro~. ii IJ.EV ta xaMA.ou, ii 1>£ ta
xata j.l.tgo~ t!;Eta~EL (68. 19-20). The attribution of this chapter to Nicolaus is
doubtful (Felten, iii-vii).
8 "Est igitur unum genus, quo tota rerum imago quodam modo verbis deping-
itur."
9"Interim ex pluribus efficitur illa quam conamur exprimere facies."
lOA third-century rhetorician. The title, Pro Gallio, is also supplied by Aquila.
Aquila's text differs from Quintilian's in other minor respects. He also supplies an
additional sentence between oscitantis and Humus erat: "Versabatur inter hos Gallius
unguentis oblitus, redimitus coronis" (De figuris sententiarum et elocutionis 2;
23.16-17 Halm).

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 41

with wine, and some yawning from yesterday's drinking. The floor
was filthy, awash with wine and covered with wilting garlands and
the bones of fish.

Aquila calls this technique of detailed description leptologia, and

that is the term I adopt. 11 Each sentence of Cicero's description
contains an enumerative sequence: the sounds of the banquet
(clamor, convicium, cantus), the behavior of the banqueters (a series
of participles, arranged in two pairs, intrantif and exeuntis, vacillan-
tis and oscitantis-Cicero is describing a banquet of more than one
night's duration), the disorder of the room (inmunda, lutulenta,
cooperta-here inmunda sets the theme, which is then illustrated;
contrast clamor in the first sentence). Figures of parallelism rein-
force the regularity of sense; anaphora in sentences one and two,
homoeoteleuton in sentence two, varied by chiasmus in sentences
one and three. There is a marked preference for asyndeton and
short phrases-more commata than cola (following Longinus' def-
inition that a komma consists of two or three words). 12 The tech-
nique of splitting up a crowd scene into separate groups (alios ...
alios, quosdam ... quosdam) derives from epic tradition 13 and is one
of the most common and characteristic means of leptologia. Quin-
tilian's second example, the capture and sack of a city (8.3.67-69),
uses the same method, including the sequence aliorum . . . alii . . .
(8.3.68). It is important to create the impression ofexhaustivity; a
single word may imply all that is enumerated in a detailed descrip-
tion, but when a speaker wants to arouse the emotions, "to tell the
whole thing is less than to tell everything" (minus est tamen totum
dicere quam omnia, 8.3.69). 14

11Demetrius, Bloc. 4.209, uses the term UXQL[3oA.oy(a.

tZLonginus, Rhet. I, tm:Lv 'tO ~-tEv x6~-t~-ta ex {)uoCv M!;Eoov i] 'tQL<ilv. ( r. 309.20-2 I
Spengel). Quintilian's definition is a sense unit lacking a rhythmical clausula
(9.4. I22). The examples he gives conform to Longinus' definition, except that he
recognizes a single word sense unit as an incisum (= x6~-t~-ta). For further references,
see Lausberg, I:465-67.
13 Richard Heinze, Virgils epische Technik (Leipzig, I903), 348-50. Albert

Wifstrand, Von Kallimachos zu Nonnos: Metrisch-stilistische Untersuchungen zur

spiiteren griechischen Epik und zu verwandten Gedichtgattungen, Skriftner utgivna av
Vetenskaps-Societeten i Lund I6 (Lund, I933), I 50-54, notes the frequency of the
technique in Nonnus' Dionysiaca; he attributes its use to the influence of the
ecphrasis, as taught in the rhetorical schools.
14So Quintilian comments on his first example, Cicero's description of the

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 42 The jeweled Style

Quintilian describes the process of enumeration as "opening out

what had been contained in a single word" (aperias haec, quae verbo
uno inclusa erant, 8.3.68--the single word is, as it were, the title, or
part of the title, of the descriptio; in the case of the captured city
eversio [sc. urbis]). He gives no further instructions on how. this is to
be achieved, disapproving of the minute systematization practiced
by some of his contemporaries. 15 In fact, the Greek progym-
nasmatic treatises do contain hints to the student on how a subject
should be analyzed into its constituent parts. Ecphrases of events,
for instance, should be subdivided by time into past, present, and
future; 16 ecphrases of people should proceed from head to toe
(evidentia would be served by anatomical itemization in any se-
quence, though the logical progression aids visualization); 17 and
descriptions of places should proceed spatially, setting the subject
in the context of its surroundings. 18 These are little more than
general guidelines, but they convey something of the spirit in

convivium luxuriosum: "Quid plus videret qui intrasset?" (8.3.67). Demetrius, Eloc.
4. 209, is more emphatic: 1:0 yaQ EvaQYt; EJ(.EL £x m-o :n:av1:a ElQf)attm 1:a ouJ.I.f3a(-
vovta, xat f.LTJ :n:aQaAEAECq:>-ltm f.LTJl'ltv.
15 "Sed quoniam pluribus modis acdpi solet [sc. evidentia], non equidem in
omnis earn particulas secabo, quarum ambitiose a quibusdam numerus augetur"
(8.3.63). Quintilian's teachings here have much in common with the modern
theories of Philippe Hamon in his Introduction a !'analyse du descriptif(Paris, I98I).
Hamon (I40-4I) speaks of the possibility of a single-word summation (he calls it
"pantonym") of the content of a description and likens the procedure of"opening
out" the word to the declension of a grammatical paradigm-it is instead the
declension of a lexical stock (43-45). Hamon (54-55) also uses the analogy of a
grid or grille of the characteristic disposition of words in a description. Overall
there is a good deal of coincidence between Hamon's results and my own, despite
our differences in terminology and corpus of texts-Hamon works mainly with
the French nineteenth-century realist novel. Perrine Galand has already made a
start in applying Hamon's results to late antique texts in an article which brought
Hamon's book to my attention; "Les 'fleurs' de !'ecphrasis: Autour du rapt de
Proserpine (Ovide, Claudien, Politien)," Latomus 46 (I987), 87-I22.
t6Hermogenes, Prog. IO (22.I9-23.6 Rabe; cf. Theon, Prog. II; II9.I4-21
Spengel), Aphthonius, Prog. I2 (37- I I-I3 Rabe).
t7 Aphthonius, Prog. I2 (37-9-I I Rabe), Nicolaus, Prog. (69. I2-I7 Felten); cf.
Victorinus, Explanationes in Rhetoricam ... Ciceronis r. 8 (I 82. 19-2 I Halm).
18£x "tOW :ltEQLE)(.6V"twv xat Ev au"tot; u:n:aQJ(.6V"tWV, Aphthonius, Prog. I2
(37. I3-I4 Rabe). It is recommended that the seasons be described in the same way.
One would imagine places could also be described linearly, from left to right or
from right to left, just as a person is described "from fi~st to last," i.e., from head
to toe.

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 43

which a writer went about achieving leptologia. All three can be

illustrated from the collection of ecphrases attributed to Libanius: a
sea battle with events before the battle, the actual hostilities, the
withdrawal of the victors and the vanquished at night, and the
setting up of a trophy; Heracles in his lion skin, described from
head to foot; and a garden, in which the author's eye moves from
the rivers that flow from nearby mountains into the garden, to the
wall that surrounds it, to the trees inside it, to the spring at its
center. 19 One consequence of this was a preference for subjects that
lent themselves readily to such enumerative treatment, especially
those that were numerically quantifiable-hence the frequency of
passages on the four seasons or the four points of the compass in
the poetry of the empire. Such subjects came prepackaged and
were ideal for practicing the stylistic techniques of leptologia. 20 So
in Cyprianus Gallus' version of the Heptateuch, references to the
points of the compass are elaborated in the poetic text, even where
their biblical context receives summary treatment. 21
The Greek progymnasmatic tradition helps to fill out the pic-

t9These particular ecphrases are probably not by Libanius-so Foerster in his

edition ofLibanius' Progymnasmata 438-39. Sea battle: Libanius, Prog. I2.II.2-4
(489. I 5-490. I4 Foerster)-the sequence of events is exactly that prescribed in the
rhetorical handbooks; Heracles: I5.3-6 (500.12-501.13); a garden:'9.2-5 (485.Io-
486. I3).
20Points of the compass; Ovid, Met. I.6I-66; Seneca, Phaed. 285-89; Lucan
1.15-18, 10.48-5I; Statius, Silv. 3.3.96-97, 3·5.19-21, 4.3.136-38, 5.1.81-82,
5· 1.88-9I; Claudian, Fesc. ii. 36-40, C.M. 40. I3-I6; Prudentius, Psych. 830-33;
Cyprianus Gallus, G 464-65, N 27-30; Rutilius Namatianus 1.57-6o, 2.28-30;
Claudius Marius Victorius 2.447-49, 3.403-5; Sedulius, C.P. 5· 191-93; Sidonius,
C. 2.22o-22; Dracontius, L.D. 3.164-66; Carm. de Res. 168-70. For examples in
Ammianus, see Harald Hagendaltl, Studia Ammianea, Uppsala Universitets
Arsskrift I92I, Filosofi, sprakvetenskap och historiska vetenskaper 3 (Uppsala,
I92I), I04.
Seasons of the year: Ovid, Met. I.II7-I8; Laus Pisonis 149-51; Statius, Silv.
1.2.I56-57, 2.1.2I5-17; Ausonius, Ep. 27.97-I02; Claudian, C.M. 20.12; Orien-
tius, Comm. 1. II7-20; Sedulius, C.P. 1.88-92; Dracontius, Sat. 253-54; Carm. de
Res. 284-86; Anth. Lat. I I6, 566-78, 864 (Riese, whose numeration I follow
throughout). This and the preceding list make no claims to exhaustivity. For the
use of the months of the year, seasons, and cardinal points to provide compart-
mentalized space for descriptions, see Hamon, 55 and 152.
The Anthologia Latina also contains a number of poems on the months of the
year: I I7, 394, 395, 490a, 639, 665, 874a; compare the sequence of poems on the
months and the year by Ausonius (Eel. 9-I8).
2tCyprianus Gallus, N 27-30.

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 44 The Jeweled Style

ture, but Quintilian provides the best guide to the stylistic tech-
niques of the ecphrasis. The illustration from Cicero's Pro Gallio is
especially revealing. Here are many of the techniques we have
found in late antique poetry: the analysis of a scene or event into its
constituent parts; composition by enumerative sequence; frequent
use of figures of parallelism (and, in the case of chiasmus, varia-
tion); and a tendency to favor short units of composition (commata
rather than cola). There are, of course, important differences. The
Cicero passage lacks the articulating system of antitheses that is
characteristic of the late antique authors (the antithesis intrantis :
exeuntis is purely local in scope). The passage thus loses in density
of texture. Its effect is more linear. Each enumerative sequence is
confined to a sentence, then abandoned for a new sequence
(though there are cross-references, e. g., vino in the last two sen-
tences). In this way the description is more open to its context than
the typical late antique passage, which functions as a self-contained
and self-defining unit. Classical rhetoric, with its special status for
forensic oratory, was wary of the tendency of descriptive passages
to become detached from their context. The fully developed
ecphrasis is treated as a digression by Quintilian, most suitable
between the narratio and probatio; 22 it should always directly serve
the speaker's case. 23
The analytical procedures of leptologia produce regularity of
structure, and regularity in tum directs attention to the differences
within the repeated units (cola and commata) that qualify sim-
ilarity. This means that the individual word, its choice and posi-
tion, receives greater emphasis than would be the case in other
styles of composition. The minute attention to word selection,
sound, and order is a necessary consequence of leptologia. Ques-
tions of this kind were addressed by rhetorical theory under the
name of variation (varietas/variatiol1toLXLALa), 24 one of the func-
tions of which was to diversify an enumerative sequence, and it is
to that term that I now tum.
Stylistic variatio performs two principal functions in rhetorical
theory. The first is the embellishment of the hypothetically simple

22Quintilian 4-3· 12-13.

23The principle of utilitas: Quintilian 4.2.40, 86, 122; see also Lausberg, 1:174.
24In what follows I shall use the term variatio; see Lausberg, 1:142.

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 45

text that underlies any elaborated work ofliterature by the applica-

tion of rhetorical ornatus, typically figures and tropes. This process
can be described as variare figuris. So Quintilian recommends that
in the narratio the exposition should be varied with figures to avoid
boredom ("plurimis figuris erit varianda expositio ad effugiendum
taedium," 4.2.22). 25 The second function is to diversify whatever
is the same or similar within a particular text. If an author, for
instance, must refer frequently to a particular person, thing, or idea
in his work, he will avoid using the same word every time, using
synonyms or synonymous expressions instead. _This is a feature of
Latin literature of all periods. 26 Students would be required to
commit lists of synonyms to memory in the schools; 27 the system
of tropes provided further possibilities for lexical variation. When
rhetoricians discuss this second type of variatio, however, they
normally have in mind variation within a narrower compass than
the whole work. Synonymic variation is illustrated by Quintilian
with the following fragment from Cicero:

Dediderim periculis omnibus, optulerim insidiis, obiecerim

invidiae. (9-3-45)

I abandoned to every danger, I laid open to treachery, I exposed to

envy.

The synonymic sequence is dediderim ... optulerim ... obiecerim.

. . Quintilian does not use the word varietas I variare here, but
Rutulius Lupus, in a work on figures known to Quintilian, intro-

25 Cf. Rhet. ad Her. 4· 13. 18; Cicero, De Or. 2.9.36; Quintilian 4.2. rr7-19,
5· 14.32, 6. I.2·
26Heinze, 359-60, and Wilhelm Kroll, Studien zum Verstiindnis der rom ischen Liter-
atur (Stuttgart, 1924), 362-64. For examples in biblical poetry, see Roberts, Biblical
Epic, 198-207, and for examples in Nonnus' Dionysiaca, see Martin String, Unter-
suchungen zum Stil der Dionysiaka des Nonnos von Panopolis (Hamburg, 1966), n-
4!.
27Quintilian records the contemporary practice of memorizing lists of syn-
onyms but disapproves of it (10. r. 7); Fronto recommends the collection and ex-
ercises in the use of synonyms (De Eloquentia 3.5; II 76 Haines). The papyrus BM
Add Ms 37533 (= Pack 2 2712) contains a list of verbs and the cases they take,
ordered in groups of synonyms (Erich Ziebarth, Aus der antiken Schule: Sammlung
griechischer Texte auf Papyrus, Holzta.feln, Ostraka, 2d ed., Kleine Texte ftir Vor-
lesungen und Obungen 65 [Bonn, 1913], 24-27).

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 46 The Jeweled Style

duces a similar sequence (dolui . . . , aegre tuli . . . , commovit

me . .. ): "varietas verborum quae eandem vim habet, huius modi
est" ("Variation of words that have the same meaning is as fol-
lows").28 The Ciceronian text includes a number of the features
associated with leptologia: enumerative sequence (periculis, insidiis,
invidiae), preference for commata, parallelism of sound (the inflec-
tional form of the verbs). Variation here too is a matter of lexical
choice; it requires attention to the word as a unit of composition.
Catalogs (a canonical feature of epic poetry) and lists, because of
their extreme regularity of content, made special demands in this
respect. Variation of the enumerative sequence was essential. Here
Virgil, according to Macrobius (early fifth century), was the
master: "Virgil took care in his catalog (in book 7) to avoid monot-
ony .... He practices variation (variat), avoiding repetition as if it
were a disgrace or a crime" (Sat. 5. 15. 14-15). 29 The illustrations
Macrobius gives show that he is thinking of variation at the lexical
level, in the forms of connectives and of proper names. Homer
shows the same quality in his choice of epithets "with which the
variegated splendor (variata maiestas) ofhis sacred poem shines, as
if with stars" (5. 14. 8). 30 In this artistic use of epithets he is imitated
by Virgil.
Common to both senses of variatio is the function of avoiding
monotony. Variation serves to diversify the similar or the straight-
forward. Thus Cicero requires that the handling of an orator's
material be varied (tractatio autem varia esse debet) to avoid wearying
the hearer with boredom at what is similar (ne ... defetigetur sim-
ilitudinis satietate). 31 The principle of variation is applicable at every
level of composition, from the word or group of words to the
arrangement of a larger unit of composition (the insertion of an
ecphrastic digression, for instance) to the organization of individu-

28Rutilius Lupus 1. 7 (I 1. I 5-20 Brooks). Both Quintilian and Rutilius treat this
figure as a form ofanaphora; cf. Carmen defiguris 9I-93·
29"Deinde in catalogo suo curavit Vergilius vitare fastidium .... Hie [sc. Ver-
gilius] autem variat velut dedecus aut crimen vi tans repetitionem."
30"[Epitheta] qui bus velut sideribus micat divini carminis variata maiestas."
3t De Or. 2.41. I77· The full quotation is "tractatio autem varia esse debet, ne aut
cognoscat artem qui audiat aut defetigetur similitudinis satietate." The emphasis
on concealing art is classical and characteristically Ciceronian. Writers oflate antiq-
uity, by contrast, preferred to parade their literary expertise. For variation as the
avoidance of similarity, see also Cicero, Inv. 1.41. 76.

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 47

al poems within a book. 32 In practice, special attention is paid in

the grammatical and rhetorical tradition to "small-scale" variation
and word choice within enumerative or synonymic sequences. 33
This concern with lexical detail is typical of leptologia. Variation is
the preeminent stylistic quality of leptologia, and fundamental, I
would argue, to late antique poetics.
In late antiquity, however, variation was conceived in visual
terms. The metaphor in the word varietas and its cognates, usually
imperceptible in the classical rhetoricians, was renewed. For vari-
etas, like its Greek equivalent JtOL'XLA(a, is properly used of variega-
tion in color. So Cicero:

Varietas enim Latinum verbum est, idque proprie quidem in dis-

paribus coloribus dicitur, sed transfertur in multa disparia: varium
poema, varia oratio, varii mores, varia fortuna. (Fin. 2.3. 10)

Varietas is a Latin word properly used of diversity of color, but by

transference of many other kinds of diversity: a varied poem, a varied
speech, varied character, varied fortune.

The increasing tendency to conceive literary composition in visual,

specifically color, terms can be traced in the metaphorical language
used of rhetorical and poetic ornatus.
Consider the words color and flos. Color is used by Cicero of
rhetorical embellishment, usually when a comparison with paint-
ing is intended (i.e., pigmentum). 34 So, of the style of the sophists,

32For variation of larger units of composition, see Quintilian 9.2.29 (pros-

opopoeiae). Dionysius of Halicamassus, Comp. 19, contains a detailed discussion
of the possibilities of variation in prose and verse (e.g., variation of meter, figures,
sentence length, clause length, incorporation of episodes). For varietas in delivery,
see Cicero, De Or. 3-57-217, Quintilian II.J.43-45·
33The rhetorical works of Cicero's maturity are not typical in this respect. For
Cicero, varietas, combined with copia verborum, is essential to the ideal orator (e.g.,
De Or. r.r2.50, 13.59, 19.85, 56.240, 2.14.58, 27.120, 53.214; Or. 69.231; Brut.
53. 198). Varietas, for instance, requires that the orator be able to vary his style (Or.
21. 70, 29. 103; cf. Rhet. ad Her. 4· r r. r6). But Cicero's works are not intended for
the schoolroom and do not contain the detailed instructions and classification
characteristic of the rhetorical handbook.
34Cicero, De Ot. 3.25.98, 57.217; elsewhere the word is normally found in
conjunction with pingo or its cognates: De Or. 3.25. roo, Brut. 86.298 (eorum pig-
mentorum ... jlorem et colorem), Att. 2.21.4 (but cf. De Or. 2. 13.54). For pigmenta,

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 48 The Jeweled Style

verba apertius transferunt eaque ita disponunt ut pictores varietatem

colorum, paria paribus referunt, adversa contrariis, saepissimeque
similiter extrema definiunt. (Or. 19.65)

They use bolder transferences of language and arrange their words as

painters do their variety of colors; they match like with like, opposite
with opposite, and very often end clauses in a similar fashion.

Here individual words are the equivalent of colors in a painter's

palette. Color in the sense of rhetorical ornatus is not, however,
common in later rhetoricians, perhaps because it is used in a differ-
ent sense (the shading given to an argument) in the schools of
declamation. 35
The nounjlos is used five times in Cicero's rhetorical treatises of
stylistic ornament, frequently in conjunction with color, varietas, or
lumen. 36 It always describes small-scale variation, the uncommon
word, figures, or tropes. Of metaphor, for instance, Cicero says,
"There is no manner of speech more 'flowering' (florentior) in sin-
gle words or that imparts more brilliance (lumen) to a speech" (De
Or. 3.41. 166)Y Extensive use of jlores is typical of the sophistic
style, as represented by !socrates and Demetrius of Phaleron
(whose style is called jloridus). 38 Cicero urges moderation on the
forensic orator:

Ut porro conspersa sit quasi verborum sententiarumque floribus,

id non debet esse fusum aequabiliter per omnem orationem, sed ita
distinctum, ut sint quasi in omatu disposita quaedam insignia et
lumina. (3.25.96)

see also Att. 2. I. 1, De Or. 2.45. 188. Color is also used of the style or character of a
speech or part of a speech (see, in general, ThLL 3· 1720.43-72).
35ThLL 3. 172!.47-1722.47· Quintilian does not use colores of the techniques of
rhetorical ornatus.
36De Or. 3.25.96 (in conjunction with lumina, and varietas colorum [98]); Or.

19.65 (varietas colorum); Brut. 17.66 (lumen), 66.233 (lumen), 87.298 (pigmenta, col-
orem). Flos is also used of rhetorical ornamentation in Farad., Pr. 2.
37"Modus autem nullus est florentior in singulis verbis neque qui plus luminis
adferat orationi."
38 Style of the sophists Or. 19.65; 27.96 (florens orationis pictum et expolitumgenus).
Demetrius of Phaleron's style is described as jloridior, ut ita dicam, quam Hyperides,
quam Lysias (Brut. 82.285). The qualification ut ita dicam apologizes for the
"flower" metaphor; cf. the double use of quasi in De Or. 3.25.96.

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 49

Further, for a speech to be sprinkled with flowers of language and

thought there is no need for the ornament to be spread uniformly
over the whole speech, but it should be set out in such a way that
marks of distinction and highlights are distributed as decoration.

For the most part, Quintilian avoids this sense of }los, 39 prefer-
ring the word lumen, probably because he associated a highly
"flowered" style with the schools of declamation and their exces-
sive use of rhetorical embellishment. Quintilian refers disparaging-
ly to "this self-indulgent modern style" with its "flowerets" of
rhetoric (recentis huius lasciviae flosculis, 2. 5. 22), a brilliant but in-
substantial feature, along with farfetched vocabulary, of the cor-
rupt declamatory style popular in his own day. 40
The license enjoyed by speakers in the schools of declamation
tended to blur the distinction between rhetorical prose and poetry,
especially in vocabulary, tropes, and figures. Already in Cicero,
flores are associated with epideictic, the type of oratory most
closely allied to poetry. 41 The notion of a poem being like a gar-
land woven from flowers 42 must have contributed to the belief that
flores were a form of embellishment particularly characteristic of
poets. So Columella, writing in the 6os, says of the fourth book of
Virgil's Georgics: "He lent luster (illuminavit) to the subject of bees
with poetic flowers" (poeticis floribus, 9.2. 1). But the metaphor is
found only rarely in the surviving literature of the first century
A.D. It was destined for vast expansion in late antiquity, with a full
exploration of the latent implications of the image.
It is characteristic of late antiquity that the distinction between
prose and verse, in style and subject matter, progressively broke

39 Iknow of only two passages, 8.3.87 and 12.!0.13.

40 Quintilian criticizes the "vitiosum et corruptum dicendi genus, quod aut ver-
borum licentia exultat aut puerilibus sententiolis lascivit aut inmodico tumore
turgescit aut inanibus locis bacchatur aut cas uris si leviter excutiantur flosculis nitet
aut praecipitia pro sublimibus habet aut specie libertatis insanit" (12. 10. 73); see
George Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 300 B.C.-A.D. 300
(Princeton, N.J., 1972), 494-96. For jlosculi in Quintilian, see also 6, Pr. 10 and
10.5.23; cf. Seneca, Ep. 33.1, 7·
41 Hermogenes, fiEQl tbE<i:Jv (389. 7-9 Rabe); see Theodore Chalon Burgess,

"Epideictic Literature," University ojChicago Studies in Classical Philology 3 (1902),

166-94.
42 Lucretius 1.928 (= 4.3), Horace, C. r.26.7; ThLL 6.931.51-58.

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 50 The Jeweled Style

down. Flores were expected of artistic prose as they were of poetry.

The metaphor became commonplace. It is used by, among others,
Ammianus Marcellinus, Ausonius, Symmachus, Jerome, Clau-
dian, Paulinus ofNola, Macrobius, Sidonius, Ennodius, Venantius
Fortunatus, and Isidore. 43 In many of these passages, }los (flares) is
no more than an equivalent of ornatus. Its metaphorical sense is
scarcely perceived. But the word also recurs in contexts where the
literal meaning is insisted upon by the presence of semantically
related words. In these cases the reader is required to reconstitute
the ground of the metaphor through visual imagination. Such pas-
sages are especially revealing of the literary aesthetics of late
antiquity.
To begin with, though, it is important to emphasize that for late
antiquity flares meant variety of color. So Claudian (C.M. 47· 1 1-12)
can describe a belt as variata colorum/floribus, literally, "varied with
flowers of colors," where flares and col ores are virtual synonyms. 44
The word varia, its cognates, or synonymous expressions are fre-
quently used of flowers. 45 So Sidonius describes Horace's Odes as:

vernans per varii carminis eglogas

verborum violis multicoloribus
(Ep. 9. 13.2, vv. 12-13).

In his poems of various meters blossoming with many-colored ver-

bal flowers.

The lines show something of the density of texture we have come

to associate with late antique poetry: varii and multicoloribus are
synonyms; vernans and violis, from the same semantic field (no pun

43 Ammianus Marcellinus 29.1.II; Ausonius, Ep. I (233.8 Prete); Symmachus,

Epp. 4· 18. 1, 4.36.2, 7-1 I;Jerome, Epp. 58. 10, II7. 12, 148. 14; Claudian, Theod. 84;
Paulinus, Ep. 16.6 (120.18 Hartel); Macrobius, Sat. 6.1.2; Sidonius, Epp. 4.3.2,
4.16.1, 7.4.2, 8.4.2, 8.9.1, 9.9.6; Ennodius 1.10 (20.16 Hartel), 1.16 (28.3), 2.7
(47-5), 7.21 (189. 15), 8.36 (223. 15); Venantius Fortunatus, V. Mart. 1. 17, C. I, pr.
5, C. 6.2.98. For further references, see Hans Bruhn, Specimen Vocabularii Rhetorici
ad Inferioris Aetatis Latinitatem Pertinens (Marburg, I9II), 36-37; ThLL 6.936.45-
6.937·9·
44Cf. ThLL 6.932.15-31.
45 E.g., Prudentius, Perist. 3·198-200, 12.53-54; Vomanius, Anth. Lat. 569; cf.
ThLL 6.937.36-38 for passages from earlier authors.

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 5I

intended), mutually qualify and explain each other. Viol is itself is

an example of what is described, the choice word, synecdoche for
jlores (as the adjective multicoloribus implies). The lines also contain
an antithesis, eglogas : verborum. Horace's poetry shows the poly-
chromatic diversity, so admired in late antiquity, at two levels of
composition: the entire poem (poems in different meters are set
next to each other) and the single word. The late antique eye for
such patterning was acute. Its appreciation found expression in
terms of brilliance and color.
Flowers are at their brightest in the spring, and the participle
vernans (derived from ver) 46 is often used in late antiquity of rhetor-
ical ornatus, as the equivalent of jloridus. So, in addition to the
passage just cited, Sidonius describes the style of Claudianus
Mamertus' De statu animae as "softened by the flower of blossom-
ing eloquence" (vernantis ... eloquii jlore mollitum, Ep. 4·3-2).47
The quality could be displayed at various levels of composition,
including the individual word. So the Fescennine verses of
Lampridius are praised as vernans verbis; the poet avoided using the
first words that came to mind, preferring what was "impressive,
attractive, carefully calculated" (non verbis qualibuscumque, sed gran-
dibus, pulchris, elucubratis, Ep. 8. I 1. 6). Lexical choice was central to
a style that was vernans jloribus.
When fully visualized, a poem (or book of poems) could be
imagined as a meadow in springtime covered with brilliant, multi-
colored flowers: the words prata, ver, jlos, varius, their cognates or
synonyms, often occur together in late antiquity-for instance,
Anth. Lat. 569: ver pingit vario gemmantia prata colore ("Spring paints
the jeweled meadows in various colors"). 48 Here the poet is de-
scribing a literal meadow. But when Sidonius uses a similar phrase
in a literary context to describe Statius' Silvae, he introduces a new

46 The connection with spring often seems somewhat attenuated, even in the first

century A.D. So Columella (10.270) uses the word simply to mean "blossoming"
(vernantia Iilia). For vernus as an epithet of }los, see ThLL 6.937·38-40.
47for other examples, see Symmachus, Ep. 8.22. I; Sidonius, Ep. 4.3.6; Tauren-
tius, Ep. ad Ruric. 3, facundiae }lore vernantes (CSEL 2I; 445.9); Ennodius, Dictio I
(424.25 Hartel) and IO (458. 11); Bruhn, 40.
48Apuleius, Met. I0.29. Prudentius, Psych. 862-63, Perist. 3.I98-2oo, I2.53-54
(prata vernis jloribus renident); cf. Claudian, Rapt. 2.90-93, Reposianus, De Con-
cubitu Martis et Veneris 37-44, Lucretius 5. I395-96; Culex 70-7I; Paulinus, C.
21.85-86.

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 52 The jeweled Style

metaphor: the ''jeweled meadows of his little Silvae" (gemmea prata

silvularum, C. 9.229). The metaphor of "jewels" I the "jeweled" is
important for my argument and needs separate consideration.
Jewels (gemmae) are characterized by their varied colors and their
brilliance (lumen). 49 So Servius on Aen. 1.655 distinguishes be-
tween jewels and pearls: "jewels are of different colors, pearls
white." The word gemma is first found in a literary context in an
epigram of Martial (5. 1 1.3-4). Martial is describing the style of L.
Arruntius Stella, the patron of Statius and a poet in his own right:
"you will find many jewels on his fingers, more in his poem. " 50
An ostentatious literary style reflects extravagance in personal hab-
its, so Quintilian moves easily between literary and moral criticism
in his condemnation of the corrupt style of contemporary declama-
tion. The same connection had been made by Augustus, in his
mockery of Maecenas' "enervated, effeminate, and dissolute style"
(remissus, mollis et dissolutus-the criticism is recorded by Macro-
bius, Sat. 2.4. 12):

Vale, meli gentium, t meculle, ebur ex Etruria, lasar Arretinum,

adamas supernas, Tiberinum margaritum, Cilneorum zmaragde,
iaspi figulorum, berulle Porsenae, carbunculum habeas, tva O'UVl"E!!W
:n;avta, !!UA.ay!!a moecharum. 51

Goodbye, sweetheart of the human race, Mecullus(?), ivory from

Etruria, silphium of Aretium, northern diamond, pearl from the
Tiber, Cilnian emerald, potters' jasper, Porsenna's beryl, carbuncle
... take you-in short, you soft-soaper of unfaithful wives.

Here precious stones and other materials of various colors connote

the extravagant and varied effects Maecenas achieved in his writ-

49See ThLL 7.2.r8r7.s-r8.

SO"Multas in digitis, plures in carmine gemmas I invenies."
51 The passage is quoted as an example of Augustus' wit (urbanitas). For a discus-
sion, see Remo Gelsomino, "Augusti epistula ad Maecenatem: Macrobius, saturn.
II 4, 12," RhM 101 (1958), 147-52, whose text I quote in preference to that of
Willis for its greater closeness to the manuscript tradition. Gelsomino, 149, sug-
gests Mecullus may be a diminutive of the Tuscan gentilicium Meconius. Carbun-
culus can mean either a jewel or a pustule, hence the pun. The word f.UlAUYf..tU is
explained by Gelsomino, 152, as a facial emollient. Maecenas actually composed
poetry packed with the names of gems (fr. 2 Morel).

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 53

ing, and this style is mockingly described as dangerous to the

morals as well as to the taste of the susceptible. Last, in Tacitus'
Dialogus the advocate of the moderns, Marcus Aper, requires of
oratory the beauty of poetry (poeticus decor, 20. 5). Literature should
be like a rich edifice that attracts the eye with gold and jewels.

ego autem oratorem, sicut locupletem ac lautum patrem familiae,

non eo tantum volo tecto tegi quod imbrem ac ventum arceat, sed
etiam quod visum et oculos delectet; non ea solum instrui suppellec-
tile quae necessariis usibus sufficiat, sed sit in apparatu eius et aurum
et gemmae, ut sumere in manus et aspicere saepius libeat. (22.4)

I want my orator to be like a rich and luxurious man of property. His

house should not just keep off the wind and rain, but delight the eyes
too, and his possessions should not just be the everyday necessities
but gold and jewels. In that way it w:ill be a pleasure to pick up his
works and contemplate them over and over again.

The appeal of literature is expressed in visual terms. Oratory

should have the brilliance and color of precious metals and jewels.
An analogy is drawn with the use of eye-catching materials in
architecture (cf. 20. 7, speaking of temples that "shine with marble
and gleam with gold"; marmore nitent et auro radiantur).
"Jewels," like "flowers," were, then, characteristic of the mod-
ern style of literature in the first century A.D. and viewed with
suspicion by the classicizing Quintilian and Tacitus. The metaphor
is unusual in that period, but by the fourth and fifth centuries the
"jeweled" style of verse and artistic prose was a commonplace,
although it never received the currency of the "flowered" style.
Prudentius speaks of the jewels of Symmachus' rich eloquence;
Paulinus speaks of verses as "little jewels. " 52 At the same time, the
images of flowers and jewels tended to become conflated as the
adjectivesgemmeus, gemmans, andgemmatus are increasingly used in
the sense of jloridus. 53 So in expressions like gemmea I gemmantia

52Prudentius, C. Symm. 1.633; Paulinus, Ep. 32·4 (278.24 Hartel); cf. Bruhn, 37.
S3So already in the first century Pliny the Younger speaks of prata .florida et
gemmea (Ep. 5.6. II); c£ Columella I0.258; Culex 70; and ThLL 6.I758.7J-76. The
Lucretian herbae gemmantes rore recenti (2.3I9; cf. 5.46I) is a different image. It is
relevant here that gemma is widely used of the buds of plants. This was in all
probability its original sense (see ThLL 6.I753.78-I754.32).

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 54 · The Jeweled Style

prata the notion of "jewels" has undoubtedly faded because of the

familiarity of the metaphor gemmea = florida. On the other hand,
the force of the analogy between jewels and rhetorical ornatus was
still felt, unmediated by the comparison of both withjlores. In the
sixth century Ennodius contrived a further variation on the
theme-not gemmae but diademata verborum. 54 The proposition
with which I started out, that the organization ofjewels on Aaron's
breastplate could be understood as a metaphor for and a model of
poetic composition in late antiquity, fmds confirmation in the styl-
istic vocabulary of contemporary authors.
For the sake of completeness the metaphor of "brilliance" (lu-
men) and semantically related terms for rhetorical embellishment
and variation should be considered. The word lumen (stellae I sidera)
is found in the Rhetorica ad Herennium of rhetorical ornatus; it is
frequent in Cicero and was the preferred term of Quintilian. Its use
is common in all periods. 55 Quintilian likens the lumina in a speech
to fiery sparks or eyes in the human body (playing on the
metonymic sense of lumina = ocult), both patches oflight, brighter
than their surroundings. And, in accordance with his classical
taste, he warns that their brilliance depends on the contrast with
the plainness of their context (8.5.29, 34). In one passage (Or.
27.92, Demetrius of Phaleron's use of tropes 56) Cicero speaks of
stellae rather than lumina, a comparison that, as we have seen, is
continued in late antiquity when Macrobius speaks of Homer's use
of epithets "with which the variegated splendor of the sacred poem
shines as if with stars" (velut sideribus micat, Sat. 5· 14.8). Augustine
in the De Doctrina Christiana applies the ideal of variatio to his
stylistic analysis of biblical texts, describing the language of the
book of Amos as "embellished with the names of places as though
with lights" (locorum nominibus tamquam luminibus ornatur) and ob-
serving how the words in such passages are "most attractively
varied" (decentissime variantur, De Doctr. Christ. 4· 7· 17). 57 Cicero
had praised a line of verse in similar terms in the Orator (49· 163), as
"illuminated by brilliant names of places" (locorum splendidis nomi-

54Ennodius 7.29 (195. 17 Hartel); cf. 1.4 (7. 13), 2.13 (53.4); ThLL 5-946.53-63.
SSRhet. ad Her. 4.23.32; for other passages, see ThLL 7.2.1820.26-59·
S6"Cuius oratio cum sedate placideque liquitur, tum illustrant earn quasi stellae
quaedam tralata verba atque immutata."
57"Deinde verba, quae his adiunguntur locis, decentissime variantur."

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 55

nibus inluminatus), and Augustine may well have had this passage in
mind when discussing Amos. 58

The picture is sufficiently clear. The stylistic norms of the

ecphrasis informed the poetics oflate antiquity. In particular, lep-
tologia, with its requirement of exhaustivity, generated the enu-
merative and synonymic sequences, preferences for short clauses,
and attention to lexical detail and word order that characterize our
texts. It was as though texts were put under a microscope, magni-
fying the constituent parts at the expense of the whole. The princi-
ple of variatio directed the choice and ordering of these small units
of composition. In late antiquity a sense for the literal meaning of
variatio was reawakened. The elements of a text were understood
chromatically, described as multicolored flowers or jewels. The art
of the poet was akin to that of the jeweler-to manipulate brilliant
pieces (lumen is a quality of both flowers and jewels) 59 and to
throw them into reliefby effects of contrast and juxtaposition. The
poet strives for an impression equivalent to that of a flower-cov-
ered meadow in spring.
This conception of late antique aesthetics has the advantage of
explaining and relating to a single general principle many of the
observations that have long been made about the poetry of the
period. For instance, the predominance of ecphrasis in poets oflate
antiquity is well known. 60 Visual description lent itself best to the

58Compare Quintilian 12.10.33, Symmachus, Or. 2.24, and Ep. 1.14.4; in the
latter passage, Symmachus praises Ausonius' catalog of fishes in the Mosella as
quam nominibus varia tam coloribus. For the principle that proper names and exotic
language were adornments to poetry, see Kroll, 21-22; Andre Loyen, Sidoine
Apollinaire et !'esprit precieux en Gaule aux derniers jour de !'empire, Collection
d'etudes latines, serie scientifique 20 (Paris, 1943),25, andJ. Marouzeau, Traite de
stylistique latine, 4th ed., Collection d'etudes latines, serie scientifique 12 (Paris,
1962), 91-95. Harald Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics, 2 vols., Studia
Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia 20 (Goteborg, 1967), does not note the Cicero-
nian parallel.
59Qf flowers, ThLL 7.2. 1817.19-23 (e.g., Columella 10.96-97, "varios, ter-
restria sidera, flores, I candida leucoia et flaventia lumina calthae"); of jewels,
ThLL 7.2. 1817.5-18. The adjectivegemmatus was used in late antiquity not only of
flowers in a meadow (ThLL 6.1758.73-76) but also of stars in the sky (ThLL
6. 1758.69-73).
60Donato Gagliardi, Aspetti della poesia latina tardoantica: Linee evolutive e culturali
dell' ultima poesia pagana dai novelli a R. Namaziano (Palermo, 1972) and "Linee di
sviluppo della poesia latina tardoantica," in La poesia tardoantica: Tra retorica,

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 56 The Jeweled Style

demonstration of that polychromatic exhaustivity which was

prized as a special poetic excellence. 61 In particular, works of art or
natural scenes that showed the same qualities were a favorite sub-
ject-hence Aaron's breastplate. More will be said about the rela-
tionship to the visual arts in the next chapter. But the influence of
leptologia I variatio extended beyond descriptive passages. Their
characteristic stylistic techniques were appropriate to any artis-
tically ambitious passage of verse (e. g., the passage from Paulin us
of Nola quoted in the previous chapter).
Poetry of the period is often criticized as episodic, 62 but what is
involved is no more than the application of the principle of variatio
to large units of composition ("episodes"). Late antiquity preferred
juxtaposition and contrast to logical interrelationship; contiguity
no longer required continuity. The impression of an organic
whole, the sense of proportion, is lost, but it is compensated for by
the elaboration of the individual episode. Late antique poetry has

teologia e politica, Atti del V. Corso della Scuola superiore di archeologia e civilta
medievali ... 6-I2 Dicembre I98I (Messina, I984), 5I-73; Margherita Principato,
"Poesia familiare e poesia descrittiva in Ausonio," Aevum 35 (I96I), 4I3-I6; Pierre
Fargues, Claudien: Etudes sur sa poesie et son temps (Paris, I933), 285-328; Alan
Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, I 970),
269-73; Isabella Gualandri, Aspetti della tecnica compositiva in Claudiano (Milan,
I968), 8-9; Wifstrand, I 53-54; String, 7-9; Klaus Thraede, Studien zu Sprache und
Stil des Prudentius, Hypomnemata I3 (Gottingen, I965), 125-26; Loyen, I I4-I9;
Isabella Gualandri, Furtiva Lectio: Studi su Sidonio Apollinare, Testi e documenti per
lo studio dell' antichita 62 (Milan, I979), 33. The poets in question are Ausonius,
Claudian, Nonnus, Prudentius, and Sidonius, but the list could be greatly
expanded.
61Gualandri, Aspetti, I7-I8, comments on the minuteness ofClaudian's descrip-
tions and the impression of exhaustivity they communicate; Principato, 4I, speaks
of Ausonius' accurate abundance of particulars in the Mosella (i.e., leptologia; cf.
Wifstrand, I 5 I-54).
62Principato, 4I7-I8; Maria Rosa Posani, "Reminiscenze di poeti latini nella
'Mosella' di Ausonio," SIFC, 34 (I962), 59-6I; Gualandri, Aspetti, 9; Cameron,
Claudian, 264-65; Rudolf Keydell, "Nonnos," RE I7. I (I936), 9IO; String, I6;
Peter Krafft, "Erzahlung und Psychagogie in Nonnos' Dionysiaka," in Christian
Gnilka and Willy Schetter, eds., Studien zur Literatur der Spiitantike, Antiquitas 1.23
(Bonn, I975), 9I-94; Loyen, 3; cf. Reinhart Herzog, "Probleme der heidnisch-
christlichen Gattungskontinuitat am Beispiel des Paulinus von Nola," in Chris-
tianisme et formes litteraires de l'antiquite tardive en occident, Fondation Hardt, En-
tretiens 23 (Vandoeuvres, I977), 409-Io; Wolfgang Kirsch, "Strukturwandel im
lateinischen Epos des 4.-6. Jhs," Philologus I23 (I979), 40-41.

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 57

its own unity, but it is conceptual and transcends the immediate

historical content of a narrative. 63
Moving to a smaller unit of composition, we find an analogous
attitude toward poetic imitation. Fragments of earlier poets, in-
vested with brilliance and color by their original contexts, are
manipulated and juxtaposed in striking new combinations, often
exploiting the contrast with the previous text in sense, situation, or
setting. Again, this is an aspect oflate antique poetics that has been
observed often. So, for instance, Isabella Gualandri writes of Clau-
dian's "multicolored mosaic" of imitations, "in which the old col-
ors seem to acquire new light and brilliance by virtue of their
new surroundings. " 64 Macrobius observed this practice in Virgil,
commenting on "how much Virgil had benefited from reading
previous writers" and drawing attention to "the flowers (flores) he
had picked from everywhere" and "the ornaments he had drawn
from various sources to enhance the beauty of his poem" (Sat.
6. 1.2). 65 In the case of centos, verse compositions made up entirely

63Qn this, see esp. Friedrich Mehmel, Virgil und Apollonius Rhodius: Unter-
suchungen uber die Zeitvorstellung in der antiken epischen Erziihlung (Hamburg, I940),
99-I32. For the symbolic language of Latin panegyric, see Sabine G. MacCor-
mack, "Latin Prose Panegyrics: Tradition and Discontinuity in the Later Roman
Empire," REAug 22 (I976), 46-54, and for the symbolic language of art, see
Andre Grabar, "Plotin et les origines de l'esthetique medievale," CArch I (I945),
I9-22, and Sabine G. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, The
Transformation of the Classical Heritage I (Berkeley, Calif, I98I), 3 I.
64Gualandri, Aspetti, 8; see also Michael Roberts, "Rhetoric and Poetic Imitation
in Avitus' Account of the Crossing of the Red Sea (De Spiritalis Historiae Gestis s.
37I-702," Traditio 39 (I983), 70. I have found the following studies especially
valuable: on Ausonius, see Posani, Woldemar Gorier, "Vergilzitate in Ausonius'
Mosella," Hermes 97 (I969), 94-II4; on Claudian, see Cameron, Claudian, 279-84,
and Ursula Keudel, Poetische Vorliiufer und Vorbilder in Claudians De Consulatu
Stilichonis: Imitationskommentar, Hypomnemata 26 (Gottingen, I970); on the
Hymns of Ambrose, see Jacques Fontaine, "L'apport de la tradition poetique
romaine ala formation de l'hymnodie latine chretienne," REL, 52 (I974), 342-52
(= Etudes, I46-83), and Fontaine, "Unite," 447-50 (= Etudes, 47-50); on Pruden-
tius, see Fontaine, "Melange," 758 (=Etudes 4); on Sidonius, see Gualandri, Fur-
tiva, 84-I04. Klaus Thraede, "Epos," RAC, 5 (Stuttgart, I962), I034-4I, and
Reinhart Herzog, Die Bibelepik der lateinischen Spiitantike: Formgeschichte einer er-
baulichen Gattung, vol. I, Theorie und Geschichte der Literatur und der schonen
Kiinste, 37 (Munich, I975), I:I89-200, propose elaborate classifications of imita-
tion techniques in Christian poetry.
6S"Ostendere cupio quantum Vergilius noster ex antiquiorum lectione profecerit
et quos ex omnibus flores vel quae in carminis sui decorem ex diversis omamenta
libaverit." The speaker is Furius Albinus.

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 58 The Jeweled Style

of fragments from earlier poets (in Latin, normally Virgil), the

very name implies the manipulation of contrasting compositional
units, for a cento is literally a patchwork of various scraps of
material sewed together. 66
The tendency to fragmentation of the poetic text and to analytic
modes of composition was promoted by the schools of grammar
and the methods of poetic enarratio practiced there. Marrou likened
those methods to "admiring a string of pearls held between the
fingers, examining each grain one after the other for its particular
beauty. " 67 Like Humpty Dumpty expounding the Jabberwocky,
the grammaticus of late antiquity particularly relished the oppor-
tunity to explain "hard words." The special attraction of poetry lay
in its lexicon, the use of tropes or otherwise unusual (i.e., "hard")
words, and in the manipulation of that lexicon by figures of dic-
tion, especially the Gorgianic figures. When writers of late antiq-
uity speak of variation and related terms, they usually have this
level of composition in mind. The "miniaturization" of late an-
tique poetry, to borrow a term from Fontaine, extends to the
smallest self-contained unit of sense. 68 Words are viewed as pos-
sessing a physical presence of their own, distinct from any con-
siderations of sense or syntax. They may be moved like building
blocks or pieces in a puzzle to create ever new formal constructs. It
is this sense of the physical existence of words and of meter as their
structural matrix that underlies the ingenious verbal patterns of
Optatianus Porfyrius and the Technopaegnion of Ausonius. 69

66Qn the cento, seeK. H. Schelkle, "Cento," RAC 2 (I954), 972-73.

67 Henri-Irenee Marrou, Saint Augustin et Ia .fin de Ia culture antique, 4th ed. (Paris,
I958), 25.
68fontaine, "Unite," 440-45 and 45 I ( = Etudes 40-45 and 5I), and Naissance de Ia
poesie dans /'occident chretien: Esquisse d'une histoire de Ia poesie latine chretienne du II!e
au VIe siecle (Paris, I98I), 61. Fontaine, "Melange," 755 (=Etudes I), observes that
the variation typical oflate antique poetry operates at different levels of composi-
tion. Rhetorical theory recognized that units of sound (i.e., letters, syllables) might
communicate sense and that variation was possible at this level too (see Quintilian
9·4·33, 37, 42, 6o), but the primary concentration was on the word and its possible
permutations. Note that composition by synonymic or enumerative sequence
facilitated the incorporation of "hard words," because each word was situated in a
sequence of semantically related or identical words.
69for these works, see E. Castorina, "I poeti neoterici del IVo secolo," GIF 2
(I949), II7-46 and 206-28, with the criticisms of Alan Cameron, "Poetae Novel-
li," HSCP 84 (I98o), I34-35, and W. Levitan, "Dancing at the End of the Rope:

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 59

A recurrent feature of late antique poetry is the enumeration,

catalog, or list. Enumerations were valued because they provided a
regular framework for the poet to diversify by the techniques of
polychromatic variation, the preeminent activity of the poet in late
antiquity. Not that there was anything new in poetic catalogs or
lists-they go back to Homer. But it is Ovid in the Metamorphoses
who can claim to have inaugurated the systematic use of enumera-
tion as a technique of composition and amplification. 70 In late
antiquity a concentrated form of enumeration, the figure known in
medieval theory as articulus, 71 is popular, especially in the poetry of
Sidonius and Dracontius. The catalog is reduced to a series of
single words that are semantically related and grammatically and
syntactically equivalent. So Sidonius enumerates the labors and
other exploits of Heracles:

cui sus, cerva, leo, Gigas, Amazon,

hospes, taurus, Eryx, aves, Lycus, for,
Nessus, Libs, iuga, poma, virgo, serpens,
Oete, Thraces equi, boves Hiberae,
luctator fluvius, canis triformis
portatusque polus polum dederunt.
(C. 9-95-IOO)

Optatian Porfyry and the Field of Roman Verse," TAPA IIS (1985), 245-69.
Ausonius, in his prefatory letter to Pacatus, emphasizes that his work's originality
lies in form not in content: "in quibus nullus facundiae locus est, sensuum nulla
conceptio, propositio, redditio, conclusio aliaque sophistica, quae in uno versu
esse non possunt: set cohaerent ita, ut circuli catenarum separati" (126. s-7 Prete).
The last phrase, "they hold together like the individual links in a chain" (trans.
Evelyn-White), envisages a comparison with chainmail armor. Cf Sidonius, Ep.
9. 14.6, on versus recurrentes (verses that can be read forward or backward): "En
habes versus, quorum syllabatim mirere rationem. Ceterum pompam, quam non
habent, non docebunt."
70So Gordon Williams, Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire
(Berkeley, Calif, 1978), 215. For catalogs in the poets oflate antiquity, see Ludwig
Deubner, "Zum Moselgedicht des Ausonius," Philologus 89 (1934), 256-58 (Aus-
onius); Cameron, Claudian 284-86, 345; Keudel, 138-40 (Claudian); Loyen, 14-19,
25 (Sidonius); Salvatore Costanza, "11 Catalogo dei pelleg.rini: Confronto di due
tecniche narrative (Prud. Per. XI 189-213; Paolino di Nola Carm. XIV 44-85),"
BStudLat 7 (1977), 316-26, Roberts, Biblical Epic, 201-6 (Prudentius, Paulinus, and
the biblical poets).
71See Epilogue, n. 8, and cf Ps.-Rufinianus, De schematis lexeos 20 (52.35-53·3
Halm; the figure is called am)vbetov).

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 6o The Jeweled Style

To whom the sow, stag, lion, Giant, Amazon, host, bull, Eryx,
birds, Lycus, thief, Nessus, Libyan, peaks, apples, maiden, snake,
Oete, Thracian horses, Spanish cattle, wrestling river, three-formed
dog, and burden of the heaven gave the heavens.

Venantius Fortunatus' well-known hymn, Pange, lingua, contains a

similar enumeration of the instruments of the Passion (cf.
Sidonius, C. 16.48-49):

Hie acetum, fel, arundo, sputa, clavi, lancea,

mite corpus perforatur, sanguis, unda profluit,
terra, pontus, astra, mundus quo lavantur flumine.
(C. 2.2. 19-21)

Here are vinegar, gall, reed, spittle, nails, lance; his gentle body is
pierced, blood and water flows out. By the flood the earth, sea, stars,
world are cleansed.

These passages depend on late antique admiration of the formal

manipulation of individual words. In the case of the Sidonius pas-
sage, it is easy to imagine such lines being put to use as a
mnemonic device in schools, but examples of congeries are frequent
in late antique poetry and cannot be dismissed simply as school
poetry. Such single-word enumerations are rare in Virgil and the
first-century epic; they never occupy a complete verse. 72 They are
much more common in the satirists and in Lucretius, and their
extension to all types of poetry in late antiquity represents a blur-
ring of genre distinctions typical of that period. 73 In the case of
antithetical enumerative sequences, the pattern observed in Chap-
ter 1, concentration on the individual word will yield a sequence of

72Virgil, Aen. 11.329, 12.197; Lucan 7.635-36, 8.599, 9.402; Silius 11.563-64;
Statius, Theb. 10. 768; in other first-century poetry: Seneca, Phaed. 939; Octavia
176; Statius, Silv. r.6.44, 2.7.85-86.
73 Fontaine, "Unite,'' 440-45, 447-52, 466-67 (=Etudes 40-45, 47-52, 66-67).
Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard
R. Trask (New York, 1953; reprint 1963), 285-86 and 291, cites this figure as an
example of late antique mannerism. But by no means all late antique poets made
extensive use of congeries. I have counted seventy-one examples in the poetic
corpus ofSidonius, but only eight in Claudian (only one longer than three words).
For the continuation of the practice in the medieval period, see Harry E. Wedeck,
"The Catalogue in Late and Medieval Latin Poetry," M&H 13 (196o), 3-16.

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 61

opposing pairs. So Paulinus, C. 11.37-39, begins: si vitulum tauro vel

equum committis onagro. Two lines below, with the elimination of
synonymic repetition, the antithetical pair castaneis corylos is suffi-
cient to communicate the sense. The process of concentration is
made possible by enumerative regularity. Only the nouns, the
bearers of difference, are retained. 74
In discussing enumeration I have raised the question of the af-
finities of late antique poetry with earlier Latin poetry. Where
should we look for the predecessors of late Latin poetry? What
poets show the closest similarities with those of our period? The
poetry of late antiquity is not a totally new departure, but the
continuation and intensification of trends already evident in Latin
poetry. Only one answer is possible on the basis of the evidence
presented in this chapter. It is the poets of the first century A.D.,
especially Ovid, Lucan, and Statius, who are the true forerunners
of the late antique style. 75 Catalogs and enumerations, ecphrases,
and ethopoeiae are all characteristic of the first-century epic, as
they are of the poetry of late antiquity. 76 By contrast with Vir-
gilian epic, the poetry of the first century appears episodic; atten-
tion is distracted from the whole by the brilliance of the parts.
Ovid's Metamorphoses already asserts this aesthetic of discontinuity.

74This is a species of zeugma. Leptologia is especially likely to generate such

concentration of expression. So Ps.-Rufinianus (De schematis lexeos 23; 53.31-36
Halm) quotes a Virgilian passage as an example of distributio (= leptologia), which
shows the same feature: "ferit ense gravem Thymbraeus Osirim, I Arcetium
Mnestheus, Epulonem obtruncat Achates I Ufentemque Gyas" (Aen. 12.458-60).
75These affinities have been observed before-e.g., Gagliardi, Aspetti, 7-9;
Cameron, Claudian, 272, 279-86; Fontaine, Naissance, 187-88. The tragedies of
Seneca should also be mentioned in this context. Late antique poetry has also been
described as a new Alexandrianism, notably by Loyen, xi-xiii, II8-19, and by
Fontaine, "Unite," 466-67 (= Etudes 66-67), Naissance, 60-65.
76Williams, 193-271, is a thorough presentation of the peculiar qualities of first-
century poetic style; Cameron, Claudian, 253-348, provides something similar for
a late antique poet, Claudian. It is striking that the qualities singled out by
Williams (imitatio and aemulatio, brevity and expansiveness, genre and personality,
the cult of the episode, ready-made poetic ideas, rhetoric) can all be amply illus-
trated from late antique poetry. They also provide criteria for distinguishing be-
tween late antique poets. Thus Claudian and Prudentius (in the Psych. and C.
Symm.) make extensive use of allegorical personifications, but biblical epic (as
might be expected) does not. On the other hand, the introduction of the poet in his
own person into the narrative, a characteristic of Lucan, is infrequent in Claudian
(at least in the first person) but common in the New Testament epic.

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 62 The Jeweled Style

In the fourth century the principle of Ovidian variatio holds sway,

no longer challenged by any residual classicism and generalized to
all genres of poetry. Even the classical authors Virgil and Horace
are interpreted in these terms. Ausonius' Mosella is typical. It com-
bines Horatian ethics 77 with an Ovidian awareness of the fallibility
of appearances and a Statian fascination (in the Silvae) with visual
and architectural detail. Indeed, Statius' Silvae, with its emphasis
on small scale and the play of brilliance and color, is late antique
poetry before its time. 7 8
This picture is confirmed by the evidence of rhetorical terminol-
ogy. Quintilian's resistance to stylistic flores is explained by the
popularity of such poeticus decor in the schools of declamation. In
both prose and verse the new style is distinguished by its extensive
use of rhetorical ornament, especially in the choice and manipula-
tion of vocabulary. For the first time the metaphor of gemmae is
used, by Tacitus and Martial, to describe the special quality of
first-century literature. The metaphors of flowers and jewels were
destined for wide use in late antiquity. What had been in the first
century a new style, in conscious reaction to the canons of classi-
cism, became in late antiquity the canonical style of verse and
artistic prose. Macrobius cites Pliny the Younger and Symmachus
as examples of the genus floridum, authors whose example Sidonius
claims to be following in his Letters. 79 Sidonius may be thinking
principally of the genre of epistolography, but Macrobius is defi-
nitely talking about style. However different the authors may seem

77for the Horatian ethics, see Michael Roberts, "The Masella of Ausonius: An
Interpretation," TAPA II4 (1984), 349·
78Zoja Pavlovskis, Man in an Artificial Landscape: The Marvels of Civilization in
Imperial Roman Literature, Mnemosyne, Suppl. 25 (Leiden, 1973), traces the influ-
ence of Statian architectural description on the poets of late antiquity; for the
epithalamia of Statius, Claudian, Paulinus, Sidonius, Dracontius, and Ennodius,
see Camillo Morelli, "L'epitalamio nella tarda poesia latina," SIFC 18 (1910), 319-
432, and Zoja Pavlovskis, "Statius and the Late Latin Epithalamia," CPh 6o (1965),
164-77. Herbert Cancik, Untersuchungen zur lyrischen Kunst des P. Papinius Statius,
Spudasmata 13 (Hildesheim, 1965), 45, 70, 78-79, speaks of the role ofbrilliance in
Statius' aesthetic in the Silvae.
79Macrobius, Sat. 5· I. 7, "[Genus] pingue et floridum in quo Plinius Secundus
quondam et nunc nullo veterum minor noster Symmachus luxuriatur"; Sidonius,
Ep. I. I. I. "Quinti Symmachi rotunditatem, Gai Plinii disciplinam maturitatem-
que vestigiis praesumptuosis insecuturus."

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 63

to a modern reader, it is revealing that Macrobius looked to the

first century for artistic parallels to his own era.
Another aspect in which the first century anticipates late antiq-
uity is the breakdown of distinctions between prose and verse.
Meter is still a differentiating factor, but distinctions of style and
subject matter, insisted upon in classical theory, are no longer
consistently drawn. To put it in other terms, in late antiquity the
categories and stylistic modes of epideictic, already assimilated to
poetry by !socrates, predominate; rhetorical prose is permitted the
license of poetry, poetry lays claim to the compositional categories
of epideictic. It is therefore to be expected that the qualities we
have identified as typical of late antique poetry are also present in
the prose of the period. Take, for instance, the following passage
from a letter of Sidonius, in which he describes the fortitude of the
priest Constantius, who had recently visited and brought encour-
agement to the inhabitants of Clermont:

obversatur etenim per dies mentibus singulorum quod persona

aetate gravis, infirmitate fragilis, nobilitate sublimis, religione vener-
abilis solius dilectionis obtentu abrupisti tot· repagula, tot obiectas
veniendi difficultates, itinerum videlicet longitudinem, brevitatem
dierum, nivium copiam, penuriam pabulorum, latitudines soli-
tudinum, angustias mansionum, viarum voragines aut umore im-
brium putres aut frigorum siccitate tribulosas, ad hoc aut aggeres
saxis asperos aut fluvios gelu lubricos aut colles ascensu salebrosos
aut valles lapsuum adsiduitate derasas; per quae omnia incommoda,
quia non privatum commodum requirebas, amorem publicum ret-
tulisti. (Ep. 3. 2. 3)

For every day there was present before the mind of all the picture of
you, a person burdened by years and weakened by ill-health, yet of
distinguished birth and revered for your holiness, who out of no
motive but affection broke down so many barriers and conquered so
many difficulties put in your way-the length of the journey, the
shortness of the days, the abundance of snow and the shortage of
provisions, the expanse of wilderness and the discomfort oflodgings,
the state of the roads, broken up by rainwater or made uneven by the
cold and frost; in addition, highways rough with unfinished stone,
rivers treacherous and icy, rugged hills to climb, and valleys leveled
by continual landslides. Yet through all these hardships, because you
sought no private benefit you gained the love of the people.

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 64 The Jeweled Style

The passage is analyzed by Isabella Gualandri. 80 She draws atten-

tion to the enumeration of hardships (incommoda) structured by
antitheses (e.g., longitudinem brevitatem; copiam penuriam; solitudinum
... mansionum), the alternation of chiastic and parallel cola of two
or three elements (i.e., commata), the richness and variety of vocab-
ulary, and the concentration of attention on formal qualities rather
than narrative continuity. We might add the use of framing de-
vices: repagula ... , obiectas ... difficultates, which anticipate the
enumerative sequence, and quae . . . incommoda, which concludes
it. The stylistic techniques and the impression of exhaustivity are
typical of leptologia and the ecphrasis, although the function of the
passage is argumentative not descriptive. No attempt is made to
bring a particular scene before our eyes; rather, the mode is pan-
egyric, and Constantius' fortitude is amplified by rhetorical ex-
ornatio. Many of the qualities observed in the poetry of late antiq-
uity are present in this passage. That is not surprising, given the
assimilation of prose and verse in the period. Yet differences re-
main. Prose has greater freedom in choice of vocabulary, unham-
pered as it is by metrical restrictions, and it is capable of an ampli-
tude that can rarely be duplicated in verse. Verse, on the other
hand, benefits from a regularity imposed by metrical form.
Sidonius must create regularity by imposing a commatic structure,
with parallelism and antithesis. While a poet may use similar tech-
niques, he already has at his disposal a framework for his text
provided by the recurrent metrical unit, the strophe, distich, or
line of verse, and its various subdivisions. The poet has available
inherent in the verse form a regularity that permits a boldness of
variation and a tightness of patterning that is denied the writer in
prose. Although prose authors may strive to create effects ofjewel-
like patterning, it is in the poetry of late antiquity that we find the
fullest exploration of the potentialities of the "jeweled" style.
The stylistic techniques of the ecphrasis lie behind the preferred
methods of late antique poetry. Leptologia, detailed description,
called for enumerative sequences and short clauses, which in turn
focused attention on the smallest units of composition. The placing
and ordering of words within the text fragmented by leptologia was
a matter of variatio. And the individual elements to be varied were

SOGualandri, Furtiva Lectio, 35-40.

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 The Literary Tradition and Its Refinement 65

increasingly viewed as brilliant, multicolored flowers or jewels.

The art of the poet lay in setting the variegated pieces off against
each other to best effect. Framing devices defined the composition-
al panel; antithesis was added to further diversify enumerative and
synonymic sequences. The poetic text was understood in visual
terms; the poet strove to replicate or outdo effects he saw in the
world around him. In the next chapter I explore the relationship of
poetry with the visual arts in late antiquity, for the world around
the poet contained the artistic creations of humans as well as the
world of nature.

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