Rome – The Scholarly Dilettante

April 12, 2022

Orange Blossoms, Bootleg Liquor, and an Acrostic: My Grandparents’ Wedding

Last Christmas, when I was writing about Pietro Yon, composer of the Christmas song Gesù Bambino and probable guest at my grandparents’ wedding, one of the images I considered including was this souvenir of the occasion, a beautifully-decorated remembrance of the wedding guests in the form of an acrostic. But since this item has an Easter connection rather than a Christmas one, I decided to save it until now.

Wedding Acrostic — Souvenir of Julius and Josie’s Wedding

Under the heading “NOZZE: Julius Valentino ~ Josephine Boatti” (Nuptials of Julius Valentino, my grandfather, and Josephine Boatti, my grandmother), the names of the guests are arranged in squares and rectangles, with one letter in each name highlighted in red, forming an acrostic. Moving from left to right, the acrostic reads, “FIORI DI ARANCIO LA PASQUA CHE VI UNISCE VI PORTI FELICITA PARENTI AMICI PRESENTI LONTANI LO AUGURANO.” The words are in all caps and there’s no punctuation, which makes translation more challenging. I separated it into two sentences, which I have rendered thus:

With orange blossoms, may Easter which unites you bring you happiness. Your family and friends, both those present and those far away, wish you the best.

The text of the acrostic exhibits several interesting features. It begins, “With orange blossoms.” Orange blossoms, also illustrated in the background, have long been associated with weddings, and, like the white bridal gown, were popularized by Queen Victoria’s 1840 wedding to Prince Albert. I don’t think I can see actual orange blossoms in my grandmother’s bouquet; it looks to me like just roses and lilies-of-the-valley. She doesn’t say anything about her bouquet in her memoir, although she does mention that her dress came from Macy’s. She also says, quite casually, that because the wedding took place during Prohibition, “he got all the liquor from the ship” (Julius was working for Italian Lines at the time).

Josie's wedding portrait — Josie in her wedding dress

The acrostic continues, “may Easter which unites you bring you happiness.” My grandparents were married on April 20, which in 1924 was Easter Sunday. My grandmother wrote in her memoir, “They did not want me to get married on Easter Sunday, but somehow or other I must have looked at the priest with a very sad expression because we managed to get that date.” The Catholic Church does not allow weddings during Lent, as it is a penitential season, but as far as I know Easter Sunday is ok. Probably the priest was just reluctant because Holy Week and Easter are so busy and it would have been more convenient to pick a later date.¹

Finally, the acrostic uses the Italian verb augurano for what the family and friends are doing. I have translated augurano as “wish you the best.” The related noun, auguri in the plural, means “best wishes.” My grandmother used to write molti auguri in my birthday cards, or “with all best wishes.” The history of these words goes back to ancient Rome, where augury was a form of divination. Divination refers to determining the will of the gods by means of observing some aspect of the natural world. A prophet—mantis in Greek—is one who is skilled in reading the book of nature. That is why many forms of divination end in the suffix –mancy.² The insect known as the praying mantis is named for its resemblance to a prophet making a pronouncement.³

praying mantis — Praying mantis in a prophetic pose

Augury is the form of divination that involves interpreting the behavior of birds. When Romulus and Remus were arguing over which of them should have precedence in their new city, they decided to settle the question by asking the gods. It didn’t go well, as the ancient Roman historian Livy relates:

For this purpose Romulus took the Palatine hill and Remus the Aventine as their respective stations from which to observe the auspices. Remus, the story goes, was the first to receive a sign—six vultures; and no sooner was this made known to the people than double the number of birds appeared to Romulus. The followers of each promptly saluted their master as king, one side basing its claim upon priority, the other upon number. Angry words ensued, followed all too soon by blows, and in the course of the affray Remus was killed.⁴

Had the fight gone the other way, of course, the capital of Italy would be called Reme.⁵ We no longer consult the flight of birds before undertaking something important, like building a city or getting married, but Italians still wish one another good omens—molti auguri—and even in English we say that something “augurs well.”

In addition to the text of the acrostic, the guest list is also quite interesting. Disappointingly, the name of Pietro Yon does not appear, although I am reasonably certain that I identified him in a group wedding photo. Perhaps the artist only included those names that were needed to make the acrostic. Of the names that do appear, the one that jumped out at me was “Hon. La Guardia.” In 1924 La Guardia was not yet an airport, or a Broadway musical, or even the mayor of New York City, but he was, I discovered, a U.S. Congressman (hence the “Honorable”).⁶ This souvenir was framed and hung in my grandparents’ house for years, and I remember once asking her about La Guardia. As I remember, she said something like, “My parents invited all kinds of bigshots.” Now I’m not sure if she meant that a bigshot like La Guardia was invited and came to the wedding, or that he was invited and therefore included on the guest list that the artist worked from, but didn’t actually show up. In any case, La Guardia’s presence is not noted in any of the newspaper articles about the wedding that my father transcribed in the memoir.

My grandparents were married for 70 years, until my grandfather died in 1994. That Easter Sunday wedding, with or without actual orange blossoms, did augur well for them.

June 4, 2020

“Stuff I Did”: The Res Gestae, Tulips, and Squeezes

We tend to think of the Latin language as fancy, formal, and technical. But my favorite Latin word when I am teaching ancient Roman civilization in Origins of the West is “res,” which means “thing.” In Origins, we encounter it in the term res publica, literally the “public thing,” which began, according to tradition, in 509 BCE, when the Roman people, led by Brutus the Liberator, exiled King Tarquin the Proud and replaced the monarchy with a republic. A monarchy is a private thing—the king treats the kingdom like he owns it—but a republic is a public thing, owned by the people as a whole.

We also encounter the word when we read Vergil’s Aeneid, which begins in medias res—in the middle of things.¹ Book one of the Aeneid begins with Aeneas already in Carthage; we learn the previous events, the fall of Troy and his voyage to north Africa, through flashbacks, as Aeneas narrates them at the banquet Queen Dido throws for him in books two and three. By book four, we’re back to the present.²

I made this diagram to illustrate how the Aeneid is structured in medias res. The numbered items on the outside of the arch are the events in the order they occurred; the book numbers on the inside of the arch are the order in which we read them.

Finally, my favorite use of my favorite Latin word is in the phrase res gestae, or “things done.” This is the title of a document written by the emperor Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE) near the end of his life.³ The title is usually translated “accomplishments” or “achievements,” but it basically means “stuff I did.” So we’ve got “public stuff,” “in the middle of stuff,” and “stuff I did.” So much for fancy, formal, and technical.

We know of the existence of the Augustus’ Res Gestae from a passage in the biography of Augustus by the ancient Roman author Suetonius, written around 120 CE. Suetonius tells us that Augustus compiled a list of his accomplishments and arranged for them to be published on bronze tablets to be erected in front of his mausoleum in Rome.⁴

The bronze tablets no longer survive, but a copy that was sent to the provinces does. The Latin text of the Res Gestae is carved into the interior walls of the cella (the inner room) of the Temple of Augustus in what is now Ankara, Turkey (then Ankyra, provincial capital of Galatia). A Greek translation is found on the exterior wall (which makes sense, as Galatia was in the Greek-speaking part of the empire). The inscription is also known as the Monumentum Ancyranum.⁵

The ruins of the Temple of Augustus in Ankara. Only the cella is still standing.

I use a translation of this text whenever I teach the Age of Augustus. It’s a rare example of an extant ancient historical text that is not only contemporary with its subject but also written by the person in whose voice it is. (Unlike, for example, the Suetonius biography, written about a century after Augustus died, or the Funeral Oration of Pericles, written by Thucydides in Pericles’ voice.)

A portion of the Latin inscription of the *Res Gestae* on the wall of the Temple of Augustus.

In the document, Augustus lists the achievements he wishes to be remembered by. It’s a combination of a memoir, curriculum vitae, and a completed to-do list. The document is not particularly well-organized, but if we were to reorder the items and group them under headings (which is what I have my students do), they might look something like this:

Military Victories and Conquests
Diplomacy and Peacemaking
Public Works
Donations
Restoration of the Mores Maiorum (the “ways of the ancestors”)

If you are familiar with the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where John Cleese’s character asks, “What have the Romans done for us,” you might think of the Res Gestae as Augustus’ answer to the question, “What has Augustus done for us?” And both answers would include “the aqueduct” and “brought peace.”

Equally as fascinating as the document’s content is the story of how it was found. I knew that it survived only in the provincial copy carved into the Temple of Augustus in Ankara, and I knew that at some point it was recognized as the work of Augustus. Beyond that, I vaguely assumed that it had been identified by a classically-educated nineteenth-century British diplomat—like Lord Elgin, only less destructive.

As usual, I was partially right. My instincts were correct, but I was off on the details (just like with King Arthur flour). It wasn’t a classically-educated nineteenth-century British diplomat; it was a classically-educated sixteenth-century Flemish diplomat. Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1522-1592) was ambassador of Emperor Ferdinand of Austria to Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent. During his time there, between 1554 and 1562, Ghiselin de Busbecq traveled around the Ottoman empire and later published his observations in Turkish Letters (1581). He wrote,⁶

Here we saw a very beautiful inscription, containing a copy of the tablets in which Augustus gave a summary of his achievements. We made our people copy as much as was legible. It is engraved on the marble walls of a building now ruinous and roofless which formerly may have formed the official residence of the governor. As you enter the building one half of the inscription is on the right, and the other on the left. The top lines are nearly perfect; in the middle the gaps begin to present difficulties; the lowest lines are so mutilated with blows of clubs and axes as to be illegible. This is indeed a great literary loss, and one which scholars have much reason to regret; the more so as it is an ascertained fact that Ancyra was dedicated to Augustus as the common gift of Asia.

Recognizing the Res Gestae wasn’t Ghiselin de Busbecq’s only accomplishment. He was also interested in plants, and claimed to have been the person who introduced tulip bulbs to Europe. This claim was an exaggeration, but Ghiselin de Busbecq probably contributed to their popularization. ⁷ Tulips became so popular in the Dutch Republic of the 17th century that the buying and selling of the bulbs is referred to as “Tulipmania,” and the rise and subsequent collapse of the market in 1637 is considered an early example of an investment bubble. ⁸

‘Still Life with Flowers,’ 1639, by Hans Bollinger (fl. 1623-1672), now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The striped tulips, known as ‘broken,’ were the most highly sought-after during the tulip craze. It is now known that the ‘break’ is caused by a virus. Coincidentally, the name of the most valuable broken variety was ‘Semper Augustus.’

The surviving copy of the Res Gestae was mentioned by classical scholars a few times in the subsequent centuries, but serious study of it was only undertaken in the nineteenth century, beginning with the work of Theodor Mommsen, a groundbreaking German historian of ancient Rome. Mommsen was not an archeologist, and he did not travel to Turkey to study the inscription in person. Rather, he relied on drawings made by others to produce his scholarly edition of the Res Gestae in 1865, and a second edition that utilized plaster casts of the inscription in 1883.⁹

Another technology that has been developed by epigraphers (people who study inscriptions) is known as “squeezes.” A squeeze is made by pressing dampened paper onto the inscription, letting it dry, then lifting it off. The resulting impression is lightweight and easy to work with (although the image is reversed; epigraphers have to become adept at reading ancient languages backwards). Taking a squeeze allows for prolonged study of the text off-site, and for simultaneous study of inscriptions from multiple sites.

I was delighted to learn that Cornell University, my doctoral institution, has an extensive collection of squeezes, including the Res Gestae. The Res Gestae squeeze was obtained as part of the Cornell Expedition to Asia Minor and the Assyro-Babylonian Orient (1907-1908). I was not aware of this collection’s existence while I was studying there, although ancient Greek and Roman history was one of my minor fields. At that point, in the pre-digital era, the squeezes were just sitting in storage in the attic of Goldwin Smith Hall, home of Cornell’s Classics department. But the squeezes have since been restored and digitized.

One of the squeezes of the *Res Gestae* now in Cornell’s collection.

Another Cornell connection to the Res Gestae, slightly more tenuous, is that Theodor Ernst Mommsen (1905-1958), grandson of Theodor Mommsen, taught medieval history at Cornell beginning in 1954 (having escaped Nazi Germany in 1935) until his untimely death from suicide in 1958. His successor was Brian Tierney, with whom I studied.

In the 1930s, archeologists excavated the Ara Pacis, an Augustan monument mentioned in the Res Gestae: ¹⁰

When I returned to Rome from Spain and Gaul, having settled affairs successfully in these provinces, in the consulship of Tiberius Nero and Publius Quinctilius [13 BC], the senate decreed that an altar of Augustan Peace should be consecrated in thanks for my return on the field of Mars, and ordered magistrates and priests and Vestal Virgins to perform an annual sacrifice there.

As part of his program to connect his rule to the glories of imperial Rome, Mussolini had a museum constructed to house the Ara Pacis, located near the ruins of the mausoleum of Augustus on the banks of the Tiber. The text of the Res Gestae was carved into an exterior wall of the museum. The Ara Pacis museum opened in 1938, a year celebrated as the 2000^th anniversary of the birth of Augustus.¹¹

Mussolini’s Ara Pacis museum. The *Res Gestae* was carved on the wall in the foreground.

The Mussolini-era museum has since been demolished and replaced with a new building, completed in 2006, designed by American architect Richard Meier. The wall with the Res Gestae was preserved, however. So if you want to see an inscribed version of the Res Gestae, there’s no need to visit Ankara; there’s one in Rome, near its original location, although not on a bronze tablet.

Left: Richard Meier’s Ara Pacis museum. Right: The Res Gestae wall on the new museum.

Whenever an academic administrator asks me for the goals of a course, I always use the same three (polished a bit more for administrative consumption):

Teach them stuff (content).
Teach them to do stuff (skills).
Teach them how it relates to other stuff (connections).

The Res Gestae is a perfect example of this approach in action. Teach them stuff: the document is literally made up of, and named for, the stuff Augustus did. Teach them to do stuff: in addition to the skill of reading and interpreting a document, the Res Gestae also gives students the opportunity to learn about disciplines like archeology and epigraphy and techniques like squeezes that lie behind the conveniently anthologized, printed, translated text in front of them. Teach them how it relates to other stuff: the history of the Res Gestae not only connects to the history of the interest in and study of the classics—by Ghiselin de Busbecq in the 16^th century, Mommsen in the 19^th, and Mussolini in the 20^th—it also, more unexpectedly, connects to the history of horticulture and early-modern capitalism. No wonder it’s one of my favorite texts to teach.

March 11, 2020

Vergil or Virgil: What’s in a Roman Name?

Yesterday I made a brief Facebook post regarding an insight one of my students had during a discussion of Book II of Vergil’s Aeneid (the Fall of Troy). The account of the attack on Priam’s palace reminded him of the siege of Helm’s Deep in Tolkien’s The Two Towers. A friend of mine questioned my spelling of “Vergil” in the post. I assured him that I was correct and realized that this was a perfect opportunity for a blog post on Roman onomastics (the study of naming customs).

My friend thought that the correct spelling for the name of the poet of the Aeneid is “Virgil.” He’s not wrong: look at the cover of my (well-thumbed) copy of the Fitzgerald translation of the Aeneid.

So why did I write “Vergil” and not “Virgil”? The poet, of course, didn’t spell his name either of those ways. His full name was Publius Vergilius Maro. But that just leads us to another question: why are we referring to him by a shortened form of his middle name? Well, it’s not a middle name in our understanding of the term—that is, the second of two personal names chosen by our parents, and followed by our last name, which is the family name. The name in the middle position of a 3-part Roman male name was not a personal name chosen by one’s parents; it was part of the family name. In other words, Publius Vergilius Maro’s father and brothers would also be named Firstname Vergilius Maro, and not Firstname Middlename Maro.

Here’s how it worked. The name of a male Roman typically had three parts:

The praenomen (first name)	Marcus
The nomen (clan or gens name):	Tullius
The cognomen (branch of the gens):	Cicero

There were so few praenomines available that the Romans developed a set of standard abbreviations for them; these abbreviations are found, for example, in inscriptions on Roman monuments. They are also commonly used by modern writers. So we could refer to our poet as P. Vergilius Maro, and there would be no doubt that we are talking about a Publius. Here are all the praenomines and their abbreviations (I tell my students that an ancient Roman baby name book was a single page):

A.	Aulus
App.	Appius
C.	Caius or Gaius
Cn.	Cnaeus or Gnaeus
D.	Decimus
K.	Kaeso or Caeso
L.	Lucius
M.	Marcus
M’	Manius
Mam.	Mamercus
N.	Numerius
P.	Publius
Q.	Quintus
S. or Sex.	Sextus
Ser.	Servius
Sp.	Spurius
T.	Titus
Ti.	Tiberius

Notice that not only are there merely eighteen names to choose from, but some of them are just numbers: Quintus, Sextus, and Decimus (Fifth, Sixth, and Tenth)! I don’t know if those names were reserved for actual fifth, sixth, or tenth sons (or children); I also don’t know why the other numbers are missing.

A boy born after the death of his father was given the praenomen “Postumus.” Sometimes a second cognomen was added (later called an agnomen), especially in honor of military achievements: P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus (P. Cornelius Scipio, the conqueror of Africa). If a boy was adopted by another family, he would assume the new family’s nomen and cognomen; his original nomen would have the syllable “an” inserted in it (making it an adjective) and would become his agnomen. For example, when P. Aemilius Paullus was adopted by the Scipio family, his new name became P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (the Aemilian Cornelius Scipio). Similarly, when C. Octavius was adopted by C. Julius Caesar, his new name became C. Julius Caesar Octavianus (the Octavian Julius Caesar). We commonly refer to him as “Octavian.” (Later, he was granted the agnomen “Augustus”).

If this is how male names worked, how about female names? Was there a corresponding list of female praenomines, and was P. Vergilius Maro’s mother known as Mrs. Vergilius Maro? No and no. Female Romans had only one name: the name of their father’s gens (his nomen) with a feminine ending. If a family had more than one daughter, they would be distinguished by maior (the elder) and minor (the younger). Roman women did not change their names at marriage. Here are some examples:

C. Julius Caesar’s daughter = Julia
M. Tullius Cicero’s daughter = Tullia
L. Aemilius Paullus’ daughter = Aemilia
T. Livius’ daughter = Livia

Back to Vergilian spelling. One good indication that a particular Roman has had a prominent place in the western tradition is if his name has been anglicized. We don’t say “Q. Horatius Flaccus”; we say “Horace.” We don’t say “T. Livius”; we say “Livy.” We don’t say “P. Vergilius Maro”; we say “Vergil.” But that still doesn’t answer the question where “Virgil” came from.

The answer is that it comes from the Middle Ages. The poet of the Aeneid was especially revered during the Middle Ages, when his work was used for divination: a questioner would open the Aeneid at random and point to a line, whose significance would then be used to answer the question. This practice is known as the sortes Vergilianae (or Virgilianae). As a result, the poet got a reputation as having been a magician. The Latin word for “magic wand” was virga; hence, his name came to be spelled “Virgilius.” This was later anglicized as Virgil.

Today, both spellings are used and both are acceptable. I prefer “Vergil” because it’s closer to his original name. But if I were writing about medieval uses of the Aeneid (for example, in Dante’s Divine Comedy), I would probably spell it “Virgil.”