Roman
authors of the early imperial period had an extensive
vocabulary of virtue and vice at their disposal for the
representation of character, but artless application of
such vocabulary could easily produce something closer to
a statistical table than a vivid portrait. To avoid this
hazard, Roman writers could choose to show virtues and
vices as part of larger patterns of individual behavior.
The biographer Suetonius and the poet Statius in
different ways point to just such a pattern in the
emperor Domitian's actions: a fearsome and somewhat
paradoxical practice of controlled calculation in the
exercise of unrestrained vice. Once we recognize this
feature of Domitian's character in Suetonius' life of
Domitian and in Statius' Thebaid, we can gain a perspective on how the generic conventions of
each work inform the representation of this and other
such patterns underlying vicious behavior.
As
an imperial biographer, Suetonius demonstrates a special
interest in virtues and vices. Among the variously
virtuous and wicked Caesars whom Suetonius surveys,
Domitian represents an intermediate case, demonstrating
virtues before descending into sheer vice (3.2). The life
of Domitian provides an exceptionally good example of how
Suetonius presents Roman categories for vice in
combination in order to suggest their formal
similarities. Presented in tandem, Domitian's cruelty and
greed reinforce one another as instances of immoderation,
both of which are made more fearsome by meticulous
execution. Nevertheless, Suetonius' biographical
technique of summary analysis through categories of
virtue and vice limits his exploration of this character
trait to something of a tally.
The
epic genre within which Statius composes allows for other
possibilities. Although scholars dispute the extent to
which Statius' Thebaid comments on contemporary political
circumstances, when Statius uses the language of the very
financial matters that so perversely interested Domitian
to explore the theme of controlled immoderation among the
kings and leaders of the Thebaid,
we find a distinct, if subtle, reflection of the vices of
the princeps. Jupiter, a natural doublet for the divine
emperor, claims that he suffers a loss (iactura,
7.205) when he has to repopulate the world after war. But
the mortal Coroebus had already pointed out that the
divinities saw human suffering and death as a cheap and
acceptable cost (iacturaque uilior,
1.649) of fulfilling their desire to harm mortals. This
they do by sending monsters, which are consequently more
valuable to them (monstra...cara adeo superis, 1.648-9).
Here
and elsewhere in the Thebaid Statius
is able to explore a ruler's calculated indulgence of
immoderate desires in greater detail than Suetonius due
to different conventions of their respective genres.
Statius has at his disposal not only the greater length
of epic, but also the character-illuminating potential of
narrative, a wider scope for invention and arrangement,
and the potential for linguistic experimentation. This
last possibility in particular allows him to overcome
contravening obstacles which his choice of genre posed.
Statius could not easily represent greed in a poetic
tradition where zealous pursuit of goods is standard
heroic behavior. Yet by using words like iactura
that had contemporary economic connotations, Statius
manages to introduce into his epic a notion of
calculation in the pursuit of excessive desire that
resonates less with epic traditions than with the
circumstances of Domitian's Rome.
Statius
thus manages to achieve within his chosen genre a
representation of calculated immoderation that is more
complex, but also more diffuse than that of Suetonius.
Such diffusion was of course necessary when touching on
the vices of a reigning princeps. Fortunately in
Suetonius we have an aid to discovering and interpreting
this motif in Statius' epic poetry.