7
Bruce Gibson
Hildebert of Lavardin (c. 1056–1133) is credited with two poems on the city of Rome, which he visited around 1100 during his tenure as Bishop of Le Mans.1 The two poems in elegiacs, though they are numbered 36 and 38 in the Teubner edition of A. B. Scott,2 are usefully seen as a pair offering contrasting approaches to the city of Rome.3 The first poem (36), of thirty-eight lines, presents an address from Hildebert to the city of Rome, which concentrates on the enduring magnificence of the city, in spite of its ruined condition. The second poem (38), of thirty-six lines, is a speech made by the city herself, in which she notes how she has changed from the lofty grandeur of her past, but is now transformed by the city’s Christian status as the city of St Peter (38.11 plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Cesare Petrus, ‘the standards of the Cross are more than the legionary eagles, Peter is more than Caesar’).
This pair of poems represents a striking treatment of the city of Rome,4 especially in view of the shift in perspective which the second poem effects after the first. This paper will offer a close reading of both poems, and will explore how Hildebert is able to exploit links with earlier classical poetry, especially Lucan’s pessimistic poem on the Roman civil war of Caesar and Pompey, and with Scripture in presenting his response to the city of Rome.5
I
The first poem opens with Hildebert addressing the city of Rome (36.1–4):
Par tibi, Roma, nihil cum sis prope tota ruina.
quam magni fueris integra, fracta doces.
longa tuos fastus etas destruxit, et arces
Caesaris et superum templa palude iacent.
Nothing is equal to you, Rome, although you are almost entirely a ruin. Broken, you teach how much you were worth when you were whole. Long years have destroyed your pride, and the citadels of Caesar and the temples of the gods lie sunk in marshes.6
The address to Rome in these opening lines can be seen as setting up the response from Rome which follows in poem 38, with tibi in the opening line of this poem being answered by Rome referring to herself in the first person singular with mihi in line 1 of poem 38. The opening line also establishes the paradox of Rome having lost its glories, and being almost reduced to a strikingly singular ruina,7 but still having nothing to equal it. The second line suggests that Rome can impart a lesson from her ruin about her past greatness: with doces, Hildebert also looks to the second poem where Rome imparts her wisdom, though not perhaps in the sense implied here, since the condition of Rome in her fall will turn out to portend rather more than simply a regretful statement of her past glory. Lines 3–4 also establish important motifs that operate throughout the two poems: the sense of Rome’s pride, which has been laid low by history, and the demise of the temporal power of the emperors (arces | Caesaris) and of the sway of the pagan gods (the plural superum will allow for a contrast with the monotheism of Christianity in the second poem). The phrase superum templa echoes Luc. 10.15–16 superum sedes et templa uetusti | numinis, but may also draw on Lucan’s account of the decayed condition of the ruins of Troy, during Caesar’s visit in Book 9 of his civil war poem (9.966–9):8
iam siluae steriles et putres robore trunci
Assaraci pressere domos et templa deorum
iam lassa radice tenent, ac tota teguntur
Pergama dumetis: etiam periere ruinae.
Now sterile woods and tree trunks rotten to their core weighed down on the halls of Assaracus and hold sway over the temples of the gods with roots that are now worn out, and the whole of Troy is covered in thickets: even the ruins have perished.
Lucan’s reference to the demise of political and divine grandeur at Troy, with the overgrown state of the abode of Assaracus, a legendary Trojan forebear, and of the temples of the gods, finds its counterpart in Hildebert’s reference to the even more inglorious process of decline that is the fate of Caesar’s arches and the temples of the gods at Rome, now sunken in marshes, which may be a generalised reference to the ever-present threat of flooding from the Tiber.9 But whereas Lucan’s account of the ruins of Troy includes the paradox that even the ruins themselves have perished, Hildebert’s approach after this pessimistic opening will be a very different one, with an emphasis on the different paradox of the survival and even the monumentality of the ruins. Indeed, whereas the ruins of Troy have perished, Rome is almost entirely a ruin (cum sis prope tota ruina), but yet is still unequalled for her grandeur.10
Hildebert then continues by considering Rome’s historical development (36.5–14):
ille labor, labor ille ruit, quem dirus Araxes
et stantem tremuit, et cecidisse dolet;
quem gladii regum, quem provida iura senatus,
quem superi rerum constituere caput;
quem magis optavit cum crimine solus habere
Cesar, quam socius et pius esse socer.
qui crescens studiis tribus hostes, crimen, amicos,
vi domuit, secuit legibus, emit ope.
in quem, dum fieret, vigilavit cura priorum,
iuvit opus pietas hospitis, unda locum.
That labour, that labour has fallen, which dread Araxes both trembled at when it was standing, and grieves at its fall. The swords of kings, the wise laws of the senate, the gods established it to be the head of the world. Caesar preferred to possess it alone through crime, rather than to share it, and to be a pious father-in-law. As it grew through three qualities, it tamed its enemies through force, it cut back crime through the laws, and bought friends through wealth. As long as it was coming into being, the care of ancestors watched over it, the piety of a stranger helped the task, and the sea helped the place.
Here labor, the arduous toil required to achieve Roman greatness (the thought recalls Virg. Aen. 1.33 tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem, ‘it was a task of such a weight to found the Roman people’), stands as a metonymy for the city herself, as it is grammatically the labor which is then established as ‘the head of the world’ (rerum … caput, 8).11 The usage of ruit here may echo the famous usage of the word at the opening of Horace’s sixteenth Epode, suis et ipsa Roma uiribus ruit, ‘and Rome herself falls through her own strength’.12 The parallel is confirmed when we see the parallelism in the syntax between the opening of the two poems, since Horace’s poem likewise makes a statement about Rome’s fall, and then, just like Hildebert, follows his reference to the fall of Rome with a relative clause with Rome as the antecedent (Epod. 16.1–10):
Altera iam teritur bellis ciuilibus aetas,
suis et ipsa Roma uiribus ruit.
quam neque finitimi ualuerunt perdere Marsi
minacis aut Etrusca Porsenae manus
aemula nec uirtus Capuae nec Spartacus acer
nouisque rebus infidelis Allobrox,
nec fera caerulea domuit Germania pube
parentibusque abominatus Hannibal,
impia perdemus deuoti sanguinis aetas,
ferisque rursus occupabitur solum …
Another age is now worn away with civil wars, and Rome herself falls through her own strength. Whom neither the neigbouring Marsians could destroy, nor the Etruscan band of threatening Porsenna, nor the competing bravery of Capua nor sharp Spartacus nor the unreliable Allobroges in revolution, nor could savage Germany tame it with its blue-eyed youth, or Hannibal who was loathed by our ancestors, we will destroy her, an impious age of an accursed race, and the land will again be occupied by wild animals …
The parallelism with the syntax of Hildebert’s poem is striking here: though Horace has only the one relative pronoun (quam, in line 3), whereas Hildebert has several in lines 5–14 of his poem, the structure is very similar: both poets follow an opening statement of Rome’s fall with an evocation of past successes. In Horace’s case the focus is on the failure of Rome’s external enemies, and although Hildebert concentrates instead on the internal qualities that made Rome great, he too opens with an allusion to an external enemy of Rome, with his mention of the River Araxes, a river in Armenia which may signify Rome’s eastern enemies, the Parthians. This reference to the River Araxes evokes Virgil again, whose account of the triumph of Octavian in the Shield of Aeneas refers to the river on Rome’s eastern frontier as resenting the bridge imposed on it, pontem indignatus Araxes (‘the Araxes resenting its bridge’, Aen. 8.728). Hildebert takes over Virgil’s implicit personification of the river, but turns it in another direction,13 as the river who in Virgil had resented Rome’s imperial success, and is here said to fear Rome while its power stood, instead grieves at the fall of Roman dominance.
After linking Rome’s success in general terms to the military achievements of its kings, the leadership of the senate and also the gods (7–8), once again an association of Rome’s past with pagan religion, Hildebert then moves to a specific example from Roman history, evoking Julius Caesar, and his insistence on seizing power in Rome, regardless of the ties of kinship with his son-in-law Pompey. Here, Lucan is again very much to the fore: solus habere, referring to Caesar’s desire for sole possession of Rome, draws directly on an epigrammatic comparison between the two leaders in Lucan’s first book (1.289–91):
socerum depellere regno
decretum genero est: partiri non potes orbem,
solus habere potes.
The son-in-law has decided to oust his father-in-law from rule: you cannot share the world, you can have it alone.
And Caesar’s refusal to be a pius … socer provides a reversal of another passage in Lucan, where the poet describes the insincerity of Caesar’s response to his son-in-law’s death (8.783):
condita laudabit Magni socer impius ossa
The impious father-in-law will praise the buried bones of Magnus
Lucan’s juxtaposition socer impius is thus transformed by Hildebert’s reference to Caesar’s not wishing to be a pious father-in-law (pius esse socer).14
Hildebert then returns in lines 11–14 to consider how the city of Rome (still referred to as ille labor, as indicated by the masculine relative pronoun qui in line 11) achieved its successes both at war and in peacetime. Rome is said to have excelled in three ways, in military success over the city’s enemies, control of wickedness through laws, and an ability, strikingly, to win over friends through the adept deployment of wealth. The couplet made up of lines 13–14 includes in line 13 the reasonably straightforward idea of Rome’s earlier leaders (priorum) watching over the success of the city, but line 14 is more complex. The meaning seems to involve a reference to pietas, ‘piety’, which could be seen as a reference to the piety of the stranger Aeneas (Virg. Aen. 8.188 hospes Troiane, and pietas here perhaps also evokes more broadly the general piety of the Romans as a whole; cf. Virg. Aen. 12.838–9) with iuvit (‘helped’) being used in a kind of zeugma with unda as a second subject with locum as an object.15
The following lines relate Rome’s riches and finery gathered from all over the world (36.15–18):
materiem, fabros, expensas axis uterque
misit, se muris obtulit ipse locus.
expendere duces thesauros, fata favorem,
artifices studium, totus et orbis opes.
Both sides of the world sent materials, craftsmen and contributions, the very place offered itself for building the walls. Leaders spent their treasures, the Fates spent their goodwill, artists spent their expertise, and the whole world spent its wealth.
These lines emphasise the richness of Rome, summed up with the idea that the whole world spent its wealth on Rome. For the juxtaposition orbis opes, compare Ov. AA 3.114, referring to Rome, et domiti magnas possidet orbis opes, ‘Rome possesses the wealth of the world that has been tamed’. axis uterque is a borrowing from Lucan again (9.542 procul axis uterque est, ‘both poles are far away from them’), though Lucan’s point is an astronomical one, whereas Hildebert seems to use axis in less specifically astronomical terms. The effect is to provide a remarkable preparation for the unexpected turn which Hildebert takes in the lines that follow (36.19–24):
urbs cecidit, de qua si quicquam dicere dignum
moliar, hoc potero dicere ‘Roma fuit’.
non tamen annorum series, non flamma nec ensis
ad plenum potuit hoc abolere decus.
tantum restat adhuc, tantum ruit, ut neque pars stans
equari possit, diruta nec refici.
The city has fallen, about which, if I were to try to say anything worthy, I will be able to say this: ‘It was Rome’. But not the sequence of years, not fire and not the sword could destroy this splendour in full. So much still remains, so much is fallen, that neither could the part that stands be equalled, nor could the part that is destroyed be repaired.
After the grandeur of the evocation of Rome’s riches in lines 15–18, the sudden shift here is marked by Hildebert’s simple yet effective urbs cecidit, which is itself followed up by a further instance of powerful rhetoric, as Hildebert uses the familiar trope of the difficulty of adequate poetic utterance with the suggestion that the only comment that could be made is that ‘It was Rome’ (Roma fuit). But this acknowledgement of the failure of language to match up to Rome’s fall is set in counterpoint with the fact that the phrase Roma fuit is itself a classical quotation used by more than one author.16 Though some instances of the phrase, such as Silius’ haec tum Roma fuit (Punica 10.657), on the pristine state of Roman virtue even at the time of the disaster at Cannae, are most unlikely to have been known to Hildebert,17 Lucan does use the phrase strikingly, when Lentulus, seeking to encourage the Pompeians who had been driven from Rome in the civil war, remarks that Rome still existed even at the time of the Gallic sack of the city (5.27–9):
Tarpeia sede perusta
Gallorum facibus Veiosque habitante Camillo
illic Roma fuit.
When the Tarpeian citadel had been burned by the torches of the Gauls, and when Camillus was living at Veii, that is where Rome was.
The reference is all the more appropriate as its context is the physical destruction of Rome in the Gallic sack, which provides an ancient parallel for the ruined state of Rome in Hildebert’s time. Thus Hildebert’s response to the ancient ruins of Rome, even though it presents a failure of language, is nevertheless one which draws on the classical past. Hildebert then moves to more elevated language, referring to the immortality of Rome’s glory. Here, as Scott notes in his text, the poet draws on the theme of the immortality of poetry which is used by Horace at the end of Carm. 3.30 (explicitly evoked through the borrowing of annorum series), and by Ovid at the end of Metamorphoses 15:
Hor. Carm. 3.30.1–5:
Exegi monumentum aere perennius regalique situ pyramidum altius, 18
quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
possit diruere aut innumerabilis
annorum series et fuga temporum.
I have completed a monument more lasting than bronze
and higher than the decaying Pyramids of kings,
which cannot be destroyed by gnawing rain,
nor wild North Wind, or by the unnumbered
procession of the years and flight of time.
(tr. David West)19
Ov. Met. 15.871–2:
iamque opus exegi, quod nec Iovis ira nec ignis
nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere uetustas.
And now I have accomplished a work, which neither the anger of Jupiter nor fire nor iron nor gnawing time will be able to obliterate.
There is however a striking twist here. Whereas Horace and Ovid contrasted the ephemeral nature of physical monuments and their susceptibility to physical destruction with the immortality of their own poetic works, Hildebert instead paradoxically refers to immunity to physical destruction when describing the ruins of Rome itself, so that the ruins, with which Hildebert began the poem in the first couplet, become a focus in terms of their own survival and thus their paradoxical immortality. The reference to these two earlier classical authors is all the more pointed, as both had declared that their own survival was linked to the survival of Rome itself: Horace comments on how his praise will grow while Rome’s (pagan, from the perspective of Hildebert) religion continues, usque ego postera | crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium | scandet cum tacita uirgine pontifex, ‘In time to come my fame will grow ever fresh, while priest climbs the Capitol with silent Virgin’ (Hor. Carm. 3.30.7–9, tr. David West), while Ovid associates his fame even more directly with the temporal dominion of Rome at Met. 15.876–7 quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, | ore legar populi, ‘and where Roman power extends through lands that have been tamed, I will be read on the lips of the people’. In alluding to these two classical texts, Hildebert simultaneously undermines their claims to the perpetuity of Roman power by referring to them in the context of ruin, but also underlines their poetic immortality by demonstrating their persistence beyond the span of ancient Rome’s power, even in a Christian context. Thus the vastness of Rome’s calamitous ruin stands alongside the splendour of that ruin.
This return to the theme of ruin, which appeared at the outset to be the cue simply for reflections on the lost glories of Rome’s past, now allows Hildebert in the closing section of the poem to continue the emphasis on the remarkable state of Rome’s ruins (36.25–30):
confer opes marmorque novum superumque favorem,
artificum vigilent in nova facta manus,
non tamen aut fieri par stanti machina muro,
aut restaurari sola ruina potest.
cura hominum potuit tantam componere Romam,
quantam non potuit solvere cura deum.
Bring wealth and new marble and the favour of the gods, let the hands of artists be wakeful at their new works, but the crane cannot be made equal to the wall that is standing, nor can the deserted20 ruin be restored. The diligence of men could fashion a Rome so great that the diligence of the gods could not destroy it.
Whereas Hildebert had underlined the extraordinary effort and wealth that went into the making of ancient Rome and its glories, the suggestion here is that even if there was an attempt to revive those past glories, the monuments could not be restored to their former splendour.21 There is also the suggestion that the cura hominum can eclipse the cura deum in lines 29–30, so that even the transient monuments of mortals cannot be overwhelmed by the cura deum.22 componere Romam may evoke the prophetic language of Virg. Aen. 3.384–7, where Helenus warns Aeneas that various trials await him ante … quam tuta possis urbem componere terra, ‘before you can found a city in a land that is safe’.
The poem’s climax is the evocation in its closing lines of the splendours of Rome’s monumental ruins (36.31–8):
hic superum formas superi mirantur et ipsi,
et cupiunt fictis vultibus esse pares,
non potuit Natura deos hoc ore creare,
quo miranda deum signa creavit homo.
vultus adest his numinibus, potiusque coluntur
artificum studio quam deitate sua.
urbs felix, si vel dominis urbs illa careret,
vel dominis esset turpe carere fide.
Here, even the gods themselves admire the images of the gods, and they desire to be equal to their crafted expressions. Nature could not create gods with these countenances, with which man has created the statues of the gods that must be admired. These gods are helped by their expression, and they are worshipped more for the skill of the craftsmen than for their own divinity. O happy city, if that city were either to lack masters, or if it were shameful for its masters to lack faith.
These lines have added point because of the preceding remarks about the impossibility of restoring Rome’s glories. The magnificence of the statues of the gods is described not in the context of Rome’s past splendour, but in the context of her ruin. The gods admire their own images even when they are in a ruinous state, and Hildebert moreover suggests that the gods themselves cannot match the human images that have been made of them; Tilliette has rightly commented on the striking usage of creavit, a word which can denote divine creation (as in Genesis 1:27), to refer instead to the human creation of images of gods.23 In the context of scriptural warnings against graven images, this is a remarkable and powerful moment,24 yet we can notice that Hildebert’s focus is on a plurality of pagan gods, who will be contrasted with the one Christian God that Rome serves in poem 38 (uni sum famulata Deo, ‘I have been a servant to one God’, 38.4). Moreover, even within poem 36, Hildebert suggests that the impressive sight of the pagan gods is in any case owed more to the human achievement of crafting their image, rather than to their own divinity (35–6).25
The observations on the calamitous nature of the leadership of Rome’s masters in lines 37 and 38 is most satisfactorily seen, as Tilliette has argued, as a reference to the power of temporal monarchs in Hildebert’s own day, rather than those of classical antiquity; we can note in passing here that the phrasing is also appropriately guarded, with no specific indication of who are the domini who are mentioned here.26 The sense, however, is made even clearer by the reference to Lucan which is contained within this passage. Here, von Moos has pointed to further connections with Lucan, suggesting that the syntax of the conditional sentence looks back to Luc. 4.807–9 felix Roma quidem ciuisque habitura beatos, | si libertatis superis tam cura placeret | quam uindicta placet, ‘Rome certainly would be fortunate and would have blessed citizens, if the gods have as much care for liberty, as they have a desire to avenge it’, where the thought is that the gods resent and punish Rome for overthrowing liberty, but are not so concerned with restoring it.27 The parallel here is a good one, and contributes effectively to the thought of the conditional sentence, to the effect that Rome would be better off without its temporal leaders. The second conditional sentence, however, points in a different direction, with its suggestion that Rome’s fate could be better instead if the city’s lords were to find it shameful to be lacking in faith. Here, the thought of turpe carere fide points the reader at the poem’s conclusion to the issue of religion. Though divinities have been considered within the text, the poet now raises the question of Rome’s status as a city whose rulers might be expected to manifest an appropriate religious faith. The phrase carere fide, used to reflect on the lack of religious feeling amongst Rome’s rulers, is brilliantly chosen here, as the only two parallels for the phrase in classical Latin are from erotic contexts in Ovid’s Heroides, with Phyllis lamenting the faithlessness of Demophoon, and Helen commenting on the risk that Paris’ words to her may be faithless ones:
Ov. Her. 2.25–6:
Demophoon, uentis et uerba et uela dedisti;
uela queror reditu, uerba carere fide.
Demophoon, you have given your words and your sails to the winds; I lament that sails are lacking in a return to me, and that your words are lacking in loyalty.
Ov. Her. 17.40:
… uerbaque dicuntur uestra carere fide.
And your words are said to be lacking in loyalty.
In spite of the erotic context of these parallels, Hildebert’s use of carere fide points instead to religious faith, and also anticipates the second of the two Rome poems,28 where the attention of the poet will then concentrate on Rome in a religious context.
II
Hildebert’s second Rome poem opens with Rome speaking in the first person (38.1–8):29
Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placerent,
militia, populo, menibus alta fui.
at simul effigies arasque superstitiosas
deiciens uni sum famulata Deo,
cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divum,
servivit populus, degeneravit eques.
vix scio que fuerim, vix Rome Roma recordor,
vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei.
While images, while vain divinities pleased me, I was lofty through my military, my people and my walls. But as soon as I cast down the idols and superstitious altars I served one God, the citadels gave way, the palaces of the gods fell, the people became servants, and the equestrian degenerated. I scarcely know who I was, scarcely do I Rome remember Rome, scarcely does my fall allow me even to remember myself.
The opening line of the poem makes for a subtle transition from the first Rome poem. The first-person dative singular of line 1 (mihi … placerent) is in fact ambiguous: Hildebert could be referring in the first person to his own delight in Rome’s pagan gods, which would be in keeping with the lines on the magnificence of the gods’ appearances at the end of poem 36 (36.31–6). The ambiguity of mihi in the first line is however resolved by the second line, where Rome is identified as the speaker, as she enunciates her greatness in terms of the city’s past achievements, with the juxtaposition menibus (= moenibus in classical Latin) alta perhaps picking up on the teleological optimism of Virgil’s genus unde Latinum | Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae, ‘from whence would come the Latin people, the Alban fathers and the walls of lofty Rome’ (Virg. Aen. 1.6–7). The optimism of the Virgilian sequence of events that culminates in Roman glory is however tempered in Hildebert with Rome’s fui at the end of the line, simply and effectively indicating that the Virgilian future for Rome is now something that is in the past, with Rome’s alta fui also echoing Roma fuit from the first poem (36.20).
Instead Rome’s speech points to the shift that has taken place in terms of religion, with the ousting of pagan cults leading Rome to be a servant to the Christian God, so that an imagery of mastery is now replaced by one of deference. In describing the demise of the altars of pagan superstition, we may even see a hint at Evander’s words to Aeneas when he explains in the Aeneid why the Arcadians worship Hercules (Virg. Aen. 8.185–9):
rex Euandrus ait: ‘non haec sollemnia nobis,
has ex more dapes, hanc tanti numinis aram
uana superstitio ueterumque ignara deorum
imposuit: saeuis, hospes Troiane, periclis
seruati facimus meritosque nouamus honores.’
King Evander says: ‘These rites, these customary feasts, this altar of such a divinity, it is not vain superstition, unaware of the old gods, that has placed this requirement on us: saved from savage dangers, Trojan guest, we perform and renew honours that are deserved.’
Evander in this passage explains that the cult of Hercules (which gives rise to the cult of the Ara Maxima in Rome) is not to be considered in any way as a uana superstitio (Aen. 8.187). By contrast, Hildebert’s juxtaposition arasque superstitiosas | deiciens, not only recalls Prudentius’ Contra Symmachum 2.765 et madidas sanie deiecimus aras, ‘we knocked down the altars which were dripping with gore’,30 from a work which includes a long speech from Rome where she rejoices in the ending of pagan cults,31 but also evokes Biblical language: compare Ezech. 6:4 et demoliar aras vestras et confringentur simulacra vestra et deiciam interfectos vestros ante idola vestra, ‘I will destroy your altars and your statues will be broken and I will cast down your dead in front of your idols’. Hildebert’s plural aras,32 dismissively encompassing the whole of Roman pagan religion and contrasted with the single god (uni … Deo) whom Rome now serves, underlines how Rome is instead turning its back on such pagan cults in the light of the city’s new association with Christianity. Rome is said to serve, as the participle famulata denotes.33 In a complex move, Hildebert contrasts this positive concept of Christian service with the negative imagery of political slavery that accompanies Rome’s temporal decline, when he speaks of the people and equestrians in terms of servitude and degeneracy (servivit populus, degeneravit eques); for this kind of negative figuring of political decline as slavery, compare servorum servi nunc tibi sunt domini, ‘the slaves of slaves are now your masters’, in line 8 of the Versus Romae, an anonymous ninth-century poem on Rome’s decline, MGH Poetae Latini aevi Carolini III.556.
In lines 7–8, Rome names herself with the arresting phrase vix Rome Roma recordor. The grand rhetoric, with its triple anaphora of vix and the polyptoton Rome Roma here, is strikingly at odds with the sentiment of a Rome who cannot even properly remember herself. In the succeeding lines, however, the city turns her attention away from her past glories to explain the transformation to a Christian city (38.9–16):
gratior hec iactura mihi successibus illis:
maior sum pauper divite, stante iacens.
plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Cesare Petrus,
plus cunctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit.
stans domui terras, infernum diruta pulso;
corpora stans, animas fracta iacensque rego.
tunc misere plebi, modo principibus tenebrarum
impero: tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
This loss is more pleasing to me than those successes: as a pauper, I am greater than when I was rich, prostrate I am greater than I was when I stood tall. The standards of the cross are more than my eagles, Peter is more than Caesar, a defenceless crowd gave more than all the leaders. When I stood, I tamed the earth, destroyed, I beat down the underworld; when I stood I ruled bodies, broken and prostrate I rule souls. Then I ruled over the wretched plebeians, now I rule over the lords of the shades; then cities were my kingdom, now it is heaven.
After the powerful and unexpected antitheses of lines 9–10, where loss (iactura) is more pleasing than past success, where poverty eclipses wealth,34 and a position of submission (iacens) is preferred to a standing one, Rome explains how her current situation is even grander than the days of her past empire. Here again, we can add a parallel for the thought that Rome might rejoice in her transformation to a Christian city with Prudentius’ evocation of the figure of Rome in Contra Symmachum 2.651 quae quia turpe putat templorum flere repulsam, ‘because she thinks it is shameful to lament the rejection of her temples’. Similar is the explanation in a sermon of Pope Leo the Great (r. 440–61) to the effect that Rome’s pagan power was arranged by divine providence so that a united world might then be able to receive Christian teaching (Tractatus 82.2).35 The expected pairing of eagles and standards as emblems of Roman military power (cf. Plin. Pan. 10.3 cum iam tua uexilla tuas aquilas magno gradu anteires, ‘although you were now walking ahead of your standards and your legionary eagles with large steps’, where Pliny is speaking of the emperor Trajan) is here undermined as the eagles of the legions are instead contrasted with the standards of the Cross, with vexilla not only evoking Roman success in Christian terms, but also the practice of using the word vexillum to refer to fragments of the true Cross (note e.g. Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 2.6, the hymn Vexilla regis, on the occasion of a donation of a fragment of the true Cross by the eastern emperor Justin II, MGH Auctores antiquissimi IV.1.34–5). There is a further possible resonance here as well, since vexilla crucis may also, especially in a line where Peter is said to be greater than Caesar,36 refer to the vexillum sancti Petri, the papal standard which gave sanction to Christians for military action against their enemies. This tradition can be traced back to Pope Leo III’s dispatch of a vexillum to Charlemagne, and such papal support could be even deployed against other Christians – a vexillum sancti Petri was granted to William of Normandy when he attacked Harold II of England.37 For Hildebert and his audience, the memory of the First Crusade of 1095–9 will have been fresh, so that vexilla crucis in Hildebert’s poem might set up the idea that there will now be a contrast between the pagan military success of ancient Rome and the Christian temporal sway of the standard of St Peter.
The shift of perspective offered in the next line, however, plus cunctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit, overturns these expectations. Instead of moving to affirm the supremacy of Christian temporal power sanctioned by the papacy, Hildebert moves instead to considering Rome’s Christian triumph in terms of her power over souls, the vulgus inerme.38 The language of conquest that Hildebert uses in the succeeding lines is thus not applied to events such as the First Crusade, even though it had re-established Christian rule in Jerusalem, but to the transcendent success of Rome in defeating the powers of Hell. While Rome was able to rule over the earth when she stood tall, she is able in a condition of ruin (diruta) to defeat the underworld (infernum … pulso); in her broken state (fracta) it is not her past glories that she is concerned to impart (see 36.2 above, quam magni fueris integra, fracta doces), but her power over souls. As a counterpart to the previous contrast between duces and the vulgus inerme, there is a similar antithesis where Rome remarks that whereas she had exercised power previously over a wretched people, she now does so over the ‘lords of the shades’; here, the use of terms with a resonance from the Roman past, plebs and principes, is highly effective, and leads to the declaration that Rome’s rule is heavenly rather than over other cities. Thus, having hinted at the very contemporary theme of Christian power exercised in temporal terms, with the phrase vexilla crucis, Hildebert uses these lines as a means of affirming not a political but a spiritual dominion for Rome.
This idea is then developed in the lines that follow, where Hildebert explores the idea that Rome’s physical ruin has a purpose (38.17–24):
quod ne Cesaribus videar debere vel armis,
et species rerum meque meosque trahat,
armorum vis illa perit, ruit alta senatus
gloria, procumbunt templa, theatra iacent,
rostra vacant, edicta silent, sua premia desunt
emeritis, populo iura, colonus agris.
durus eques, iudex rigidus, plebs libera quondam,
querit, amat, patitur, otia, lucra, iugum.
So that I should not seem to owe that rulership to the Caesars or to arms, and so that the appearance of the world should not drag down me and my people, that force of arms has perished, the lofty glory of the senate has fallen, the temples have collapsed, the theatres lie low, the rostra are empty, the edicts are silent, the veterans are lacking their rewards, the people are lacking their laws, the farmer is lacking his fields. The knight who was enduring before, the judge who was unbending, the people who were free before, they seek leisure, they love gain, they endure the yoke.
The argument that is made in these lines and expressed with a negative purpose clause with ne is the claim that Rome’s physical and political decline is an essential concomitant of the city’s greatness in spiritual terms. For Hildebert, the Rome of the present does not have to lay claim to a greatness which is based on her past, here denoted by the reference to the Caesars and to arma in line 17. The argument made here, indeed, is that Rome’s past successes present a trap, as contemplation of the appearance of Rome’s greatness (species rerum, 38.18) is what can bring down the city and her people.39 And even though arma have already been mentioned, the repetition in armorum vis illa perit in line 19, which is perhaps a further glance at Lucan (Luc. 8.489 sceptrorum uis tota perit, ‘the whole force of sceptres perishes’), is a pointer not just to the demise of the military power of ancient Rome, but also to the poem’s emphatic refusal to engage with the possibility of Christian temporal power in the world. Once again, reflections on the loss of Rome’s political might in the past also have a bearing on the present, as Hildebert envisages Rome’s fall in terms of the demise of its theatres and the forum, as the scene for political activity, before going on to mention the debilitation of its soldiers, people and farmers. The reference to the absence of farmers from the fields in lines 21–2 is an intriguing detail. Here we might see Hildebert as evoking Lucan’s picture of rural depopulation in Italy, as smallholders are driven from the land, all the more so as the general context is an evocation of the ruined state of Italy as a consequence of the civil war of Caesar and Pompey (Luc. 1.24–32):
at nunc semirutis pendent quod moenia tectis
urbibus Italiae lapsisque ingentia muris
saxa iacent nulloque domus custode tenentur
rarus et antiquis habitator in urbibus errat,
horrida quod dumis multosque inarata per annos
Hesperia est desuntque manus poscentibus aruis,
non tu, Pyrrhe ferox, nec tantis cladibus auctor
Poenus erit: nulli penitus descendere ferro
contigit; alta sedent ciuilis uolnera dextrae.
But now the fact that walls totter with half-ruined buildings in the cities of Italy, and huge stones lie low when the walls have fallen, and homes are kept with no one to watch over them and a sporadic inhabitant wanders among the old cities, the fact that Hesperia [Italy] is coarse with thickets and left fallow for many years, and the hands to toil in the fields that demand it are missing, it will not be you, fierce Pyrrhus, nor the Carthaginian who will be the cause of such great disasters: it fell to no foreign sword40 to penetrate within; the wounds of civil conflict go deep.
This passage offers two points of contact with Hildebert. In the first place, we can note Lucan’s use of iaceo to denote a state of physical ruin, saxa iacent (Luc. 1.26; cf. 9.977–8 discussa iacebant | saxa, from Caesar’s visit to the ruins of Troy, referred to above), a verb which Hildebert repeatedly deploys with the same meaning in both poems (36.4; 38.10, 14, 20, 25). Second, Lucan’s depiction of the rural desolation of Italy in lines 28–9 seems echoed by Hildebert, especially as the syntax of Lucan’s desuntque manus poscentibus aruis seems closely followed by Rome’s reference in Hildebert to a lack of farmers in the fields ([desunt] … colonus agris). The desolate image of the empty countryside that Hildebert seems to take from Lucan here is then reinforced with the tightly controlled rhetoric of lines 23–4 durus eques, iudex rigidus, plebs libera quondam, | querit, amat, patitur, otia, lucra, iugum, where Hildebert presents a telling picture of former rigour and liberty having been turned aside towards baser pursuits, all encapsulated in the syntax of line 24 where the three subjects mentioned in line 23 successively each govern a verb in a list of three and then a noun from a list of three, epigrammatically summing up a pervasive decline.
Yet Hildebert in the lines that follow will go on to explain that this decline has a purpose (38.25–36):
ista iacent ne forte meus spem ponat in illis
civis, et evacuet spemque bonumque crucis.
crux edes alias, alios promittit honores,
militibus tribuens regna superna suis.
sub cruce rex servit, sed liber; lege tenetur,
sed diadema gerens; iussa tremit, sed amat.
fundit avarus opes, sed abundant: fenerat idem,
sed bene custodit, sed super astra locat.
quis gladio Cesar, quis sollicitudine consul,
quis rhetor lingua, que mea castra manu
tanta dedere mihi? studiis et legibus horum
obtinui terras: crux dedit una polum.
Those things lie low so that my citizen may not perchance place his hope in them, and cast out the hope and good of the cross. The cross promises other homes, other honours, granting heavenly realms to its soldiers. Under the cross serves the king, but he is free; he is kept in place by the law, but he wears the crown; he trembles at the commands he receives, but he loves them. The miser pours forth his wealth, but his wealth is abundant: the same man makes his wealth available for investment, but he cares well for his wealth, but he stores it above the stars. What Caesar with his sword, what consul with his care, what orator with his tongue, and with what arms did my camps ever give so much to me? Through their studies and laws I obtained the earth: only the cross gave me heaven.
Once again, a negative purpose clause with ne is a crucial stage of the argumentation. But whereas the purpose clause of lines 17–24 expressed the argument that Rome’s physical and moral decline is necessary so that Rome’s heavenly kingdom should not seem to be owed to her past glories, the argument in these closing lines turns towards the need for faith to be affirmed. ista iacent in line 25, the last appearance of the verb iaceo in the two poems, is a closing glance back at the city’s decline, with ista perhaps dismissively referring in a rather unspecific way to the way that Rome has been laid low, not just in terms of its buildings, but also in moral terms. But the point of this decline is so that Rome’s citizens do not place their hope in Rome’s past and therefore run the risk of paying no heed to the hope offered by the Cross. Here, Hildebert’s spem ponat recalls Virgilian passages on the hope that might be put in warfare (Virg. Aen. 2.676 sin aliquam expertus sumptis spem ponis in armis, ‘but if you place some hope through your experience in the arms you have taken up’, 11.411 si nullam nostris ultra spem ponis in armis, ‘if you place no further hope in our arms’), but rejects it in favour of Christian hope. That hope is also expressed in terms of metaphor: thus Hildebert explains that the Cross offers homes and honours of a different kind. Again, the language of warfare is evoked in a way which might seem to suggest the Church exercising temporal power on earth, with the reference to militibus (28), but these soldiers are given heavenly realms, not earthly ones. In line 29, sub cruce rex servit might at first glance evoke the Cross as a sign of contemporary military power, but Hildebert concentrates instead on speaking of Christian service in more general terms, underlining ideals not of rulership but of obedience to Christian law.
Lines 31–2 present the traditional image of the miser and his wealth, but with a reversal. The juxtaposition avarus opes has good classical precedents (cf. e.g. Ov. Am. 1.12.26 in quibus absumptas fleret auarus opes, ‘in which [the accounts] a miser might weep for the wealth that he has spent’),41 but Hildebert instead conveys a sense of a Christian as a man who was a miser but who is now spending his wealth, and therefore increasing it in metaphorical terms, on the basis of the scriptural admonition to store up wealth in heaven (Matthew 6:19–21). The second part of the couplet can be understood in terms of the image of the miser making his money available on loan to others (fenerat), but paradoxically being able to store up heavenly wealth through these actions.42
This allows Rome to close her utterance in the last four lines with the remark that the figures of Rome’s past did nothing for her that could be compared to the benefit of Christian revelation, as the achievements of the Caesars in the military sphere, of the consuls in the political sphere, and of orators and of Roman armies are all dismissed as having produced nothing that might be compared to Rome’s current state. Here we may feel that the seemingly incongruous grouping of military and political men alongside orators is a subtle rejoinder to the famous moment in the Aeneid where Anchises explains that for Romans (Virg. Aen. 6.847–53), the task at hand is to win military glory and empire, and leave refinements such as sculpture and oratory (Virg. Aen. 6.849 orabunt causas melius) to others; the Virgilian distinction between Roman military achievements and cultural activities that are left to others is thus elided as both categories give way to the new prospect of Christian Rome.43 The poem thus ends with the ringing affirmation that while in the past Rome had dominion over the earth (obtinui terras), the Cross has given her heaven.
III
To draw together some of the threads from this paper, we can see in Hildebert’s Rome poems that the encounter with the fabric of the city of Rome is not simply an engagement with the material remains of the city, its ancient past and its Christian present and future, since there is a shift away from contemplating contemporary Christian political power towards a more transcendent celestial vision of Rome as a place associated not with empire but with saving souls. A key approach which Hildebert uses is the evocation of Latin texts from classical antiquity. In part, this enables Hildebert to emphasise Rome’s past glories, as when, for example, he evokes Horace and Ovid on immortal fame when evoking the splendour of Rome’s monuments in 36.21–2 (see above), though even here there is a reversal of expectations in that, whereas Horace had underlined the transience of physical monuments when set alongside poetry, Hildebert instead affirms the permanence even of Rome’s ruins. But there is another side to this literary engagement with the Roman past, and that is the evocation of texts referring to decline and change. Thus the repeated use of the verb ruo points to Horace’s bleak comment on Rome in Epode 16.2 suis et ipsa Roma uiribus ruit, and we can also compare the use of the same verb in the opening couplet of the Versus Romae: Nobilibus quondam fueras constructa patronis | subdita nunc servis heu male, Roma, ruis, ‘You were formerly built by noble patrons, but now made subject to slaves, alas, Rome, you come to an evil fall’, MGH Poetae Latini aevi Carolini III.555. Hildebert’s various glances at Lucan’s poem on the civil war of Caesar and Pompey are part of this strategy, especially effective in the light of Lucan’s own interest in the decline and desertion of Italy in his first book (Luc. 1.24–9) and in the ruined condition of Troy during Caesar’s visit in Book 9 (Luc. 9.954–1003). Hildebert also is able to evoke texts from the classical past whose original significance might be felt to be positive, but in contexts where Hildebert instead is able to point in a different direction: thus the Virgilian use of the idiom spem ponere is reworked into a Christian context that refers to the salvific role of the Cross (38.25–6). Furthermore, the presence of scriptural references in the two poems may echo Hildebert’s broader point about the physical city of Rome, that it has become Christian.
But even though Hildebert’s Rome explains in the second poem that her physical demise is essential to her higher success on the spiritual level, we should not altogether ignore the fact that Rome’s monuments and its pagan past are still a powerful force in both poems, a point which is underlined by the literary monuments which Hildebert also revisits in them. As we saw above, in Horace’s Carm. 3.30, which Hildebert echoes, literature itself can be cast as a monument (Exegi monumentum, ‘I have completed a monument’, Carm. 3.30.1, tr. David West), reflecting the usage of other classical texts which group monumenta and litterae together, such as e.g. Cic. Verr. 2.4.106 uetus est haec opinio, iudices, quae constat ex antiquissimis Graecorum litteris ac monumentis, ‘this is an old opinion, jurors, which is generally agreed from the most ancient letters and monuments of the Greeks’, Cat. 3.26 litterarum monumentis, ‘the monuments of letters’, Gell. 19.14.2 Varronis … monumenta rerum ac disciplinarum, quae per litteras condidit, ‘Varro’s monuments of matters and disciplines, which he founded through letters’. Hildebert’s novel response to the classical idea of literary monumentality surpassing mere physical remains is both to turn it round, so that even ruins have an abiding monumentality, and also, at the same time, to evoke the persistence of Rome’s literary remains.
A powerful testimony to Hildebert’s success in evoking the literary aspect of Rome’s monumentality can be found in a work written later in the twelfth century, in the opening of the Narracio de mirabilibus urbis Romae, a guide to the monuments of Rome by the English writer Magister Gregorius.44 After describing the moment of his arrival and his astonished reaction to his first view of Rome from afar, Magister Gregorius evokes successive passages from Lucan, before quoting from Hildebert’s first Rome poem. The passage is worth presenting in full here (I have incorporated the relevant passages from Lucan and Hildebert in square brackets):
Vehemencius igitur admirandam censeo tocius urbis inspectionem, ubi tanta seges turrium, tot aedificia palatiorum, quot nulli hominum contigit enumerare. Quam cum primo a latere montis a longe vidissem, stupefactam mentem meam illud Caesarianum subiit, quod quondam victis Gallis, cum Alpes supervolaret, inquid magnae miratus moenia Romae [cf. Luc. 3.90: miratusque suae sic fatur moenia Romae]:
Tene, deum sedes, non ullo Marte coacti,
Deseruere viri? Pro qua pugnabitur urbe?
Dii melius &c. [Luc. 3.91–3]
Paulo post: Ignavae manus liquere urbem capacem turbae humani generis, si coiret [cf. Luc. 1.511–14 urbem … | … generis, coeat si turba, capacem | humani … | ignauae liquere manus]; et Romam invocans, instar summi numinis [cf. Luc. 1.199 summique o numinis instar] eam appellat. Cuius incomprehensibilem decorem diu admirans, deo apud me gratias egi, qui, magnus in universa terra, ibi opera hominum inaestimabili decore mirificavit. Nam licet tota Roma ruat, nil tamen integrum sibi potest aequiparari. Unde quidam sic ait:
Par tibi, Roma, nichil, cum sis prope tota ruina: [= Hildebert 36.1]
Fracta docere potes, integra quanta fores. [cf. Hildebert 36.2]45
Cuius ruina, ut arbitror, docet evidenter cuncta temporalia proxime ruitura, praesertim cum capud omnium temporalium, Roma, tantum cotidie languescit et labitur.
All the more emphatically, then, is the sight of the whole city to be admired, where there is such a crop of towers, so many buildings of palaces, as could fall to no man to enumerate. When I had first seen it from afar from the side of a mountain, into my astonished mind came that remark of Caesar’s which he once uttered after defeating the Gauls, when he flew across the Alps, admiring the walls of great Rome:
You, seat of the gods, did the men abandon you without being compelled to in any warfare? For what city will there be fighting? May the gods better etc.…
A little after: Ignoble hands abandoned the city that could contain the crowd of the human race, if it were to come together; and calling on Rome, he calls her the likeness of the highest divinity. Admiring her incomprehensible beauty for a long time, I gave in my own person thanks to God, who, though great throughout the whole world, adorned the works of men there with inestimable beauty. For though all of Rome may fall, nothing still that is whole could match her. On account of this, someone wrote:
Nothing is equal to you, Rome, although you are almost entirely a ruin. Broken, you can teach how great you were when whole.
Rome’s ruin, as I think, teaches clearly that all temporal things are soon to fall, especially when the head of all temporal things, Rome, grows weak and slips so much every day.
Magister Gregorius’ direct evocation of passages from Lucan alongside the opening of Hildebert’s poem shows the acuteness of his reading of Hildebert; the citations from Lucan point not only to the way in which the monumental qualities of the city are already a feature in classical Latin poetry, something which Hildebert draws on heavily in his poems on Rome, but also to the importance of Lucan in these two poems on Rome. For Hildebert, as we have seen, and as Magister Gregorius’ response to Hildebert suggests, Rome’s enduring monuments are both textual and physical: even his statement of his poetic incapacity to do more than simply say Roma fuit (36.20) in describing the city’s ruined condition turns out to be a demonstration of the continuing power of texts from the classical past.46
1On the date of Hildebert’s visit to Rome, see the discussion of Dieudonné (1898) 111–13; on the political and cultural background to his career and visits to Rome, and contemporary views of the city’s monuments, see e.g. Bloch (1982); Tilliette (1995) 364–7; Kinney (2006); Wickham (2014) 339–41, 348–50, 423–9; on the phenomenon of spoliation of ancient monuments in medieval Rome, see Kinney (2013). Zanna (1991) is an important survey of medieval descriptions of cities, including consideration of Hildebert’s poems (567–77).
2We cannot be sure of the arrangement of the poems within the collection of Hildebert’s poetic works. The standard text of Hildebert’s Carmina minora is Scott (2001), a photographic reprint of his first edition (1969) but with the addition of some addenda and corrigenda at the end (pp. 77–9). For convenience, Scott’s edition in this chapter is cited as 1969 except when referring to additional material in the 2001 edition. Scott interposes a poem ‘De Anglia’ (no. 37) between the poem beginning ‘Par tibi, Roma’ (no. 36) and that beginning ‘Dum simulacra mihi’ (no. 38). On this issue, however, the MSS do not offer a single voice. In his original preface, Scott (1969) vi–vii, xxi–xxv divides them into two groups, DBT (α) and KZ (φ), and furthermore argues that the two groups represent two successive stages of composition (‘recensiones’) that are attributable to Hildebert himself. This last view, it should be noted, has been fiercely contested: see Öberg (1971), Orlandi (1974), Scott (2001) 77–9 (his own reply) and Smolak (2002) 381–4. The first group of MSS is Scott’s main guide in the first part of the collection, and the latter in the second part. Of the first group, D (Trinity College, Dublin B. 2. 17 (Abbott no. 184)), for the most part, has the ordering used by Scott, who comments ‘ordinem codicis D suscipere censui’ (1969: vii), whilst T (Tours, Bibliothèque municipale 890) juxtaposes poems 36 and 38; of the second group, K (British Museum, Add. 24199), which also contains the Psychomachia of Prudentius, does not include poem 38, whereas Z (Paris, Baluzianus 120) juxtaposes them. MS B (Paris. lat. 14194) only contains poems 1–27. Secondary MSS tend to place poem 38 directly after poem 36, though M has the opposite arrangement, while still others follow K in only including the first of the two poems. Scott’s approach to the arrangement of the poems thus rests primarily on the authority of D, which, as he acknowledges at the end of his preface (1969: xxxiii–xxxiv), may have led him to err in separating poems 36 and 38, when their separation in the manuscript might simply be the result of scribal error: ‘cum hanc editionem instruere coepi, ordo poematum quem vidi apud codd. DB accurate servandus mihi videbatur (cf. praef. VII). nunc tamen me sero paenitet ordinem poematum 36, 37, 38 non mutavisse, ut allocutio poetae ad Romam iuxta responsionem urbis poneretur. nam hunc ordinem poematum trium suspicor emanasse ex incuria scribae potius quam intentione poetae. sed “sero sapient Phryges”, atque hoc unum sperare possum, me veniam impetraturum a benignis lectoribus’.
3The argument that the two poems should be seen as two sides of a dialogue is most recently restated by Tilliette (1995) 361–2; cf. Michel (1986) 197, who comments on the antithetical nature of the pairing.
4Note the quotation of poem 36 in its entirety by William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum 4.351.2–4.
5Key recent treatments of the poems are Tilliette (1995), Jaeger (1997), Smolak (2002).
6All translations are my own, except where otherwise noted.
7Karmon (2011) 23–46 offers an overview of ancient and medieval approaches to the preservation of ancient monuments in Rome. On the literature of ruins, including those of Rome, see e.g. Macaulay (1953), Woodward (2001), Edwards (2011), Kahane (2011), Schnapp (2011), Mayer (2012). Hui (2016) deals with the poetics of ruins in Renaissance literature.
8On Caesar’s visit to Troy, see Zwierlein (1986), Gagliardi (1997), Berti (2000) 21–2, Alston (2011). For an overview of Lucan’s importance in the Middle Ages, see Tarrant (1983) on the abundance of manuscript evidence (with five complete MSS surviving from the ninth century), and von Moos (2005) 89–202; see also D’Angelo (2011).
9On the regular Tiber floods during antiquity and in the Middle Ages, which could reach as high as the Pantheon, see e.g. Krautheimer (1980) 43, 237–8, 255; Aldrete (2007). For palude iacent, perhaps compare Sen. Ag. 768 palude limosa iacent, though the earliest complete manuscript of Seneca’s tragedies dates only to the late eleventh century (E = Florence, Laur. 37.13). For the negative tone of palus here, a better, but less close parallel may be Meliboeus’ comment on Tityrus’ farm in Virgil (Ecl. 1.47–8): quamuis lapis omnia nudus | limosoque palus obducat pascua iunco.
10Tilliette (1995) 370 asks whether cum here has to be interpreted as adversative, but see the response of Smolak (2002) 378 n. 19.
11For ille labor, compare also Virg. Georg. 2.397 est etiam ille labor curandis uitibus alter. For rerum … caput, Scott (1969) ad loc. compares Petrus Pictor’s De excidio Romani imperii et magnificentia Catonis 5–6 Roma potens cecidit, caput orbis, honor regionum | mundi constituit dominam sedemque sacrorum: for the text of this poem by a contemporary of Hildebert, see van Acker (1972) 79–83. There are also classical parallels for the phrase: cf. Liv. 1.45.3 ea erat confessio caput rerum Romam esse, 5.54.7; Ov. Met. 15.736 iamque caput rerum, Romanam intrauerat urbem; Tac. Hist. 2.32.2 Italiam et caput rerum urbem senatumque et populum, Ann. 1.47.1; Prud. Contra Symmachum 2.662 nunc merito dicor uenerabilis et caput orbis. The phrase is of course comparable to caput mundi, found in classical Latin in Lucan 2.136, 2.655 (see Fantham (1992) ad locc.), and also attested epigraphically in CIL 6.29849a Roma, capus mundi [sic]. The phrase subsequently has a rich medieval resonance in relation to Rome: see e.g. Alcuin Carm. 9.37–8 Roma, caput mundi, mundi decus, aurea Roma | nunc remanet tantum saeva ruina tibi (MGH Poetae Latini aevi Carolini I.230), Hofmann (2002); Scully (2013) 109–14 on the Hereford mappa mundi, Gervase of Tilbury and Matthew Paris; Costambeys (forthcoming) on Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardum 2.16.
12For the importance of Horace in the Middle Ages, see e.g. Quint (1988), Friis-Jensen (2007) and (2015). On medieval curricula in the period up to 1200, see Glauche (1970).
13For this shift away from Virgil’s emphasis on the river’s resentment of Roman power, compare Stat. Silv. 1.4.79 patiens Latii iam pontis Araxes and 5.2.141 quantum ferus exsultabit Araxes. It should not be supposed, however, that Hildebert can have been aware of Statius’ Silvae. See also Luc. 1.19, who refers to the Araxes as not yet properly defeated by Rome, owing to Rome’s destructive civil war.
14For socer … pius see also Ov. Met. 5.152.
15Even if we remove the comma before unda, it is more difficult to see how hospitis unda here can satisfactorily be taken to refer to the Tiber, though Braswell (1979) 235 offers various parallels for the idea of the Tiber as a stranger to Rome (compare the translation of Tilliette (1995) 379: ‘leur piété a favorisé l’entreprise, l’onde du (fleuve) étranger l’installation’), including Prop. 4.1.8 et Tiberis nostris aduena bubus erat and Ov. Fast. 2.68 qua petit aequoreas aduena Thybris aquas.
16See Prop. 4.4.9; Liv. 2.40.7; Ov. Fast. 1.198, Ex P. 4.3.46; Luc. 5.29, mentioned by von Moos (1979) 122 without further comment, 8.133; Sil. 10.481, 10.657; Tac. Ann. 15.38.3. Cf. Virg. Aen. 3.325 fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium with Horsfall ad loc.
17On the extremely scanty traces of Silius in the Middle Ages, see Reeve (1983) 389.
18On the meaning of situ in this line, evoking both ‘site’ and ‘decay’, see Woodman (1974) 117–18 = (2012) 89–90.
19West (2002) 259.
20For solus denoting ‘lonely’ or ‘deserted’, see OLD s.v. 3.
21For a different take on the persistence of Rome’s monuments, compare Paul the Deacon’s view that the walls of Numa (probably the ‘Servian’ walls) would never be destroyed by an enemy, but would fall victim to the force of nature: Paul the Deacon, poem 6.63–4 moenia celsa Numae nullo subruentur ab hoste; | turbo, ait, evertet moenia celsa Numae, in Neff (1908) 30, and see Costambeys (forthcoming).
22On the contrast between cura hominum and cura deum, see Jaeger (1997) 117 n. 1.
23Tilliette (1995) 372.
24On the passage, see further e.g. von den Steinen (1967) 201–3, von Moos (1965) 252–3, Jaeger (1997) 118–19.
25Lines 31–6 have regularly led readers to see poem 36 as reflecting an early pre-Renaissance humanism, e.g. Zwierlein (1976) 92: ‘Das erste Romgedicht Hildeberts von Lavardin gilt als das wichtigste Zeugnis für eine von humanistischer Begeisterung getragenen Vorrenaissance im 12. Jahrhundert’; see also von Moos (1965) 241–5, von den Steinen (1967) 196–214. Tilliette (1995) 370–2, however, cautions against anachronistically humanistic readings of this passage. There has been much discussion of the phrase vultus adest numinibus. Though Zwierlein (1976) viewed the reading vultus as an anticlimactic corruption influenced by the presence of vultibus in 36.32, and therefore emended to cultus, von Moos (1979) defended the transmitted vultus, arguing (125–6) for the value of a parallel from Lucan uultus adest precibus (Luc. 10.105), which Zwierlein (1976) 93 had dismissed as a ‘Pseudoparallele’. See also Smolak (2002) 379–80, and Otter (2010) for further discussion of the passage.
26Tilliette (1995) 369 sees the words as also suggesting a sharp response to claims of temporal authority from the Papacy: ‘Les prétentions émises par le Dictatus papae de Grégoire VII à régenter l’univers, étendant son autorité sur les puissances laïques, sont ici rejetées comme caduques’. Though the temporal authority of the popes and its relation to the power of monarchs was a serious issue in the period, on which see e.g. Blumenthal (1988) 106–81, it is harder to see Hildebert as directly attacking papal power here, especially when the case is made for St Peter eclipsing the power of Caesar (38.11).
27Von Moos (1979) 125 n. 14, who also compares Luc. 1.84–5 tu causa malorum | facta tribus dominis communis, Roma. We can also compare Luc. 1.351 detrahimus dominos urbi seruire paratae. For the thought, cf. Tac. Hist. 1.3.2 non esse curae deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem.
28Von Moos (1979) 119–20 and Tilliette (1995) 361 go so far as to argue that 36.37–8 is virtually a separate epigram, serving as a transitional link between 36.1–36 and poem 38, which are of equal length (36 lines).
29For a classical precedent for a first-person speech from Rome, perhaps compare the vision of the patria and her brief speech to Caesar at Luc. 1.186–92.
30As noted by Scott (1969) 26. For Prudentius in Hildebert’s Rome poems, see e.g. von Moos (1965) 240–1, 252; Smolak (2002) 372–7.
31For the context of Gratian’s removal of the Altar of Victory from the senate-house in AD 382, Symmachus’ response, and Prudentius’ poem attacking Symmachus, see Hedrick (2000) 71–2; Salzman (2002) 74–83; Cameron (2010) 33–51, 75–89, 337–43.
32For another passage with ara and superstitio, cf. Stat. Theb. 6.10–11 mox circum tristes seruata Palaemonis aras | nigra superstitio.
33The word famulus occurs several times in the Vulgate with reference to serving God, e.g. Joshua 12:6 Moyses famulus Domini; a celebrated later example is the reference to Baeda, famulus Christi in the incipit of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. For the language of service applied to Christian Rome, Scott (1969) 26 compares Prud. Contra Symmachum 2.768 sed soli pacis domino mea seruiat aula.
34Tilliette (1995) 376 compares 2 Corinthians 8:9 here, but the language of the Vulgate text (scitis enim gratiam Domini nostri Iesu Christi quoniam propter vos egenus factus est cum esset dives ut illius inopia vos divites essetis) does not seem such a close parallel.
35See further Scully (2013) 131 and n. 95.
36On this antithesis, see further Tilliette (1995) 361.
37The left side of the apse in the triclinium mosaic in the Lateran palace depicts Pope Leo III conferring a banner on Charlemagne, while the Annales regni Francorum also note that Leo III sent a vexillum to Charlemagne: claves etiam confessionis sancti Petri et vexillum Romanae urbis eidem direxit (Annales regni Francorum s.a. 796, in Kurze (1895), 98). See further Goodson and Nelson (2010) 459–66; on the Lateran and its environs in the Middle Ages, see Herklotz (1985), Úbeda Martínez (2017). The definitive treatment of the vexillum sancti Petri is that of Erdmann (1977) 182–200. See also e.g. Riley-Smith (1986) 5.
38Contrast the appearance of the phrase vulgus inerme as a military analogy in amatory contexts in Ov. Am. 1.9.22 and AA 3.46.
39For species rerum as something which might be dangerous, compare Sen. Ben. 4.34.1 fallaces enim sunt rerum species, quibus credidimus.
40For this meaning of ferro as ‘foreign sword’, see Roche (2009) 129 on Luc. 1.31–2.
41See also Ov. Am. 2.10.33, 3.7.50.
42Compare the translation of Tilliette (1995) 380: ‘il prête à intérêt – il conserve son bien, placé dans l’empyrée’.
43On this passage see Section III of Chapter 6 in this volume.
44The text of the Narracio may be found in Valentini and Zucchetti (1943) 143–67; Nardella (2007) is an important recent study.
45The text reported in the MSS of Hildebert for this line is a little different: quam magni fueris integra, fracta doces, as above.
46I am indebted to Marios Costambeys, Diarmuid Scully, Jaap Wisse and Tony Woodman for their invaluable comments on this chapter.