Abstract
“The Unstained Rule”: Ethics and Rhetoric in Late Antique Panegyric
Although tainted since Antiquity with a rather different reputation, panegyric does not simply flatter an emperor : it flatters him by showing how he realises a certain ideal of virtuousness. A panegyric cannot, however, be read as a simple summing-up of the virtues current in Roman society at a given time. At least two factors cloud the relationship between the virtue and the text. Panegyric strongly draws on text-book advice: praise for a certain quality does not have to imply that the person praised really possesses this quality. This is traditionnally called a topos. In the second place, even virtues have to be interpreted. For example, things as divergent as executing the defeated enemy and the willingness to spare the enemy, could be adduced as testimonies of a good reign in a single panegyric. It is the context that turned acts into virtuous acts.
Two main interpretations of panegyrical topoi exist, each of them starting out from one of the two factors singled out : either a literary analysis is preferred or the panegyric is read as propaganda. Both approaches focus on the tenuous relationship panegyric entertains with reality: in the first the stress is on the literary character of a panegyrical speech, in the second it is perceived as ideology. In both cases, panegyric is a façade that serves to hide the real acts of the emperor, be it by literary dressing-up or by propagandistic deformation. Although it is true that its relationship with reality is difficult to gauge, we will show how panegyric can be used to retrieve ideals of virtuousness that were current in Late Roman society. In accordance with Menander’s advice, panegyrics were supposed to praise universally acknowledged virtues. Even when complying with the demands of literature and propaganda, the orator had to be understood by his public. So we can assume that the qualities he praised, rang a bell in his audience. The more the panegyrist addressed moral concerns shared by his audience, the more his discourse would find an echo among them. Of course, we should not be so naive as to think that a panegyric simply expressed all moral concerns shared by his audience and to forget that it also drew on literary tools and paid allegiance to the imperial ideology. Still, panegyric offers us at least a glimpse of the moral discourse in which public concerns could be clothed. To study panegyric from this perspective boils down to the question : What does it reveal about the order of the public moral discourse?
In this paper we will illustrate that this approach can be fruitful, by studying the public moral concern about the limitation of bloodshed in times of peace, culminating in the claim of an “unstained rule”. Although essentially a transformation of the classical theme of clementia and philanthropia, it embraces a wider span of phenomena in Late Antiquity, something that can be taken to indicate a rise in the concern with bloodshed. We will show that it is not merely a literary topos, nor simply a part of the imperial ideology, but that it testifies to a widespread moral concern.
The Late Antique discourse on the “unstained rule” addressed three phenomena, capital punishment and venationes (staged hunts of wild animals), and gladiator games. The discourse is characterised by a moral concern with bloodshed in times of peace. Pardoning criminals or abolishing bloody institutions like gladiator or men-to-beast combats resulted in moral praise ; the ideal was that of an “unstained rule”, during which the state functioned without causing the death of one of its subjects. We can identify four sources on which the discourse drew for its arguments against capital punishments and bloody games: the idea of reform and not punishment as goal of the law ; the imitation of the divine as the ground principle of the exercise of power ; traditional Roman imperial concern with clementia ; and finally Christian ethics. Even though it had a classical ascendancy, it is only in Late Antiquity that the idea of an “unstained rule” became widely current, and associated with the general exercise of power by both emperors and lower officials.
It would be a mistake to assume that the ideal of the “unstained rule” was a full-fledged moral theory about social and juridical reform, or even only about punishment. Its coherence was not logical but guaranteed by the fact that it focused on a limited range of phenomena (executions and spectacles that caused the death of the participants), in which the concern expressed itself most clearly.
In panegyrics, but also in many other writings of Late Antiquity, the acts of emperors, officials and clergy were measured by the ideal of the “unstained rule”. This allows us to answer the initial question about the relation between panegyrical topoi and the “universally acknowledged good”. Because the “unstained rule” functions as a moral standard to judge actions, it was not entirely an ideological construct or a mere literary device. Although its formulation in the different panegyrics owed for sure a lot to literary auxesis (amplification) the topos was rooted in a wide-spread concern with bloodshed. It would not have had the success it had in Late Antiquity and would not have surfaced in other writings apart from panegyrics if it were not based on an existing moral discourse.