Abstracts

1) Andrea Balbo (University of Turin)

Inter omnes Asiae ciuitates Pergamum clarius: Elements of possible Pergamene influence on Roman oratory and rhetoric in the middle and late Republic.

After a brief examination of the existent bibliography, starting mostly from some studies of Gelzer (1979), Montanari (1993), Calboli (1987, 1996) and Lucarini (2015), the first scope of my paper will be to identify which elements of Hellenistic culture developed in Pergamum could have had a recognizable influence on Roman rhetoric and oratory in the last part of the Roman Republic. Then, I will discuss some texts taken mainly but not only from the Rhetorica ad Herennium, the De inventione, the Brutus and the Institutio Oratoria to inquire which was the impact of these elements on Roman production in the rhetorical domain, also dealing briefly with the problem of the so-called rhetorical Asianism. In a third part, I will study some oratorical texts, taken both from fragmentary speeches collected by Enrica Malcovati (1976) in the ORF4 and by Catherine Steel in the project FRRO (Fragments of the Republican Roman Orators, http://www.frro.gla.ac.uk/), and from Ciceronian texts, trying to pick out in a more precise form some traces of the above mentioned cultural elements. At the end, I will also examine the possibility of finding examples of interactions between oratory, rhetoric and Pergamum figurative arts, on the tracks of a suggestion proposed by Margarethe Falkner in an article of 1946.

2) Maria Broggiato (University of Rome – La Sapienza)

Grammar, philology and literary criticism between Pergamum and Rome

Roman authors of the Republican and early imperial age show a marked familiarity with the results of the philological and literary research that centered on the library of the Attalids in Pergamum. Starting from an analysis of the sources of the material we possess about the Pergamene scholars of the Hellenistic age, my paper will try to emphasize the influence these critics, above all Crates, had on Roman culture. Hellenistic Pergamene scholarship, thanks also to the fortune it had in Rome, appears in our sources to have been considered in antiquity on the same level as the research which was produced in the same period at the Museum in Alexandria.    

3) Alessandro D’Alessio (MiBACT - Parco archeologico del Colosseo; UNIBAS - SSBA)

Impact and sharing of Pergamene Culture in Rome: reasons and forms for the hegemonic city

Hellenism identifies “mixing” (Droysen), and can arguably be described as the first experiment of cultural globalization in human history. Rome, in that long period from the end of the 4th century BC to the Battle of Actium, will play the cards of History. At the end of the Latin and Sannitian wars, Rome is a powerful Italian city, but not yet comparable to other geo-political realities dominating the Mediterranean (Greece, the great Hellenistic kingdoms, Carthage);  by the time of Caesar and Augustus the urbs will have embraced much of the known world. From a semi-unknown or anonymous city (polis Tyrrhenìs) in the early middle Republican age, Rome will become, by the end of it  a ‘new’ polis Hellenìs. This was the outcome of a long process, which involved political and military expansion, economic structuring, and a formal-functional endowment, but also the progressive redefinition and consolidation of a Roman tradition and cultural memory (an ‘identity’), under the impulse of the new role played by the hegemonic power. The eventual aim was  to merge and eventually amalgamate the artificial “codification” of the prisci mores with the immense heritage derived from the Hellenistic world (of Greece, Magna Graecia, and especially Asia Minor).

In this perspective, the kingdom of Pergamum soon assumed a crucial and strategic role, in many decisive aspects. Since the III century BC contacts and political-diplomatic relations of Rome with the great pólis of Asia Minor are indeed becoming more intense. These relations are determined precisely by the logic of Roman expansionism in the East, and, more specifically, by the related network of relationships with the Hellenistic states. This network granted the Romans a number of political achievements in the Aegean theatre, and, at the same time,  boosted their quest for a mythical-ideological legitimacy of their origins, which could justify their militarism and imperial vocation among the Greeks, as well as claim a culturally equal power-role (D’Alessio 2006). Pergamum and its civilization, and in particular the Attalids’ opposition in the name of all the Greeks against the barbarian Galatians and the magnetic presence of Troy within its territory (Πέργαμος was the eponymic oikistes of the city after the fall of Troy, but also the city’s “acropolis” in Homeric use) thus became an indispensable point of reference in the construction of the supranational imperium and in the genesis of a “new” mythical-historical identity of the Romans, which eventually incorporated a fastening of the Trojan saga with the Albanian narrative of the origins of Rome.

This paper will address this “acculturative” processes of the Romans in the Hellenistic age from the point of view of the archaeologist: all these processes had indeed an early and evident impact on the political, cultural and urban scene of Rome: from the introduction, facilitated by the Attalids, of the cult of Magna Mater in 204 BC as the Protector Goddess (salutaris) of the foundation of the city, to the progressive transposition, over the centuries, of a wide range of themes and iconic-formal solutions, of a true semantics in some cases, in the field of architecture and architectural decoration, urbanism, plastic art (sculpture statuary and relief), and so on.

4) Paul Ernst (Université Paris 8 – Université de Caen)

The cultural practices of Italians in Pergamum from the 2nd c. BC to the 1st c. AD

In 133 BC, Attalus III, king of Pergamum, died and bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans. The oldest mentions of Italians appear in some lists of new citizens which were established at that time. But most of the literary, epigraphic (in Greek and sometimes in Latin) and archaeological documents date from the following two centuries.

This paper deals with the cultural practices (in the broad sense of the term) of these Italians (citizens, freedmen or slaves, negotiatores, students, magistrates or soldiers) who were settled in Pergamum or passing through this place. The study will be about their linguistic practices, their participation in the gymnasium activities of this great intellectual center, as well as their religious and funeral practices.

While I will pay attention to the problems posed by the evidence available, I will study the forms of the integration of most of these Italians in the Pergamene society and the reasons why some of them distinguished themselves by using Roman customs. Thus it will be possible to determine very cautiously whether the life of these Italians in Pergamum had any specific characteristics or whether their relationship with this Greek environment was comparable to what can be observed in other places around the Aegean.

5) Andrew Erskine (University of Edinburgh)

Showing Rome the way: the Attalids and their friends in the West

The Attalid relationship with Rome began early in Rome’s involvement in the Greek east.  It is important to interpret it in the context of the late third and early second century when both were relatively new powers in the region. Despite being as far east as Asia Minor Attalos I linked up with Rome in the First Macedonian War, a consequence more of its ties with the Aetolians than any affinity with Rome. From then on until the Third Macedonian War the Attalid dynasty acted not only as a political guide to the affairs of the East but also as a cultural one. The present paper emphasises the varied character of the Rome-Attalid relationship. At its core on both sides it was driven by political and military necessity, but there was more to it than that, especially from the Attalid side.  The Attalids regularly used benefactions of various sorts to influence states both within and beyond their immediate territory, thus the building of monuments at Delphi, the funding of Stoas at Athens and the (rejected) offer of a subsidy to the Achaean League.  The Attalid attitude to Rome is rather similar. It may not offer to build anything but it is instrumental in the transfer of the Magna Mater to Rome and acted as patrons of Rome’s Trojan ancestry in Asia Minor. Only with the increase in Roman power does this change. Roman success in the Third Macedonian War fundamentally changed the dynamics of the relationship. Once boldly urging Rome to war, the dynasty was now reluctant to go to war at all without Rome’s permission.

5) Myrto Hatzimichali (University of Cambridge: Homerton College)

Philosophy in Pergamene Culture

This paper explores the ways in which philosophical ideas intersected with, influenced or were modified by Pergamene culture and the intellectual achievements of its main exponents. For the duration of the Hellenistic period the main philosophical schools were based firmly in Athens, but their members were sought by and often formed connections with Hellenistic monarchs, including the Attalids (e.g. Diogenes Laertius 4.60 on the Academic Lacydes, 5.67 on the Peripatetic Lyco). It is one of the aims of this paper to offer a survey and assess the intellectual, educational and political significance of any philosophical (or philosophy-related) activity that took place within the context of Pergamene culture. This would range from the biographer of philosophers Antigonus of Carystus (third century BC), to the Stoic Athenodorus Cordylion, friend of Cato the Younger, who became librarian at Pergamum (D.L. 7.34, and the Academic-cum-Peripatetic Cratippus, who later taught Cicero’s son (De officiis 1.1; 3.5).

Within this broad chronological range, a principal focus for a more detailed investigation will be the alleged Stoic affiliation of Crates of Mallos, which is reported explicitly in only a handful of sources and, whereas it was accepted unreservedly by modern scholars such as Pfeiffer (1968), it has also been called into very serious doubt (e.g. Porter 1992: 85–8). This will involve an examination of the extent to which Stoic ideas underpin Crates’ interpretation of Homer and/or his linguistic/grammatical investigations.

6) Giuseppe Pezzini (University of St Andrews)

Pergamum in Republican Rome: a Quellenforschung

From the wide circulation of the Trojan/Pergamene myth in tragic (cf. e.g. Liv. Andron. Trag. 2 R., Enn. Trag. 61 J., Pacuv. 167 R.) and para-tragic (cf. e.g. Bacch. 933 o Troia, o patria, o Pergamum, o Priame periisti senex) contexts, to the Senatus Consulta de Pergamenis and De Agro Pergameno (cf. Sherk 1969: 59–73), Pergamum is a tantalizing but widespread presence in Roman sources of the Middle Republic.

This paper will present the results of a systematic collection of references, direct or indirect, to Pergamum in Roman Republican sources, down to the early 1st c. BC. The word ‘Pergamum’ will be construed in a broad sense, to denote both the Hellenistic kingdom of the Attalids and/or its culturally-thriving capital, but above all its mythical ancestor: the city of Troy, with its Pergamene rock, its Pergamene people and above all its Pergamene body of related narratives, to which Rome decided to connect its mythical-cultural memory.

Apart from tracing a history of Pergamum’s reception in Roman sources, the paper will aim to reconstruct the features of Pergamum’s construal within the Roman cultural discourse, focusing in particular on its possible distinctiveness from other strands of Hellenism (of Magna Graecia, mainland Greece, and the Ptolemaic-Alexandrian kingdom in particular). Secondly, the paper will explore how these features are associated with and/or incorporated into that of process of construction of a Roman cultural identity, which is a trademark of the Roman production of the Middle Republic.

7) Nicolas Wiater (University of St Andrews)

Pergamene influence on mid-Republican literary aesthetics

This paper will make an attempt to trace specifically Pergamene influence on the literary aesthetics of both Greek and Roman texts produced in the second and first centuries BC. I will operate on the basis of a deliberately broad definition of “text”: I intend to consider literary prose and poetry alongside inscriptions and their possible relationship with “overt” literary criticism as expounded in technical treatises. But I also hope to investigate to what extent aesthetics ideas as represented by Pergamene art, that is, what we might call “covert” aesthetics, might have influenced literary production in mid-republican period.

 References List

Bauman, Z. (2004), Identity. Cambridge.

Bayart, J.-F. (2005), The Illusion of Cultural Identity, transl. Jonathan Derrick et al. Chicago.

Calboli, G. (1987), ‘Asianesimo e Atticismo: retorica, letteratura e linguistica’ in Studi di retorica oggi in Italia. (Atti del Convegno, Torino 18–19 aprile 1985) (Bologna), 31–53.

Calboli, G. (1996), ‘Gli oratori romani nel passaggio dal II al I sec. a. C.’ in Per Enrica Malcovati. Atti del Convegno di Studi nel Centenario della nascita (Pavia 21–22 ottobre 1994 (Como), 105–24

Denecke, W. (2013), Classical World Literatures. Oxford.

D’Alessio, A. (2006), ‘Il santuario della Magna Mater dalla fondazione all’età imperiale: sviluppo architettonico, funzioni e paesaggio urbano’ in Topografia del sacro sul colle Palatino, Atti della Giornata di Studi (ScAnt 13) (Rome), 429–454.

Falkner, M. (1946), ‘Ἀσιανος ζῆλος und der Pergamon-Fries’, JŒAI 36, 1–45.

Gelzer, T. (1979), ‘Klassizismus, Attizismus und Asianismus’ in Flashar, H. (ed.), Le classicisme à Rome aux Iᵉʳ ssup; siècles avant et après J.C. (Vandoeuvres-Genève), 1–55.

Gruen, E. S. (ed.) (2005), Cultural borrowings and ethnic appropriations in antiquity. Stuttgart.

Gruen, E. S. (ed.) (2011), Cultural Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean. Los Angeles.

Lucarini, C. M. (2015), ‘I due stili asiani (Cic. Br. 325; P. Artemid.) e l’origine dell’Atticismo letterario’ ZPE 193, 11–24. 

Malcovati, E. (1976), Oratorum Romanorum fragmenta, 4 ed. Turin.

Montanari, F. (1993), ‘Pergamo’, in Cambiano, G., Canfora, L., and Lanza, D. (eds.), Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica, 1.2, L'ellenismo (Rome and Salerno), 639–55. 

Pfeiffer, R. (1968), History of classical scholarship from the beginnings to the end of the Hellenistic age. Oxford.

Porter, J.I. (1992), ‘Hermeneutic lines and circles: Aristarchus and Crates on the exegesis of Homer’, in Lamberton, R. and Keaney, J. J. (eds.), Homer’s Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes (Princeton), 67–114.

Sherk, R.K. (1969), Roman documents from the Greek East: senatus consulta and epistulae to the age of Augustus. Baltimore.