Dynasty and Empire in the Age of Augustus "d0e367"

The Cups in Context

Pairs of drinking vessels are as typical in finds of Roman silver as single vessels.^[20] They belonged to that part of a Roman silver service called the argentum potorium, which embraced a variety of vessels and implements useful or necessary to the ritual of communal drinking; the Boscoreale hoard is itself exemplary of such a set.^[21] Two cups instead of one imply use in a particular manner: the owner is drinking with a friend and wishes to share a matched set of cups. Such convivial drinking, at a meal or simply at a drinking session, was an integral feature of cultured life in Greece from the High Archaic period on and from at least the second century B.C. was a standard feature of cultured Roman practice as well. At such drinking bouts friends were meant to speak as well as drink, on a topic either elevated or merry; in any case witty conversation was the

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goal. Paradigmatic is of course Plato's Symposion, both event and text; a perhaps less oppressively uplifting sort of occasion may be imagined from the Hellenistic poet Phalaikos' mock epitaph for his friend Lykon, as a host memorable both for the charm of his own speech and for the scintillating conversation at any drinking bout over which he presided (Greek Anthology, vol. 1, no. 6, Loeb edition).

The host and his guest(s) might let the conversation take its own course, but they might as easily set their topics guided by an outside stimulus, whether the reading/singing of poetry or prose or the contemplation of artwork in the host's dining room. That category included drinking cups.^[22]Ekphrasis on decorated vessels, expounding on the decorations dramatic or moral content, was a topos of Hellenistic and Roman poetry; various extant drinking cups themselves imply such attentive conversation. It is with this (generally unexpressed) premise in mind that so many authors take cups with mythological subjects to be veiled allegories or satires on Julio-Claudian court politics. Such hypotheses are unprovable; there are enough good examples of "didactic" cups without this suspect class.^[23]

An exemplary text is an epigram written by Antipater of Thessalonika to accompany the gift of a cup pair to his friend and patron L. Calpurnius Piso (Gow and Page, Greek Anthology, 2: 541). In paraphrase: I send you two bowls, each a perfect hemisphere (cf. the profile of Megarian bowls), one engraved with the constellations of the southern sky and the other with the constellations of the northern sky, making two halves of the celestial globe; drink and empty yours so that you can [turn it over and] look at the figures, throw away your Aratus for you have the phainomena before your eyes. A parallel Augustan reference to such gift giving is preserved by Plutarch (Mor. 207): Maecenas gave Augustus every year a silver patera (phiale) for a birthday present. The Hellenistic poet Aratus of Soli was famous for setting in verse a complete astronomical guide, the Phainomena; extremely popular in the early Empire, it was translated into Latin by the young Germanicus. Imputing interest in such a work implied a high level of education and culture; the decoration of Antipater's cups (given, and presumably commissioned, in Rome) served also this taste for serious learning as an adornment of leisure and pleasure. The use to be made of the cups is clear: Piso is to drink, and then discuss the star map on his cup with the drinking companion who holds the pendant cup. Note especially that the two cups are fully meaningful only when paired, as their decorative programs constitute distinct and complementary portions of a greater whole. This is obvious, for instance, on the skyphoi decorated

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with the Twelve Labors of Hercules, three to a side and six to each cup;^[24] in most or all Roman cup pairs, the decoration sets up a game of compositional and semantic correspondence and antithesis, from one side to another and between vessels.^[25]

An exemplary parallel in silver to Antipater's epigram is furnished, from the Boscoreale hoard, by a pair of beakers decorated with animated skeletons (MonPiot 5 [1899]: pls. vii–viii). Skulls and skeletons, in model form and on drinking vessels, gems, and mosaics, were typical adjuncts to the late Republican and early imperial feast, a reminder to "drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will be as these." In a unique twist, on the Boscoreale beakers^[26] the skeletons impersonate a gallery of famous poets, tragedians, and philosophers engaged in various "real" and allegorical activities; detailed inscriptions label the philosophers and their attributes, and by some a "spoken" phrase sums up his literary or philosophical stance. These parody the moralistic portrait assemblages that decorated aristocrats' libraries and gardens; they could be evoked without parody, as on the early Julio-Claudian Berthouville cup, where philosophers and poets conversed with the Muses and characters from their works.^[27] Most of these unnamed sages can still be recognized from their known portrait types, as ancient spectators were expected to do in compliment to their artistic, as well as literary, connoisseurship. One can imagine the owner of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum resting from earnest researches in the dense Epicurean texts recovered from his library by indulging in comic relief while showing off his erudition over his wine with such a pair of cups, laughing at their parody of Epicurus among others.^[28]

The Boscoreale Cups of Augustus and Tiberius functioned like the cup pairs described above: they were meant to be observed carefully and discussed knowledgeably by the owner and his friends, who would muse over details as well as over the general themes of the decoration. Each cup can be read as having a discrete historical story and political theme—one features Augustus on either side, the other Augustus' stepson Tiberius; one shows Drusus the Elder, Tiberius' brother; the other, Tiberius. Though each cup can be enjoyed singly, the two are obviously pendants, which give up the fullness of their message only in apposition; this is a major premise of my analysis.

This particular cup pair was meant to stimulate not a literary discussion but a discussion of the historical glories and campaigns of the Augustan house; the owner must have enjoyed historical memoirs like Caesar's campaign accounts and the German wars of Pliny the Elder, as well as the poetry and philosophy relevant to the other cup pairs in his collection.

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This (so far) unique commission to copy a public monument onto a pair of drinking cups must have had some bearing on the personal experiences of the original owner.^[29] It is most likely that he received or commissioned these cups because he had served on the staff(s) of the brother generals celebrated here for their related commands in northern Europe;^[30] think of an educated member of the Roman gentry like Velleius Paterculus, whose family made its fortune serving Augustus and his heirs (cf. the Augustan grounding of the BR hoard discussed above), and whose gratitude combined with his historical interests in the writing of history on behalf of his general Tiberius.^[31] A tie between the original owner and the cups' images would account for their preservation in damaged state by the owner's descendants^[32] (the display of time-damaged art was an affectation of the nobility in regard to portraits and trophies of their ancestors).^[33] It is because cups like these were meant to be carefully examined and discussed that an undertaking like mine is justified; if Antipater's cups could stand in for the endless hexameters of Aratus, the length of my excursus on a pair of silver cups does not seem uncalled for.