Mark Antony’s Will and his Pietas

Tenue est mendacium Rethinking Fakes and Authorship in Classical, Late Antique & Early Christian Works Tenue est mendacium Rethinking Fakes and Authorship in Classical, Late Antique & Early Christian Works edited by K LAUS L ENNARTZ and J AVIER M ARTÍNEZ B ARKHUIS G RONINGEN 2021 AD EMERITUM ANTONIUM GUZMANEM Gratias tibi agimus, magister qui scientia tua nos aluisti. Natus in Gaditana terra per multos et frugiferos annos in Academia Complutensi doctrinam tradidisti, doctus inter doctos, tuorum tutor, consili plenus, scaenae Graecae antiquae studiosus. Nunc tibi tempus est dulci otio perfruendi. Ita di faciant! Book design: Barkhuis Cover Design: Anke de Kroon, ontwerpzolder.nl Cover image: Third century A.D. pottery shard found in the Roman ruins at Iruña-Veleia with an early depiction of the crucifixion. The carving has been proven to be a modern addition, see pp. 315ff of this volume (Image credit: DFA/AFA). ISBN 9789493194366 Copyright © 2021 the authors and editors All rights reserved. No part of this publication or the information contained herein may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronical, mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the authors. Although all care is taken to ensure the integrity and quality of this publication and the information herein, no responsibility is assumed by the publishers nor the authors for any damage to property or persons as a result of operation or use of this publication and/or the information contained herein. Contents Acknowledgments K LAUS L ENNARTZ tenue est mendacium: Introduction I IX 1 GREEK LITERATURE D IEGO D E B RASI What a Cruel Bee! Authority and Anonymity in Pseudo-Theocritus’s Idyll 19 17 J ONATHAN S. B URGESS The Periplus of Hanno: Dubious Historical Document, Fascinating Travel Text 29 M ARIO C APASSO The Forgery of the Stoic Diotimus 43 K OSTAS K APPARIS Fake and Forgotten: The True Story of Apollodoros, the Son of Pasion 53 M IKEL L ABIANO The Athenian Decree Contained in the Corpus Hippocraticum 75 K LAUS L ENNARTZ Two Birds with One Stone: Thuc. 2. 41 and the Nauarchs Monument 91 C O NT E NT S VIII H EINZ -G ÜNTHER N ESSELRATH From Plato to Paul Schliemann: Dubious Documents on the “History” of Atlantis 105 K ATHRYN T EMPEST Confessions of a Literary Forger: Reading the Letters of Mithridates to Brutus 119 A LESSANDRO V ATRI An Interpolator Praising Forgers? Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the Pythagoreans (On Imitation, Epitome 4) 137 II LATIN LITERATURE J OHN H ENDERSON “Why Not Cicero?” The Spuriae I. De Exilio 151 J ARED H UDSON Framing the Speaker: [Sallust] Against Cicero 163 G IUSEPPE L A B UA The Poet as a Forger: Fakes and Literary Imitation in Roman Poetry 179 J. I GNACIO S AN V ICENTE Mark Antony’s Will and his Pietas 195 III LATE ANTIQUE AND EARLY CHRISTIAN WORKS E STEBAN C ALDERÓN D ORDA Falsehoods and Distortions in the Transmission of the New Testament Text 215 B RONWEN N EIL Forging the Faith: Pseudo-Epistolography in Christian Late Antiquity 229 C O NT E NT S C OLIN M. W HITING Two Forged Letters and the Heirs of Athanasius and Lucifer IX 243 IV EPIGRAPHY AND ARCHAEOLOGY P ETER K EEGAN False Positive: Testing the Authenticity of Latin Graffiti in Ancient Pompeii 261 N ICOLETTA M OMIGLIANO Minoan Fakes and Fictions 293 I GNACIO R ODRÍGUEZ T EMIÑO A ND A NA Y ÁÑEZ Considerations on the Judgement of Criminal Court No. 1 of Vitoria-Gasteiz on the Iruña-Veleia Case 315 Abstracts 333 Contributors 341 Indices Index locorum General Index 347 347 349 Mark Antony’s Will and his Pietas*1 J. I GNACIO S AN V ICENTE University of Oviedo 1. Modern Historiography Mark Antony’s will has been the subject of extensive debate among authors who have studied the period, but they have not reached a unanimous criterion. Three clear positions remain: those who believe that the will Octavian read was authentically Antony’s; those who are of the opinion that he falsified it; and those who maintain that he made a partial reading, but added new provisions that did not originally appear in it. In the last two cases, in the eyes of the law Octavian became a testamentarius, that is, a counterfeiter who makes a false will or alters a genuine one. We will now review the opinions of the most significant authors who have dealt with the subject from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. For Michael Rostovtzeff (1926, 29, 494, n. 24), at least in the first edition of his book The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, Mark Antony’s will may have been false or forged, although he does not elaborate on his analysis; Kenneth Scott (1937, 41–43) advocates its legality, while Ronald Syme (1939, 282, n. 1) does not rule out a partial forgery of the will, and argues that the issue was not a matter of scruples, but of opportunity. John Crook (1957, 36–68) contends that the document is false, arguing that Cleopatra and her children were not Roman citizens, although his view is contested by J. R. Johnson (1978, 494–503), who objects that Mark Antony may have resorted to the military will or granted citizenship to Cleopatra and his children and that, therefore, the will should have been legally valid. The legislative analysis of the will carried out by François Dumont (1959) does not question its content, so it can be deduced that from his point of view it was not manipulated by Octavian. Eleanor Huzar (1978, 207–208; 1984, 656), for her part, argues that the entire will, if any, was a forgery, while ————— * This paper is based on research funded by the Project “Falsificaciones y falsificadores de textos clásicos” (FFI2017-87034-P) of the Government of Spain. Tenue est mendacium, 195–211 196 J . IG NA C I O S AN VI C E N TE Frank Siriani (1984, 236–241) assumes the authenticity of the document deposited in the temple of Vesta, but argues that it was partially forged by Octavian in order to use it as war propaganda against Antony. For Edward Champlin (1991, 10, n. 20), the will reflected what Antony felt, so he advocates its plausibility. Christopher Pelling (1996, 52) is of the opinion that the will contained the provisions of Mark Antony whose public reading could most favour Octavian, so much so that it seems that Octavian had drafted them himself, or at least part of them. He adds that Mark Antony was not in a position either to deny or to admit the contents of the will because he was in the East. On the other hand, a study by Luca Fezzi (2003) on the documentary falsification of the republican period between 133–31 does not include Antony’s will, so it must be that he considered there to be no manipulation. The authors of a series of Octavian biographies have defended different points of view. Pat Southern (2013, 151, 330, n. 19) proposed in 2001 (the date of the English publication of his work) the hypothesis that Octavian may have falsified some sections of the will, but argued that he probably did not have to alter anything, and that instead it could have been enough to have rehearsed and offered a good performance in the Senate and the Assembly. However, in a second work, which is devoted to examining together the facts starring Mark Antony and Cleopatra (2007, 214), he qualifies his previous hypothesis, admitting that children could not be heirs, since marriage to a foreigner was illegal from the Roman point of view. He defends, against the doubts raised by the modern authors, that the Greco-Latin authors did not accuse Octavian of falsification. For his part, Anthony Everitt (2008, 210, 397, n. 4) rejects the fact that the will is a forgery, rebutting Michael Grant (1972, 193), who was of the opinion that the document was an invention and that Mark Antony did not deposit his will in the temple of Vesta. He argues, against Grant, that Caesar had also deposited his will in the same place before his planned campaign against the Parthians (Suet. Caes. 83. 1). One of the last to deal with the subject has been Adrian Goldsworthy. In his study of Mark Antony and Cleopatra (2011, 380), he considered the inheritance left in the will to foreign children to be suspicious since it was illegal, although he believed that Antony may have wished to be buried in Alexandria with Cleopatra. However, in his biography of Octavian (2014, 199), he observes that it is likely that Octavian did not falsify the document, but rather distorted it in order to worsen the impression caused by a document he describes as embarrassing. A certain tendency can be perceived in these last works among the authors of the biographies to exonerate Octavian from the accusation of falsification, perhaps driven by a hagiographical propensity towards this character. M ARK AN T O NY ’ S W I L L A ND HI S P I ET A S 197 Recently, Loïc Borgies (2016, 313–316) advocates that Octavian gave a reading of previously selected passages, taking them out of context and giving them a tendentious nuance, and, therefore, assumes that Octavian did not falsify the will or introduce Antony’s new will into his reading. 2. The Late Republican Roman Will The purpose of the Roman will was to allow the testator, a civis romanus with the capacity ius testamenti faciendi, to name his heirs. These could dispose of the deceased’s property after the death of the testator. In the early Republic, wills were oral. As time went by, they evolved and written wills were accepted, although for a certain period both modalities coexisted. The type of will used by Mark Antony was the so-called testamentum per aes et libram (for the formal ritual that accompanied it), with a written nuncupatio, the same that Octavian would later use (Dumont 1959, 86). The will of the testator, that is to say, the nuncupatio with all the dispositions mortis causa that would have been arranged, was written on tablets, and the testator declared before the witnesses that their last will and testament was contained in them. The tablets were tied with ribbons and then sealed with the seals of the five or seven witnesses (five, plus the libripens and the familiae emptor) and remained closed until such time as the seals were broken in an official act (exhibitio) before a magistrate (although this formality was only obligatory from the lex Iulia vicesimaria promulgated by Augustus) (Dumont 1959, 94). He verified that it was signed by the seven witnesses, and proceeded with its public reading. The advantage of the written will was that it no longer depended on the memory of the witnesses or on their good faith and, moreover, whatever the testator had stipulated could remain secret (Iglesias 1972, 638– 639). If the testator did not want to make his will known, the witnesses were not in a position to be aware of the contents of the will. As can be deduced from a text by Horace (Sat. 2.5.52–56), the first line of the first tablet contained the name of the testator and, from the second line, the names of the heirs. As noted by Champlin (1989, 199; 1991, 1), the Romans’ wills mirrored their personalities. He bases this on two testimonies by Pliny the Younger, who states in a letter (Epist. 8.18.1) that it was a popular belief that the wills of men were like a mirror of their character (creditur vulgo testamenta hominum speculum esse morum), in other words, that the will would reveal the true nature of the man. An equally illuminating quote is taken from the Greek philosopher Lucian (Nigr. 30), who warned through one of his characters that the Romans only told the truth once in their lives: when they wrote their wills. These testimonies reflect the special 198 J . IG NA C I O S AN VI C E N TE sensitivity that the Romans had towards wills. They also explain that any manipulation of them was harshly punished, since it was considered an alteration of a public document, and that the use of this type of document in a context of political struggle could have an unsuspected scope. There was a clear precedent: the skilful reading of Caesar’s will by Mark Antony, which led to Caesar’s assassins fleeing Rome. 3. The Opening of Mark Antony’s Will, and its Context Octavian’s victory over Sextus Pompey in 36 BC had been achieved with the help of naval support provided by Mark Antony. As a consequence of this triumph and the subsequent elimination of Lepidus, Octavian’s situation had greatly improved and enjoyed a high degree of stability. On the other hand, Antony’s defeat by the Parthians in the same year had put him in an uncomfortable position and had ruined his military prestige. It was evident that, in order to reduce the losses suffered, Mark Antony wanted to resume a new eastern campaign, initially against Armenia, for which he needed Octavian’s support. Octavian only sent one-tenth of the soldiers he had promised him, which left Antony in a difficult situation and provoked, on the one hand, the rupture of the old alliance with Octavian and the sending of Octavia to Rome and, on the other, a new approach to Cleopatra, who offered to support his new projects in exchange for territorial concessions. The next phase took place in 34 BC, with the victory of Mark Antony over Armenia, the celebration of the triumph in Alexandria, and the so-called Donations of Alexandria. In the course of the lavish ceremony held in the Egyptian capital, he awarded Cleopatra the title of Queen of Kings and to Caesarion that of King of Kings. In addition, as the sources state (Plu. Ant. 54.6–7; D. C. 49.41.1– 3), he proceeded to make territorial donations from areas under the control of Rome to Caesarion and the children he had had with Cleopatra (Cleopatra and Caesarion: Egypt, Cyprus, and Coele-Syria; Cleopatra Selene: Libya; Alexander Helios: Armenia; Ptolemy: Phoenicia, Syria, Cilicia). As Goldsworthy (2014, 195–196) states, these were only nominal concessions, since no changes were observed in the administration of the eastern provinces. Similarly, Caesarion was recognised as the son and legitimate heir of Julius Caesar, which compromised Octavian’s position, since he was, after all, only an adopted son. By declaring that Cleopatra’s son was Caesar’s son, Mark Antony, through Caesarion, would receive Caesar’s inheritance, which could lead to a rift with Octavian. This was accompanied by Antony’s attempt to have both of them abandon the office of triumvir. This would weaken Octavian’s position, who would be left without legal M ARK AN T O NY ’ S W I L L A ND HI S P I ET A S 199 support, while the status of Mark Antony would not be so impaired, due to his status as consort of the Queen of Egypt. From the moment Antony returned Octavia to Octavian, the rupture was inevitable (San Vicente, 2018). Mark Antony had joined the queen of Egypt, and one of her sons, Caesarion, was Caesar’s heir. The year 33 marked a decisive milestone in the poor relations of both triumviri. Octavian’s propagandistic attacks on Antony multiplied, and he transferred his forces concentrated in Mesopotamia to the coasts of Asia Minor, a sign that the enemy to be beaten was no longer in the East, but in the West. In the year 32, the two elected consuls, Domitius Ahenobarbus and Gaius Sosius, supporters of Mark Antony, politically attacked Octavian in the Senate. Faced with threats from the latter, the two magistrates went to Ephesus to meet Mark Antony, accompanied by hundreds of senators who left Rome and embarked on the same itinerary (D. C. 50.2.6; Suet. Aug. 17.2). After his departure, Octavian summoned the senators and discussed the situation, while Antony gathered a Senate with his friends and supporters (D. C. 50.3.2). One of the main lines of Octavian’s attacks against Mark Antony was to highlight the negative aspects of everything that had an eastern origin, accentuating the accusations against Antony and Cleopatra in this sense. He must even have exhorted Octavia to leave Mark Antony’s house in Rome, which she refused (Plu. Ant. 54.1–5). Antony, for his part, moved together with his army first to Samos (Plu. Ant. 56.6) and then to Athens (Plu. Ant. 57.1). The Greek polis became the operational centre from which to direct the impending military campaign against Octavian, who was still his brother-in-law. All these movements took place just before the summer, as Antony’s rapid preparations alarmed Octavian, who foresaw that the conflict could begin that same summer (Plu. Ant. 58.1). It was in this context that Mark Antony and Octavia must have been divorced in the months of May–June of 32 BC (Eus. Chron. 2.140), while Mark Antony and Cleopatra were in Athens (Plu. Ant. 57; Sen. Suas. 1.6). This act had a clear symbolism. With it the last links between both sides were severed, since the conflict was seen as inevitable and there was no interest on the part of either faction in recovering the former alliances. The final decision regarding his marital status may have prompted Mark Antony to draft a new will which he would send to Rome to be deposited, as was customary, in the temple of Vesta. Among the witnesses who stamped the testamentary tablets were Lucius Munatius Plancus (Broughton 1952, I, 357; PIR2, 317, n° 718; Wiseman 1971, 243, n°263; Ferries, 438–444, n°100), the consul from 42 BC, and his nephew, Marcus Titius (Broughton 1952, I, 420; PIR2, 328– 329, n° 186; Wiseman 1971, 243, n°263; Ferries, 475–477, n° 133), two important supporters of his cause. Among Antony’s supporters, the growing role played by Cleopatra in the political strategy of the Antonine camp found an increasing