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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

CL A SS ICS IN T HEORY

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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

CL A SS ICS IN T HEORY
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The Art of Complicity

in Martial and Statius
The Epigrams, Siluae, and
Domitianic Rome

Erik Gunderson

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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© Erik Gunderson 2021
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First Edition published in 2021
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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

For Tom
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

Contents

Acknowledgements ix
1. Introduction 1
2. Martial’s Epigrams as Domitianic Literature 29
A. “But now I know that you really are going to Rome” 29
B. Welcome to the show: Epigrams 1 40
i. Run, rabbit, run 40
ii. Power and play in the hare and now 50
iii. Stage-­managing the passions 60
iv. It’s not just about rabbits, you see 65
C. To whom it may concern: Epigrams 2+ 66
D. Trust and truth: a confidence game in Book 5 68
E. Bigger, better . . . and badder: Book 6 76
F. High and mighty; near and far: Book 7 84
G. Turning things outside-­in: Book 8 92
H. A poet’s will to power: Epigrams 9.pr 100
I. Agony, ecstasy, and emperor: Epigrams 9.1–4 107
J. Managing to both hit and miss the mark: anxiety and
Epigrams 9.5 115
K. Assigning a name to the Domitianic condition, or not 119
i. Unspeakably something: the Earinus cycle begins
(Epigrams 9.11–13) 119
ii. Everybody loves the Ausonian Father. But why? (Epigrams 9.7) 129
iii. The kindest cut: Epigrams 9.16–17 133
iv. The poetry of (ir)reverence: Epigrams 9.36 and its environs 139
v. The poetry of reverence: Epigrams 9.79 and its affines 148
L. Oops: Book 10 150
i. Forgetting how to count in Epigrams 10.1–2 150
ii. Dichtung und Wahrheit: further autobiographical
fictions (Epigrams 10.3–5) 157
iii. The (new) new start ends: Trajan (Epigrams 10.6) 163
iv. I am not going to say, “Master and God”: Epigrams 10.72 164
M. The new beginning as the end: Books 11 and 12 168
i. Approaching the palace, or not (Epigrams 11.1) 168
ii. Epigram is the poetry of private life and festal time
(Epigrams 11.2–3) 172
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/07/21, SPi

viii Contents

iii. Nerva dials back the principate (Epigrams 11.4–5) 176

iv. Martial’s (confused) preface to his (wretched) postscript:
Book 12.pr and 12.1–5 178
v. Now one is free to enjoy all of Helicon, or not
(Epigrams 12.6 and 12.8) 183

3. Statian Metapoetics: The High Art of Complicity 189

A. An introduction to Statius’ Domitianic literature 189
B. Says this poetry, “This is how you are supposed to read
this poetry”192
C. All that glitters makes for a golden verse 201
D. The high and the low in the here and now 204
E. The ecstatic present (and the mundanity of the traditional
sublime)210
F. An introduction to Domitianic grammar and syntax:
the psychic life of subjection 218
i. Marveling at modernity in Siluae 1.1 and 1.2 219
ii. Make way for the present 225
iii. Shut up and be happy: Siluae 4.pr 229
iv. Everything and everyone wears a happy face: Siluae 4.1 234
v. The bold have nothing to fear: Siluae 3.2 238
vi. There is nothing to complain about in this best of worlds 239
vii. True confessions of undeniable attachment to the present 242
G. Select nouns from the Domitianic lexicon 245
i. Freedom (but not that kind of freedom) 246
ii. Faith (for those naive enough to believe) 254
iii. Masters (so many, so marvelous) 259
H. Domitianic time all the time 267
I. Mastering the submission game: six case studies 270
i. Parroting and the mastery of affect (Siluae 2.4) 271
ii. The lion that was tamed (Siluae 2.5) 277
iii. As free as a freedman (Siluae 3.3) 283
iv. Dead boy: poor master, says the poet (Siluae 2.6) 301
v. Dead boy: poor master-­dad, said the master-­poet (Siluae 2.1) 313
vi. Castrated boy: lucky master, says the poet (Siluae 3.4) 323

4. Conclusion 345

Appendix: From Nero to Trajan: Lives and Times 377

Bibliography 379
Index of Passages 391
General Index 397
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

Acknowledgements

The students in my over-­broad Complicity seminar put up with a lot.

From their suffering came my wisdom. They helped me to see how every-
thing could be put far more clearly and succinctly. If the book is neither
clear nor succinct, know at least that things were once much, much worse.
Charlotte Loveridge and Karen Raith were a pleasure to deal with at the
press, both helped move the project forward swiftly and painlessly despite
the fact that the world and everything in it was a mess. John Henderson of
erstwhile anonymity was wonderful, as ever: so painfully generous with
time and genius. I need to write another book, if only to get a chance to
acknowledge more of the support and inspiration he has provided over the
years. The press’s other reader I cannot name, but I nevertheless owe him
or her a debt of gratitude for, among other things, making me worry about
my own tyranny and so perhaps saving others from it, at least in some
measure.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/06/21, SPi

1
Introduction

Consider the gap between the Domitianic discourse of the Domitianic age
and the next era’s discourse of the Domitianic age. What had been the best
of times was presently denounced as the worst of times.1 Furthermore it is
not at all clear that this distance between these two versions of “the
Domitianic” measures a shared conceptual unit. That is, the Domitianic
discourse of power, even if distorted, does not seem to be structured along
quite the same logic as is the Antonine discourse of Domitianic power.
And the latter is a distorted discourse as well. If one elects to follow up on
Foucault’s insight and to deprecate the repressive model of power, then an
agenda presents itself. If power is fertile and productive, rather than nega-
tive and constraining, then when it comes to the case of “imperial power”
viewed as a discourse more broadly and not just as the concrete institu-
tional capacity for an emperor to give an order and see it executed, who
stood to gain? A naive, direct answer is incomplete. The advantaged party
is not simply a partisan of a cause or an individual emperor. Imperial
power was a modality of sovereignty, legitimacy, and participation. In the
discourse of power that surrounds the Domitianic age, what sorts of
Romanness were enabled, solicited, and fostered? How? On what occa-
sions? By whom? Who, then, is the imperial subject, and what makes
him tick?
In the case of the Antonines, the need for an appraisal of their claims
about the past is glaring. The men denouncing the Domitianic era had
themselves been politically active during that same period.2 A discourse of

1 Boyle, 1995:83: “It was a period of blood, terror, opulence, spectacle, poetry, theatre, and
display; it was a period of social convolution, conformity and reordering, of sexual licence
and puritanical legislation, of rebellion and subversion, of loyalty, concealment, executions
and friendship; it was a period of cultural renewal and of immense creativity in the visual
arts, in architecture, in sculpture; a period of military adventurism, bureaucracy and
careerism, political and social patronage and favour, corrupting power, servility and self-
abasement—and of satisfied life.”
2 Griffin, 2000:55: “Like Nero, to whom Juvenal compared him, Domitian was the last of
his dynasty, and he was removed and disgraced. The rulers that followed justified their usur-
pation by treating his reign as a tyrannical aberration after which the tradition set by good

The Art of Complicity in Martial and Statius: The Epigrams, Siluae, and Domitianic Rome. Erik Gunderson,
Oxford University Press. © Erik Gunderson 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898111.003.0001
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/06/21, SPi

2 Introduction

hypocrisy springs to their lips: “The devil made us do it.3 Throughout that
period we had our fingers crossed behind our backs.4 None of it meant
all that much. But today let me assure you that, though you cannot see
them, behind my back my fingers are assuredly not crossed.”5 Words like
adulatio—a word evoking cringing, fawning flattery, a word better suited
to a dog than a man and yet so often used of men . . . —became very
important in the post-­Domitianic age.6 Words like this offer a label as well
as a cloak.7 They qualify even as they also conceal the details of the
contents of the object so signed, sealed, and delivered to the contemporary

principes would be resumed. Writers under Nerva and Trajan were only too happy to elabo-
rate on the theme, especially those who had flattered and prospered under the old regime.
How can we trust any of them?” Compare Leberl, 2004:12–14; Syme, 1997:3: “When a despot
is killed or a dynasty destroyed less is achieved than some expect. After the initial transports
of newly won liberation men look around and discover that the system abides—and most of
the people.” Waters, 1969:390: “We must conclude then that at no time was there greater
continuity in the sphere of imperial advisers and other prominent administrators than in the
transition from Domitian to Trajan.”
3 Bartsch, 1994 shows just how sinister and involuted the question of acting can get for
political agents.
4 But the emperor knew that your fingers were crossed behind your backs . . . Absolutely
everybody, emperor included, knows the score. Contemporary testimony is provided by Dio
Chrysostomus 6.58: “The tyrant is not pleased when praised. For he does not think that peo-
ple are speaking their minds ([ὁ τύραννοϲ] ἐπαινούμενοϲ δὲ οὐχ ἥδεται· οὐ γὰρ φρονοῦνταϲ
οὕτωϲ οἴεται λέγειν).” Similarly, the flatterer fools only himself: “The flatterer outstrips all in
his folly. Of those who conceal the truth, he alone confidently disseminates his falsehoods
despite the fact that his audience is perfectly aware that he lies (τῷ δὲ ἄφρονι πάνταϲ
ὑπερβέβληκεν ὁ κόλαξ. μόνοϲ γὰρ τῶν ἀφανιζόντων τὴν ἀλήθειαν πρὸϲ ἐκείνουϲ θαρρεῖ τὰ
ψευδῆ λέγειν τοὺϲ μάλιϲτα εἰδόταϲ ὅτι ψεύδεται; 3.19).”
5 Leberl, 2004:16 on readings that let self-­interested Romans get away with this line of
argument: “Sie setz, auf die flavische Literatur bezogen, voraus, dass kein Untertan einen
‘Tyrannen’ freiwillig und ohne Not preise, und dass Domitian seine gesamte Regierungszeit
hindurch ein Tyrann gewesen sein muss.” When it comes to “resistance” via double-­speak,
Leberl raises the most devastating question of all: how is it that only Caesar was too stupid to
understand that he was being double-­spoken to? As Geyssen, 1996:7 notes, he had been
trained to read this sort of thing. And, even if he was obtuse, did he have no self-­interested
delator to help him get up to speed?
6 Keitel, 2006:223: “Tacitus repeatedly alludes to fides, amicitia, adulatio, and self-­interest
in the narrative of 1.12–49 and shows the breakdown of traditional values among all groups
involved in the struggle for power at Rome.” And Histories 1.15.3–4 can be compared to
Pliny, Panegyricus 85.1 (Keitel, 2006:221).
7 Gallia, 2012:89: “If anything, it seems that Trajan did more to consolidate the power of
the princeps, expanding many of the authoritarian policies for which Domitian is supposed
to have been reviled.” Antonine positions are highly compromised. It is polite to avoid look-
ing too closely. See Syme, 1997:25: “Tacitus proclaims his scorn for the brave enemies of dead
tyrants, the noisy advocates of the heroes and martyrs. They had not confined their reproba-
tion to evil men, the willing agents of despotism, but had gone much further. The rule of the
Caesars depended not only on political managers or venal prosecutors. It had the support of
administrators; and the whole senatorial order was acquiescent. Tacitus goes out of his way to
make a passionate confession of collective guilt.” Gallia, 2012:91: “Pliny’s embarrassment is
understandable, given that every step of his career save the very first and the most recent had
been obtained with the endorsement of a ruler he repeatedly condemns as a despot.”
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/06/21, SPi

Introduction 3

moment.8 What more does one need to know other than that the situation
was revolting?
The cynical appraisal of imperial life is important and compelling. But
the portrait of a world full of mere actors who mouthed empty lines itself
comes to feel two-­dimensional. The discourse of the subject and power
produced within the Domitianic age unfolds a rich constellation of prob-
lems. The Antonines denounce something that is both too simple and to
one side of this discourse. And so I have opted to offer a reading of the
Domitianic portrait of Domitianic literature. Such an agenda potentially
entails a species of meta-­complicity: if the authors get to set the terms of
the debate, then one is all too likely to end up on one side of it in the end.
Similarly, one may well overlook key issues that have been pointedly sup-
pressed by the authors of the hour. Nevertheless, the converse failing is, at
least in the case of Domitianic literature, familiar enough: disgusted, one
fails to give ear to these self-­serving, boot-­licking flatterers of power. Their
praise turns into self-­indictment. One denounces and moves on. A new
age conveniently dispenses with an old one without asking too many
inconvenient questions.
But if we linger, one’s relationship to the material on hand becomes a
somewhat fraught affair. And this is one of the points of the whole study:
can politics and art be tidily separated at any layer of analysis? The poems
are never merely political, nor are they simply art, and this is true even—
especially?—when we are invited by the verse itself to draw distinctions
and to set down lines of demarcation. Even if the contents of a poem were
somehow purely apolitical, does not the apolitical posture itself reek of
politics? Even when speaking most directly to power, is the speech ever
just political without also itself constituting an aestheticized political
object? And the lovely speech-­object so produced is itself objectifying
contemporary politics as a thing of wonder and beauty.
The pseudo-­antinomy of art as set against politics cannot be sustained.
Any desire to say that we are dealing with “either . . . or . . . ” must yield to a
story of “both . . . and . . . ”. Our reluctance to engage in a discourse of guilt
and innocence is almost reflexive, especially in the wake of the over-­hasty
denunciations of the Antonines who seem all too eager to cast judgements.
But it is, in its own way, perverse for us to maintain neutrality given the
loud shouting of all parties that the affair at hand is indeed politically and

8 Henderson, 2001:76 on Book 3 of Pliny’s Epistles: “Altogether, these in-­brief profiles of

individuals map out an embryonic political review, from a Trajanic perspective, of the first
two dynasties of Caesars. The half-­light of another Panegyricus, in fact.”
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/06/21, SPi

4 Introduction

socially charged. The critic who decides that what confronts him or her is
merely a question of artistry has in practice taken a side both relative to
the past and relative to the present. And so one has no choice but to decide
what to do about all of the sticky questions before us. And they are sticky
because they stick to us as well.
Other polarities will likewise need to be dismantled. Freedom and con-
straint work as a useful conjunctive pair. The disjunction that posits either
freedom or constraint proves too simplistic. Poetry and power need to be
allowed to unfold themselves, to interact, to intersect, to interpenetrate.
The mutual implication of the two terms can help to steer us away from a
static portrait of anyone or anything: we need to capture the dialog and
dynamism. Conversely, even the most reductive approach to the interpre-
tation of Domitianic poetry founders at once in its own terms. Did the
historical individual named Martial think that Domitian was a good
emperor? Well, the poems of 86 and the poems of 90 and the poems of 94
differ in their presentation of the issue. They are always positive on the one
hand, but they are differently positive on the other. Maybe he thought
Domitian was satisfactory at first but not so good in the end. Maybe the
praise starts as sincere but then becomes insincere. Maybe it was never
sincere to begin with, but then it becomes bitingly critical in the end.
There is no obvious way to talk about the relationship between poetry and
power in this age that does not at once get complicated and then more
complicated still: the question of power is protean. As for the poets them-
selves, they are all too happy to sing about how someone once sang a song
about Orpheus who was singing about the children of Poseidon. And such
songs comprise their pointedly shape-­shifting answer to the question of
the nature of the interaction between poet and prince.
And so we will be exploring power-­and-­poetry. This project entails
something more than just reading poems about power. It may well indeed
be most keenly interested in those places where the narrative voice speaks
most directly to or about power. But it is also more generally interested in
the poetic corpora in question. And, in practice, this project will be skepti-
cal of poems about poetry as somehow revelatory of the “real” project
while the poems about power are the “specious, throwaway” elements of
the enterprise.9 Instead the fertility of power, its expressiveness, and its
ubiquity will be put into dialog with the making, doing, and omnipotence
of ποίηϲιϲ. Poet and prince are nodal points in the same network, moments

9 Compare Foucault, 1990:82–83 on the impasses that arise when one examines power-­
and-­pleasure from a “juridico-­discursive” perspective.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/06/21, SPi

Introduction 5

where structural features of the system itself meet up and confront one
another. The oil-­and-­water immiscibility of the pair is more a pretense
than a reality. Poet and prince are masters, masters of metaphors, and
master metaphors. The exchanges between their domains and the trans-
fers effected within their own zones attest a commonality. One is the duck,
the other the rabbit. One the vase, the other the face; one the fair maid, the
other the hag. But as in the case of these famous optical illusions, the two
are part of the same image, and neither is the truer subject of the scene.
Accounts of how Statius and Martial “reflect on” or “comment on”
power will not be avoided. But such stories-­of-­power come as preludes to
an investigation both of the nature of this commentary and the place from
which it is articulated. This means exploring the conflicting, contradictory,
atomized, partial, now-­hesitant, now-­enthusiastic portraits of the emperor
within “Domitianic poetry.” When one bears in mind how little of what we
see can in any sense be said to have been “dictated” by a specific man who
held an office, it becomes easier to appreciate that we are in the presence of
a discourse of power that springs up as a fantasy of things that one might
say to and about and for power.
We see collections of masterful performances that proffer meditations
on mastery that the master may—or may not . . . —deign to observe.10
Master-­ Poet names the split center of the discursive field where the
trope of freedom-­and-­constraint plays itself out. The concrete historical
individual poet is producer and product of this free—but not totally
free . . . —play of the signifier.11 The poet both is and is not the master. The
poet both loves and loathes the figure of mastery.
What does anyone mean when they talk about “Domitianic literature”
or the “Domitianic age”? Such notions are convenient fictions: a whole
race of men was not born the day that Domitian came to office; another
did not replace these people on the day he died.12 But the fiction that the
age might have as its cause the Prince is not merely the product of a lazy
historicism that is unduly reliant on metonyms that substitute for analysis.

10 Foucault, 2000b:341: “[Power] operates on the field of possibilities in which the behav-
ior of active subjects is able to inscribe itself.”
11 Foucault, 2000b:341 on the key structural equivocation of the term “conduct”: “To ‘con-
duct’ is at the same time to ‘lead’ others . . . and a way of behaving within a more or less open
field of possibilities.”
12 Freudenburg, 2001:130: “For cultural, epochal identities, such as those suggested by the
terms ‘Augustan’ and ‘Neronian,’ are never simply synonymous with ‘the facts’ of an emperor’s
rule . . . They emerge as identities only when those facts are rendered into stories, told as tales
that ‘make sense’ inside themselves.”
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/06/21, SPi

6 Introduction

On the one hand, Domitian is not the cause of the Domitianic age.13 He
had help, and lots of it. In fact he had so much help from so many helpers
that he seldom needed to spell things out and to give specific instructions.
People are anticipating, intervening, adding their twist, making their
mark. Poets, sculptors, men toiling at the mint: there is plenty of work to
go around. How many of their efforts did they really expect the princeps
himself would take note of? How much of the activity was aimed at a
broader contemporary audience of fellow travelers along the Via
Domitiana? What in here is the spontaneous, unbidden, jubilant outpour-
ing of bottom-­up efforts to go along, get along, and even get ahead in
Today’s Rome?
But, on the other hand, even if so many are lending their aid and acting
as the efficient causes of the Domitianic era, Domitian is routinely figured
as the one true cause of his own age. Domitian names matter, form, agent,
and end. Ask anyone. “There is no Domitianic age without Domitian,”
they will aver. That is, the metonym is “real” and “truly powerful” precisely
to the extent that there is a wide-­spread mobilization of this figure of
speech as if it were indeed the figure that legitimately names the moment.
And the moment assuredly has been/will have been named, at least tem-
porarily: Domitian eventually renames September and October after him-
self.14 And yet, at the very same time, there is a smirking quality to this
deployment of the figural on the part of the members of this (so-­called)
age: it is always also a mere figure. The poets “conduct themselves” as if
there were a ruler ruling, but their own conduct also betrays the simulta-
neous presence of a second order of relationships to power, specifically
that power is nothing more—while also being nothing less . . . —than
something figural.
If, as Foucault would have it, genealogy is “gray, meticulous, and
patiently documentary,” then patience will indeed be required.15 For we
are not looking into the pedigree of any given poet, his birth, his wealth,
his education, the books he read, his preferred allusions, his aesthetic
affiliations, and so forth. In the case of Statius in particular one can write
volumes about these things. And they have indeed been written. But we

13 Leberl, 2004:27: “Der Princeps war nicht der auctor aller Instrumente und Medien
seiner Herrshaftsdarstellung.”
14 Suetonius, Domitian 13.3. It doesn’t stick. But one could always dream, sometimes suc-
cessfully, sometimes not so successfully. See Suetonius, Julius 76 and Augustus 31 on the ori-
gin of the month-­names of July and August. And see Caligula 15 on an earlier attempt at
renaming September as the month of Germanicus. Nero named April after himself (Nero 55).
15 Foucault, 2000a:369.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/06/21, SPi

Introduction 7

are exploring instead the emergence of politico-­aesthetic objects posi-

tioned at the intersection of a constellation of forces. Domitianic poetry
books both embody and body forth a swirl of forces and power relations
that are all in play. And the work effected by these forces comes with the
label “play” set upon it. Lusus is the name one frequently assigns to this
“playful” constellation of power. But that is a self-­serving pedigree that
poetry bestows upon itself, and, as such, it should be immediately suspect.
Playful splashing in learned waters is not mere play as soon as one
asserts that power-­and-­poetry is the real name for the game afoot.16
Helicon’s font is not the only source of all of this. Instead, a founding dis-
parity lies at the bottom of it all. The essential thing to observe is that there
is no essence to begin with.17 There is only a “current episode in a series of
subjugations.”18 The list of elements that should attract the critic’s eye
might not include only allusions, intertexts, master-­poets, and master-­
texts. In such a flowery figuration, the question of power has been dis-
placed. It has been hidden away under a purple cloak woven of the finest
cloth, a vestment crafted by Pierian maidens, by the looks of it. Scandalous,
base-­born forces might be detected tussling lustily ’neath that mantle:
social obligation, economic ties, political submission, proud self-­display,
social ambition, political resistance, artistic independence, other-­loathing,
self-­loathing, fear of failure, fear of success. And this is only the list of
forces that one might describe as semi-­subjective, as sites where an ego
might assert itself, where someone might affirm or deny or somehow
argue the point. The impersonal system as such, the forces for which there
is no personal agent have not been entertained in such a list. Not yet of
interest are ideology in the abstract, the sign system in general, power at
its most fertile, the dominant fiction at its most elusive.
Presently and below we will linger with a hermeneutics of the
­subject, not because getting to the bottom of Martial—who is always also
“Martial”—or of Statius—who is always also “Statius”—is somehow pos-
sible. But we will spend time thinking about subject positions and the
rhetoric of the self precisely because this is where the poetry itself spends
its time. Even if they are not real people, these vividly drawn characters
and their fictional psychic lives need to be explored and to be taken seri-
ously precisely because one needs to be sensitive to the politics of
pseudo-­interiority.

16 Habinek, 2005:5: “Play turns out to be a crucial element of hegemonic Roman culture,
not as a release from the labor of the everyday but as a proving ground for mastery.”
17 Foucault, 2000a:371–372. 18 Foucault, 2000a:376.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/06/21, SPi

8 Introduction

We will be complicit with the agenda handed to us by the text, an

agenda that insists that we pay attention to how “I” feel about “you” and
“this wondrous Rome we live in.” We will be complicit in this agenda in
the name of making some headway on the question of complicity itself, for
that too is very much on the agenda. The issue of the subject and power
has been articulated as a species of cynical knowledge. The knowing know
more and know better than they let on. Deep down, say the savvy, there is
“something more.” But what if there were not really a “deep down”? What
if there was only a surface that conjured depth? Cynical knowledge would
be nothing more than a name one gives to “a practical assemblage, a
‘mechanism’ of statements and visibilities.”19 Cynical knowing would
describe practices, comportments, and displays. The knower emerges as
an implicit function of the praxis, as the implied and privileged subject of
the act.20
I am describing an epistemic regime of bad faith. Even in the best of
cases the authentic self is a self-­serving fiction on the part of a je who
refuses to imagine itself as anything other than the first person singular
subject of the act—“I am my ego, there is no such thing as id, not in my
case, at least . . .” The twist in this instance is that the self-­service occurs by
way of self-­assertion in the course of an inauthentic act. The ineffable sur-
plus of the self is presented as the visible gap between what is said and
what is meant. The subject of the statement is not the subject of the enun-
ciation. And, ironically, the ironist believes that he or she is a master of
this “gap.” The ironist is in love with his own symptom—as are we all—but,
ironically, he sees in this love a moment of mastery when the actual logic
of the symptom exposes the presence of something more, something
unmastered.21
An alternate mode of approaching the issue of cynical knowledge is via
ideology, or rather, via the manner in which the self is an ideological con-
struct.22 “The cynical subject is quite aware of the distance between the

19 Deleuze, 1988:51.
20 Sloterdijk, 1987:60–61: “The dance around the golden calf of identity is the last and
greatest orgy of counterenlightenment . . . The establishment of inwardness comprises the ego
as the bearer of ethics, the erotic, aesthetics, and politics . . . Precisely the analysis of [the] nar-
cissism [of the ego] can show how the other has already got the better of the ego.”
21 Žižek, 1989:21 on the definition of the symptom: “ ‘a formation whose very consistency
implies a certain non-­knowledge on the part of the subject’: the subject can ‘enjoy his symp-
tom’ only so far as its logic escapes him.”
22 Before we get off on the wrong foot and think of ideology as a way of speaking about
the illusions of an ego that need to be dispelled via a process of enlightenment, see
Žižek, 1989:21: “ ‘Ideological’ is not ‘false consciousness’ of a (social) being but this being
itself in so far as it is supported by ‘false consciousness’. ” [emphasis removed]
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/06/21, SPi

Introduction 9

ideological mask and the social reality, but he none the less insists upon
the mask.”23 And this yields the formula, “They know very well what they
are doing, but still, they are doing it.”24 The poetry performs a thesis of
artistic freedom in theory, but, in practice, these verses perform, repro-
duce, and body forth an ideology of freedom-­and-­constraint that presup-
poses imperial domination as the condition of possibility for their own
precious cynicism. A specifically imperial poetics becomes the condition
of possibility for the poetic self as such, whether one is speaking of either
the narrator or the author. But the very split between the author and
the narrator—is he? isn’t he? surely he is . . . of course he is not . . . —is
sustained by this same cynical structure that loves-­and-­hates and loves-­to-­
hate power.
We are going to jump into the lion’s jaws of poetic practice and see what
becomes of us there. There is every reason to feel a bit the fool when rush-
ing in like this since this very same act can be described as a deep dive into
the glittering surface of the world. In fact, it turns out that the affective
valences of a dangerous moment like this have already been adumbrated
by the poetry itself. The image of the lion’s maw was not accidentally cho-
sen. It is instead on loan from Martial. How much boldness does the poet
or critic really evince? How much danger is really to-­hand? Are we really
in the presence of repressive power or just articulating our self-­serving
speciously radical theses via a fantasy of repression? Meanwhile power in
its concrete fertility is giving birth to any number of ludic poetic fancies
that execute a festal dance around a variety of poles, one of which is the
convenient fiction that hypothesizes that “power says not to, but . . .”
How could one possibly speak of Martial and his feelings? How could
one not? Only a determined cretin would succumb to the temptation to
indulge in the biographical fallacy. And yet the poetry itself is constantly
inviting the reader to mistake author for narrator. This is part of the game.
On the one hand, none of it is real or can be real, but, on the other, is it
really the case that none of it is in fact real?25 Sincerity resides at the level
of the corpus itself.26 Whatever reluctance or reservations on the part of

23 Žižek, 1989:29. 24 Žižek, 1989:29.

25 Sullivan, 1991:xxii–xxiii: “Are we to declare that there is no connection between the
man and the work or between the work and society for which it was written? Is all the mate-
rial purely conventional so that the poems can best be understood by comparing them to
their models or even in vacuo?”
26 See Bartsch on Pliny on the (alleged) disaster for an Antonine author produced in the
wake of Domitianic discourse: “[I]n large part the Panegyricus is an obsessive attempt to
prove its own sincerity.” (Bartsch, 1994:149)
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
disposition that has induced them in modern times to
impose humiliating penalties on such Women as are
guilty of sins which the Men themselves commit with
the utmost freedom, and thus to establish a mortifying
difference, in that respect, between the two sexes,
instead of that amiable equality which obtained
between them under the Jewish law, according to
which the Man and Woman who had committed
together the sin of Fornication, were lashed with equal
numbers of stripes.
[9] The Miserere is the 51st Psalm; and the De
Profundis is the 130th, which is none of the shortest.
The singing of the Miserere seems to be particularly
appropriated, among Catholics, to regulate both the
duration of religious flagellations, and the time to which
they are to be performed, as we may conclude from
the above passage of our Author; and also from a
passage of M. de Voltaire in his Candide, in which he
says, that, when Candide was flagellated at Lisbon, by
order of the Inquisition, he was all the while
entertained with a Miserere en faux bourdon; which is
a kind of Church Music.
[10] The expressions of the Vulgate are, fui
flagellatus, I have been whipped. The Vulgate of the
Old Testament is a very ancient Latin version of it from
the Hebrew, corrected afterwards by St. Jerom, which
is followed in all Catholic Countries.
[11] The Talmud is the Tradition, or unwritten law of
the Jews, the Law of Moses being their written Law.
This Tradition has, in process of time, been set down
in writing; and two different Collections have been
made of it: the one, in the Jerusalem School, about
three hundred years after Jesus Christ, which is called
the Jerusalem Talmud; the other, in the Babylonian
School, five hundred years after Jesus Christ, and is
called, the Babylon Talmud. The latter is that which is
usually read among the Jews; and when they simply
say, the Talmud, they mean the Babylon Talmud.
[12] Buxtorf, the Author from whom the above facts
are drawn, is mentioned with great praise in the
Scaligerana, which is a Collection, or mixture, of
Notes, partly French, partly Latin, found in the papers
of J. Scaliger, and printed after his death. Buxtorf is
called, in one of these Notes, the only Man learned in
the Hebrew language; and Scaliger adds, that it is
surprising how the Jews can love him, though he has
handled them so severely; which shews that he has
been impartial in his accounts. Mirum quomodo
Buxtorsius à Judæis ametur, in illâ tamen Synagogâ
Judaicâ illos valdè perstringit.
[13] It is to be supposed, that the Jew Priests had
been well freed for the above benign interpretations
they gave of the law of Moses.
 C H A P. III.

Voluntary flagellations were unknown to the first

Christians. An explanation is given of the
passage of St. Paul: I chastise my body, and
keep it under subjection[14].

FLAGELLATIONS are mentioned so often as eleven

times by the Holy Writers of the New Testament.
Of these, five relate to Jesus Christ. The first is in
the xxth chapter of the Gospel according to St.
Matthew, v. 19; and in the xxvith of the same, v. 26.
In the xvth chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel, v. 33. In the
xviith chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke, v.
33; and in the xixth chapter of the Gospel according
to St. John, v. 1[15]. No just conclusion, as the Reader
may see, can be drawn from the above-mentioned
passages, in support of voluntary flagellations, and of
those Disciplines which Monks now-a-days inflict on
themselves; since it is plain that our Saviour did not
whip himself with his own hands: and we might as
well say that we ought to inflict death upon ourselves,
and nail ourselves to a cross, as that we ought to
lacerate our own flesh with scourges, because Jesus
Christ was exposed to that kind of punishment.
The other six passages of the New Testament in
which whipping is mentioned, are, first, in St. John’s
(c. ii. v. 15.) And when He had made a scourge of
small cords, he drove them out of the Temple, and
the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the
changers of money, and overthrew the tables. The
second chapter is in the fifth chapter of the Acts (v.
40.) And when they had called the Apostles and
beaten them with scourges, they commanded that
they should not speak in the name of Jesus; and let
them go. The third place in which scourgings are
mentioned, is the sixth chapter of the second Epistle
to the Corinthians (v. 15.) St. Paul in that Chapter
places Stripes among the different methods of
persecution which were used against the ministers of
the Gospel, and he moreover relates the sufferings to
which he himself had been exposed. Of the Jews five
times received I forty stripes save one: and in the
next verse he says, Thrice was I beaten with rods,
once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck; a
night and a day I have been in the deep. Fifthly, in his
Epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 36.) the same Apostle
says, speaking in general terms, And others had
trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea,
moreover of bonds and imprisonments. Now, from all
these passages no authority whatever can be
derived to justify the practice of voluntary flagellation.
All the persecuted persons above-mentioned
suffered those beatings with rods, and those
scourgings, much against their will.
The sixth and last passage in which whipping is
mentioned, in the New Testament, is therefore the
only one from which any specious conclusion may be
drawn in support of the practice of voluntary
flagellation: it is contained in the first Epistle to the
Corinthians (ix. 22); St. Paul in it says, I chastise my
body, and keep it under subjection. Indeed this
passage is well worth examining attentively. Several
men of great authority have given it as their opinion,
that the Apostle expressly meant to say, by the
above words, that it was his practice to lash himself,
in order to overcome his vicious inclinations. Among
others, James Gretzer, an able Theologian and one
of the Fathers Jesuits, vehemently asserts that the
Greek words in the text literally signify, “I imprint on
my own body the stripes or marks of the whip, and
render it livid by dint of blows,” and the same Father
supports his assertion by the authority of Septalius
and Guastininius, two celebrated Interpreters of
Aristotle, who, in their Commentaries, quote
Gallienus as having used the Greek word in question
(ὑπωπιάζω) in the same sense which he (Father
Gretzer) attributes to St. Paul. To these authorities
Gretzer moreover adds those of St. Irenæus, St.
Chrysostom, Paulinus, and Theophylactus, who (he
says) have all explained the above passage in the
same manner as himself does: so that, if we were to
credit all the comments of Father Gretzer, there
would, indeed, remain little doubt but that St. Paul
meant to say, he fustigated himself with his own
hands; and that he was thereby left an example
which all faithful Christians ought in duty to imitate.
But yet, if, setting aside, for the present, all
authorities on this head, we begin with examining
attentively into the real meaning of the Greek word
which is the subject of the present controversy, we
shall see that it cannot have that signification which
Father Gretzer pretends. In fact, let us examine if
that word occurs in any other place of the New
Testament, and in what sense it is employed. We
meet with it in the eighteenth Chapter of St. Luke,
wherein Jesus Christ says, in the manner of a
Parable, that a Widow used to teaze a Judge with
her frequent complaints, who was thereby compelled
at last to do her justice; and he makes him speak in
the following words: “Because this Widow troubles
me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming,
she weary me (ὑπωπιάζη μὲ.)” Now, who can
imagine that this Judge entertained any fear that the
Woman should flagellate him? Yet, we must think so,
if the Greek word used in the Text (which is the very
same as that employed by St. Paul, and on which
Father Gretzer builds his system) should always
signify, as that Father pretends, to beat, or lash. If a
literal explanation of that word, therefore, is in many
cases improper and ridiculous, it follows that it is
frequently to be understood in a figurative sense, and
that it is then only employed to express that kind of
hard usage either of one’s self, or of others, which is
exercised without any mixture of real violence, or
bodily sufferings. To this add, that St. Paul himself,
when, on other occasions he really means to speak
of blows and actual stripes, never once makes use of
the word in question.
Besides, if in order rightly to understand the
meaning of St. Paul, we consult the holy Fathers and
Interpreters (which certainly is a very good method of
investigating the truth), we shall scarcely find one
who thought that St. Paul either beat or lashed
himself, and in the above passage meant to speak of
any such thing as voluntary Flagellation. St. Iræneus,
Bishop of Lyons, though he has translated the words
in question into these, “I chastise my own body, and
render it livid,” has made no mention whatever of
either scourges, whips, or rods.—St. Chrysostom
likewise supposes, that the Apostle in the above
passage, only spoke of the pains and care he took, in
order to preserve his temperance, and conquer the
passions of the flesh; and that it was the same as if
he had said, “I submit to much labour, in order to live
according to the rules of Temperance. I undergo
every kind of hardship, rather than suffer myself to be
led astray.” It must be confessed, however, that
Benedictus Haeftenus, in his Disquisitiones
Monasticæ, quotes a passage from the above
Author’s 34th Homily, by which he pretends to prove
that self-flagellations were in use in that Father’s
time; but the words which Haeftenus has quoted in
Latin are not to be found in the original Greek of St.
Chrysostom’s Homilies, and are therefore to be
attributed to some modern Flogging-Master
(Μαστιγοφόρος) who has lent them to him, by a kind
of pious fraud. Other passages to prove our
assertion, might be quoted from the words of
Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, of Oecumenius, as well
as several other Greek Fathers.
The Latin have also understood St. Paul’s words in
the same sense that the Greek Fathers have done.
Indeed I do not find one among them but who
thought that St. Paul did not actually lash himself with
his own hands. St. Ambrosius, Bishop of Milan,
expresses himself on the subject in the following
words. ‘He who says (meaning St. Paul) I chastise
my body, and bring it into subjection, does not so
much grieve (contristatur) for his own sins, which
after all could not be so very numerous, as for ours.’
St. Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe, and an illustrious
Discipline of St. Augustin, on this occasion treads in
the footsteps of his excellent Master, giving the same
sense as him to the words of St. Paul. The following
is the manner in which St. Fulgentius explains those
words, in his Epistle on Virginity, addressed to Proba.
“The spiritual Spouse of Virgins does not seek in a
Virgin a body practised in carnal pleasures; but
rather wishes she should have chastised it by
abstinence. This, the Doctor of the Gentiles used to
practice on his own body. I chastise (says he) my
body, and keep it under subjection. And again, in
watchings often, in thirst and hunger, in fastings
often: let therefore the Virgin of Christ forbear to seek
after pleasures which, she sees, are equally with-
held from the widow.”
To all the above proofs, I know it will be objected
that St. Petrus Chrysologus, archbishop of Ravenna,
is clearly of opinion that St. Paul lashed himself with
his own hands. The following is the manner in which
he expresses himself on this head, at least if we are
to credit the account given of his words by that great
Patron of flagellations, Father Gretzer, in his Book
printed at Ingolstadt in the year 1609. “This St. Paul
used to do, who wrote in the following words the title-
deed of his own Servitude, I render my body livid,
and bring it into subjection: like a faithful Slave,
himself supplied the rod, (vindictam) and severely
lashed his own back, till it grew livid[16].” Now, who
would not from these words, thus standing alone, as
Father Gretzer recites them, conclude that St. Paul
really used to cover his back with stripes? But, if we
consult the original itself, we shall see that St.
Chrysologus meant no more than to borrow a simile
from the punishment usually inflicted on Slaves;
which punishment he mentions in the beginning of
the very passage we discuss here, and of which
Father Gretzer has artfully quoted only the
conclusion. “After all (says Peter Chrysologus) if the
Servant does not awake early the next day, and rise
before his Master, whether he be weary or not, he
will be tied up and lashed. If the Servant therefore
knows what he owes to another Man, the Master is
thence taught what himself owes to the Lord of
Lords, and is made sensible that he also is subject to
a Master.” ‘This is what St. Paul practised, who wrote
the title-deeds of his own servitude, and exposed
himself to thirst, hunger, and nakedness. Like a good
slave, he himself supplied the rod, and severely
lashed himself.’
 If we examine into the works of St. Hierom, St.
Austin, Pope Gregory the Great, and other Latin
Fathers, we shall find that they also understood, that
St. Paul had expressed himself in a figurative
manner. And it is only by misquotations, or arts of the
like kind, that Father Gretzer, Cardinal Demian, and
others, have attempted to prove that self-flagellations
were in use so early as the time of St. Paul among
Christians.
 FOOTNOTES:

[14] As the disputes concerning religious

flagellations have been carried on with great warmth
on both sides, the two parties have ransacked the
Scriptures for passages that might support their
respective opinions; and the supporters of flagellations
have been particularly happy in the discovery of the
passage of David, mentioned in the preceding
Chapter; and that of St. Paul which is recited here. By
the former passage, the supporters of flagellations
pretend to shew, that they were in use so early as the
time of David; and that the Prophet underwent a
flagellation every morning: by the latter passage, they
endeavour to prove that self-scourgings were practised
by St. Paul, and of course by the first Christians. As
the literal meaning of the above two passages is
wholly on the side of the supporters of flagellations,
this, as it always happens in controversies of that kind,
has given them a great advantage over their
opponents, who have been reduced, either to plead
that the expressions urged against them were only to
be understood in a figurative sense, or to endeavour,
by altering the original passage, to substitute others in
their stead. The latter is the expedient on which our
Author has chiefly relied in this chapter, and he strives
to substitute another word, to the word ὑπωπιάζω,
used by St. Paul when he said, he chastised his flesh;
which is to be found in all the common Editions of the
Greek New Testament. And indeed it must be
confessed, that the above word is of itself extremely
favourable to the promoters of self-flagellation; little
less so than the words of Asaph, fui flagellatus (I have
been whipped) mentioned in the foregoing Chapter; its
precise meaning being the same as I bruise or
discolour with blows: it comes from the word ὐπώπιον,
which signifies a livid mark left under the eye by a
blow: on which the Reader may observe (which, no
doubt, will be matter of agreeable surprise to him) that
what is called in plain English a black-eye, was
expressed in Greek by the word ὑπώπιον. Besides
trying to substitute another word to that attributed to St.
Paul in the common Greek Editions of the New
Testament, our Author produces several passages
from Greek and Latin Fathers, to shew that they
thought that St. Paul meant no more than to speak of
his great labours, abstinence, continence, &c.
The principal end of this Chapter is, therefore, to
discuss the interesting question, whether St. Paul used
to flagellate himself: and I have preferred to give the
above compendious account of the contest on the
subject, rather than introduce the long discussion of
Greek words, and use the whole string of passages
from Greek and Latin Fathers, contained in the Abbé
Boileau’s Book. By that means, the present Chapter
has, for the sake of the Reader, been shortened to ten
pages, instead of thirty, it must otherwise have
contained.
[15] “And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock,
and to scourge and to crucify him.” St. Matth. c. xx. v.
19.... “Then Pilate took Jesus, and scourged him.” St.
John, c. xix. ver. 1.
[16] Hoc implebat Paulus, qui servitutis suæ titulos
sic scribebat. Lividum facio corpus meum, & servituti
subjicio. Præbebat vindictam bonus servus, qui se
usque ad livorem, sic agens, jugiter verberabat.
 C H A P. I V.

The use of Flagellations was known among the

ancient Heathens. Several facts and
observations on that subject.

IT is not to be doubted, that flagellations had been

invented, and were become, in early times, a
common method of punishment in the Pagan world.
Even before the foundation of Rome, we meet with
instances which prove that it was the usual
punishment inflicted on Slaves. Justin, in his Epitome
of Trogus Pompeius, relates that the Scythians more
easily overcame their rebellious Slaves with
scourges and whips, than with their swords. ‘The
Scythians being returned (says Justin) from their
third expedition in Asia, after having been absent
eight years from their Wives and Children, found they
now had a war to wage at home against their own
Slaves. For, their Wives, tired with such long fruitless
expectation of their Husbands, and concluding that
they were no longer detained by war, but had been
destroyed, married the Slaves who had been left to
take care of the cattle; which latter attempted to use
their Masters, who returned victorious, like Strangers,
and hinder them, by force of arms, from entering the
Country. The war having been supported, for a while,
with success pretty nearly equal on both sides, the
Scythians were advised to change their manner of
carrying it on, remembering that it was not with
enemies, but with their own Slaves, that they had to
fight; that they were to conquer by dint, not of arms,
but of their right as Masters; that instead of weapons,
they ought to bring lashes into the field, and, setting
iron aside, to supply themselves with rods, scourges,
and such like instruments of slavish fear. Having
approved this counsel, the Scythians armed
themselves as they were advised to do; and had no
sooner come up with their enemies, than they
exhibited on a sudden their new weapons, and
thereby struck such a terror into their minds, that
those who could not be conquered by arms, were
subdued by the dread of the stripes, and betook
themselves to flight, not like a vanquished enemy,
but like fugitive slaves.’
Among the antient Persians, the punishment of
whipping was also in use: it was even frequently
inflicted on the Grandees of the Kingdom by order of
the King, as we find in Stobæus, who moreover
relates in his forty-second Discourse, ‘That when one
of them had been flagellated by order of the King, it
was an established custom, that he should give him
thanks as for an excellent favour he had received,
and a token that the King remembered him.’ This
custom of the Persians was however in subsequent
times altered: they began to set some more value on
the skin of Men; and we find in Plutarch’s
Apophthegms of Kings, ‘That Artaxerxes, son of
Xerxes, sirnamed the Longhanded, was the first who
ordered that the Grandees of his kingdom should no
longer be exposed to the former method of
punishment; but that, when they should have been
guilty of some offence, instead of their backs, only
their clothes should be whipped, after they had been
stripped of them.’
We also find, that it was a custom in antient times,
for Generals and Conquerors, to flog the Captives
they had taken in war; and that they moreover took
delight in inflicting that punishment with their own
hands on the most considerable of those Captives.
We meet, among others, with a very remarkable
proof of this practice, in the Tragedy of Sophocles,
called Ajax Scourgebearer (Μαστιγοφόρος): in a
Scene of this Tragedy Ajax is introduced as having
the following conversation with Minerva.

Minerva.
 ‘What kind of severity do you prepare for that
miserable man?’
Ajax.
‘I propose to lash his back with a scourge till
he dies.’
Minerva.
‘Nay, do not whip the poor Wretch so cruelly.’
Ajax.
‘Give me leave, Minerva, to gratify, on this
occasion, my own fancy; he shall have it, I do
assure you, and I prepare no other punishment
for him.’

The punishment of flagellation was also much in

vogue among the Romans; and it was the common
chastisement which Judges inflicted upon Offenders,
especially upon those of a servile condition.
Surrounded by an apparatus of whips, scourges, and
leather-straps, they terrified Offenders, and brought
them to a sense of their duty.
Judges, among the Romans, as has been just now
mentioned, used a great variety of instruments for
inflicting the punishment of whipping. Some
consisted of a flat strap of leather, and were called
Ferulæ; and to be lashed with these Ferulæ, was
considered as the mildest degree of punishment.
Others were made of a number of cords of twisted
parchment, and were called Scuticæ. These Scuticæ
were considered as being a degree higher in point of
severity than the ferulæ, but were much inferior, in
that respect, to that kind of scourge which was called
Flagellum, and sometimes the terrible Flagellum,
which was made of thongs of ox-leather, the same as
those which Carmen used for their Horses. We find
in the third Satyr of the first Book of Horace, a clear
and pretty singular account of the gradation in point
of severity that obtained between the above-
mentioned instruments of whipping. In this Satyr,
Horace lays down the rules which he thinks a Judge
ought to follow in the discharge of his office; and he
addressed himself, somewhat ironically, to certain
persons who, adopting the principles of the Stoics,
affected much severity in their opinions, and
pretended that all crimes whatever being equal,
ought to be punished in the same manner. ‘Make
such a rule of conduct to yourself (says Horace) that
you may always proportion the chastisement you
inflict to the magnitude of the offence; and when the
Offender only deserves to be chastised with the whip
of twisted parchment, do not expose him to the lash
of the horrid leather scourge; for, that you should only
inflict the punishment of the flat strap on him who
deserves a more severe lashing, is what I am by no
means afraid of[17].’
The choice between these different kinds of
instruments, was, as we may conclude from the
above passage, left to the Judge, who ordered that to
be used which he was pleased to name; and the
number of blows was likewise left to his discretion;
which sometimes were as many as the Executioner
could give. ‘He (says Horace in one of his Odes) who
has been lashed by order of the Triumvirs, till the
Executioner was spent[18].’
Besides this extensive power of whipping
exercised by Judges among the Romans, over
persons of a servile condition, over Aliens, and those
who were the subjects of the Republic, Masters were
possessed of an unbounded one with regard to their
Slaves, over whose life and death they had moreover
an absolute power. Hence a great number of
instruments of flagellation, besides those above-
mentioned, were successively brought into use for
punishing Slaves. Among those were particular kinds
of cords manufactured in Spain, as we learn from a
passage in an Ode of Horace, the same that has just
been quoted, and was addressed to one Menas, a
freed-man, who had found means to acquire a great
fortune, and was grown very insolent. ‘Thou (says