Martin Shedd, Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
This paper demonstrates how the lives of bad emperors in the Historia Augusta (HA) expand our understanding of the rare rhetorical form, the self-standing invective. Riskier than panegyric, which catered to imperial sensibilities, invective invited censure or revenge. Despite being named in most guidebooks to rhetorical training, invective form was rarely discussed, added as a footnote to panegyric with the vague instruction to do the opposite (e.g. Quint. inst. 3.7; Nixon and Rodgers 1994). In principle, this should mean that an invective briefly outlines the target’s birth, heritage, early life, education, character traits, and rejection of the principal virtues: justice, moderation, wisdom, and courage. The relationship of the panegyric structure with the form of biography both ancient and late antique is well discussed (Hägg and Rousseau 2000). However, while the tropes of invective literature have been identified throughout the HA (see Chazal 2021), the question of how the HA enriches our understanding of the methods of invective themselves remains unaddressed.
While a virtuous emperor needs to embody the cardinal virtues in both public and private affairs, and a balanced discussion of a complex emperor—such as Chazal’s “ambivalent” emperors—must encompass a full character picture to demonstrate where on each virtue the emperor succeeds or fails, the HA shows that a bad emperor needs to know only one vice, and make it a big one. This paper will look at two examples from the HA itself, the lives of Elagabalus and Maximinus Thrax. For the former, the author announces directly the overarching theme of luxuria. For the latter, it is intemperance both emotional and physical, that characterizes his monstrous reign. Both explorations of failure in moderation enter the realm of the absurd; to the historian of imperial facts and deeds, they are of little value. However for the study of rhetoric, they show that by selecting a single feature for discussion, the writer can exercise their ability to entertain and invent, pushing the selected theme to its limits. Adopting Cicero’s principle that the topics at hand just need to make the author’s argument seem probable (de inv. 1.9), so long as the reader leaves with the conviction that the emperor failed in the manner alleged, and the author avoids the tedium of which the HA author is ever self-conscious (e.g. Maximin. 1.1; Heliog. 18.4), they have succeeded in their goal without needing to add failures in any other virtue.
The paper concludes with a parallel example, Ammianus Marcellinus’s treatment of Caesar Gallus (14.1–11), to show that the monolithic vice approach to invective was not limited to the HA. The insistence with which Ammianus pursues the topic of injustices suggests that here, as in the panegyrical summary of Julian’s reign, he is influenced by contemporary rhetorical strategies. If a good emperor must succeed at all virtues, and a good panegyric must explain how he accomplishes each, an invective need not explore each inverse, but can succeed by hammering home failure in just one.