The Funeral of Junius BassusAuthor(s): Alan CameronReviewed work(s):Source: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 139 (2002), pp. 288-292Published by: Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Bonn (Germany)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20191451 .Accessed: 28/09/2012 19:05

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288

The Funeral of Junius Bassus

The sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, discovered in 1597, is one of the most familiar and striking

monuments of early Christian art.1 About Bassus himself we know regrettably little. An important

inscription found at what must have been a villa of his at Aqua Viva gives more details of his (rather

brief) career and adds the signum Theotecnius to his name.2 He died in office as prefect of Rome on 25

August 359, aged 42 years and two months. But a little more can be gathered from the lucky find half a

century ago of part of the long lost lid of the sarcophagus, carrying a little known poem in eight fairly

competent elegiac distichs describing his funeral.3 Here is the text as published in the first edition and

repeated in all subsequent editions:

2 [h]aec Ba[ssi] nerim

4 o regi co

[hie pra]efectorum.erem

[per] praefectur[am flu]mina promift opum]. [hie mo]derans plebem patriae sedemque se[natu]

8 [ur]bis perpetuas occidit ad lacrimas,

[nee l]icuit famulis domini gestare feretrum,

[c]ertantis populi sed fuit illud onus.

[fle]vit turba omnis, matres puerique senesque,

12 [fie]vit et abiectis tune pius ordo togis.

[flere vide]bantur tune et fastigia Romae,

[ipsaque tun]c gemitus edere tecta viae.

[cedite sublimes] spirantum cedite honores,

16 [celsus est culmen] mors quod huic tribuit.

Anyone with any feel for Latin verse must be surprised at the supplement suggested for the beginning of

line 16.4 Not only does it not scan. The masculine adjective celsus does not even agree with the neuter

noun culmen. Only A. Merlin made any specific comment: "ne vaut-il pas mieux restituer excelsum est

culmen?"95 a suggestion repeated by Moreau and Marrou. This does at least scan, but that is the extent

of its merits.

1 Pending the appearance of a new study by Alice Christ {The Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus: Making and Meaning,

University of Wisconsin Press), there is the not very satisfactory monograph by Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, The Icono

graphy of the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus: Neofltus iit adDeum (Princeton 1990). 2 G. Evrard, Une inscription in?dite d'Aqua Viva et la carri?re des Junii Bassi, M?FRA 74 (1962), 607-47, apparently

unknown to Struthers Malbon.

3 It is listed but not discussed in the brief but useful section by W. Schetter, La po?sie ?pigraphique entre 284 et 374, in

R. Herzog (ed.), Nouvelle histoire de la litt?rature latine 5 (Turnhout 1993), 265-71.

4 B. M. Apollonj Ghetti, A. Ferma, E. Josi and E. Kirschbaum, Esplorazioni sotto la confessione di S. Pietro in

Vaticano i (Vatican 1951), 220-22; AE 1953, 239; A. Chastagnol, Fastes de la pr?fecture de Rome au Bas-Empire (Paris

1962), 150; G. Bovini and H. Brandenburg, Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage I: Rom und Ostia (Wiesbaden

1967), 279; E. Diehl ILCV'w (ed. J. Moreau and H. I. Marrou, Dublin 1967), no. 90 p. 2; Struthers Malbon, Iconography

(1990), 114-5 (with a hopelessly inaccurate English translation). 5 AE 1953, p. 74; Struthers Malbon 1990, 214 n. 65 notes the bad Latin and suggests celsum, evidently unaware that this

would not scan.

The Funeral of Junius Bassus 289

I find it hard to believe that the first editors actually intended celsus.6 It is surely no more than a

misprint for the neuter of the comparative: celsius. In any event, celsius is almost certainly what the poet

wrote. Other supplements are no doubt possible, but with [celsius est culmen] the couplet acquires a

certain elegance and point: "yield,7 high honours of mortal men; higher still is the distinction that death

brings him". Bassus had reached the height of human ambition with his prefecture of Rome, but has

now reached even higher, sitting at God's right hand in heaven.sfastigia in line 13 are the high points of

Rome, picked up by culmen, the height of heaven.9

One other textual detail, in line 7. The participle moderans governs two objects: plebem patriae,

which must refer to the people of Rome; and sedem. But what does sedem refer to, and how does the

ablative se[natu] fit in? Bassus was prefect of Rome when he died, and by the mid fourth century the

prefect was the president of the senate and intermediary in all dealings between senate and emperor.10

Surely what is needed is se[natus], a genitive dependent on sedem to balance the genitive patriae depen dent on plebem: what Bassus governed was "the people of his city and the house of the senate".

The supplement [flu]mina promi[t opum] in line 6 seems plausible. A brief search has turned up no

example in earlier Latin poetry of the metaphor "rivers of wealth", but it is a standard motif in the late

antique lexicon of praise. On a number of third-century papyri we find the puzzling vocative 'Qiceocv?

addressed to local officials, perfectly explained in John Chrysostom's vivid account of a theatre

audience in Antioch greeting a generous patron:{1

They liken him to the greatest of rivers, comparing his grand and lavish munificence to the copious waters of the Nile; and they call him the Nile of gifts. Others, flattering him still more and thinking the simile of the Nile too mean, reject rivers and seas; and they instance the Ocean and say that he in

his lavish gifts is what Ocean is among the waters, and they leave not a word of praise unsaid.

Bror Olsson drew attention to what looks like a Latin example (OCIIANE) from Pompeii.12 Though the mention of the prefecture would seem to exclude private munificence here, the reference might be to

the public distributions of grain, wine and oil which were one of the prefect's main responsibilities.13 But [per] praefectur[am] is less than compelling (perhaps et] praefectur[ae, assuming that 5 and 6

evoke two parallel activities). While clearly able to compose fairly correct classicizing elegiacs, the poet does not fill his lines with

tags from Vergil, like so much Latin epigraphic poetry. But it may be that he read the Pseudo-Ovidian

Consolatio ad Liviam before sitting down to his task. With certantis populi sed fuit illud onus (of Bassus's coffin, line 10), compare Consol. Liv. 207, certat onus lecti generosa subir? iuventus. And

6 Though in line 15 they read ]as and supplement sublim]as, again repeated in most subsequent texts. Seeing no clear

traces on the photograph, Merlin reads sublimes]. 7 For the sense "yield", "give way", and the anaphoric repetition compare Propertius on the imminent publication of the

Aeneid: cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii; I nescio quid mains nascitur Iliade (ii. 34. 65-6). Compare too the Christian

dedications cede vetus nomen, novitati cede vetustas {CLE ii. 1. 320. 1) and cedeprius nomen, novitati cede vetustas (ib. ii.

2. 912. 1). Struthers Malbon oddly translates "grant". 8 The prosody huic, cm is not uncommon in late poets. 9 The height of the buildings of Rome is a commonplace of descriptions of the city: W. Gernentz, Laudes Romae

(Rostoch 1918), 53-55. 10 A. Chastagnol, La pr?fecture urbaine ? Rome sous le Bas-Empire (Paris 1960), 66-78. 1 !

?epl KEVo?o?ia? 4, in Anne-Marie Malingrey, Jean Chrysostome: Sur la vaine gloire et I 'education des enfants (Sources chr?tiennes 188), Paris 1972, 78; on the motif, G. M?autis, 'Qiceav?, Revue de Philologie 40 (1916), 51-4; E.

Peterson, Die Bedeutung der Keav?-Akklamation, Rhein. Mus. 78 (1929), 221-3; J. and L. Robert, Bull ?pigr. 1958, 105.1

quote from the English translation by M. L. W. Laistner, Christianity and Pagan Culture in the Later Roman Empire (Ithaca

1951), 87-8.

12 B. Olsson, 'QKeave, Aegyptus 6 (1925), 295-6. 13 For details, Chastagnol, Pr?fecture urbaine (1960), 296-334.

290 A. Cameron

with flevit turba omnis, matres puerique senesque (line 11), compare Consol. Liv. 203-4, omnis adest

aetas, maerent iuvenesque senesque, /. . . matres.

According to its latest editor, Henk Schoonhoven, this work dates from shortly after the death of the

Emperor Claudius.14 Apart from quoting one or two possible echoes in Corippus, Schoonhoven does not

specifically address the question of late antique reception. But as the most elaborate known verse conso

lation,15 it is bound to have exercised a certain influence on subsequent funerary and consolatory poetry. Since it is obvious that art historians have no reliable translation to turn to, here is a version of lines

7-16:

While governing the people of his city and the house of the senate, he died, to the everlasting tears

of the city. Nor were his own servants allowed to carry his bier, but it was the burden of the people,

vying <for the honour>. Everyone wept, married women, children and old men. Then too the

reverent senate wept, discarding their togas. Then too the highest buildings of Rome seemed to

weep, then too the very houses along the route made lament. Yield, high honours of the living; it is a

yet higher distinction that death brings him.

II

Now for interpretation. Taken by itself, the claim that family retainers (famulis, 9) were "not allowed"

to carry their master's coffin, and that "the people" vied to bear the burden instead, might seem to be no

more than a bit of flattery, implying spontaneous enthusiasm on the part of a grieving public to honour a

popular figure. But aristocratic funerals were traditionally family affairs, with elaborate parade of the

family imagines and a eulogy by a family member.16 In the ordinary way an aristocratic family would

not have looked on outsiders grabbing the coffin from the hands of Bassus's retainers as a mark of

honour or respect. When we take into account the further claim (1. 12) that the "pious senate"

participated in the mourning after "discarding their togas", a different conclusion suggests itself. Bassus

was awarded the honour of a public funeral.

Very little is known about public funerals for private citizens under the empire beyond the obvious

fact that the cost was born by the public purse.17 Nine are attested between Augustus and Trajan, five of

them only known because of Tacitus's fondness for obituary notices.18 Most of our information

concerns members of the imperial family, but one thing seems reasonably certain: members of the elite

at large rather than just members of the family carried the coffin, and some distinguished senator

delivered the funeral oration.19 The best known example is Tacitus delivering the eulogy on Verginius Rufus in 97.20

Why do the senators "discard their togas" (abiectis . . . togis, 12)?21 Because they put on saga

instead, dark, coarse cloaks worn for mourning in place of the togas senators ordinarily wore for public occasions.22 A number of passages in Cicero's Philippics refer to senators putting on the sagum when

Roman armies were in danger during the Mutina crisis and exchanging it for the toga when the danger

14 H. Schoonhoven, The Pseudo-Ovidian AdLiviam de morte Drusi (Groningen 1992), 37. 15 J. H. D. Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus: a commentary on Jerome, Letter 60 (Oxford 1993), 21. 16 Harriet I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford 1996), Ch. 4. 17 F. Vollmer, De funere publico Romanorum, in Fleckeisens Jahrbuch f?r classische Philologie Suppl. 19.3 (1893),

321-64 remains a useful collection of evidence; see too Gabriele Wesch-Klein, Funus publicum (Stuttgart 1993); briefly, R.

J. A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton 1984), 370-71. 18 R. Syme, Ten Studies in Tacitus (Oxford 1970), 79-90. 19

Wesch-Klein, Funus publicum 83-90.

20Plin.?/?. ii. 1.1 and 6.

21 Not "in their saddened togas", as Struthers Malbon 1990, 115.

22 For the sagum, L. M. Wilson, The Clothing of the Ancient Romans (Baltimore 1938), 104-10.

The Funeral of Junius Bassus 291

passed.23 Though no public funeral was involved, this odd practice was nonetheless a demonstration of

public mourning. We have a slightly more detailed account in Orosius, summarizing Livy's account of

how, on the news of victory over the Samnites in the Social War in 90 B.C., "the senators laid aside

their saga, that is to say the dress of mourning (vestem maeroris) which they had put on at the outbreak

of the Social War", and returned to their togas.24 This was also how people of rank dressed for public funerals under the empire. A pseudo-Quintilianic declamation describes the pompa of a public funeral

being led ff by the senate in mourning dress (primus eat senatus et ordo Ule sanctissimus . . .).25 The

best known text is Juvenal's pullati proceres, "nobles in drab dress".26 The implication of the Bassus

poem is clearly that the senate as a whole wore mourning dress.

The last two public funerals on record were for Verginius Rufus in 97 and L. Licinius Sura in 108, and modern scholars seem to have assumed that the practice gradually died out under the growing

imperial autocracy.27 It is true that the emperors appropriated much of the pomp and spectacle of the

traditional aristocratic funeral for members of the imperial family, but it may go too far to conclude, with John Bodel, that non-imperial aristocratic funerals "withered and died".28 It may also be mislead

ing to link the decline of aristocratic funerals with the lack of evidence for public funerals after Trajan. The two should be distinguished rather than identified. By giving the elite at large a major role in the

obsequies for a great man, the public funeral of the empire must have diminished the ability of the great families to exploit the occasion for their own glorification. The honour was largely restricted to the great

man himself, now safely dead.

The texts make it clear that, although the proposal usually came from a member of the imperial

family, the decision was made by the senate.29 By the fourth century, when the emperors no longer resided in Rome, there seems no reason why they should have withheld their consent for so innocuous

an honour. There are at least one and perhaps two other examples of private citizens being honoured in

this way as late as the fourth century. Ammianus describes indignantly how Valens forced high dignitaries, two former consuls included,

to walk before the coffin of his favourite astrologer in mourning clothes {pullati, perhaps remembering

Juvenal).30 The fact that Ammianus uses the word iustitium here suggests a formal closing of the courts, as for the funerals of members of the imperial family. We know from inscriptions that this additional

honour was granted to L. Volusius Saturninus (suff. 3 A.D.) in 56 and T. Flavius Sabinus (suff. ?47) in

70 A.D., both of whom, like Junius Bassus, died in office as city prefect.31 The so-called Carmen contra paganos (32-33) associates a iustitium with the pagan prefect the

anonymous Christian poet is attacking:

23 Phil. 6.9; 8.6; 8.31; 12.16; 13.23; 14.1, 2 and 3. It is usually assumed that saga sumere is different from vestem mutare, a formula likewise found several times in Cicero {Pro Sestio 26 and 54; Pro Plancio 29 and 87; In Pisonem 17; also

Livy vi. 16. 4 and Epit. 105; Tac. Ann. ii. 29. 1), also a form of mourning. They are distinguished by Julia Heskel in J. L.

Sebesta and L. Bonfante (edd.), The World of Roman Costume (Madison 1994), 142-3. But three passages of Dio that mention the senate "changing clothes" (37.43.3; 40.50.1; 41.3. 1-4) look as if they refer to iustitia.

24 Oros. v. 18.15; Liv. Epit. 72-73.

25 Ps-Quint. Declam. Minores 329.15, p. 263 Shackleton Bailey.

26 Juv. iii.213. For other references to mourning dress for the senate, Talbert, Senate (1984), 218-9; RE s.v. "Trauer

kleidung" 2229-30 and "Lucius" 1699-1700.

27 So, for example, Talbert, Senate (1984), 371.

28 Flower, Ancestor Masks (1996), Ch. 8; John Bodel, Death on Display: Looking at Roman Funerals, in B. Bergmann

and C. Kondoleon, The Art of Ancient Spectacle (New Haven 1999), 259-81 at 271. 29

Talbert, Senate (1984), 370. 30 Amm. 29.2.15.

31 vadimoniis exsequiarum eius causa dilatis, for Saturninus, AE 1972, 174; J. Reynolds, JRS 61 (1971), 142-3; and vadimon[iis honoris cau]sa dilatis for Sabinus, CIL vi. 31293, as restored in PIR2 F.352 (p. 168).

292 A. Cameron

quis tibi iustitium incussit,32 pulcherrima Roma, ad saga confugerent populus quae non habet olim.

Who declared this iustitium for you, most beautiful Rome?

Are the people to don the saga they have not worn for so long?

This iustitium has traditionally been interpreted in the archaic republican sense of a state of

emergency proclaimed under the threat of enemy invasion. Such an emergency has been held to support the identification of the unnamed prefect as Nicomachus Flavianus the elder, and the occasion as the so

called last pagan stand against the Emperor Theodosius in 394.33 But quite apart from the fact that no

iustitium in this sense had been proclaimed for more than half a millenium by 394, on this interpretation it must have been the prefect himself who did the proclaiming. But that does not explain the incredulous

quis: "who proclaimed the iustitiumV Why ask who if it was obvious who, none other than the subject of the poem?

Throughout the period of the empire iustitium indicere had meant only one thing: to proclaim a

period of public mourning}* Iustitia were regularly proclaimed on the deaths of members of the

imperial family (explicitly attested for C. and L. Caesar, Augustus, Germanicus, Drusus, Drusilla,

Hadrian, Pius, Severus, Constantine and Jovian).35 We even find them in the world of fiction. In

Apuleius's Golden Ass (for example), when Psyche's fate is announced "a iustitium was at once

proclaimed"; Ausonius describes Priam mourning Hector iustitio publico.36 The saga the people wear in

line 33 of the Carmen are the dark cloaks of mourning that the senators of the Bassus poem wear instead

of togas. Since the Carmen is entirely devoted to its prefect's death, the obvious interpretation is that a

period of public mourning was proclaimed for the prefect's funeral, evidently a public funeral.37 The

poet's quis tibi iustitium incussit is indignant, expressing his disapproval of the granting of this honour

to a pagan.

It is a remarkable fact that of the nine private citizens known to have been granted a public funeral

between the age of Augustus and Trajan, no fewer than four died in office as prefect of the city: L.

Calpurnius Piso (cos. 15 B.C.), in 32 A.D.; Aelius Lamia (cos. 3 A.D.) in 32/3; L. Volusius Saturninus

in 56; and T. Flavius Sabinus (Vespasian's brother) in 70. In one respect this is a less startling statistic

than might at first appear, since first- and second-century city prefects were normally senior men

appointed for life.38 Nonetheless, it does look as if city prefects dying in office were felt to have a

special entitlement to a public funeral.

Columbia University Alan Cameron

32 incussit seems an unlikely verb with iustitium; the vox propria is indicere or edicere. The poet surely wrote indixit.

33 Most recently Domenico Romano, L 'ultimo pagano: Flaviano nello specchio del Carmen contra paganos (Palermo

1998) and Aldo Bartalucci, "Contro ipaganF: Carmen cod. Paris, lat. 8084 (Pisa 1998), 112-14, both with a bibliography of earlier studies.

34 As firmly stated long ago by A. Nissen, Das Justitium: Eine Studie aus der r?mischen Rechtsgeschichte (Leipzig 1877), 148-52; see too F. Vollmer, De funere publico Romanorum (1893), 321-64 at 339 n. 4; Gabriele Wesch-Klein, Funus

publicum (Stuttgart 1993), 91-101. 35 Tac. Ann. i. 16.2; Ann. i.50.1; Ann. ii.82; Suet. Tib. 52.1; Galba 10; Fasti Ostienses (19 A.D.): VI idus Dec(embres)

iustitium ob excessum Gferjmanici; Fasti Cuprenses (4 A.D.): Romae iustitfium indicium est (C. Caesar); SHA Marc. 7.10;

Victor, Caes. 20.6; SHA Marcus 7.10; Euseb. Vita Const, iv.69; Symm. Or. i.8.

36 Apul. Met. 4.33; Auson. Per. Horn. 24.

37 This is enough by itself to eliminate Nicomachus Flavianus (who suffered damnatio memoriae on his death), and

strongly supports the identification of the prefect as Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, whose death late in 384 is known to have

provoked widespread mourning. I shall be developing this point of view at greater length in my forthcoming book The Last

Pagans of Rome.

38 For a brief survey, R. Syme, Prefects of the City, Vespasian to Trajan, Roman Papers 5 (Oxford 1988), 608-21.