Coda

This concluding section follows a series of intertextual connections to trace the transformations of the most radical appropriation of pride, Seneca the Younger’s image of virtue proudly walking in triumph over fortune. This series concludes with the only Christian text treated, a paradoxical image of holy pride in a letter of Paulinus of Nola. This moment shows how, with the introduction of humility as a virtue, we can see both continuity and irreversible change in the conceptual landscape of Roman emotions, and serves as a logical stopping point for this analysis of Roman pride.

Conclusion to Part III

IN THESE CHAPTERS I HAVE TRACED THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DIStinct set of meanings, limited to the superbia cluster, beginning in the Augustan reconfiguration of the pride script. My point of departure was the argument I made in Chapter 3, that the Republican elite’s investment in its members’ equality underlies the exclusively negative articulation of pride and its corresponding centering as the signature anti-republican, monarchical quality. Here I showed that change to one-man rule motivated an intense engagement with the concept of pride in contemporary poetic texts that allowed a positive and neutral version of the emotion to be expressed. In ...

Conclusion to Part II

THE INVESTIGATIONS IN CHAPTERS 4 AND 5 HAVE SHOWN THE STAbility of the core script of pride as described in Part I and at the same time demonstrated the flexibility of its application. Chapter 4 demonstrated that—thanks to their foundation in that script—accusations of kingship fly free of political and ideological commitments and become weapons in a variety of power struggles, designating any transgressive, overreaching behavior as “kingly.” ...

The Peculiar Case of the superbia Group

This chapter shifts back to the lexical approach and zeroes in on superbia, the one pride term whose etymology has the potential for developing a positive conception of the emotion. It shows that superbia is not attested in a positive meaning in the republican period and that the baseline of the traditional conceptualization of pride in our sources is as a negative emotion. It discusses some possible exceptions as well as antonyms to negative pride, none of which develops into a robust expression of the positive version of the emotion. As explanations for this peculiar lack, the chapter emphasizes the symbolic significance of the figure of Tarquinius Superbus, the last of the legendary Roman kings, deposed and expelled for his tyrannical behavior, to the articulation of the republican values of the governing elite, and offers a pride-centered reading of Livy’s narrative at the end of book one.

Stages

The chapter analyzes pride scripts by focusing on pride’s constituent parts. Using representative examples as bases for modeling how the functioning of the emotion is envisioned, it examines what causes pride, what kind of behaviors the emotion, once aroused, leads to, and what reactions it is likely to provoke. It shows that pride can be said, in general, to originate in various types of good fortune or personal accomplishment that are overvalued by the person experiencing them compared to how they are viewed externally. The excessive emotion then is seen to lead to a variety of transgressive behaviors, ranging from verbal excess to physical violence. These behaviors form part of the subject’s attempts at impressing this self-valuation on others. The reactions to pride show the greatest variety and are dependent on the relative power of the affected party in the relationship.

Introduction

Beginning with a text that contains many typical features of Roman pride discourse, the Introduction places the investigation of Roman pride in the broader context of approaches to ancient emotions on the one hand and contemporary studies of pride by psychologists on the other. It identifies its externally conceived and predominantly negative articulation (exclusive in republican texts) as unique and proposes the twofold method of investigation based on scripts, short narratives that present the emotion as a process and allow for the most important elements to be identified on the one hand and a lexical approach that traces differences between terms and their individual development on the other.

The Transformation of Pride in Augustan Poetry

This chapter follows the analysis of the Aeneid with an examination of the role that pride plays in the poetry of Vergil’s contemporaries, also engaged with the changing meaning of the concept alongside the political changes. Pride, especially associated with triumph, is an indication that excess of good fortune might lead to disaster in book one of Horace’s Odes and in Augustan love poetry, where Propertius develops a way of conceptualizing such pride as justified by the beloved’s qualities and not necessarily disproportionate. The most radical version of this development takes place in the metapoetic sphere, where the first positive reconceptualization of pride takes place: Horace’s attribution of positive pride to his Muse and Propertius’s response to the claim that his fatherland, Umbria, should be proud of his achievement. The concluding part of the chapter shows the poets’ pulling away from extending this rehabilitation of pride into the public sphere.

Capua

This chapter considers how the pride script functions when the quality is attributed to a place. It investigates Roman attitudes to the city of Capua, which remained the proud place par excellence in Roman discourse from its star turn as a defector in the Second Punic War to late antiquity. The chapter begins with the distillation of the stereotypical picture of Capua in a poem of the fourth-century author Ausonius. Reading Capuan pride in Cicero, Livy, Silius Italicus, and Ausonius, the author shows how Roman ideas about pride interact with stereotypes about climate and ethnic character, as well as imperialist ideology, to create a remarkably durable portrait of a proud city that far outlasts its immediate historical motivation.

Kingship

This chapter is devoted to kingship as an institution deeply entangled with pride. The author analyze the functioning of the pride script within the kingship discourse in two case studies: accusations of regnum leveled at the early republican ‘pretenders’ (so-called adfectatores regni) and the rhetorical deployment of similar, but more flexible accusations in late republican oratory. I demonstrate that kingship accusations are both a way of conceptualizing certain kinds of political deviancy and, at the same time, a tool for suppressing such behavior. A concluding look at Pliny the Younger’s attacks on Domitian shows the endurance of the discourse into the empire.

Vergil’s Aeneid, Pride Unsettled

This chapter argues that the Aeneid unsettles the stable negative pride script by repeatedly staging confrontations between two different subtypes of pride. A narrative in which pride is ascribed to both victors and victims invites readers to take sides, creating an environment in which it is possible to see one of the two as positive: a situation familiar from both the ancient and the modern reception of the poem. The chapter presents a comprehensive reading of the poem through the prism of pride, discussing many well-known and controversial episodes, such as the death of Priam, the encounter of Dido and Aeneas, and the final duel between Aeneas and Turnus, as well as Anchises’ injunction to Aeneas to “battle the proud” and the depiction of Augustus’ doorposts as “proud.”