L’Antiquité Classique 79 (2010), p. 173-187. The Sexual Hypocrisy of Domitian: Suet., Dom. 8, 3*
In his much-debated Vitae, Suetonius maintained a particularly hostile view towards Domitian, which should come as no surprise given the latter’s damnatio memoriae. 1 Scholars such as Bradley and Vinson have even contended that Suetonius’ portrait of Domitian is the clearest, and perhaps the most artificially constructed, illustration of imperial tyranny in his work. 2 Furthermore, there is no clear, single
divisio between the subject’s virtutes and vitia in the Domitianus as there is, for example, in the lives of tyrants such as Gaius (Cal. 22, 1) and Nero (Ner. 19, 3). The implication is that Domitian maintained a tyrannical character throughout his life. 3
Indeed, Suetonius characterized the last Flavian as a tyrant as early as Dom. 1, 3, i. e., when he became a praetor with consular powers in 69. In compliance with the view that the Vitae of the “ bad emperors” are constructed around rhetorical literary patterns stressing their subjects’ negative qualities, this article focuses on Suetonius’ depiction of Domitian as a sexual hypocrite, a prominent feature of the rhetorical tyrant. Our primary aim, here, is to explore the way in which sexual hypocrisy was employed as a rhetorical device at Dom. 8, 3, a locus where Suetonius describes Domitian’s deceitful attempts to repress sexual misconduct so as to magnify the emperor’s tyrannical nature and assimilate him further with the hypocritical tyrant of rhetoric and historical literature. 4
* Journal abbreviations follow the “ Liste des périodiques” in L’Année philologique. All dates are C. E., while all translations are adapted from the relevant Loeb edition. The authors would like to thank Dr B. W. Jones for reading an earlier version of this paper.
1 On this, see SUET., Dom. 23, 1, with M. B. CHARLES, “ Calvus Nero : Domitian and the Mechanics of Predecessor Denigration,” AClass 45 (2002), p. 19-49 ; ID., “ Suetonius
Domitianus 1.1 : Nerva and Domitian,” AClass 49 (2006), p. 79-87 ; B. W. JONES, “ Domitian, Nerva and the Bias of Suetonius,” in P. DEFOSSE (ed.), Hommages à Carl Deroux II. Prose et linguistique, Médecine, Brussels, 2002 (Collection Latomus 267), p. 236-239 ; on the negative literary tradition, see, e. g., B. W. JONES, The Emperor Domitian, London/ New York, 1992, p. 198 ; G. TOWNEND, “ Suetonius and his Influence,” in T. A. DOREY (ed.), Latin Biography,
London, 1967, p. 79-97, at p. 91 ; H. I. FLOWER, The Art of Forgetting : Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture, Chapel Hill, 2006, chapter 9 passim (especially p. 236).
2 K. R. BRADLEY, “ The Imperial Ideal in Suetonius’ ‘ Caesares’,” ANRW II, 33.5 (1991), p. 3720-3729, at p. 3728 ; M. P. VINSON, “ Domitia Longina, Julia Titi, and the Literary Tradition,”
Historia 38 (1989), p. 431-450.
3 B. W. JONES, Suetonius : Domitian, London, 1996, p. XV, has even suggested that there are two divisiones in the Vita, viz., Dom. 3, 2 and 10, 1 ; see also TAC., Hist. IV, 86, 2, perhaps the locus classicus for Domitian’s Tiberius-like dissimulatio ; cf. TAC., Ann. I, 11, 1-3 (on Tiberius).
4 M. T. GRIFFIN, Nero : The End of a Dynasty, London/ New York, 2000, p. 79, for example, believes that “ evidence for [ Domitian’s] ... hypocrisy was clearly dug up or invented”.
